What is Email workflow automation?

Email workflow automation is the process of creating a series of automated email campaigns. Your customer’s behavior and data profile trigger these automated email series.

Email workflow management software helps marketers engage customers at every touchpoint. Every touch contains relevant content based on the customer’s behavior and data.

7 examples of email marketing automation workflows

Classic examples include automated email workflows that send:

1. cross-sell email campaigns
2. campaigns that encourage recurring purchases after a certain period of time
3. automated emails that help recover abandoned shopping carts
4. automated lead nurturing emails that turn leads into customers
5. abandoned shopping cart recovery
6. abandoned product views
7. price drop or back-in-stock product notifications

Take an automated email workflow and make it your own. A custom variation on the classic. You might not be able to see at the moment how much fun this is. Once you start thinking of the ideal automated funnel the creative juices will start flowing. Think about how to bring people back that are bound to fall out of the ideal automated path.

What email workflow automation isn’t

Email Workflow Management is more than sending simple emails after a completed web form. Email Workflow Management software does a whole lot more than autoresponders. With Email workflow automation you lead a customer down a dynamic path. A dynamic path is a series of steps that change according to what the customer needs.

Why you need email marketing automation.

Every business can use email campaign workflows in multiple email streams. What type of automation you need for workflows depends on your business context. Here are a few signs that you will profit a lot from email workflow management;

• You sell products that expire or have a limited life
• You sell products that are complemented by others
• You have customers that don’t always complete their purchases
• You manually follow-up with leads
• You have customer purchase history & other preferences data to segment them

This list is not every scenario that email workflow management; software can handle. If you have a customer’s preferences you already send a personalized series of welcome emails. A marketing automation funnel starts at first contact, first inquiry, first purchase. you don’t need to have the data yet. Use the behavior and data that you pick up after the first automated email.

Your future business needs automated email software now

If your automated marketing automation brings an influx of new leads, those need to go through a lead nurturing process. Is your marketing funnel ready to convert those leads into clients? An email campaign workflow at the right time to the rescue. The management of dynamic email campaigns is where email workflows come out strong. Grow new and current customers.

These are solid business reasons to invest in marketing automation. Furthermore, they will help you with your resourcing struggles so that you maintain sustained growth. In short, to account for future of you business scale, it makes sense to get your marketing automation funnel tools in order today.

What to look for in your Email Workflow Automation software

Strong workflows make use of triggers in different ways. Email triggers can be based on customer behavior, events, logical operands and conditions on any dataset. This means you should be able to make use of all the data you own to automate your workflows.

It all has to start somewhere – how flexible are the workflow’s start points?
Your workflow’s starting point should be totally open for you to fill in, otherwise, it will be limiting your campaign setup. This means you should be able to start your workflow with any type of condition or event, even if that is just an open of an email, a click event. But also custom event or API calls.

How integrated is your segmentation with your workflow?
It’s all well and good if you automate with an automated workflow, but that won’t have the business impact if your customer isn’t getting the right message. Advanced segmentation can help guide your customer across their customer journey. Segmentation is a marketing tactic of choice to get the right message in front of the right customer. For that to happen you need well-defined segmentation and the appropriate content. Enter advanced segmentation.

How advanced is your segmentation?

Here’s a sample creative that went out as part of a clearance sale offer. It takes the customer’s purchase history into account and offers them a specific product based on their purchasing history.

Advanced segmentation ensures that you’ll have the right recipients receive the right content. With workflow automation they also get it at the right time. It’s being able to make use of all your data with dynamic content, based on business rules.

It should be just as easy for a business user to create advanced segmentation visually via the email marketing tool UI. The majority of users do have SQL knowledge. Once you’ve got your segmentation and your workflows defined it’s time to put it to work.

Email Marketing Automation Workflow Example: Clearance sale

There’s almost no limit to what you can automate. Here’s a simple example of an email marketing automation workflow of a targeted clearance sale offer.

Let’s have a look at the things you could do with a well-planned out clearance sale campaign workflow. Your workflow start with a segmentation. The segment selects all users that purchased a specific product within a time frame. In this case a surfboard within the last 24 months.

Our workflow starts a clearance sale that offers our customers products of the right type and size. It’s based on their history of previous purchases. We add their browsing history to tracking.

There is a logical data switch. It sets the email campaign workflow with the right delays. Send your customer the most relevant clearance sale offers at the right time.

Email Marketing Automation Workflow Example: Recurring purchases

According to recent research from Adobe, the conversion rate of repeat customers is around 4x higher than for new customers.

This workflow will remind dog owners to purchase some dog food for their beloved pet. It’s a recurring purchase that they’ll need to do for years on end, so let’s make it easier for them.

1. A customer purchases a 4kg bag of dog food. We remind them that in 3 weeks’ time they should buy a new bag.
2. We give them 3 days to make the purchase. If they still haven’t purchased the dog food, we send them another email “Don’t let your dog go hungry”.
3. We give them 2 more days. If they still don’t complete the purchase, we send an email with a limited one-time offer. A stylish new chain for their dog to go along with the dog food.
4. The purchase and reminder cycle is repeated after every completed purchase allowing us to increase sales.

