How to choose your email marketing software: If you want to send mass emails.
You need email marketing software. But how do you go about figuring out which one is the right one for you? Here are some basic requirements that you can expect of any email marketing software, also called email service provider or abbreviated as ESP!
First, we’re going to discuss really basic requirements every ESP should have. Excellent deliverability: the whole reason you’re using email marketing software is that you cannot send out emails yourself from a regular address and guarantee they will make it into inboxes. S make sure it actually delivers on the <text start=”37. 12″ dur=”4.
32″>deliverability that you need it for!How do you go about measuring this? Well, l there are a couple of things you canlook at. <text start=”44.
48″ dur=”3. 36″>first of all you can check what theiranti-spam policies are so what are they doing to keep spammersoff their shared ip addresses <text start=”51.
92″ dur=”4. 88″>because spammers bring down thereputation for everyone using that esp you can also see if they have amembership to a white listing service <text start=”60.
239″ dur=”4. 24″>such as the certified sendersassociation or the csa and finally just have a chat with theirsales rep and ask what their <text start=”68.
24″ dur=”4. 8″>deliverability rates are on shared ipseven if you’re going to use dedicated ips figuring outhow they maintain good deliverability on <text start=”77.
119″ dur=”4″>shared ips will tell you a lot aboutthis esp now just a quick side note here you wantto make sure to ask about deliverability <text start=”85. 68″ dur=”4.
96″>rates and not just delivery ratesdeliverability rate is also known as inbox placementso this means how many emails are making it into inboxeswhereas delivery rate just means the <text start=”98.
4″ dur=”3. 92″>email made it onto the serverand it could be in the spam folder so make sure you ask about deliverabilityrates <text start=”105.
6″ dur=”4. 24″>there are a couple of functions as wellthat your esp should offer you so you can maintain your own excellentdeliverability <text start=”114.
079″ dur=”3. 281″>one such important function is bouncemanagement when you send an email to an invalidemail address that will be marked as a <text start=”121.
84″ dur=”3. 52″>hardbounce now you never want to send to a hardbounced email twice eventually these <text start=”128.
879″ dur=”4″>hard bounces become spam trapsand once they’re spam traps and you’re sending to them that marks you as aspammer that can get you on a blacklist <text start=”137. 92″ dur=”4.
16″>so to avoid that for everyone your espshould offer bounce management which means that when your emails hardbounce they are automatically <text start=”146. 4″ dur=”4.
479″>blacklisted so you’ll never accidentallysend to that same email address that has hardbounced for youa second or third time segmenting and filtering are functions that are alsovery helpful for maintaining good <text start=”159.
2″ dur=”4. 319″>deliverability and that’s somethingwe’ll cover in later videos your esp should also make it super easyfor you to comply <text start=”167.
84″ dur=”4. 64″>with the legal guidelines around emailmarketing in your area we’ll be talking later about how tocomply with the european gdpr which is <text start=”176.
8″ dur=”2. 88″>seen as the gold standard of dataprivacy but here are some functions you need forlegal compliance in many different <text start=”182.
879″ dur=”3. 36″>placesfirst of all you need to make sure you’ve got automatic management ofsignups and unsubscribes <text start=”189.
68″ dur=”3. 52″>and it’s the unsubscribes that arereally important here local laws governing email marketingall agree that your contacts need to be <text start=”197.
04″ dur=”4. 96″>able to unsubscribeeasily and quickly from your emails if your sp doesn’t offer this you’llvery quickly get into legal hot water <text start=”206. 959″ dur=”3.
36″>another tool that’s key for legalcompliance in many areas especially with the gdpr is to have adoi or double opt-in sign up form <text start=”216. 159″ dur=”4.
241″>you also need blacklisting options soyou need to be able to very quickly blacklist a contact and say don’t sendto them ever again <text start=”225. 36″ dur=”3.
2″>this is a little different fromunsubscribing unsubscribing is when contacts themselvessay they don’t want to receive your <text start=”231. 12″ dur=”3.
44″>emails anymore blacklisting is when yousay don’t send them my emails anymore andyou might need to do this for example if <text start=”238. 959″ dur=”3.
761″>a contact calls you upand says don’t send me any more emails then you say no problemlet’s blacklist that person so if the <text start=”246. 879″ dur=”5.
601″>contact doesn’t follow the traditionalclicking unsubscribe finally subscriber profiles are really helpfulfor legal compliance because they show you when the subscribers signed up toyour emails <text start=”259.
199″ dur=”3. 841″>what emails they’ve received from youthey basically give you a short history of all your email interactions with thatparticular contact <text start=”267.
