Email marketing is an essential channel in any marketer’s outreach options. Marketing experts have also come out declaring that it is the singular most important channel in marketing today. In short, email marketing is not going the way of the dinosaurs anytime soon.
In fact, with current privacy laws, marketers need to seriously think about using email marketing software to help them stay compliant. If you are sending mass marketing emails on a traditional email client, you are putting yourself at risk on various fronts.
Fortunately and/or unfortunately, there are now many email marketing vendors. Marketers today are spoiled for choices. Unfortunately, all email marketing applications are not created the same. Their developers place different emphasis. A such, marketers need to Below are some thoughts marketers need to keep in mind when selecting an email marketing vendor.
Application functionality or features rank high on the selection criteria list. Every marketer has a different approach to address their audience. They have their preferred method.
For example, if SMS marketing is a vital outreach channel, then ideally, SMS functionality should be a feature in the email marketing application. For others with regional responsibilities where their audience communicates in various languages, having a multi-language feature is vital.
User-friendliness
Whether an application will be adopted successfully or end up a white elephant depends very much on its usability. For easy access, some developers try to cramp the main working interface with too many features, like an airplane cockpit. This could be bewildering to a new user. They might even baulked at spending more time than necessary on it. On-page navigation and moving from page to page should be intuitive without users having to figure what everything fits.
Integrations
Software applications these days rarely run in isolation these days. They work with other software to meet users’ requirements.
Depending on your specific needs, you would want to ensure integrations with your existing application is available. Otherwise, additional work or walk-around would be needed.
Compliance
Compliance is fast becoming essential in a privacy-sensitive world. Users now have the law to back them up if they feel that their data has been misused or mishandled. With the need for consent and other compliance requirements, a marketer must demonstrate that efforts have been taken to meet compliance requirements.
Also, in an investigation, the ability to provide documentary proof quickly will be most beneficial.
[grwebform url=”https://app.getresponse.com/view_webform_v2.js?u=Q48UO&webforms_id=52038901″ css=”on” center=”off” center_margin=”200″/]
Cybersecurity
Security and compliance go hand in hand as often security measures serve as a control of compliance. In the areas of access, storage, and transmission of confidential data, security defenses need to be put in place to safeguard and deny unauthorized access to critical private data.
Support
Support is critical when things go wrong with the application. The ability to quickly obtain help to resolve application-centric issues is vital. In today’s face-paced world, expectations of all of us are high. We are expected to accomplish things quickly. Any delay could translate to us being inefficient on our part. As such, we do not have the luxury to get bogged down by such inconveniences as a software bug or slow software support.
Price
Price, while important, should be the last thing to consider.
Going for the lowest could lead you to miss out on certain key features, integrations, or support. This might compel you to conduct a migration later on.
One important thing to note, unlike most applications that are cost-centers, an email marketing system is a revenue-center.
So you should not worry too much about the cost of the application if it is going to lead to more sales and revenue to the company.
Drop us a note if you further assistance to implement a email marketing system