5 Email Tools for Your Online Business

Does “you have items in your cart waiting to be checked out” look oddly familiar in your inbox when you seemingly “forget” to check your cart out? You have also probably received emails with personalised recommendations for something that you might be interested in on a weekly-monthly basis. With the advent of digitisation, marketing has also evolved to cater to our behaviour which includes spending much more time in the digital world. 

Marketing is one of the primary drivers of growth for businesses and it is crucial to ensure that you are using the right tools to execute your marketing campaign. Automation for email marketing is particularly useful to help convert visitors into customers as well as to retain your current customers.

Instead of only trying to reach out to new customers, why not put your existing contact list to good use by retargeting your existing customers? Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to reach out to existing and potential customers as you do not have to worry about advertising and printing fees.

Email marketing allows you to own the email list which you can have full control of and even use it to further analyse the patterns of your customers. This email list is also useful for you to start integrating your customers into your Consumer Relation Management (CRM) software.

You might be overwhelmed by the sheer number of solutions out there but worry not, we have some pointers and recommendations to help you settle down on an email tool that caters to your needs.

5 factors to consider when choosing an email tool

Features

Most email tools will be able to provide basic features such as sending out emails to your email list. However, you might require more advanced features to ensure optimal email campaigns such as A/B testing, customization and email marketing automation. 

Analytics

In order to monitor the success of your email campaign, you will need metrics such as but not limited to click through rate, bounce rate, open rate and unsubscribe rate to measure the performance. You will want analytics that help you track the metrics automatically for you with goal setting features to work your way towards your goal instead of trying to create the “perfect” email campaign on the first try.

Third party integration

To get the most out of your email tool, you will want it to support third party integrations. Your aim is to connect the software/services that you are using for your online business together so that they can seamlessly share data between each other removing the need to manually transfer/import data.

Ease of use

Just like most softwares out there, you want a software with an easy to navigate interface. The last thing you want is to spend the bulk of your time fumbling around the software trying to figure out how to use it properly.

Cost

You might think that having the most number of features is the way to go as you might be using those features in the future (which often goes unused). However, feature rich softwares usually comes with a hefty price tag. It is crucial to balance functions that you truly need against the cost to ensure that you are not over paying for unused functions.

5 Email tools that you should consider using

Mailchimp

Founded in 2001 and perhaps the most well known email tool, Mailchimp is an all in one marketing platform for small businesses. Even if you do not have any experience starting and growing a business, Mailchimp offers support and world-class technology to help launch, build and grow your business.

Mailchimp has a wide arsenal of features ready for you to grow your business. From email, automations to even more advanced features such as integrating social media ads and postings so that you can easily manage all your marketing campaigns from Mailchimp.

They even provide branding tools for you to design and develop your brand which consists of their own creative assistant to help you generate designs for your band with just a click of a button. Their content studio helps you to sync and manage your digital assets to ensure that your marketing campaigns across different platforms are consistent.

They have over 250 supported app integrations. Prominent softwares such as WordPress, QuickBooks, Stripe and Facebook are all supported to ensure it works seamlessly across all your software and services.

Best of all, you can easily get started with Mailchimp on their free plan (Yes, free. Not a trial). Their free plan already has many powerful features that will definitely be of use to you. You can then easily upgrade to their paid plans from S$15 onwards if you feel that you need more advanced features.

ActiveCampaign

With over 150,000 users worldwide and more than 850 employees around the world, ActiveCampaign takes an automation-first approach to help you grow, save time and connect with your customers.

ActiveCampaign boasts a wide range of solutions from triggered emails, broadcast emails, email autoresponders to marketing automations such as automatic reminders, scheduled emails and contact creation for their built in CRM. 

They have a beautifully designed CRM that is intuitive and feature rich. Their CRM is integrated with their many different services such as sales and marketing so that you can have the most accurate, up-to-date customer data to better target your customers and give them the best experience possible.

ActiveCampaign supports over 870 different software and service integrations to help you realise your automated marketing and sales dream. They also feature a drag and drop interface so that you can easily setup automations with little to no programming knowledge.

ActiveCampaign provides a free trial for you to tinker around. If you are satisfied with their software, their plan starts from $29 USD per month for their Lite plan which already provides a handful of features to get you started.