44″ dur=”4. 319″>let’s now talk about what functions tolook for to make sure your esp matches your team’s needs so the firstpoint may seem like a minor one but it’s <text start=”276.
88″ dur=”2. 72″>an important oneif you have team members who speak languages other than english you want tomake sure <text start=”282″ dur=”3.
36″>that your email marketing softwareoffers a user interface in their language and support availabilitythis will lead to a lot less frustration <text start=”291. 759″ dur=”3.
841″>a really important thing to examineclosely is how do you design your campaignswith your esp so first of all look at <text start=”299. 759″ dur=”2.
88″>the editor itselfis there a drag and drop editor that lets you move text and images aroundvery easily <text start=”305. 759″ dur=”3.
681″>is it a plain text editor so all theemails just look like regular plain text emails or do you alsohave an html editor option for your more <text start=”314. 56″ dur=”3.
68″>tech savvy team membersyou also want to ask about the personalization optionsnow this can range from inserting simple <text start=”322. 32″ dur=”3.
04″>attributessuch as a name and location to having elements show up for contacts who aretagged in a certain way so you can have <text start=”329. 039″ dur=”2.
561″>one emailfor example that has a block in french for your french readers and a block inenglish for your english readers <text start=”335. 199″ dur=”4.
241″>and that can all be covered in one emailif you have robust personalization optionsyou also want to make sure you can send <text start=”342. 56″ dur=”5.
359″>test emails to yourself and othersyou also want the ability to schedule the send timesome email marketing tools might have <text start=”351. 6″ dur=”4.
48″>even more robust optionswhere you can send at the best time for each individual contactthat’s a big bonus does your email <text start=”361. 12″ dur=”3.
6″>marketing software come with templatesfor you to use this will make getting startedso much easier than building from <text start=”366. 96″ dur=”3.
92″>scratchand finally is there an image gallery so is there space for you to uploadyour own company logos and images as well as other connections to outsideimages that already exist <text start=”378.
4″ dur=”5. 76″>for you in this softwareyou want to look very closely at what sort ofmetrics and reporting options your email <text start=”387.
199″ dur=”4. 801″>marketing tool offersas an online marketing medium there are a million ways to measure email andyou’ve got to make sure you have all of <text start=”395. 28″ dur=”3.
759″>those at your fingertips so you canchoose the kpis to focus on can you see stats on emails deliveredemails opened <text start=”402. 96″ dur=”4.
079″>email clicks and your click rates aswell as conversions if you’re selling things within the emailsand you also need to make sure you can <text start=”409. 84″ dur=”3.
84″>see when emails bounceand then you have other kinds of stats for example devicesare your contacts reading their emails <text start=”417. 36″ dur=”4.
72″>on desktops or on their cell phonesinbox providers are they using gmail are they using outlookwhat’s the percentage breakdown there <text start=”424. 72″ dur=”4.
4″>and then finally geolocation where areyour contacts located now let’s look at some really nice tohave functions <text start=”432. 479″ dur=”5.
681″>within your email marketing toolit’s great if you have some advanced functionality as well as advancedchannels this can just make things so <text start=”441. 759″ dur=”3.
521″>much easierso can you do a b testing on subject lines on content on other thingscan you send transactional emails such <text start=”450. 479″ dur=”4.
56″>as your order has been shippeddo you have marketing automation options and this is the image on the leftand this is a really powerful tool we’ll <text start=”459. 52″ dur=”2.
48″>discussmarketing automation a lot in the coming videosdo you have access to other channels through your email marketing platform socan you do sms marketing as well <text start=”469.
039″ dur=”4. 241″>and combine it with email marketing canyou set up facebook ads can you do retargeting can you do chathow robust is this platform <text start=”478.
479″ dur=”3. 921″>another important question to ask is howeasy is it going to be to integrate your email marketing toolinto your other marketing platforms and <text start=”486.
08″ dur=”3. 28″>toolsso can you link it to your crm tools so you keep your contacts always up to datecan you link it to your cms your website <text start=”494.
4″ dur=”4. 16″>so you can for exampleimport blogs really easily and most importantlycan you link it to your ecommerce <text start=”500.
8″ dur=”5. 28″>platform finally you want to look intothe api functionality and documentation if you have a tech savvy team who canset these up for you <text start=”509.
52″ dur=”4. 24″>so starting from the absolutefundamentals of deliverability and legal complianceall the way to some really nice add-ons <text start=”516.
8″ dur=”3. 84″>such as additional channelsplug-ins and integrations we hope you now have a really good idea about whatto look for and what to ask about when <text start=”524.
159″ dur=”11. 761″>choosingyour email marketing software