Tip: Further fine-tune the timing and follow up steps. This will make this Email Marketing Automation Workflow example work like a charm.

The repurchase workflow example requires:
* to know when the dog food is most likely to be finished,
* to estimate and suggest when they should be thinking of repurchase.

So if they bought a 4KG and two other bags of 6KG, ideally you have to do some calculation. If you want to make it super profitable, try and get them on a subscription model around the second purchase.

Email Workflow Automation features you need

The workflow examples show the potential of email workflow automation software. When deciding which email workflow management software is best, you want to consider the following features:

• Start events: these events are the entry conditions that will start a customer’s journey in your workflow. Ideally, you should have complete flexibility in starting your workflow. We’re talking opt-ins, opens, clicks, defined goals, predefined times and custom triggered events via API calls.
• Sending dynamic emails or other types of messages such as SMS or API calls at specific stages of the workflow.
• Delay events: you can use these events if you want to send at a predefined time (say the next day at 3pm) or after a set amount of time.
• Set data events: these update customer profiles in a workflow. You add tags and change data fields about customers in your database.
• Winner switch: having the ability to run an A/B split test on a group of customers in your workflow automation. The winning version is sent automatically.
• Distribution switch: dividing customers into groups to test different content. (E.g. 75% of the audience will receive one message and the remaining 25% will receive another message).
• End event an element that marks the end of a customer’s path in your workflow and take them out of their workflow “membership”.
• Contact frequency control: control over the number of messages a customer will receive in a given period. This includes the triggered emails in your workflow.
• The ability to save and edit workflows, even when they are already started.
• Workflow monitoring & reporting: give marketers the number of prospects in a workflow. It also gives them at all specific stages. You have the ability to select and export them.

If you want to automate then you need to segment-ate

Your automation will only be as powerful as your segmentation allows it to be. to choose the best automated workflow tool, know exactly what you will automate. Only then you’ll be engaging your customers with relevant content. Make your their customer journey align with your marketing automation funnel.

The post Selecting the best Email Workflow Automation tool for your business appeared first on Email vendor selection.

But some functionalities do have the Power of WOW. They could make your life easier, better and incredibly awesome. I’ll zoom in on five moments, or rather functionalities you want to be WOW-ed by during the selection process.

1. Drag-and-drop campaign (flow) editor

It saves you a lot of time when creating a campaign using a user-friendly “drag-and-drop” campaign flow editor. No use of complex coding or creating cumbersome data selections. The campaign flow is an important piece of the marketing automation pie. You want to set up a sizzling campaign in 2 minutes.

“Easily set up an impressive campaign-flow in 2 minutes, it’s possible using the right tools”

A great “drag-and-drop” campaign flow editor will save time so you can, for instance, start to optimize and think to make more innovative (multichannel) email campaigns.

A few tools that personally got me WOW-ed on this specific feature are: Dotdigital Engagement Cloud, E-village Clang and Selligent Marketing Cloud. For example:

Dotdigital Engagement Cloud (previously dotmailer) has an intuitive campaign editor. Drag the start of your campaign into the grid, together with e-mails they have to receive and the right decisions when they should receive them. A nice extra is that you can combine your email campaign flow with connections to other channels. You can think of social channels, calling an external API (for example print follow-ups) but also with Google Ads (display).

E-village Clang, ever since they gave their tooling a makeover, it’s very easy to draw complete flows and trigger several emails, notifications and API-calls. Clang stuck more to its core although a lot of the features of that you can find in other marketing automation software are available through extra modules.

Putting your campaign together in Clang by drag-and-dropping elements

Selligent Marketing Cloud is a bit more complex, but on the other hand, it has more standard integrations in their campaign editor. You can drag and drop your campaign elements into a grid. Marketers can easily create a follow-up to all other channels. With an extra module, you can even personalize your website and use web data to make all your other channels much more relevant. They also have interactive dashboard reporting.

Interactive dashboard / reports in Selligent Marketing Cloud

Time to completion is a real important part of email marketing. Get an email out the door quicker and you can do either more, or more intelligent, campaigns. Research by Really Good Emails showed that the time spent producing one email went up 12% from 2017 to 2018. Now it takes on average 5.7 business days and as list size grows, so does production time for each email.

2. Easily personalize your email 1-on-1 with data selections

The more relevant your message, the better your campaign results. I remember doing a case at Travelworld where we’ve set up a complete customer journey where we sent specific emails based on where they are in the customer journey. Those emails were completely personalized on their click and buying behavior. Opening, click and conversion rates went through the roof!

Creating an automatic 1-on-1 personalized email is easier said than done though. In most cases, it remains quite hard to get the entire email to be completely personalized like you had imagined.

“Generate more revenue by making your email campaign more relevant”
Patrick van Wattum

Think coding, complex scripts and business-rules. If, then, else, fall-back, exceptions and those kinds of things. The bigger the “WOW” is if an email marketing tool handles this in 5 clicks without all the complexity.

