In this article, we’ll cover how to choose a tool and run through some of the best tools on the market. We’ll explore:
- Choosing the Right Email Marketing Software Tool
- Email Warm-Up for Enhanced Deliverability
- Library of Easily Customizable Email Templates
- 6 Best Email Marketing Software for Businesses Looking to Rapidly Scale
Choosing the Right Email Marketing Software Tool: What to Look For
There are several factors that you’ll need to consider when choosing the right email marketing software tool for your business. The following selection covers the most important of those features and is applicable to both small, large, and scaling businesses. Picking the right tool can make a big difference in the success of your email marketing campaigns. It’s important to take the time to understand precisely what your business needs and then select the right tool accordingly.
The following list explores the key features to look for so that you can pick the best tool for your business.
Email Warm-Up for Enhanced Deliverability
Email warm-up is arguably one of the most important aspects of any email marketing software. Without it, almost all campaigns risk being doomed to poor results, but this is especially true for startup businesses and those new to email marketing. Deliverability should never be overlooked. If your emails aren’t delivered, then what’s the point of even starting a campaign?
The process of warming up an account helps establish the reputation of your account with the aim of avoiding spam filters and having your emails land in junk mail. The process involves gradually increasing the number of emails you send over a period of time. Normally this would take a large amount of time but with software, this can be completely automated.
Library of Easily Customizable Email Templates
It’s true that you’ll want to be sending unique and well-considered content that is relevant to the user, but that’s not to say that you can’t make use of some tried and tested customizable email templates. The best pieces of email marketing software will provide comprehensive libraries of these templates.
The key is that these templates are easily customizable. Otherwise, your emails will look like any other company that uses the software. When comparing software check to see if you’re able to consistently set styles and branding features, as well as being able to add personalization.
Thanks to a functional library you’ll not only save time and effort, but you’ll also gain additional flexibility and control over your campaigns. Creating professional-looking emails quickly and easily is no light task, but with software, you’ll be doing it in no time at all.
Automated Personalization
Personalization is an important feature of any successful email marketing campaign. Within email marketing software, automated personalization allows you to edit and tailor your emails with a focus on individual recipients in a scalable and efficient way. This, in turn, helps to improve the relevance and effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
The software needs to be able to use and manipulate data about your recipients. The very best will maintain a connection to your contact list, CRM system, or similar, so that data is updated through a live connection. Automating as much of this process as possible is a huge time and effort saver, allowing you to personalize emails at scale.
Scheduling Campaigns and Follow-ups
By using a scheduling feature you’re able to easily coordinate the delivery of your emails with your other marketing efforts while also ensuring that your emails are delivered at the optimal time. The very best software may also include information on when it feels is best to schedule emails, allowing you the very best chance of achieving optimal sales engagement.
Follow-up messages are often formulaic and similar to each other, especially in cases where no reply has come from the recipient, or the recipient hasn’t even opened the email. These follow-up messages can be templated, automatically personalized, and sent a certain period of time after the initial email is sent. When working at scale, follow-ups need to be automated. Otherwise, you’ll be drowning in a sea of drafted emails.
Outreach Scalability
Brands that are serious about scaling need to be sure that the tool they’ve selected can match their expected growth. That means it needs to be able to handle a large volume of emails efficiently and effectively without running into any performance or deliverability issues. That includes successfully merging all of your data between your list and emails.
Many tools will offer scalability on a sliding scale related to the number of emails sent or potential recipients.
Detailed Analytics
With a detailed analytical suite within your email marketing tool, you’re going to be in a position where you know precisely what has gone well and what requires work next time. It should include all of the key metrics such as open rate, deliverability, response rate, and more. These metrics should be presented in a way that allows you to easily compare different times of the campaign. These are not only valuable insights, but they help you make decisions moving forward.
The best tools will match this feature with other features such as A/B testing allowing you to clearly see which of the tests garnered the best results.
6 Best Email Marketing Software for Businesses Looking to Rapidly Scale
These 6 tools are our choice of the best email marketing software available on the market for growing and scaling businesses. Many of them have similar features, and some deliver certain features better than others, but the decision is ultimately down to your own requirements.
