The advanced technologies available today offer a myriad of powerful and cost effective online marketing strategies that companies in any industry can engage in for profits. One of these successful online marketing approaches is email marketing that has been around in the market for a long time when the Internet was made known to consumers.
Online contact
With or without a web business site, business entities must generate creative marketing solutions that would keep their business afloat. Traditional marketing approaches are adopted, although these can be quite costly with media advertising and high expenses on paper and manpower. Many of these traditional marketing strategies may not generate very high returns on investment with the high cost of production and manpower. Leaflet and flyer distributions are not very impactful or environmentally friendly where consumers are concerned about carbon footprints.
With the advent of the Internet, more effective contacts with consumers can be enjoyed without boundaries and limitations. The emergence of emails prompted email marketing by creative business marketers who manipulated the dynamic features of email facility. A web business site may be one of the important online marketing components for modern businesses today, but an effective email marketing strategy can foster good relations between the company and its customers.
Emails allow the company to contact their customers and potential leads in a professional manner based on the types of emails sent. Emails enable a two-way communication between companies and their clients as well as other interested parties such as prospects, associates, vendors, suppliers, shareholders and even competitors.
There are many ways to contact customers and potential leads using emails. Email newsletters can update the customers on the latest promotions and happenings of the company. Queries and feedback can be responded to easily and quickly via emails.
Marketing software
Email marketing has a variety of software that can be incorporated into any company’s online marketing solutions. It is a crucial decision for a company to decide on the type of email marketing software that best fits the company’s business needs and requirements.
Email marketing software applications can come free or fee based. Companies that wish to manipulate email marketing software solutions need to choose their software wisely. Small or new companies may opt for free software to cut down their cost if they have a small budget while companies with a good budget and clear objectives may not mind investing in fee based email marketing software to achieve their business objectives quickly with a quick ROI.
There would be certain limitations with free email marketing software as it may be a trial version or one with limited features. Free software for email marketing may be sufficient for small or new enterprises that want to check out the effects of this option on the market before venturing into a full-fledged email marketing solution. Free software for email marketing may not provide the necessary technical support or complex services that bring about faster outcomes.
Free email marketing software with limited features can limit the types of actions to be taken by the company. Advanced emailing options may not be available with free software. Many big portals on the net offer free email marketing services on behalf of companies that are usually smaller but this may mean that only simplified email messages can be sent. There would not be important features such as personalized messages, tracking of emails, SMS send outs or CSV files. These portals may insist on including their ads in the emails sent out.
Other free email marketing software restricts the number of subscribers on every mailing or the time of usage, such as a free trial, which may cause a losing of contacts if proper storage is not available.
Preferred software features
The fee-based email marketing software offers more useful features that would boost the effectiveness of the email sent out to subscribers. Some of the desired features include personalization of emails, tracking, scalability, integration and plug-ins.
Email personalization is impactful to the recipient where recipients feel connected with the sender, although it may be a business contact. Good email marketing practices require a good monitoring of the emails sent as well as identifying the results effectively.
Scalability is an important feature in modern software to allow a potential growth of business in a certain timeframe. This software feature allows the owner to use the software for a longer time with a little bit of adjustment instead of discarding the software for a new version or replacement which can be costly. Smart companies need to anticipate their business’ rate of growth to select email marketing software that can adjust to future growth easily.
Another good feature in email marketing software is the ability to create HTML newsletters that generate better response rates over plain-text email newsletters. HTML format is the new formatting standard in most software applications to enable efficient email tracking.
It is necessary to integrate existing applications and databases with emails for a proper management and execution of business operations. There would be certain data that needs to be imported or exported in and out of existing databases, files and applications. Different companies may have different operating systems and platforms which require different types of connectivity and integration support for a smooth import of data for further execution.
With the increasing businesses going global today, it is an advantage to have email marketing software that has an international character support to generate proper content pertaining to the local demographics. Good email marketing software offers useful plug-ins and updates to improve email activities for a more efficient send out.
Companies or email marketers who are not very tech savvy would opt for fee-based software that includes technical support and customer services to ensure a smooth execution of emails that would not incur the wrath of the recipients.
Besides considering between free or fee-based software on email marketing, marketers may also want to consider the choice of platform to activate their email marketing activities. This refers to desktop or hosted ASP platforms; each with its pros and cons.
