Do you know that there are more than 4 billion email users? Email, having these many users, dwarves other digital communication platforms. It has been often believed that email as a marketing tool was on its deathbed.
Contrary to these beliefs. emails have seen a resurgence as one of the preferred marketing tools by marketers for their day to day marketing activities.
Importance of Email Marketing
59% of marketers say that email marketing gives them the highest return on investment compared to other marketing methods.
It is the reason email marketing is the preferred tool for many marketers. However, it is not always a walk in the park for companies to conduct successful email marketing campaigns. Although email marketing is a great way to reach individuals directly, it takes a lot of time out of companies. Many businesses have evolved their email marketing strategies in search of efficiency. Long ago, companies had to dig through questionnaires to understand their customers’ preferences. Today it is easy to access automatically compiled lists with tons of information on potential customers.
There are tons of specialised software people can use to streamline their email marketing drives. Unfortunately, some companies are still drawing a blank looking to streamline their email marketing.
You must already have heard about a boatload of email marketing tools. However, by themselves, these tools are not guaranteed to give pleasing results. Every marketer needs to use supportive tools to boost their edge. The following are supportive tools that can improve every email marketing campaign.
1. Canva
When developing an email marketing campaign, a marketer can easily overlook the importance of how the emails will appear. The design of the emails sent out should be a top priority. The perfect email should draw attention to what you want the reader to see first while packing in all the information you want to convey. The need for good-looking emails is where a design tool comes in.
With Canva, you do not need to be a designer to make perfect-looking emails. It is an easy-to-use tool for creating branded content that looks awesome. The best part is that Canva targets people who have no prior design skills.
2. Grammarly
Are you creating content for your email and want to be sure it conveys the message you want? Is it the middle of the night, and your proofreading skills have taken a nosedive after the long day you’ve had? Grammarly makes an honourable mention here because it makes sure that no silly errors get past. With this tool, you can create captivating content which you can customise to suit the tone of voice you want for the target audience.
Grammarly is not only helpful with email marketing but it can help you with all your writing to make it error-free. You can also use Grammarly regardless of the platform you have in place.
3. Deliverability Tools
Let’s say you have developed and launched a killer email marketing campaign, but how do you know if the emails reach their intended targets? The only way you can do that is to use a deliverability tool. A good deliverability tool will test your email for spam triggers, show you if your email has reached your target, and some go as far as telling you which folder your email ends up in the recipient’s address. Two great deliverability tools to use are MailGenius and GlockApps.
4. Hyperise
It is another email customisation tool that each email marketing arsenal needs. We have already mentioned Canva for personalisation. However, Canva is a general customisation tool, but, Hyperise is the best for emails. You can use it to add customised graphics to emails to make them pop.
5. Clearbit for Data Enhancement
You cannot maximise lead conversions by sending generic-looking emails. An effective marketing email needs to show the recipient that you know them.
To create the appearance of familiarity, you need to add details like the recipient’s proper name, title, and other details specific to them. A data enhancer tool such as Clearbit can help you populate those hard-to-fill fields. Clearbit scans numerous sources and provides up to 85 data fields that you can use to customise emails.
6. Landing Page Optimisation Tool
You must optimise the landing page where potential leads arrive. A well-optimised page will improve your conversions and make your investment worthwhile. The quality of the landing page should be top-notch. It should also have a call-to-action that is a logical progression from the content of the marketing email.
Unbounce comes highly recommended as a landing page optimisation tool. It enables you to create landing pages that give you better conversion rates.
7. Get a Good Email Verification Tool
How many of the emails on your mailing list are active? It is a question you should answer before sending marketing emails. A good email checking tool like DataValidation will enable you to reduce undeliverable emails and improve your return on investment.
8. OptinMonster To Manage Opt-ins
As the name suggests, OptinMonster manages opt-ins, but it has evolved to do much more. It is now arguably the most acclaimed plugin for generating leads. OptinMonster was exclusively a WordPress plugin, but now it works on any other website.
OptinMonster is highly customisable with many lead generation types, numerous triggers for displaying popups, many built-in templates, drag-drop customisation of assets, and much more.
9. Convertkit For Organising Your Contacts Like A Pro
No matter how many email marketing tools I introduce to you, you will notice a lot of duplication of tasks. Few email marketing tools have enough unique features to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Marketers who excel at their jobs don’t rely solely on marketing tools. Instead, they create strategies to complement them.
One indispensable email marketing strategy is audience segmentation. You cannot send a single email to your entire audience, no matter how carefully you have crafted it. If you have a long email list, you should consider grouping the contacts to make targeted emails more effective. One of the best tools for segmenting email lists is Convertkit. You can use them to create countless segments for your current and future campaigns.
10. See If Your Audience Has Read Your Emails With Boomerang
Long before fully-fledged email marketing tools came along, marketers had found creative ways to check the performance of sent mail. One of the first things a marketer would want to know is whether recipients have opened their mail.
One tool that can give you this information is Boomerang for Gmail. Judging by its name, you can already guess what Boomerang does — it sends you an email if your recipient hasn’t read or replied to your email by a time set by you. Initially, Boomerang worked with Gmail only. However, you can now get versions that support Office 365 and Outlook.
11. Great Marketers Use Calendar Scheduling Apps
What call-to-action have you made on your landing page? Does it involve customers potentially booking time with you or your marketing team? If it does, you might want to automate your calendar scheduling. A scheduling tool will help your qualified leads to book calls or meetings with you at a suitable time for both of you.
Calendly is an excellent calendar scheduling app. It will automatically help you book clients without your direct participation for each lead.
12. Multi-Way Data Syncing
When you conduct an email marketing campaign, you often need to use multiple apps. The onboarding process of each of these apps is different and will leave you with several data sets without a central place to collate and store. To sort out this mess, you need a data-syncing tool.
Such a tool will collect opt-ins from various sources and synchronise the data. You no longer have to worry about missing leads because of your many lead generation tools.
A highly recommended data syncing tool is Hubspot Data Sync.
Bonus Tips: Email Marketing Is Going Mobile
For the first time in 2019, more people used their phones to access the internet than desktops. What does that mean for email marketing?
Fortunately, you will not need to make ground-breaking changes to your email marketing campaigns. You only need to be mindful of the unique characteristics of mobile phones and adapt your strategy to match. I know you are already wondering what you need to do differently. Here are some pro tips for making your email marketing work in the mobile space.
Use mobile-friendly templates
Ensure your subject line is short enough to fit on the narrower screens of mobile phones
Your preheader text needs to be compelling. People often decide if to open an email based on it.
Use a “From” field optimised to appear trustworthy to your audience.
Balance text with compelling images. The human brain processes visual elements 60,000 times faster than text — make your photos count.
Use big buttons because they are easier to tap with a finger.
Final Words
The email marketing world is a cut-throat scene. Every marketer is looking for a way to edge out the competition. You may have an excellent email marketing tool and a well-laid-out strategy but find that your conversion rates are below your expectations. At this point, you might want to consider utilising the tools mentioned above to figure out why your marketing strategy is not working. There are also quite a few to put you back on track.
