Content
How it works?
Sending emails or email marketing can help you with these tasks.
Email marketing is a type of online marketing that has the goal of retaining an existing customer base, as well as expanding it by attracting new customers through electronic messages (e-mail).
That is, all communication between sellers and buyers is reduced to the exchange of emails. Based on business objectives, an email can be one of the following types:
The fact is that mass mailing from one mailing address can be regarded by mail services as spam. Email newsletter services have learned to solve this and other problems effectively.
Scheme of the mailing list service
Since mailings are regulated by the Law on Personal Data, they must comply with a number of special requirements. The basic principles of sending email are summarized below:
Benefits
The positive effect of sending emails is hard to overestimate. At the same time, the use of special services for mailing by e-mail, in comparison with the traditional manual sending of e-mails to customers, has a number of advantages, namely:
Features and functionality
Below we briefly outline the main indicators and capabilities provided by most of the bulk email services.
Deliverability
This is one of the main indicators of service efficiency. It is expressed in the ratio of the number of letters sent to those actually received (that is, reaching the addressees). Email addresses from the customer or subscriber base can be blocked or deleted. Some letters may fall into the "spam" category or simply will not be passed by filtering systems on the way of delivery. The higher the deliverability rate, the better. So, on average, good services have a deliverability rate of 98.5-99.5%.
Payment selection
Most often, mailing services form their tariffs based on the number of subscribers who need to send a given number of letters per month, or the limit of letters that the company plans to send over a certain period. It is important to understand here that it is not worth considering the cost of one sent letter, or of a follower subscriber, but the total cost of the package, because you can purchase a package for a million letters per month, of which only a few hundred copies will be sent in fact. On the other hand, if you accompany each client (subscriber) with a whole chain of messages, then in some cases (in accordance with your concept of email marketing) it will be cheaper to purchase a package based on the number of subscribers, since here there is a sufficient number of messages per month.
Online editor
Online email editor is a key tool for creating high-quality and meaningful emails. Because even if the mailing service provides customers with ready-made letter templates, then to adapt them to the needs of the company (branding, inserting their own content, etc.), they need to be edited. The editor in this case is an interface for creating your own letter layouts or changing existing ones.
Triggered mailing (auto-mailing)
This type of mailing involves sending letters according to a predetermined algorithm. That is, a chain of letters can be launched after a certain client action, which allows to increase conversion in automatic mode. Triggered mailings will also help increase customer loyalty to a store or service, improve brand awareness through information support for each subscriber. Automatic dispatch on a schedule will eliminate the possibility of operator errors and save a lot of time.
Integration with web analytics
To analyze the effectiveness of an email campaign, it is important to have complete information about refusals to read sent emails, the number of customer responses to certain information, the volume of spam marks, etc. All this data can be collected through special web analytics services. Reporting can also be provided by the mailing service itself, but in the case of third-party analytics, the degree of trust in the results is higher, since a third party is involved (the results are more difficult to fake).
Your domain in the mailing list
Mail can be sent from different addresses and domains. However, if the sender's address contains the domain of your site, on which the client registered and subscribed, then the degree of trust in such shipments will be much higher, in addition, a single (integral) image of the seller or web service is formed in the consumer's mind, which increases loyalty the buyer as a whole.
A / B testing (split testing)
To understand how effective your actions are, you can configure the distribution of different letters (several blocks, headers, or all content may differ) focused on a specific task or category of consumers. Based on the results obtained, you should build a further email marketing strategy. If your actions lead to positive effects (the percentage of responding recipients is growing, the percentage of spam marks is decreasing, the number of open messages is growing, etc.), then it is worth making changes to the main mailing templates that are sent to all other clients not participating in the conduct testing.
