Expectations from a Great Email Marketing Software

There are tens of email marketing software programs out there, all claiming to be better than others, trying to separate themselves from the crowd.

But seriously, what should you look for when selecting an email marketing software for yourself?

Worry no more, as I will be educating you a bit about email marketing software, how they cunningly manipulate you, and what are some absolute dealbreakers.

Let’s get into it, then…

Why do you need email marketing software?

First, let me make you aware of the fact that 100,000 email subscribers are remarkably better than 100,000 social media fans because the social media audience is a rented audience but you own emails. One simple policy violation and your social media account can be blocked, but the email stays.

You require email marketing software to be able to effectively communicate with your email audience. The software makes the communication process effortless and effective.

In fact, it’s not feasible to communicate with your email audience without taking the help of email marketing software. I mean, you can manually send emails to 10 people or say 100 people, but… can you do the same to thousands of people?

The best thing about email marketing is that you are not locked in by the email marketing software, generally. If a software is not up to the mark, you can export your email list and go find another suitable software.

What to look for when selecting the email marketing software for your use case?

Whether you are sending email newsletters or an automated email series, you should look for the following features in your email marketing software:

1. High deliverability rate

Recently, I came across a few email marketing software that were offering lifetime deals for just $50-60. Just for testing, I bought one of those email software and as I expected, most of the emails landed in the spam/junk folder.

The deliverability rate is the most important aspect to verify when looking for email marketing software. Because no matter how feature-rich the software is, what’s the benefit if it can’t land your emails in peoples’ inboxes?

There are not many ways to check the deliverability score unless you first try the software. However, almost all the email software provides a free trial which you can use to test the deliverability.

Email Booster publishes a regularly updated report on the email deliverability score of some popular email marketing software.

2. Automation features

If you send an automated series of emails after someone subscribes to your email list, you would want robust automation features in your email marketing software.

The software should let you create and schedule unlimited series of emails and should have features like:

• Lets you create powerful automation funnels
• Multiple automation trigger types, like even and date trigger
• Automatic segmentation and field update features
• Easy-to-use editor

Most importantly, the automation should be quick and easy to set up.

3. Email broadcasts

The broadcasting feature is necessary if you send email newsletters. Your email software should be able to send email broadcasts to hundreds or thousands of subscribers at once.

The software should also let you apply filters to your audience and then send email broadcasts immediately or at a scheduled time.

Not to mention, a distraction-free editor is a must for writing newsletters.

4. Better organization

Say, you have an SEO blog where you are collecting leads for your newsletter and then offering a free email course. You would want to keep both sets of audiences separate from each other, right?

If the email software you’re selecting has automatic organization features like segmentation and tagging, you can set up automation for different sets of audiences.

However, this feature is not required if you’re just collecting a single email list.

5. Detailed analytics

To track your progress, you should be regularly looking at the analytics data of how your emails are performing. Generally, there are the following metrics that you should keep track of:

• Email open rate
• Email click rate
• Unsubscribe rate, and
• Spam complaints

And if your email marketing tool provides detailed analytics data of all these, you are good to go.

6. Sign up forms

When someone lands on your website, you would want to show them a sign-up form to be able to add them to the respective email list. The sign-up form might be in the form of a popup or an embedded form, here’s an example of a nice embedded form asking people to join a free email course:

Your email marketing software should provide a way to create eye-catching signup forms that you can add to your website.

However, this should not be a dealbreaker. Even if the software you’re selecting doesn’t have sign-up form features, you can use a 3rd-party sign-up form service that can be integrated with the software. You might have to pay extra for the integration, though.

7. Email templates

While it’s not a compulsory feature, some email marketing software make the email creation process easier by providing several pre-designed email templates for multiple use cases.

For example, designing a newsletter from scratch might take time, but if you have various professionally designed templates, you can choose the one that fits and then put all your effort into the newsletter content.

Most of the popular email marketing software offers pre-designed templates for free, but if it’s a required feature for you, do not forget to properly verify before buying.

8. Affordability

It’s a bit tricky part of selecting an email software, generally, high-priced email marketing software tends to have better features and deliverability. But… not always, so you would want to verify things properly.

You should always look at the initial price and then how it increases as your subscriber base grows. Some software becomes crazy costly after you reach 40-50k subscribers.

What are some good email marketing software?

I have tried tens of email marketing software but have finally settled with Mailerlite and ConvertKit. I use Mailerlite at UntalkedSEO and ConvertKit on my personal website.

Mailerlite has one of the best deliverability scores and has a more generous free tier. I get 50-60% open rates on my emails.

On the other hand, ConvertKit has slightly better features like selling digital products, etc.

Now, it’s up to you and your use cases. Just select the one that fits all your needs.

But, for some reason, if you’re not happy with the marketing software you’re currently using, you always have an option to export your list and migrate to any other software.

That’s it.

If you are doubtful about anything related, feel free to let me know by dropping a quick comment below.