Every tool you rely on as a business should help you to achieve your goals.
For email marketing, that should include the ability to capture sign-ups from your website, engage subscribers and ultimately produce sales from your email campaigns.
Of course, that ideal outcome all depends on who your email provider is. While it might be tempting to opt for the most known names or even the very cheapest platform, what really counts is that you’re getting what you need to succeed at email.
Don’t feel happy with your current email platform? Or simply don’t know how to choose from all the options? This post is for you!
Before you sign on the dotted line, here are our top tips to make an informed purchase decision.
What Are The Risks Of Choosing The Wrong Email Platform?
Limited potential - From a lack of features to poor functionality, not being able to do what you need to do through email marketing is very frustrating. It will also lower your ROI from email along with your overall business growth.
Being charged too much - It’s not just the upfront cost, but also if what you’re paying for actually represents value for money. For instance, paying for features you don’t use, or simply being on an uncompetitive plan.
Poor delivery rates and spam association - Opt for a platform that’s too cheap or doesn’t play by the anti-spam rules, and your email domain could end up forever tainted. If emails are being flagged as spam, open rates will be low. Instead, your platform should be encouraging best practices to help you succeed at email.
Skipping to the next ‘big’ marketing trend and forgetting email - Embracing the future is great. But with the number of email users at 4 billion and counting, your business can’t afford to be missing out on signups, customer engagement and ultimately sales through email. But if your current email platform doesn’t help you get results, why would you notice email’s huge potential?
Constant missed opportunities - As with your website or social media, email isn’t there just for fun. When used correctly, email should produce measurable results for your products and services. This won't happen if you're using the wrong tool!
✅ - Choosing The Right Email Platform For Your Business: An Essential Checklist
Any of the above sound familiar?
Maybe you also have some other issues to add to the list?
Don’t panic. But definitely take note of the following tips to choose a platform that will give you everything you need to succeed at email.
👀 - Features
The purpose of buying email software is to gain more functionality than a standard provider (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo) can offer.
Specifically, a dedicated and secure platform to store user data, send incredible campaigns and then monitor the results.
Every email provider offers different features.
For instance, EcoSend offers the following features depending on the plan that you select:
Advanced segmentation
Automated drip sequences
Automatic translation
Automation and segmentation
Contact forms
Custom HTML emails
Customer service
Dedicated account manager
Dedicated IPs
Dedicated migration assistance
Drag + drop email builder
Early access program
Email + live chat
Email scheduling
Insights dashboard
Pre-built templates
Resend campaigns
Simple email composer
So now is the time to note down what your email campaigns need. This is to ensure the provider can give you these features.
Also, to check that you won’t be paying for additional or unrelated tools that you just won’t use. For example, many providers offer tools unrelated to email marketing or customer engagement specifically.
Unless you directly need these tools, you're paying for something that's not going to produce a ROI.
💰 - Cost
Naturally, ‘free email plans’ are popular. But when you really look at what you are getting, it’s usually the case that you are severely limited on features.
So while free plans might be ideal for those just starting out with email marketing, for larger or more established companies, you’ll require paid features. Though, that doesn’t mean that email marketing should cost the earth!
EcoSend’s cheapest plan starts at $29 per month.
Excluding ‘free’ trials or plans, elsewhere, packages from the best known email providers cost the following:
ActiveCampaign - $29-$149 per month
Campaign Monitor - £7 ($10.94)-£749 ($910.11) per month
Constant Contact - $12 to $80 per month
HubSpot - $20-$3,600 per month
Mailchimp - $13-$350 per month
Something to look out for is being charged less per month if you agree to a year’s subscription at once rather than paying per month.
While it’s cheaper to commit to a long term package, this does then trap you if you decide the platform isn’t for you. So a 'cheaper monthly price' is often not the deal it seems, unless you're an existing customer and you're super happy with the tool.
💡 Good to know: EcoSend offers a free 14 day trial on all plans. Make sure to ask for the same if opting for another provider, especially if you’re going to be making a significant commitment to a particular provider or plan.
🦸♂️ - Customer Service
You have a business to run. So if you’re getting stuck during the setup, or if something isn’t working at any point, the last thing you need is to be left in the lurch.
Any email marketing platform worth its salt should have excellent customer service. We’re talking about the ability to speak to an actual human about your issue. For instance, through a dedicated phone number, email, video call or live chat. Though, that live chat should link to a real person and not be totally bot-led.
With EcoSend, we offer our ‘Scale’ customers a dedicated account manager. However, as a small team, we actually get to know all of our customers on a personal level.
So make sure you do your research, as customer service within email marketing tools is an easy aspect to overlook.
But when you really need help and what you get is a poor experience…spam will quite literally hit the fan. 🥁
🫶 - Reputation & Company Values
Most email providers insist that their badge is included somewhere within your message. At the very least, your subscribers can usually work out who your email provider is from the URL, sign-up form or other giveaway features.
So make sure your business is associated with the right kind of people. Specifically, that the company has a good reputation and shares your ethos as a business.
Avoid email providers that are associated with:
Spam or poor deliverability rates
Constant and random price hikes
Non-compliance with GDPR
Any practice or controversy in general your business doesn’t want to be aligned with
🌳 - Sustainability
Every email has a carbon footprint, generating up to 26g of CO2 depending on its weight.
So another aspect to look out for when choosing an email platform, is one which takes its commitment to the climate seriously.
EcoSend runs on renewable energy sources, and we plant trees on behalf of our customers. This means that by using EcoSend, we help to lower the CO2 generated by email campaigns.
All without our customers losing the functionality they need to send amazing campaigns.
Read more: What Is Green Marketing?
EcoSend - Grab Your Free Trial Of Our Email Platform Today!
Choosing an email marketing platform is a huge decision. So why not take your time with a free trial of EcoSend, to see if we’re the right fit for your needs?
We can also offer you a free product demo to talk through our features if you need any further guidance.
If that wasn’t enough, we also have a (human!) customer service team who would be more than happy to chat to you about all things email marketing for your business. Drop us a message and we’ll be right with you.
