The 45 Criteria Choosing Your Best Selling Email Marketing Software
Are you getting stuck to determine your best selling email marketing software? Do you feel you need a complete set of checklist to choose your appropriate Email Service Provider (ESP)?
If yes, then this post is for you. Get confidence that you need to know a specific set of choosing criteria. So that it helps you to have a great email marketing service resolving any knowledge gap.
Literally, it will make you more aware to adopt a quality service that helps to grow your great ROI. That is why, it is essential to keep the criteria in mind during the matching of your business with the right ESP.
You might know the importance why email marketing that about 90 percent of marketers are on this hustle. You’re getting urged to set out an email marketing service with the full spirit of your business run. In this regard, defining the choosing criteria to determine your best selling email marketing software is a sort of deep-rooted research.
Seriously, the process depends on your business nature, goal, and objectives. In addition, it matters by email marketing knowledgebase, own marketing plan, perspective of marketing strategy, sales prospecting, and lead generation techniques that play an important role.
On my own research, the below 45 criteria are about a complete set of choosing factors to determine your best Email marketing service out of dozens.
The 45 Criteria Choosing Best Selling Email Marketing Software
1. Intuitive Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is an email software platform that helps to automate marketing actions. An intuitive marketing automation will help you to do the repetitive tasks easier. Make sure that your potential email service is easy to handle and covers the range of taste you deserve.
GetResponse offers a scalable marketing automation platform like all major ESPs in the competitive market:
2. Responsive email designs
Responsive designs are essential for taking trafic opportunity of full potential. It enables email content to get displayed in all devices including mobile. So, all-device friendly email designs are the basic criteria and ultimate requirement in the email marketing now.
3. Simple Autoresponder
An autoresponder is an email servicing program which allows you to send the pre-scheduled email automatically. So, check out this criteria whether responding performance is simply satisfactory or complex.
4. Free Trial Opportunity
The free trial for a limited time or initial subscription free forever – both offers could help you to judge the service practically. This is a great criterion to uncover the good fit service performance according to your requirement.
5. Budget-friendly Fair Price
Price is a great determining factor for the starters in terms of their limited budget size. You can find several platforms offers that get a good fit for every budget. In this regard, you might avoid what you needn’t buy the service at a cost that includes some of the idle features for your business.
Here’s a table for at-a-glance price comparison that includes a monthly cost for major 7 email marketing services:
[table id=29 /]6. Available Email Analytics
An advanced analytics is an essential tool to get real-time data for empowering productivity. An adequate email marketing management requires sound data such as email open rate, CTR, deliverability and other information for optimizing the hybrid campaign.
7. A/B or Split Testing
A/B testing is one of the best ways to increase CTR that develops conversion rate. This is a sales enhancement process. Make sure that the email service you want to choose provides the best split testing service that works.
8. Quality Landing Page Creator
Responsive Landing pages are the crucial area for the interested visitors. They get converted there and become customer or subscriber while they trust the offer. Consider the email services which are with the best landing page creator including image editor and high converting resources.
9. Flexible Email Editor
An intuitive email editor should be super easy, beautifully designable, responsive message, and drag-and-drop easy and quick system. It will facilitate you to scale and create a fascinating email design. Make sure that your expected services have the system you deserve for the worthy email marketing campaign.
As for example, Benchmark Email has a simple and easy email creation process that any beginners can generate attractive email content:
10. Creative Campaign Builder
Whether you are a starter or experienced user, a comprehensive campaign builder is essential for you. It allows building smart email campaign using easy steps with well design personalized email that fascinates to convert for subscribers or sales.
11. Effective Webinars
A comprehensive webinar tool provides lots of benefits. It helps to grow brand awareness, business relationship, outreach, connection with decision makers, knowing new audiences, and leads for a quick list. A well UX and quality integrity with the invitation and reminder delivery system might help you to grow better result.
12. Fascinating Templates and Forms
An appropriate email marketing Software Company get hustle to keep up enough top quality template and email acquisition professional forms. In terms of building a convertible great looking landing page, you need the templates are to be a taste of the time. How much available the quality templates and forms is a major factor to determine your email service.
Aweber has over 700 mobile friendly email template like others in the ESP industry:
13. Available Opt-in Process
If the system includes a double opt-in email validation process is the best. A lead becomes double opt-in while the users re-confirm the subscription with an additional click from her email box. After GDPR, it’s been simply required to get subscribed the audience for surefire email deliverability.
14. Effective Data Capture and Forms
In purpose of growing contact list, you need to build a cute subscription form that might be pop-up, exit, appear on the scroll, and so on. Find your email service platform that includes survey form as well.
