Email marketing remains the online king for businesses. It’s the one digital marketing and sales channel that’s absolutely indispensable.
Email was the original “killer app” that everyone used. As we head into 2019, everyone uses email even more, and that’s why it remains the absolute best channel for digital marketing and sales.
Here’s the thing … email provides you the most direct line of communication with your audience. That makes it crucial for converting prospects into sales, which is why savvy content marketers have no intention of giving it up any time soon.
Still not convinced? Let’s look at the data:
For every $1 spent on email marketing, you get $44 in return. That’s because people spend 5.6 hours per day checking email — up almost a half hour since 2017. Plus, email remains 40 times better at converting people than social media.
Spend $1 on email marketing, get $44 in return
Six things to consider when
choosing email marketing software
- Deliverability: Does the software have a good reputation with email providers so your messages get through?
- Automation: Does the software allow you to implement sophisticated marketing automation?
- Segmentation: Can you use tagging to segment your email list so you can deliver more relevant content with email autoresponders?
- Personalization: Is the email software compatible with popular personalization tools like RightMessage?
- Analytics: Does the software have strong analytic features so you can understand what to optimize?
- Usability: Is the software easy and intuitive to use, both for standard tasks and advanced functionality?
Our Recommendation for Email Marketing Software:
ConvertKit is specifically designed with creative people in mind, and that’s why we’ve chosen it as our email marketing software here at Copyblogger.
Any member of our editorial team — no matter how technically challenged — can easily perform any task that needs to be done, including sending messages, creating automated sequences, using tags for message segmentation, reviewing analytics, and identifying personalization opportunities with RightMessage (see below).
Here are thoughts from the Copyblogger Editorial team:
“ConvertKit has been incredibly useful to me. I can use it to create complex automations and branching message sequences to deliver the exact right message to the right people. And I can do that without spending an entire weekend trying to figure out how it works. Trust me, if I can figure it out, literally anyone can. ConvertKit is a terrific tool, even if your list is still small. And it will grow as you do.” – Sonia Simone, Former Chief Content Officer, Copyblogger
“I don’t have a lot of patience for email marketing software in my role as Copyblogger’s Editor-in-Chief. I need a solution that is intuitive and allows me to focus on the creative message I want to communicate, rather than technical hurdles. I’m picky, and ConvertKit helps me achieve my goals without having to make any compromises in terms of functionality.” — Stefanie Flaxman, Editor-in-Chief, Copyblogger
Find out more about ConvertKit here.
Why Web Personalization Enhances Email Marketing
Website personalization means creating customized experiences for visitors to your website. Rather than providing a single, broad set of static content and site structure, personalization allows you to present visitors with content and page elements that are tailored to their needs and desires.
Once you start segmenting your email subscribers into various groups using tags, you begin creating unique experiences for them based on who they are, what they’re interested in, and what they actually do.
Web personalization software allows you to take that idea further, and it’s the peanut butter to the chocolate provided by your email marketing software. Seamless personalization has become expected by your prospects thanks to the experiences created by companies like Netflix and Amazon.
Now, even solos and small businesses can get personal. You can easily create different messages, landing pages, content, and even completely different website experiences — just by making small tweaks to one set of content that is then dynamically served based on the visitor.
Our Recommendation for Web Personalization Software:
Web personalization software has been around for several years, but the price tag has been out of reach for solos and most small businesses. That changed with the introduction of RightMessage, which we’re in the process of implementing here at Copyblogger.
RightMessage has all the personalization power of expensive enterprise solutions, without the hefty price tag. Personalization has been proven to deliver dramatic boosts in just about every conversion metric — most notably email opt-ins, revenue, and profit.
Find out more about RightMessage here.
What makes email marketing work?
All of us are far too familiar with email newsletters that waste our time, email pitches that annoy us, and downright spam. Those don’t work.
What works is a value exchange — your valuable information for your prospect’s valued time. Your subscribers need to know they can trust you … that you’re not a soulless self-promoting spam-bot.
When you learn how to write an email newsletter the right way, you’ll discover that good email content deepens your relationship with your audience through effective subject line writing (which get your messages opened); your distinctive voice (which gets your messages read); and delivering quality, niche-specific content your prospect needs and shares with others (which inspires referrals and word-of-mouth).
Get smarter about email marketing with these articles:
- Bad Email Marketing and Nickelback Don’t Have Much in Common
- A Quick Copywriting Lesson Taken Directly from an Email Marketing Fail
- How Strategic Content Converts to Email Subscriptions and Sales
- Which Email Marketing Strategy Should You Choose: Full Meal or Just the Aroma?
- 8 Smart Ways to Combine Blogging with Email Marketing for Best-Selling Results
- The Betty Crocker Secret to an Email Marketing Strategy People Enjoy
- 37 Tips for Writing Emails that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked