Friday, 30 January 2015

11 Email Marketing Solutions for Small Businesses


Social media marketing and mobile marketing may be the newest, coolest kids on the online marketing block, but nothing works better for growing your business than good old email marketing. Studies repeatedly show that email marketing is the most effective way to reach and retain customers. A study by consulting firm McKinsey and Co. recently revealed that email marketing is 40 times more successful than Facebook and Twitter marketing combined. To help you launch a successful email marketing campaign, here are ten email marketing solutions you can use to create, send and track emails — and discover what your subscribers do with your messages.


1. Vertical Response

Pricing flexibility is key for budget-conscious small businesses. Vertical Response is a full-featured email marketing service that offers pay-as-you-go packages for companies that only send occasional email marketing campaigns. While most email marketing services require monthly subscriptions that you pay for even when you don't use the service, Vertical Response lets you pay for only what you need, when you need it, to get the most value out of your email marketing dollars. Pay-as-you-go features include unlimited everything — contacts, signup forms, social followers and posts — autoresponders and phone, chat and email tech support. 



2. CakeMail

Need a fuss-free email marketing solution? CakeMail is a simple, Web-based email marketing app that lets businesses quickly create, send and track email campaigns. Users can choose from a collection of ready-to-use email templates or design their own from scratch — no coding required. CakeMail offers a fresh, user-friendly interface where users can also manage contact lists, measure engagement, monitor analytics, create detailed reports and more. You can also access CakeMail on the go via the new iPhone or Android CakeMail mobile app. 


3. Mad Mimi

Sending clean, eye-catching emails is key to successful email marketing campaigns. Mad Mimi lets businesses do just that with its theme-based email-creation approach. Instead of relying on templates, users can easily customize and design themes to make emails all their own. These design-centric emails don't require any prior design knowledge, but look great in all email environments. Mad Mimi also offers social network and customer relationship management (CRM) integration, list management, reports and tracking, secure delivery and more.


4. AWeber

Founded in 1998, AWeber knows email campaigns inside and out. As a service that focuses specifically on newsletters and email marketing, it lets users choose from a whopping 600+ ready-to-use HTML email templates, manage subscribers, use autoresponders to deliver email sequences and even turn their RSS feeds into email newsletters. AWeber also offers customer support by phone, email or instant messaging.


5. MailChimp

All about results? The MailChimp email marketing tool goes beyond just sending and tracking emails. In addition to an easy-to-use drag-and-drop email creator, built-in image editing and mobile-optimized emails, MailChimp offers advanced features for more effective email marketing campaigns. These tools include subscriber profiles and segmentation for highly targeted email lists; revenue reports to monitor subscriber activity and improve sales; and analytics that track everything from open and click rates to list growth, trends, subscriber demographics and more.

6. Benchmark

Searching for an all-in-one email marketing solution? Benchmark is a one-stop-shop for creating and tracking email marketing campaigns. It offers an easy-to-use email-creation platform, where users can edit an email like they would a blog post or document. You can add logos, photos and videos, as well as modify styles to fit your brand. Other features include list management tools — like customized sign-up forms for your website, Twitter or Facebook; list segmentation to target specific markets; and the ability to upload existing lists — and analytics to track campaigns, clicks and social shares.


7. Constant Contact

Created specifically for small businesses, Constant Contact aims to help small business owners reach the right people in less time. The Constant Contact Toolkit offers customizable templates for newsletters and emails, as well as social media promotions, event management and landing pages that integrate with email marketing campaigns. Other features include real-time reporting to easily track opens, clicks, purchases and more.


8. iContact

Great customer service makes all the difference, and iContact offers award-winning customer support. Users can create emails — by choosing from hundreds of templates, using a drag-and-drop email builder or from scratch using HTML — integrate social media accounts, manage their contacts, generate reports and more. And you can do all this with the peace of mind that comes from knowing there is always someone there to help. In addition to offering all types of guides, such as step-by-step tutorials and webinars, iContact also makes its technical support team available via email, phone and live chat.


9. ActiveCampaign

Searching to automate your email marketing campaigns? ActiveCampaign is here to help. First, create engaging newsletters and email campaigns that include content, images and branding materials using ActiveCampaign's customizable drag-and-drop email designer. You can also embed live product data from your website, blog posts or online store, as well as videos from Vimeo or YouTube. Then, use the automation and autoresponder features to set up automatic campaigns, such as email times and frequencies, as well as personalized content, for instance, to greet individual subscribers on their birthdays.


10. GetResponse

GetResponse is more than just an email marketing tool — it's a solution that integrates email marketing with other tools businesses use the most. GetResponse lets users create responsive newsletters and emails like a pro, save time with autoresponders, create landing pages, and gather email intelligence using analytics. A preview feature is also available, so users can see what emails look like on different mobile devices before sending them out. One of GetResponse's standout features, however, is that it helps businesses grow their lists by allowing them to connect the system with a wide range of business apps, such as CRM, content management systems (CMS), social, and e-commerce. This includes Salesforce, FreshBooks, Zoho, Facebook, Twitter, Joomla, WordPress and more.


11. StreamSend

Magical things can happen when you combine email marketing and social media. StreamSend understands that. In addition to email creation and tracking, list management and real-time reporting, the StreamSend email marketing platform integrates social sharing tools to maximize reach beyond a subscriber's inbox. Emails created on StreamSend feature a social media bar, which includes buttons to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This lets subscribers easily share, like and retweet messages to their friends and followers. Users can then track shared messages to launch smarter, data-driven email marketing campaigns.


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