Email Marketing Still the Most Cost Effective Marketing Medium

With most email marketers at least doubling their investment (Sherpa, 2013) , Email Marketing continues to reign as one the most powerful sources of ROI than any other marketing medium.

While these statistics are certainly impressive, it takes a great deal of planning, research, testing and hard work to build a successful email marketing campaign.

Your first step is finding an Email Marketing System that gives you the tools you need to help you achieve the best results possible.

Discover the essential features you need to look for in our latest guide.

Email Marketing is by no means a simple process, and over the years has become more challenging and sophisticated. Spammers, bad sending reputations and poorly targeted emails have tarnished the trustworthiness of Email Marketing, which can make it an exhausting and time consuming procedure to get right.

Choosing an Email Marketing System (EMS) that is best suited to your goals can be just as strenuous, but will make all the difference to the success of your campaign.

Email has the highest ROI of any other marketing investment, so it's worth it to put in the hard yards getting it right. This starts with choosing the right EMS that is not only a good fit now, but can support your changing needs as your business grows.

Below we've listed 4 basic features to look for when choosing your Email Marketing System.

A/B Testing

The idea of split testing is to send two versions of your campaign to two small groups of your list. A winner is chosen from the two versions, based on opens or clicks, and sent to the remaining subscribers.

You don't know what is going to work for your audience unless you test it. What day of the week will give you better open rates? What subject lines are most effective? Your EMS should be able to answer these questions for you with simple to run A/B testing features.

Responsive Design

Up to 50% or more of your emails will be opened on some type of mobile device, so optimising for smaller screens is imperative to the success of your campaigns.

Most leading EMS providers offer a range of pre-designed templates which are automatically optimised for both desktop and mobile clients. If you're coding your own emails, testing features will be your best friend. Make sure your system allows for easy testing for various email clients and devices.

Valuable Reporting

A great EMS will be able to give you clear and insightful reports telling you:

1. Who opened your campaign, when they opened it and how many times
2. What they were interested in and what links they clicked on
3. Which subscribers forwarded your message on or shared it with their friends on Facebook or twitter
4. Which emails bounced and couldn't be delivered
5. What sales, conversions and ROI your campaign has generated for and work easily with external analytic software.

As well as help you track trends and performance over time.

Auto-Responders

A definite must-have for your EMS, these are hugely effective but greatly undervalued. You can send product information relating to a recent purchase, wish someone a happy birthday or welcome new subscribers with a series of informative emails.

A good EMS should let your easily set event-based triggers that will send specific emails based on certain factors. For example, upon sign-up you may want to send an informative series to walk new users through your offerings.