15. Contact Management
In terms of high deliverability in each campaign, all you need to practice quality contact management. It includes many dynamic list management, managing contact with proper segmentation, using the advanced search tool to sort out contact, sendable time optimization, and so on.
16. Email Deliverability
Satisfactory deliverability is a great virtue of a best selling email marketing service. Make sure the ESP you want to use has a strong culture of maintaining highest deliverability. This practice includes various practices such as spam-free process, threat-free process, whitelisting process, list hygiene, the authentication process, and so on.
17. Data segmentation options
Data segmentation refers to keep up the data in dynamic segments with various options for sending the email to the targeted subscribers. In this practice it comprises users’ custom field data, latest message date, geo-location data, webinar participation data, and so on.
ConvertKit provides intuitive tag and segments management atmosphere like other dominant ESPs:
18. Strategic Marketing Worth
How much strategic scope do you have in the email marketing platform to achieve your significant ROI? The exact answer you can find while you start using the potential the service. Alternatively, you might learn the authentic reviews taking your time. Or you might get a comparative study through an expert professional.
19. Lead Generation Ability
In internet marketing, used to call “list is money”. If you do not have a complete list of your potential customers, perhaps your journey is long enough. Before jumping on, you’ll need to check out the lead generation ability of the potential ESP. You have the chance to learn the performance of specific tools, such as landing page builder, webinar tool, list building forms, and attractive design of templates.
20. Ask to the Company Informing Exact Requirement
Ask the company providing you specific information. Thus you can achieve an expertise support from the potential ESP. They are master in their own industry; know best how to figure out which package is appropriate for you.
21. Growth Rate of Email List Size
How much faster the lead generation is a factor. Make sure whether they have significant capability to earn monthly opt-in emails 10 or 20 or 100 which depends on the platform they leverage. Make sure the power of best selling email marketing tools that can help you to grow faster email list generation.
22. Comply with CAN-SPAM act and GDPR
In terms of the honest relationship with the prospects or customers, The CAN-SPAM act and GDPR compliance works as a strong filter for controlling the commercial emailing conduct transparently. It enables recipients to unsubscribe email. Otherwise, the violation could result penalty. A consent management tool should be integrated into GDPR compliance. Make sure these points with the ESP.
23. Social Media Connectivity
Social media is the largest area of the audience they engage there to pay time for their daily interests. Make sure that your email marketing service platform includes the feature that simply integrates social media sharing button to your emails.
24. Available Newsletter Templates (RSS to Email)
Find the feature of customizable RSS email templates in the service package. It enables you to grow more lead nurture to more engagement on your product.
25. Quality Standard of the Features
Make sure the significant standard of the features the ESP offers. The reviews and adequate research on the offers might help you to recognize the quality based on productivity.
26. Existing Customer Opinion
Customers are always right in their own opinion. You’ll need to care their precious opinion to determine on the choice. Try to take the feedbacks who have adequate experience on the product usage. You might contact the existing customers for feedback. Or check out the testimonials delivered by the influential users.
Sendinblue has authentic users’ feedback and reviews to figure out the standard of the service they provide. You might check every ESP like this:
27. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM is a powerful tool essential for small businesses and B2B deals. It enables you to collect the leads for nurturing future customers and sales. Using this tools, you could know where the users move on the entire funnel and how to manage them for improved engagement .
28. Integration Capability
Platform integration refers to understand the ESP regarding it’s capability to adjust the third party tools in the system – such as API, other apps, and social engagement tools. Let you know whether all the work for the result is easy to handle for designing the total campaign.
Such as, ConverKit has high compatibility with many third-party tools to take any additional advantage.
29. Freedom of Service Usage
The due service should have a flexible option for freedom of usage. Whether someone wouldn’t use the service, the provider shouldn’t obligate them with any condition.
30. Level of Security
How the ESP preserves the customer data safety? You’ll need to know how much security they provide regarding customer data such as individuals’ names, medical identification numbers, birthdays, street addresses, income data, email addresses, and Social Security numbers, etc. The security issue matters in choosing for a reliable ESP.
31. How Easy to Operate
Usability should be as simple as a child’s smile. You might rank your own on the different experience on various services according to their operating simplicity to compare the performance.
Such as, Constant Contact has convenient operability that helps to achieve a great result. You need to make sure of this usability is crucial when you choose an ESP.
32. How easy is Importing Email List
You might have an email list in the previous ESP. Now you need to import them in to the new potential ESP. then, you’ll have to uncover the fact whether ESP belongs a system support to transfer the email list instead of a manual method. This is a issue for a while initially, when you have a significantly large number of emails.
