How highly do you rate communication with your clients?

10 things to think about when choosing an email marketing platform

How did you communicate with your clients when the corona virus pandemic broke out? Did you have all their emails stored in one place and were able in a few clicks of a button to:

• Ask how they were coping

• Inform them how you were adapting or

• Tell about new services or products you were offering?

Or were you fervently wishing that you had you set up a mail marketing platform where since the beginning of time you were funneling all your clients?

Having a central place that you can easily contact all your clients is just one the advantages of having an email marketing platform. Building authority is another and nurturing your existing client base is yet another. And if that didn’t persuade you did you know that an existing client is 4 times much more likely to repeat buy from you? Does that convince you to be popping up in their Inbox with your latest offer?

Before deciding to invest in a mail marketing platform you have to know where your customer is engaging with you in the 1st place. If they are not on email and they only engage for example on Facebook or LinkedIn, then that’s the place to target them. As Andi Jarvis highlighted in this blog use your ARM to work out where your clients actually are first!

If you think yes, my target customer is on email, and I want to set up a mail marketing platform there are lots of considerations to make before choosing which one is most suitable for your needs. Having a pretty interface or being free shouldn’t be your deciding factor! I would advise thinking about these 10 elements:

1.     How intuitive the platform is to use?

When you log in is the platform intuitive to use or does logging in make you want to log straight back out again? Always sign up to a free trial if you can of a product to test how user friendly you find it first.

2.     Support

Sometimes we can be lured by a free product but as they say nothing in life comes for free and if a tool is free chances are you will pay instead in the hours you spend on trying to work it out. Before purchasing a product always check how much support is available –

-is there 24-hour chat bot?

-do they offer online or face to face tutorials?

-do they have a comprehensive how-to section (Xero accountancy is an example of a company with a fantastic help section). I swapped from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign in 2020 and they had a really thorough induction programme with customer support.

3.     Integrations

This to me is one of the most important things to consider -how easy it is to integrate with a) your own website if you have one b) any ticketing tools you are using Eventbrite for example c) courses you are selling d) scheduling tools (such as Acuity or Calendly)

It would save you a lot of time and sanity to use a marketing platform that integrates with other tools you use.

How much time do you think you would save for example if when a client booked a discovery call with you in Calendly/Acuity etc. that their name is automatically added to your mailing list and you could tag them whoever you wished?

How much manual importing, and risk of errors do you think you would avoid if your tool automatically added names of clients (with their permission) into your mailing list so you can market future events to them at a click of a button?

4.     Pricing

Pricing can be a big factor but with pricing you must always consider how much added value/support and functionality am I going to receive? As I mentioned I would be wary of products which are totally free as they have to make their money somehow? If you sign up to a tool for example which has no support package at the free version, and you then spend 7 hrs of your own time trying to understand how to set things up. How much money have you lost rather than gained?

5.     Audience

Is it easy to import/view/filter/delete/filter names into your ‘audience list’ without frying your brain? Can you manually add a name as well as well as doing an import via a CSV file? Similarly how easy is it to export names or delete information on a client (as they allowed to request via GDPR rules)?

6.     Forms

Look to see can you easily create a form that is customizable so that you can 1) have a newsletter form on your website 2) create pop up forms for lead magnets or courses you are offering 3) create a landing page.

7.     End user- friendliness

It is also worth considering how user friendly the end user finds your email campaigns/monthly newsletter to view. Do a test and send it to someone you trust and ask their critical opinion on how they see it /if it went into spam.

8.     Reporting

Crafting a beautiful email that you are convinced that your reader will just love isn’t enough, you need the hard metrics behind of :

-Delivery rates

-Open rates

-What links your clients are most clicking on

So, this is another important element to check if it’s included or not

9.     GDPR compliancy

If you are based in the UK or selling to a client based in the UK is the software, you are using GDPR compliant? Are you allowing people to opt into your newsletter rather than only having the choice to opt out and is it easy for them to unsubscribe if they want? Mailchimp has a good section about this as well as templates, see here.

10. Templates /Workflows

What type of business do you have and what kind of templates do you want to send out? Have a look to see that different mail marketing platforms offer : Ezines/simple emails/ announcements/sales promotions etc.

Lost in the maze of where even to start?

If you haven’t yet got an email marketing platform or are dissatisfied with the one you have, G2 crowd is a good place to look at for reviews for all the different platforms in terms of functionality/pricing/user friendliness.

If you have any questions about the above or:

• have lots of client emails floating about that you would like sorted and imported into a mail marketing platform.

• want to set up an automation for example that when someone downloads a free guide from you, they are entered into an email sequence.

• just have no idea even where to start!

Don’t worry you can book a free no obligation discovery call with me.

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