Example of campaigns in dotdigital engagement cloud

For example, saving your business rules for selections
Most email marketing tools allow you to make a recipient selection, create send-list to determine to who he e-mail should be sent. But once you’ve done that, you have to create the email and put all those criteria in again in your scripting or dynamic content. Why do I need to do that twice?

If you defined the business-rules, some tools let you putting those criteria in a data feed (XML or such), so you already have the right output for re-use in your scripts or dynamic content.

3. A really good and responsive drag-and-drop e-mail editor

A lot of ESP’s are already have a drag-and-drop e-mail editor. Creating email is a day-to-day activity for a lot of online marketeers and email specialists. But many tools only produce optimized code for some of the email clients and not all of them. So you still need to hack the code to get it all perfect.

As a marketer you want all of your clients to see your content rendered well, in the way you intended and not just 80% (or less). If you get a demo from an email vendor, the output code would be something you want to check.

Once you implement an ESP which does optimize and produce code(s) for all of the email clients, it’s like a big relief. Another thing you don’t have to worry about anymore.

Matthew Smith (@whale) from Really Good Emails
“If you’re not creating responsive emails, you’re basically throwing trash at your customers who are reading more and more on their phones. What do people do with trash? They throw it away! Figure out how to be essential to your customers. Responsive is the first obvious step in that direction.

When people evaluate responsive email editors there are three steps:
Does it work period. 2. Does it work for you and your team? 3. That’s it.

I have yet to see an email editor that acted like it was born in the modern era of the web. The only thing that comes close is Revue. Love what they are doing. EVERYTHING else is from the yesteryear of email editing IMO. Where is the CMS of email creation? I feel like I might need to build it “

4. Powerful pricing

As an email marketer, you can dream about the ideal email platform. With functionalities which make your daily job much easier, and you can build awesome campaigns with. You probably could get all the functionalities you wish for, but the reality is that most of them come with a price.

So it depends on pricing, or better said; on your budget! What do you want to spend on an ESP? Since no-one has an endless budget, it’s important to prioritze the functionalities you actually need and are going to use. You still have to find the right ESP which offers those functionalities for a fair price.

“Choosing the right ESP, comes down to the budget you wish to spend” Patrick van Wattum

But when it comes to ESPs, an expensive ESP doesn’t always mean better and finding a high value for money tool is great. Think of the feeling WOW-moment if you can drive a Roll Royce for the price of an Audi. Once you found the right ESP with a fair enough price, you just can’t wait to get started.

Remember: with (almost) every ESP there is some room for negotiation.

5. Performance is key.

Without high deliverability and performance, you might as well throw in the towel. Stop sending emails and start sending old fashion (post)mail via carrier pigeon.
Is your e-mail not delivered to the inbox?
Is the email send out much later than it was scheduled? Sending speed is especially important once you hit a certain scale.
Is your email marketing software interface so slow you can’t even setup a proper email and send it within 30 minutes?

Then just stop! Think about it, other features might be more sophisticated or impressive, but performance will always be a main concern.

Performance trouble is one of the top frustrations of every email marketeer. In many of the demo’s I’ve seen of email marketing tools I also requested a live test send. That means that I want them to send some test emails while we have the demo.

Once you receive the test mail within seconds you’re just WOW-ed!

Of course, be sure to realize a test environment might be optimized and behave differently than your normal set up, so you still want to do some user interviews or do a real test in a sandbox.

More ways to wow

When I started writing this blog, I thought about these WOW’s. To be honest, I could think of a dozen more.

Here are a few functions that can really impress:

• Integration with DMP / CDP – customer data platform; make your email relevant for the receiver!
• Self-learning interface; e.g. it remembers the list you want to send your email to.
• Subject Line suggestions; the ESP has an algorithm which already determines which subject works best
• Access your ESP through your CMS such as Magento. No need for extra logins.
• Native product recommendation engines; make your email (and your other channels) more relevant by using a native (AI powered) recommendation engine within the tooling
• Having chat abilities in your ESP; extend your email activities by having a chat feature on your website. You can easily follow them up through email!

So, if you are ready for a new ESP or searching for one. Think about what would really WOW you. Determine the budget you want to spend on an ESP and together with the priorities you set will bring you very quickly to a top 3 or top 5 on selecting an email service provider!

The post 5x How Email Marketing Software Can Make You Go Wow appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Why go this route? Because it just might be cheaper, faster and better compared to buying directly from the ESP. Here’s why…

You get the best of both worlds

When you use an ESP through a third party, you still get all the powerful features that ESP platform offers. However, you also benefit from dealing with the smaller size agency that can offer personalized service in a way a large ESP can’t. Which leads me to the next reason…

You might get better customer service

Anecdotally, organizations switch email service providers every two or three years due, in large part, to poor customer service. And really, ESPs aren’t in the business of customer service: They are in the business of software. For many ESPs, offering services is just a necessary evil. They try to offer the service you’ll need, but it’s simply not their core business.