33. Understanding the IP Address Usage
According to your business size or prospect volume, you might require choosing a shared IP or dedicated IP. The clarification should have available based on your maintenance feature, cost of the ESP, acceptance rate of shared IP, policy to import subscribers, and own business reputation.
34. Attractive Email Design
Attractive professional emails help to generate subscribers, leads and sales. You need to know how the ESP companies provide their service that goes with right professional design. You have a chance to try their free trial or forever free plans to weigh out the range of attraction. Using their split test leverage you could figure out the definitive emails whoever loves HTML template or simple text emails.
35. Personalized Email Creation
This is one of the best criteria in ESP choosing factors. The personalized emails have the power to build better relationship marketing for better sales. So, you’ll have to confirm this crucial requirement checking through their service thoroughly. You might ask them you emphasize this point need to assued for your email marketing excellence.
36. Lead Scoring Support
In the email marketing best practice, lead scoring is a method to rank the leads or emails according to their potentiality and behavior to be engaged. It helps to deliver the highest targeted emails.
According to Getresponse, marketers’ size is only 11.8% who use lead scoring that achieves a better result. Make sure your ESP has lead scoring system that works.
37. Email Hygiene Management
Email Hygiene management refers to keep the email list organic, clean, and hygiene. That means deleting bad and duplicate emails, keeping up the list up-to-date, workable and opt-in. This is why the email deliverability gets its highest rate. So, make sure that the ESP has ability to make your emails smart inboxing to the recipient.
38. ESP Authentication
This is the feature you need to be considered to make your email marketing more deliverable and acceptable to the recipients. ESP Authentication ensures better deliverability and prevents any fraud.
Three ways you can get the authentication services are: Domainkeys Identified Mail (DKIM), Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC).
39. Reporting Quality
Reporting is an important feature that helps to get adequate data to determine the powerful redesigned campaign. The significant information in report and graphs could leverage to make a decision on the campaigns what to be revised for best email marketing.
As for example, SendPulse email marketing service provides the reporting with impressive graph and information.
40. Ability to Meet Increased Requirement
This is the requirement to fill up the gap between present and future needs. You need to figure out the gap between how much you demand based on your increased leads and how much they can meet your demand. This measurement might give your decision to take a service that needn’t change provider in future.
41. The strength of API Capability
ESP used to provide the newest version of API that has the power of integration to combine the things it serves. It helps to manage scheduled campaigns, sending newsletters, collecting statistics, and many more. Users could easily uncover the power of ESP using the new methods. Additionally, you need to know whether older version works or not.
42. Technical Base of the EMS Provider
The significant technical base of the ESP refers to the high quality mobile responsive templates, email autoresponder, email contact management, Email automation process, appropriate reporting tools, and many more. Make sure their tech base works with high-quality integration power with the whole ESP system as well.
43. Technical Support Availability
If the ESP exists an outstanding technical support system available for the new users might highly appreciable and considerable to select them. Especially it is urgent for you if you do not have appropriate operating knowledge for using the whole potential.
44. Training Availability
As the best part of implementation support appropriate training is importantly required for an adequate usage and impressive result. Check through the offers whether their has available training for the new users as well.
For example, Getresponse has a best email marketing course for A2Z advance learning online. I get certified and found the whole course designed is an unbeatable world-class professional.
45. Success Plan
An email marketing campaign success depends not only based on an excellent email marketing platform. Depends on your management – how much capacity you are to suck the benefits from ESP you get the best fit with your business as per its basic needs.
In that regard, the top-notch right email marketing service generously declares their plan. You’ll have to weigh out their helping depth considering their history of success.
Summary
A great match of your business growth-plan with a best selling email marketing tools is at your end in terms of the available knowledge base. The choosing process might be more dependable on ROI power of the ESP. That is why, taking trial offers might give you the best determining results.
Factually most of the services are alternatively unique and great. Even though you do not have idea how to operate an email marketing, the specific choosing criteria could help you. If you keep a complete check list in your mind you might get relax to determine your best one from dozen of alternatives . Hope those hints could help you to learn the ESP offers to match your business with best selling email marketing software.
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About the Author Swapan Chandra Sutradhar
Sutradhar is a keen enthusiast in web marketing, a big fan of SEO, Getresponse certified Email marketing Expert, and a global b2b marketing professional - engaged in the business network for long. In his blog time, he love's to work on web traffic for helping small businesses and affiliate marketing people around the web.