Integration with CMS
Due to the fact that most of the clients of email services work with their own sites, where the main activity of ordering and other work with users takes place, in order to obtain a unified working environment, deep integration of the bulk mailing service with the site content management system (CMS ). In this case, most of the processes of communication with users will occur automatically. If suddenly the mailing service does not have a ready-made module for integration with your site's CMS, then it should have a well-documented process of using the API, then a third-party programmer will be able to write an integration module for your specific needs.
Integration with CRM
A mass mailing service simply must be able to integrate with the most popular CRM systems. The end result is a single comprehensive tool for working with clients, especially when it comes to a business built on email marketing or a database of customer email addresses with a large number of records.
Ready templates
To quickly launch and set up an email campaign, you can follow the established schemes. This is where ready-made letter templates come to the rescue. Of course, such templates are easier and faster to remake for your own needs than to create your own from scratch. This approach saves a lot of time and labor and is ideal for startups with no email staff.
Heatmap
This is a handy tool that monitors the number of clicks on certain elements of the letter, which provides up-to-date information for compiling templates for new mailings. Blocks with links are highlighted in a certain color depending on the number of clicks on them, which gives a visual representation of the statistics of access to a particular element of the letter. It turns out the so-called "heatmap of links". Based on its analysis, it is possible to place content inside the email in such a way as to increase the number of clicks, which in turn will increase the number of conversions, and therefore increase the number of potential buyers.
Transactional mailing
A sent letter will be most effective if it is generated for a specific user, for example, after some action on his part (after a transaction). So, if a customer chose a product on the website of an online store, but at some point left the cart without payment, then a personal letter with a reminder of an unpaid product with a presentation of the store's advantages will help to return a certain percentage of customers who have not completed the purchase.
Adaptability
Due to the fact that recipients can work with mail from various devices, for the correct perception of information, it is important to ensure the technical ability to read emails on any screens and devices (from smartphones and tablets to large-format monitors). Only in the case of adaptive layout of letters can you be sure that the letter will be received exactly as it was originally intended.
API Integration
To ensure integration with third-party applications or sites on self-written or less common CMS, a connection to the mailing service via an API (application programming interface) is used. This approach allows you to design the interaction with the bulk messaging API that best suits your business or email marketing model. However, connecting via the API will require hiring professional programmers or paying for additional integration work from the mailing list service (if the writing of the interaction module will be provided from their side).
In addition to the above features, mailing services may offer:
How to choose a mailing list service
On the web, you can find reviews of the advantages and disadvantages of certain mass mailing services by email. However, all the services under consideration are growing and developing, they regularly make changes and additions to their algorithms of work, as well as to tariff plans, so you cannot rely on the results of such reviews with absolute certainty.
The best option is to create your own pivot table, in which you need to enter the maximum number of mailing services, as well as their functionality.
Only after receiving a complete picture, you can be sure of the correct and optimal choice.
The list of functions necessary for the needs of your specific project should be formed based on the principles of the chosen strategy. The more detailed the model of interaction with users will be, the more correctly you will make a list of the necessary technical capabilities of the mailing service. As a hint, you can use the list of features we outlined earlier.
Further in the table, you should leave only those services that maximally overlap the functionality you need.
From the services remaining in the table, the choice should be made based on the total cost of the services. Of course, you should first make calculations on the estimated number of subscribers or the number of letters to be sent. You should not discard the possible expansion of the client base from the calculations, because if the service cannot ensure the growth of your company's requests, then it should be abandoned in favor of another, more functional one.
Particular attention should be paid to the technical side of the issue: simplicity and convenience of working with the service, the presence of a large number of ready-made templates, the speed and adequacy of technical support, as well as other factors that, in their absence, can cancel out all your efforts to correctly set up and launch an email marketing campaign.