So what if you didn’t have to put up with poor customer service? You don’t, when you skip the ESP and go with the third party. Working with a smaller agency means you could get better service, and also more personal.

Fewer people on staff means you’re more likely to talk to the same person each time you call with an issue. Think how much time you’ll save if you get to talk to someone who already knows you, your email marketing program, and any issues that you’re dealing with, rather than having to explain everything all over again.

You get access to a bigger ESP’s platform

While you’ll have to meet a minimum to work with a bigger ESP–as in minimum pricing or send volume–you shouldn’t have such a minimum when working with a reseller. The reseller already has enough size because they are reselling the use of the ESP platform to several clients: They can justify the cost and volume. That gives you access to a top-tier ESP without requiring that you pay the top-tier price or email at that kind of scale.

Your email marketing program might be smaller, but that doesn’t mean you won’t want to take advantage of the power offered by a large ESP’s platform. Buying through a third party lets you to do just that.

You get industry expertise

ESPs are very good at what they do…but that also means they must stay focused on what they do: the development and constant improvement of their platforms.
On the other hand, an agency, consultant or other kind of reseller has the time (and the need) to be experts in the field, keeping up with constantly changing technologies and trends.

When you choose the third party access to the ESP rather than buying directly from the ESP, you have access to a degree of expertise you’d otherwise have to pay for separately—increasing your costs, but also complicating matters because the outside consultant won’t be an integral part of your email marketing program from the start. Start with the consultant first, and they will.

You get smoother, faster, easier implementations

Does anyone look forward to an ESP migration? I doubt it. Migrations can be time-consuming hassles and seriously slow down your email marketing momentum until you’re fully up and running on the new platform. When you go through a third party instead, however, a lot of the migration work will be done for you. In addition, it will be done by people who have done multiple migrations and implementations, making them much faster at it than you’ll ever want to be.

You get those customizations finally

When you buy directly from a top-tier ESP then find you need customization, you could be in for a very long wait. When you buy through a reseller, however, your needs are a higher priority because you a) have fewer clients competing for limited resources, and b) the reseller is not consumed with the management of the platform the way an ESP’s team is. It might not be the agency that does the customization, but the agency can help make it happen—on a much faster schedule than an ESP can.

You can skip the RFP process

When you choose to work with a third-party vendor rather than buy directly from an ESP, you save yourself time and hassle because you can skip the cumbersome RFP process. Imagine all those hours spent putting the RFP together, combing through responses, coming up with a short list, meeting with ESP salespeople. Now imagine getting all of those hours back and being able to devote them to generating email ROI instead. Do you still want to do an RFP?

You might get to do a trial run

Some third-party vendors such as agencies and consultants will let you take an ESP for a test drive to make sure it’s a good fit. Although ESP interfaces are in general easy and intuitive to use, you’ll still benefit from an actual hands-on trial run…not a demo version. An agency or consultant can offer that trial run.

Tips for choosing that third-party vendor

If all of these benefits have you convinced that you might be better off with a consultant, agency or VAR, the next question is, how do you choose one? Just as ESPs differ, so do the vendors.
If you’ve already chosen an ESP, ask which certifications the vendor has related to that ESP. Also ask for specific examples showing how that VAR or agency made a difference for a client.
Review the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and, of course, ask for references. Find out if the vendor has a different way in to the ESP platform than you would have as a client.

If you haven’t yet chosen an ESP, look for a reseller that can help you choose one. Does that reseller represent ESPs in the right size for your organization (i.e. top tier, SMB, mid market). Do they resell more than one ESP? You want a vendor that will set you up with the best fit for you, not them. Do they publish guides or whitepapers to help with ESP selection? Is the pricing lower than you’d pay buying directly from the ESP? Will you have a dedicated account manager?

Consider the skill set of the reseller, whether you have an ESP picked out or not. Although your situation might require a different list of capabilities, in general you’ll want proof of expertise in:
o Strategy
o Deliverability
o Deployment
o List management
o Customization and integration
o Design
o Testing
o Segmentation
o Personalization
o Dynamic content
o Automation
o Analytics
o Compliance

In addition, you might have particular needs in areas such as SMS or international email marketing. Obviously, you’ll want to ask about those capabilities as well.
When it comes to ESPs, you have a lot of choices, although only a few are likely to be a good fit. Increase your likelihood of success by considering working with a reseller instead.

Check out our review of the best software reseller programs to find out which tools have resellers and agencies in their network.

The post Why The Best ESP Might Not Be an ESP appeared first on Email vendor selection.

A journey through the email software world usually starts with sketching the list of features you need for running email marketing campaigns. If segmentation is somewhere at the top of the list you prepared, here is a guide on how to select the best one.

When email marketing segmentation is an important issue

Realizing your needs is the first and the most important step. Marketers use segmentation in different ways, depending on their business model and type of email marketing program. Write down what you expect from a segmentation module. Here are few cases of the use of the segmentation feature, where it also plays a crucial role in the organization.