Instantly
- $37 a month
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Email Warmup
- 100 Active Leads
- 5000 Emails per month
- Advanced Sequences
- Email and Account Analytics
- Reputation and Bounce Protection
- General Support Tickets
Instantly is the leading tool on our list. It’s an efficient, comprehensive, and user-friendly tool that delivers results time and time again. There’s no competition for its AI-powered warmup feature. The warmup feature is so much more robust and efficient than other similar features offered by other tools, plus it works at scale with simple tiers depending on what you require.
The ability to add an unlimited number of email accounts to a single subscription is an absolute must for any business serious about scaling and looking to grow its email outreach. The analytical suite is easily accessible with direct connections to A/B testing, both of which make campaign management and adaptation straightforward.
Businesses that are working at scale typically have a substantial and growing tech stack, thankfully Instantly has a comprehensive and growing number of API connections and integrations.
If you’re looking to considerably grow your business and eventually work at scale then the email marketing tool that you choose needs to grow alongside you and your growth. Eventually, you’ll be sending tens of thousands of emails a month using the tool. The tool has to be reliable, with high deliverability rates, and easily accessible by multiple team members. That tool is Instantly.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a comprehensive marketing platform that offers more than just email marketing, it also offers SMS and WhatsApp campaigns plus chatbots and a Sales CRM. It might be an interesting option if your marketing is diversified but it means that the tool lacks focus on email marketing at scale. Plus, businesses that are looking to work at scale are likely to be charged a minimum of $65 a month at which point you also gain access to A/B testing and multi-user access.
The email marketing platform has an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, personalization options, and scheduling options. Linking all of this to your landing pages and other marketing funnels all within Sendinblue is attractive, but chances are you’ll be using other tools that do this side of the business in a better, more efficient way.
Mailchimp
Probably the most well-known email marketing platform in the world, Mailchimp has been on the market for years. There are a growing number of features offered by Mailchimp including many of those on the list above. The free level of Mailchimp is definitely attractive seeing as it encompasses many of the features that smaller businesses or startups might need, however it begins to falter at scale.
It is able to offer one of the largest libraries of templates the world has to offer, but the editor is far from user-friendly and that makes customization cumbersome and time-consuming. Looking down the list of requirements you might have, Mailchimp does tick a lot of boxes at face value, but in use, it’s not as efficient as other options on the market.
Benchmark
Benchmark markets itself as a platform designed to assist growth through email marketing powered by AI, marketing automation, and other marketing tools. Outside of email marketing, there are many other features including landing pages, eCommerce content, lead generation, and more. The option to use a drag-and-drop builder or an HTML editor is welcome for businesses that have their own devs on board.
If you’re looking to reduce time considerably, using the Smart Content feature of Benchmark might be of interest. It uses AI to write your email content. A great time saver, but potentially at the risk of sounding somewhat robotic.
Salesmate
Another fully specced CRM platform rather than specifically an email marketing platform. In fact, it markets itself as a replacement for all tools that you need for calls, emails, tasks, automation, reports, and more. The email side of the platform automates a great deal of the process with a personalized email builder, automated follow-ups, sending at bulk, analytical data, plus notifications on important email conversation responses.
To work at scale you’ll likely need to work at the Growth level of the platform which starts at $40 per user a month, billed annually.
Convertkit
Convertkit aims to offer everything that you’ll need to convert prospects into clients. The email marketing part of the platform includes a sophisticated email designer (with templates), email sign-up forms for your website, and automated sending paths to enable you to send well-timed, targeted content. Their reported 99%+ delivery rate with an average open rate of over 40% is impressive but in reality, this comes down to considerably more factors than just the marketing tool that you choose to use.
The two core options are sending email broadcasts (to everyone or a segment of your list) and automated emails, which are sent when someone enters your specified funnel. Convertkit pricing works on a sliding scale, appealing to scaling businesses, which is based on the number of email subscribers you have. At 20,000 subscribers, you’ll pay $150 a month, but you’ll only receive one additional team member seat. At the same level of subscribers, you can get unlimited seats at the CreatorPro level for $210 a month.
Key Takeaways
This selection of tools is a great starting point and is by no means an exhaustive list of everything on the market, but it does include the best on offer. Remember that it’s important that you consider the specific requirements of your business before selecting a tool.
- Where possible make use of the free trials or free plans that are offered, they might not give you access to all of the features that you need but they’ll give you an insight into how the tool works.
- Consider your current tech stack when selecting a tool. Some can integrate easily, while others might try and replace elements.
When working at scale, the best email marketing software on the market is Instantly. See for yourself by getting started for free right now!