TOP Email Marketing Services
SendPulse
Mailing cost
Followers
Packages of letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
DigitalContact
Mailing cost
Followers
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Unisender
Mailing cost
Followers
Packages of letters
Individual letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Sendsay
Mailing cost
Followers
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
Mailigen
Mailing cost
Followers
Online editor
Integration with web analytics
A / B testing
Mail365
Mailing cost
Followers
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
eSputnik
Mailing cost
Followers
Individual letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
E-mail discount
Mailing cost
Packages of letters
Integration with web analytics
A / B testing
Connect
Mailing cost
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
SigmaSMS
Mailing cost
Packages of letters
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
Personalization
Ready templates
Heatmap
MailHandler
Mailing cost
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Your domain in the mailing list
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Transactional mailing
- How it works?
- Benefits of Email Marketing Services
- Characteristics
- Deliverability
- Payment format
- Online editor
- Triggered mailing
- Integration with web analytics
- Your domain in the mailing list
- A / B testing
- Integration with CMS
- Integration with CRM
- Ready templates
- Heatmap
- Transactional mailing
- Adaptability
- API
- Selection algorithm
- TOP Email Marketing Services
How it works?
Sending emails or email marketing can help you with these tasks.
Email marketing is a type of online marketing that has the goal of retaining an existing customer base, as well as expanding it by attracting new customers through electronic messages (e-mail).
That is, all communication between sellers and buyers is reduced to the exchange of emails. Based on business objectives, an email can be one of the following types:
- Information letter. Contains useful information for a potential buyer. The main task of such a letter is to form a positive image of the company and increase loyalty to the brand or store.
- Transactional letter. In fact, this is the response of a service or store to user actions. For example, registration on the site, an abandoned shopping cart, etc. The purpose of such emails is to create a sense of the availability of the store and purchases in it.
- Advertising message (sales letter). Here, in the body of the letter, specific goods or services are presented, and the main task of such a message is direct sales.
- Announcement. It differs from an advertising message in its informational focus. For example, using the announcement, you can inform about upcoming promotions, sales or other events.
- Autoresponder (trigger). This is a chain of interconnected letters. The newsletter is triggered by some user action. For example, with the help of an autoresponder, you can launch a chain of letters to familiarize yourself with the store, its assortment and additional services, after the user has registered on it.
The fact is that mass mailing from one mailing address can be regarded by mail services as spam. Email newsletter services have learned to solve this and other problems effectively.
Scheme of the mailing list service
Since mailings are regulated by the Law on Personal Data, they must comply with a number of special requirements. The basic principles of sending email are summarized below:
- to receive regular emails, you must subscribe;
- the fact of subscription must be confirmed by the user;
- it should be possible to unsubscribe from the mailing list at any time;
- contact details should not be passed on to third parties and companies without the express consent of the user.
Benefits
The positive effect of sending emails is hard to overestimate. At the same time, the use of special services for mailing by e-mail, in comparison with the traditional manual sending of e-mails to customers, has a number of advantages, namely:
- Working with a large number of ready-made letter templates that can be easily adapted to your own needs.
- Integration of mailing services with site management systems (CMS) and customer relationship management (CRM), which automate most of the work with customers.
- Integration with third-party analytics systems (Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica), or providing your own interfaces for analyzing the effectiveness of ongoing email campaigns. The ability to conduct tests (A / B testing, etc.).
- Convenient management and work with the base of customer addresses to which the mailing will be carried out. At the same time, the subscriber base is stored on the servers of the mailing service, which ensures its duplication, which means that it increases safety.
- Computing capacity is fully supported by mailing services, which saves the resources of the company's own servers.
- As a rule, mailing services provide qualified support for the creation and customization of their products, depending on the goals set.
- Large volumes of messages sent. So, through the mailing service, you can send up to several million emails per hour.
Features and functionality
Below we briefly outline the main indicators and capabilities provided by most of the bulk email services.
Deliverability
This is one of the main indicators of service efficiency. It is expressed in the ratio of the number of letters sent to those actually received (that is, reaching the addressees). Email addresses from the customer or subscriber base can be blocked or deleted. Some letters may fall into the "spam" category or simply will not be passed by filtering systems on the way of delivery. The higher the deliverability rate, the better. So, on average, good services have a deliverability rate of 98.5-99.5%.