Large datasets you want to use

If your company gathered a lot of customer information like order history, browsing history, preferences, personal data, payment status or even more, then it’s just a matter of knowing how to make use of it.

There are two components to success in this case: data organization and of course segmentation. First you’ll need to check if the ESP allows to store complex data sets. For example in relational data tables. Then, you should ensure that this data is accessible via segmentation. Having these tools synced is crucial, otherwise sending well-crafted content to a very specific group of your subscribers might not be possible.

There is no marketing automation without segmentation

You may also find marketing automation a part of the solution to your business needs. There is something about marketing automation that you need to know too – there is no automation without segmentation.

Marketers go for automation because they want to deliver relevant content just at the right moment. High relevancy is achieved by making the content personal, which usually requires dynamic content too. But dynamic content itself is not enough for email marketing automation. It’s simply not possible to code a message that would adjust to all possible scenarios in the customer lifecycle.

The customer lifecycle should be governed by segments that select the right recipients at each stage. Together with dynamic content, they ensure that everyone gets the right content at the right time.

Analytics and reporting

If you frequently need to get deep down into data to find names, not numbers, take a close look at the segmentation module capabilities. It should make all data available for your detailed analysis and allow to export names, activity dates, personal information, etc. Consider it the next time you are manually adding a list of clients who ordered products from given category to your monthly report.

What makes a good email segmentation module?

The most difficult part is over. At this point, you know what kind of service you’re looking for, but you’re still stuck with few vendors on the list. Review these aspects of segmentation before you pick the right ESP.

1. Speed of the segmentation function

The first thing you should question is the time needed for a segment to generate. It costs resources on the ESPs end to process data to display a list of matching subscribers. This means that the speed of this process will be different between vendors. ESPs usually don’t mention how fast their segmentation works, but a good one gives you search results in less than a minute.

Next time you’ll be guided through a system during a demo session, ask the presenter for a simple segmentation like this:

To get a benchmark for speed ask for another, more complex segment, just like this one:

In a case of a good segmentation module, the time it takes for generating a list of matching subscribers should take less than a minute, regardless of how complex the segment definition is.

2. Dynamic use of dates and calculations

Automatic messages require dynamic segments, which to adjust to time restrictions. For example, segment selecting people who opened the message on a mobile device yesterday needs to stay valid every day, with no need to recreate it. Dynamic segments should also allow you to perform calculations, like creating a segment that selects people whose average order value in the last month was higher than $100.

3. No need for a technical knowledge, yet flexible if you have

The process of browsing database to find email address usually involves SQL queries that run in the background. SQL (Structured Query Language) is a programming language designed for managing data stored in databases. Intricate segmentation scenarios should not demand SQL knowledge from the user. Building segments should be easy enough, so a user with no IT background can use it.

It doesn’t mean, however, that more advanced features of segmentation module shouldn’t be available. Look for a segmentation module with a smooth interface, but powerful additions, like an interface to create and run custom SQL queries, that can be used whenever needed. The ability to create custom queries comes in handy in very specific segmentation scenarios that can’t be solved with predefined segment definition options. Going directly to segment’s source code gives you the ability to tailor your segmentation logics precisely for a particular campaign.

ESPs usually design their segmentation modules as a drag and drop or visual segmentation. Both ways can be user-friendly and provide you with all necessary features.

4. Drag and Drop or visual Segmentation?

A simple interface is an asset for the segmentation module. Drag and drop design is just one way of making it easy. Such solution makes it possible to pick elements like i.e. names, domain family or subscriber activities and to add them to the segment definition. Visual segmentation, on the other hand, usually allows to pick restrictions from a list.

Some ESPs put considerable attention to the usability of their solutions and the way they designed their segmentation interface can be different. Regardless if it’s drag and drop or visual segmentation, the most important is what segments you can create, not how they are created.

Segmentation checklist for choosing an ESP

The points below will help you to find the ESP that has the best segmentation module for your needs. So, whenever talking to an ESP check if:

• you’ve set clear expectations and know how you’ll use segmentation
• you can access and make use of all your data with the segmentation module
• segmentation is advanced enough to support all your automation scenarios
• you’re able to export precisely queried subscribers and their data
• segments generate in less than a minute
• segments are dynamic and you can calculate from the segmentation
• the segmentation module is equipped with easy to use interface

Modern email marketing requires the ability to adjust to every business scenario using swiftly running segmentation. There are no two businesses with the same internal operations, so it’s up to you to decide which ESP offers the best segmentation for your needs.

A journey of selecting email software begins with a list of features you need for running email marketing campaigns. Then, from the list of matching vendors you select the ones with reasonable pricing. From the list of matching vendors, you select the ones with reasonable pricing. You end up with a couple or few email providers that look to be a good fit.

After you realize what your organization looks for regarding segmentation, it’s just a matter of looking at the segmentation feature under great scrutiny. Keep the tips above in mind will help you select the best vendor and keep your money in your pocket.

The post How to select the ESP with the best email segmentation module appeared first on Email vendor selection.