HubSpot

Looking for a marketing approach that puts customers first? Hubspot might be the one for you. Hubspot was founded on the notion of helping customers instead of harassing or interrupting them. They are trusted by more than 143,000 users using their services worldwide.

Their software is categorised into 5 categories, namely Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub and Operations Hub. Each category contains a multitude of features pertaining to their respective labels. 

From form builders, email marketing to more advanced features such as marketing automation and lead tracking & management, you can be sure that their features will meet your expectations. You can easily access all their features to plan and manage your marketing campaigns all from Hubspot without the hassle of switching between different softwares.

With over a whopping 1000 integrations, you can be assured that other software and services that you are using will most likely be able to integrate with Hubspot so that all your data are always synced and accurate.

Hubspot also provides a free plan where you can use their free tools without any time limit. As your business grows and requires more features, you can upgrade to their paid plans at your convenience starting from S$38 per month for their starter plan.

Drip

Built on the belief that ecommerce is built to unite unique people with unique goods online and that giant marketplaces are threatening this spirit, Drip aims to help you fight back by providing you with similar and even more advanced capabilities to stay ahead of the competition.

Instead of bombarding you with a boatload of features, drip offers a specialised array of tools which contains a form & popup builder, email marketing, sms marketing, automation, segmentation & personalization and insights & guidance. Perfect if you are looking for a software that is straightforward.

Drip features a drag and drop email builder with an option for head to toe customization using HTML (if you know how to code). They also have a library of automation templates to help you get started which can be easily customised to your needs with just a few simple clicks. If you want to build an even stronger connection with your customers, you can make use of their SMS services to make it happen.

Even though their library of integrations is not as vast as some of the other email tools out there, they still have over 100 integrations that should support most major ecommerce platforms and services that you will likely be using. 

Drip offers a 14 day trial version for you to test and figure out their software, after which their paid plan will be based on the number of email contacts you have and the number or SMS you send. It will start from $39 USD per month with 2500 contacts for their email package while their email + SMS package with 2500 contacts and 200 SMS contacts will start from $78 USD per month.

AWeber

Founded in 1998, AWeber has a strong foundation in email marketing. They were the ones to create the autoresponder emails that we know and rely on so much. With over 120,000 users around the globe, you can be sure that you’ll create beautifully crafted emails and experience for your customers with AWeber.

Armed with a variety of tools that focuses on taking your email marketing to the next level, Aweber offers features such as drag & drop email designer, a library of ready to use stock image, segmentation, tagging, and automations. 

Easily get started with creating your first email with their library of pre-built customizable email templates. If you are looking for something unique to your online business, you can try out their email designer tool which generates email templates for you just by typing in your website URL. Coupled with their drag and drop builder, you can easily create eye-catching emails for your customers with no code at all.

With over 150 ready to use integrations for you to choose from, easily integrate your online business with AWeber. Do not be fooled by their seemingly small amount of integrations as they have support for most common software and services that you will be using. There are even integrations such as Integrately to help you connect to many more applications and services so that you can easily automate all your tasks.

AWeber offers both a free and paid plan for you to choose from with most basic features being available in the free plan. If you are satisfied with AWeber and decide to subscribe to their paid plan for more advanced features, you can easily upgrade to their paid plan anytime which starts from $16.15 USD per month if you are getting the annual bundle.

Conclusion

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective and successful ways to drive business growth. With the right tools at your disposal, you can easily create and test email marketing strategies to reach out to build relationships with personalised emails and build brand awareness. 

Like most software out there, there will usually be a trial or demo version for you to try out. Do request for the trial or demo to assess if the email tool meets your needs. A suitable email tool can help you convert new customers and engage existing customers consistently and help you monitor the metrics of your email campaigns at a glance so that you can easily optimise it to achieve a successful campaign to grow your business. 

If you are still unsure which email tool is best suited for you, do contact us and we will help you access which accounting software best suits your needs. Web Imp is a Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) approved vendor for ecommerce. We can build your ecommerce website with 70% grant support along with advising which email tool is most suitable for your needs and integrate it into your ecommerce store.