Payment selection
Most often, mailing services form their tariffs based on the number of subscribers who need to send a given number of letters per month, or the limit of letters that the company plans to send over a certain period. It is important to understand here that it is not worth considering the cost of one sent letter, or of a follower subscriber, but the total cost of the package, because you can purchase a package for a million letters per month, of which only a few hundred copies will be sent in fact. On the other hand, if you accompany each client (subscriber) with a whole chain of messages, then in some cases (in accordance with your concept of email marketing) it will be cheaper to purchase a package based on the number of subscribers, since here there is a sufficient number of messages per month.
Online editor
Online email editor is a key tool for creating high-quality and meaningful emails. Because even if the mailing service provides customers with ready-made letter templates, then to adapt them to the needs of the company (branding, inserting their own content, etc.), they need to be edited. The editor in this case is an interface for creating your own letter layouts or changing existing ones.
Triggered mailing (auto-mailing)
This type of mailing involves sending letters according to a predetermined algorithm. That is, a chain of letters can be launched after a certain client action, which allows to increase conversion in automatic mode. Triggered mailings will also help increase customer loyalty to a store or service, improve brand awareness through information support for each subscriber. Automatic dispatch on a schedule will eliminate the possibility of operator errors and save a lot of time.
Integration with web analytics
To analyze the effectiveness of an email campaign, it is important to have complete information about refusals to read sent emails, the number of customer responses to certain information, the volume of spam marks, etc. All this data can be collected through special web analytics services. Reporting can also be provided by the mailing service itself, but in the case of third-party analytics, the degree of trust in the results is higher, since a third party is involved (the results are more difficult to fake).
Your domain in the mailing list
Mail can be sent from different addresses and domains. However, if the sender's address contains the domain of your site, on which the client registered and subscribed, then the degree of trust in such shipments will be much higher, in addition, a single (integral) image of the seller or web service is formed in the consumer's mind, which increases loyalty the buyer as a whole.
A / B testing (split testing)
To understand how effective your actions are, you can configure the distribution of different letters (several blocks, headers, or all content may differ) focused on a specific task or category of consumers. Based on the results obtained, you should build a further email marketing strategy. If your actions lead to positive effects (the percentage of responding recipients is growing, the percentage of spam marks is decreasing, the number of open messages is growing, etc.), then it is worth making changes to the main mailing templates that are sent to all other clients not participating in the conduct testing.
Integration with CMS
Due to the fact that most of the clients of email services work with their own sites, where the main activity of ordering and other work with users takes place, in order to obtain a unified working environment, deep integration of the bulk mailing service with the site content management system (CMS ). In this case, most of the processes of communication with users will occur automatically. If suddenly the mailing service does not have a ready-made module for integration with your site's CMS, then it should have a well-documented process of using the API, then a third-party programmer will be able to write an integration module for your specific needs.
Integration with CRM
A mass mailing service simply must be able to integrate with the most popular CRM systems. The end result is a single comprehensive tool for working with clients, especially when it comes to a business built on email marketing or a database of customer email addresses with a large number of records.
Ready templates
To quickly launch and set up an email campaign, you can follow the established schemes. This is where ready-made letter templates come to the rescue. Of course, such templates are easier and faster to remake for your own needs than to create your own from scratch. This approach saves a lot of time and labor and is ideal for startups with no email staff.
Heatmap
This is a handy tool that monitors the number of clicks on certain elements of the letter, which provides up-to-date information for compiling templates for new mailings. Blocks with links are highlighted in a certain color depending on the number of clicks on them, which gives a visual representation of the statistics of access to a particular element of the letter. It turns out the so-called "heatmap of links". Based on its analysis, it is possible to place content inside the email in such a way as to increase the number of clicks, which in turn will increase the number of conversions, and therefore increase the number of potential buyers.