Without interest there is no sale, so if your tools allow you to nail that in the best way possible, you are with the right partner.

Of course your ultimate tool also depends on your own email marketing requirements. But where do you start and what do you look for in the best email newsletter tools?

1. Previews – look before you leap

Everybody knows how to send out newsletters, it is the basic part of the game. Your newsletter goes to mobiles, tablets and desktop computers and each can have a variety of email clients.

Nothing could be more embarrassing than your newsletter being unreadable after you sent it out to hundreds or thousands of people. It gives the impression that you really don’t know what you’re doing and that is not an impression you want to give to your current and future clients.

With so many different configurations on the market, this shortcoming is something that happens all too often.

You can avoid that by testing them before you send them out. I am talking about render testing, not A/B split testing. A preview function that all the best email newsletter tools have available will allow you to see how your newsletter will look and act on different devices, from desktop and webmail and on the latest smartphones.

Make sure your newsletter tool is compatible with a 3rd party service that does it, but the best email newsletter tools have these previews readily available inside the tool. Making it even more easy to use and a better workflow.

2. Email services and lending a helping Hand

Everybody needs a little help from time to time. The basic functions should be readily available and easily identified within your email newsletter tool. There are times when you need to do something extraordinary or simply need a reminder or some help.

The best email newsletter tools offer easy to access tutorials, documentation and even live help from people who are trained to assist you. Think of them as the Jedi masters of newsletter creation minus the philosophy and confusing sentence structures.

3. Scheduling for success

Let’s face it: your clients don’t care if you’ve had a busy week and can’t send out a newsletter on time. They expect results, not excuses and results in this case mean a newsletter in their inbox on the same day every week or month.

However, we all know that we can get overwhelmed with work, life and things that are just (dare I say it!?) more important than newsletters.

Good newsletter tools have a way to avoid this crisis with automatic scheduling. This feature sends out your newsletter at a specific time to your mailing list no matter where you are. As long as you have made the necessary preparations, you can be secure in the knowledge that your newsletter will always be on time. The best email newsletter tools even will help you in determining the right send time, through better reporting functionality and sending of triggered emails.

4. Getting personal

Dear Sir / Madam / Whom it May Concern, if you are reading this and feeling disconnected you are not alone.

If you are sending a newsletter to a client, you have already established a trusted relationship with them, no matter how small. As soon as you begin a newsletter addressing some kind of vague clientele, that trust is immediately obliterated.

Everybody wants to feel special. Everybody wants to be acknowledged as an individual – and your newsletter has the power to achieve this through personalisation tools.

Quality newsletter tools give access to personalisation that are able to address each individual client by their names, surnames, where they live, what they ordered or even how old they are – and that’s just the beginning.

The best personalisation tools are available in the best newsletter tools. You can spot the best personalisation tools by the amount of detail they allow you to add and variations based upon the normal fields, conditional fields and business rules.

Don’t send email that is consistently depersonalised. Business relationships are built on trust. If you’re not willing to engage your client on a personal level, you will never be able to build that trust – or your client base.

5. Their reputation is your reputation

When handling something as important as your email marketing or newsletter, it is always a good idea to stick with names that have lasted and been trusted through many years.

When dealing with your business and retaining your clients through your newsletter, now is not the time to strike out on your own, experiment and take risks – this isn’t college. Remember – the zebra in the middle of the herd never gets eaten. It is good to check some references of that email service provider, especially if you are seriously betting on email marketing.

Well-known companies that provide email newsletter tools and have been around long enough are trusted for a reason – they earned it. Your newsletter is your company’s impression upon your clients. In other words, your reputation is at stake – wouldn’t you want a company with a good reputation to take care of your own?

What to look for in the best email newsletter tool

Of course your ultimate tool also depends on your own email marketing requirements. But after reading the 5 Signs of a Quality Email Newsletter Tool, look for these 5 and you are on your way finding your best email newsletter tool.

1. Previews of how the newsletter will look on a variety of tablets, mobile phones and desktops.
2. Tutorials, documentation live support, help guide and video explanations.
3. Automatic scheduling.
4. Extremely detailed personalisation options.
5. A good track record, reputation and a well-known, trusted name.

The important detail to remember here is that using the best newsletter tools make your life easier and allow you to do more advanced email marketing, quicker and with less effort. If your newsletter is not holding your client’s attention, something (or someone) else is. Why take that chance? Find the best newsletter tool, make the best newsletter and get the best results.

The post 5 signs you are getting the Best Email Newsletter Tool appeared first on Email vendor selection.

As with any relationship, personal or professional, things are bound to change. Is your current ESP still one of the best email service providers, are they still “the one”?

How well has your email service provider done so far?

People grow, goals change, businesses evolve, markets change, long-term plans veer off into another direction… and so it is with ESPs and the companies they serve. Is your current ESP still one of the best email service providers, is he still “the one”? Or is there another that could serve you better down the road?

Below you’ll find 21 questions can guide you to objectively evaluate how well an ESP has performed for you so far, and how well it might be your future ESP based on both your roadmap and theirs.

Are they (still) one of the best email service providers for you?
Are they still one of the best email service providers for you? Consider the following questions as you ponder your answer…

1. Has your business grown in size?
2. Has your email list grown?
3. Has your product offering grown?
4. Have your business objectives changed significantly since starting with that ESP?
5. Are you ready to evolve your email segmentation into something more sophisticated?
6. Have you had the same account manager(s) the whole time you’ve been with that ESP or have you seen turnover?
7. Have you noticed an improvement or decline in the performance of the platform?
8. ….customer service?
9. …technical support?
10. Is the ESP growing and taking on new clients? If not, why?
11. If so, has this affected the service and performance you experience?
12. What is the ESP’s long-term plan for growth and functionality of the platform?
13. Do the ESP’s future plans align with yours?
14. Has the ESP helped you to innovate your processes and/or strategy?
15. Are they proactive on your behalf?
16. Have they come to you with ideas or do you go to them asking for help?
17. Has your email ROI improved since being with that ESP?
18. How about your processes?
19. Your strategy?
20. Does the ESP platform offer every functionality you want?
21. Does the ESP offer referrals to third parties to help, or do they have plans to add that functionality in the future?

These aren’t questions intended to be answered only with a simple “yes” or “no.” The will also get you thinking objectively about your ESP and what the future will hold.

In addition to the 21 questions above, you might want to check out the 6 reasons NOT to switch ESPs…just to make sure you’re not overlooking an internal problem when blaming your ESP if you’re already unhappy with them.

Will your ESP still be “the one” tomorrow?

Sure, you need to track what’s happening with your numbers today—deliverability rates, opens, click throughs, conversions, bounce rates, unsubscribes, list growth, ROI, etc.—and you need to watch for and react to trends in your numbers. But you also need to be looking down the road towards tomorrow, to make sure the ESP that’s serving you now will be the right ESP for the future and continue to do so next year and the year after… and the year after that.

You have to keep an eye on even the best email service providers

As happy as you might be right now, it’s still worth keeping an eye on your email service provider’s performance and level of service. At the simplest level, both you and your ESP need to keep up with new trends and technologies as you look towards the future. At a higher level, you should be considering whether or not your ESP is the one that can take your email marketing program where you want it to go in the next few years.

It’s like someone you date vs. someone you marry. And it could be you’re merely “dating” your current ESP because they’re not the best email service provider for you long term.

Evaluate even the best email service providers

Your business is likely growing and changing, as is your email program. It could be your business has expanded to more physical locations, grown the product line, or evolved into a sophisticated email marketing machine. Or maybe you haven’t experienced the growth yet, but you plan to.

Whatever the change (or anticipated change), it pays to periodically evaluate even the best email service providers to be sure they are always a help with and not a hindrance to your efforts to grow.

So…are you merely dating that ESP? Or is that ESP “the one”?

The post 21 Questions to Evaluate Even The Best Email Service Providers And See If They Are “the One” appeared first on Email vendor selection.

They are often the first concrete contact point between you and a potential customer and could very well be the last one. So what impression is your newsletter giving to your all important client base?

Picture this: you want to take a hot date to an expensive restaurant. You arrive late, you stall your car at the venue and your credit card is bounced after offering to pay for the meal. You drop your date off, turn down a dead end and have to do a twelve point turn to go home. Do you think you’ll get another date?

Technique is vital to your email marketing performance, but once you have that down, you need the best tools at your disposal for maximum effect. If this talking about restaurants made you hungry for restuarant email marketing strategy, here is a guide on email marketing for restaurants. Back to our main story: Here are some helpful signs to look out for to find the best email newsletter tool for your business.

Lots of email templates = lots of appeal

Choice is everything. It separates the winners from the losers and makes individuals stand out from the crowd. So your newsletter should not settle for less, it should strive for more.

Multiple choices of high quality, easily customizable design templates, are a must for any newsletter tool that is effective for its purpose. More templates and customisation mean your newsletter will not only stand out amongst the swarm of mail in your client’s inbox, but also in a potential customer’s mind. If your newsletter tool limits your creativity, it’s also limiting your client base.

Make sure the newsletter templates are mobile friendly; meaning that no matter on how small a screen your newsletters are read, they still look smashing!
Globally, 47% of email is now opened on a mobile device – more than traditional desktop email clients!

Newsletter reports yield results

Results are like rabbits – the more you have access to, the more you will get. Knowing your email marketing results via email newsletter reporting and making the necessary changes will get you more results.

It’s all well and good if you’re the best writer since Hemingway, but if you’re sending your well crafted newsletter to dead email accounts no one is going to care!

You need to know the details and results from what you send out or you’re flying blind. A good newsletter tool will have detailed reports on how your newsletter is performing out in the real world and will offer A / B split tests, an Inbox preview option and mailing list clean tools.

What are people responding to and clicking on? How many bounces are you getting and where? Which newsletters are getting the better results? All these questions can be resolved through a quality newsletter tool that has access to reports that allow for extremely detailed, accurate and up to date results.