Transactional mailing
A sent letter will be most effective if it is generated for a specific user, for example, after some action on his part (after a transaction). So, if a customer chose a product on the website of an online store, but at some point left the cart without payment, then a personal letter with a reminder of an unpaid product with a presentation of the store's advantages will help to return a certain percentage of customers who have not completed the purchase.
Adaptability
Due to the fact that recipients can work with mail from various devices, for the correct perception of information, it is important to ensure the technical ability to read emails on any screens and devices (from smartphones and tablets to large-format monitors). Only in the case of adaptive layout of letters can you be sure that the letter will be received exactly as it was originally intended.
API Integration
To ensure integration with third-party applications or sites on self-written or less common CMS, a connection to the mailing service via an API (application programming interface) is used. This approach allows you to design the interaction with the bulk messaging API that best suits your business or email marketing model. However, connecting via the API will require hiring professional programmers or paying for additional integration work from the mailing list service (if the writing of the interaction module will be provided from their side).
In addition to the above features, mailing services may offer:
- sending SMS messages;
- mailings in various languages;
- integration with social networks (social media buttons in mailings and automatic posting of messages on company pages);
- personalization of messages with the introduction of special tags in the message (for example, addressing by name, etc.);
- preliminary procedure for checking for spam (to increase the number of responses and timely response to changes in mailings);
- automatic distribution of news through connection to the site via an RSS feed;
- segmentation of mailings by types of customers and time zones;
- availability of mobile clients (applications for smartphones) for smooth operation of the service from any device.
How to choose a mailing list service
On the web, you can find reviews of the advantages and disadvantages of certain mass mailing services by email. However, all the services under consideration are growing and developing, they regularly make changes and additions to their algorithms of work, as well as to tariff plans, so you cannot rely on the results of such reviews with absolute certainty.
The best option is to create your own pivot table, in which you need to enter the maximum number of mailing services, as well as their functionality.
Only after receiving a complete picture, you can be sure of the correct and optimal choice.
The list of functions necessary for the needs of your specific project should be formed based on the principles of the chosen strategy. The more detailed the model of interaction with users will be, the more correctly you will make a list of the necessary technical capabilities of the mailing service. As a hint, you can use the list of features we outlined earlier.
Further in the table, you should leave only those services that maximally overlap the functionality you need.
From the services remaining in the table, the choice should be made based on the total cost of the services. Of course, you should first make calculations on the estimated number of subscribers or the number of letters to be sent. You should not discard the possible expansion of the client base from the calculations, because if the service cannot ensure the growth of your company's requests, then it should be abandoned in favor of another, more functional one.
Particular attention should be paid to the technical side of the issue: simplicity and convenience of working with the service, the presence of a large number of ready-made templates, the speed and adequacy of technical support, as well as other factors that, in their absence, can cancel out all your efforts to correctly set up and launch an email marketing campaign.
TOP Email Marketing Services
SendPulse
Mailing cost
Followers
Packages of letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
DigitalContact
Mailing cost
Followers
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Unisender
Mailing cost
Followers
Packages of letters
Individual letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Sendsay
Mailing cost
Followers
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
Mailigen
Mailing cost
Followers
Online editor
Integration with web analytics
A / B testing
Mail365
Mailing cost
Followers
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
eSputnik
Mailing cost
Followers
Individual letters
Free tariff
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
E-mail discount
Mailing cost
Packages of letters
Integration with web analytics
A / B testing
Connect
Mailing cost
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
A / B testing
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Heatmap
Transactional mailing
SigmaSMS
Mailing cost
Packages of letters
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Integration with web analytics
Your domain in the mailing list
Personalization
Ready templates
Heatmap
MailHandler
Mailing cost
Individual letters
Online editor
Triggered mailing
Your domain in the mailing list
Personalization
Integration with CMS
Integration with CRM
Ready templates
Transactional mailing