Social Media and your Email Newsletter Tool

While email marketing is far from dying out, it does not hurt to take advantage of social networks. Social Networks can be an online marketer’s gold mine. Besides, if you are not allowing your clients the opportunity to tell all their friends how awesome your services are, you are doing your clients and yourself a disservice!

The best newsletter tools see the emergence of social networks as opportunities rather than threats and have thus allowed the integration of email marketing and social media with a click.

This allows you to share your newsletter with your Facebook fans, Twitter followers or Google+ devotees. It also allows your customers to share your letter easily to their friends creating a snowball effect where everybody wins!

Interface – Looking and Feeling Good

You can have the fastest and most powerful car in the world but if you don’t know how to start it, you’re not going anywhere. Likewise, if you don’t know how to use your newsletter tool, your newsletter isn’t going anywhere!

While often taken for granted, the interface and user friendliness of a newsletter tool can make or break productivity and even the newsletter itself when the author has no idea how to finish it! Especially if you aren’t spending all your days inside the email newsletter tool, it will be hard to learn to work with a complex one.

A quality newsletter tool doesn’t not only look great but also feels great. The tool should feel intuitive, practical and logical. Basic functions such as adding a graphic, title or border should take a couple of seconds, not require you to have a degree in computer programming!

You Newsletter Tool needs some Mobile Magic

The world is going mobile – and so should you. Your customers are busy people. People usually only get the luxury of sitting down to check their email on their laptop after a long day of hard work. Seeing your newsletter at this time could make your clients ignore it – and no-one likes being ignored.

Dont be left behind. If your clients are mobile; reach them through their mobile phones. A good newsletter tool gives you the power to easily go mobile and reach your clients with impact, straight in their pocket.There are some specifics to look for in a mobile email ESP.

Whether it is via text message (SMS) or a fully optimised newsletter for mobile clients like smartphones and tablets, your newsletter tool should be able to optimise your message for whatever medium you choose.

What to look for in a quality email newsletter Tool

To round up, what should you be looking for in a quality email newsletter Tool?

• A variety of fully customisable templates that grab a reader’s attention.
• Detailed reports with A / B split tests, an Inbox preview option and mailing list clean tools.
• Integration of email marketing and social media options.
• Easy to use and intuitive interface.
• Mobile optimisation.

Make sure you have access to the best tools available to get the most out of your newsletters, clients and ultimately your business. Stay tuned for more signs of a quality newsletter tool!

The post 5 Signs of a Quality Email Newsletter Tool appeared first on Email vendor selection.

We found it quite surprising that Email Service Provider comparison is one of the top challenges in email marketing.

Email Service Provider Comparison as a top challenge

In a research of 300 marketers (client side, vendor side, agency side, thought leaders, former clients and colleagues), the researchers asked “What Are the Top Challenges You or Your Clients Face Today?”

It’s is not so often that a research into marketers’ challenges goes into the relation with a vendor. These kind of researches generally use multiple choice questions. Normally the top challenges would be reported as:

• Creating relevant content,
• Growing and maintaining a quality email database,
• Integration of systems,
• Lack of email marketing strategy and
• Generating and proving ROI.

Researchers always have quite the influence on survey results. In the best case scenario there is an extra field called “other challenges”. But in this case they did pay attention to the relationship with the ESP.

The number one challenge for email marketers is their limited budget and resources. That is pretty consistent with other research. But the number #3 and #6 challenge are interesting.

Managing multiple partner and vendor contracts

Marketers sometimes have 5 – 6 vendors and partners in the email marketing automation space at the same time. One of the top challenges is managing multiple email partners and vendors, listed as number three in this research.

What makes managing multiple vendors especially challenging is that each vendor has its’ own unique way of doing things. Creating a workable and efficient marketing environment with multiple vendors is an added challenge. It can ask for integration of multiple (real-time) CRM databases and marketing systems. This calls for marketing automation of data tasks, but beyond of what you would normally expect the infrastructure to look like. According to the researchers, it often ends up in failed efforts and wasted resources.

Help with Email Service Provider Comparison, mainly RFP or RFI help

We know that selecting the right Email Service Provider is not easy in a untransparent market. So it is a pretty challenging effort knowing that a marketer first has to dig up their company specific requirements and assess them with multiple choises. On average companies go through a vendor selection or evaluation about every three years.

Maybe we would not have ever known that companies do struggle with Email Service Provider Comparisons that often, if the research had stuck to the top 5 challenges, but luckily they published the top 19 and for that we thank them. Mainly RFP and RFI help was listed as the number 6 challenge. That is right, this totally blew my socks off.

One of the reasons given is that procurement, IT and/or marketing divisions often work against each other during the selection of a marketing system. They do have different goal or have problems marrying their multiple goals cost-efficiently. This does emphasize the need to put together the ideal team when selecting your next ESP.

The full report was an internal study conducted by information era marketing + consulting, llc (EIMC) in 2012.