What is Email Marketing Software?
Email marketing software can be used by businesses of any type to create, send, and monitor the impact of promotional campaigns sent via email with the aim of building a relationship with customers. Email marketing campaigns enable the effective distribution of a company’s newsletters, promotions, discount codes, or targeted content, and can help encourage existing customers or new leads to engage with a product or service. These solutions often facilitate workflow automation so that campaigns can be sent out at specific times, and emails can be automatically triggered by specific actions.
In order to help businesses create engaging and branded content, email marketing solutions usually include an email design feature, often with built-in templates which can be branded and customized. Templates with various layouts and designs mean that businesses can find an email format that fits their needs and customize it with their own content, images, videos, logos, calls-to-actions, and more. Customers can be divided into user segments based on custom criteria such as location, age, lead source, interests, and more, so that the most relevant and targeted content is sent out to each segment.
Email marketing software not only helps businesses to create and send marketing campaigns, but it is also used to track the performance of campaigns, often in real time. Reports and analytics are provided on metrics such as opens, click-throughs, bounces, unsubscribes, engagement and more, and geolocation can often be tracked to see the reach of campaigns and to understand which areas provide most engagement. More specific criteria can also be tracked such as social media shares and spam reporting.
Campaigns can often be automated with workflows which automatically trigger emails when certain pre-defined actions are carried out. For example welcome emails can be automatically sent when a new customer signs up for the newsletter, new leads can be targeted with personalized content after they visit the business website, and more. Workflows can be setup for enhanced targeting and personalization such as birthday promotional discounts, renewal reminders when a subscription is about to end, or drip campaigns which send timely email follow-ups over a specific time period.
Email marketing software helps businesses to nurture leads, enhance customer engagement, and increase sales by reaching out to customers with personalized content at the optimum moment. The solutions can be utilized by marketing teams from any business type but are particularly useful for ecommerce, retail, hospitality, membership services, nonprofits, and other customer-facing industries.
Email Marketing software features guide
Core email marketing software features and functionality
| Functionality | Description |
| Campaign creation | Offers a set of tools to create interactive and engaging email campaigns using pre-built templates, robust editors, rich-media assets, and more. |
| Campaign management | Manages every facet of email campaigns - from planning and designing campaigns to sending emails and analyzing audience response. |
| Campaign tracking | Lets users track various KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure campaign progress. |
| Contact management | Enables marketers to build and manage an organized repository where they can store customer details, engagement history, campaign reports, and more. |
| List management | Offers the ability to segment the entire contact list into smaller groups for running targeted campaigns and managing new subscriptions. |
| Automation | Allows marketing teams to automate various workflows like campaign scheduling and email dispatching to streamline operations and minimize manual efforts. |
| Reporting and analytics | Gives businesses the ability to monitor and analyze campaign data via dashboard or custom reports for generating business-relevant insights. |
| Integration | Allows the email marketing tool to integrate with third-party applications that add new capabilities to the integrated platform. |
Campaign creation features
Getting worn out by churning out tedious email campaigns that are left unopened in recipients' inboxes? Don't' fret as a decent email marketing tool can help you create email campaigns that are alluring, engaging, and can convert leads into lasting clients. This table will help you understand what these campaign creation features can do for you.
| Feature | Description |
| A/B testing | Allows marketers to run two or more dummy campaigns with a small sample audience and compare the effectiveness of the test campaigns. |
| Customizable templates | Offers pre-designed custom templates which marketers can use to design attractive email campaigns, newsletters, reports and a lot more. |
| Drag & drop interface | Enables marketers to select digital objects (images, videos, charts, contact lists, etc.) and drag them from one interface or location to another. |
| Image library | A centralized repository to store business logos, marketing templates, images, videos, and other digital content in defined categories. |
| WYSIWYG editor | WYSIWYG or 'What You See Is What You Get' editor helps to create professional HTML emails by allowing marketers to directly edit newsletter content from the application |
Campaign management features
The email campaigns that deliver the best outcomes are those which are thoughtfully analyzed, mindfully planned, and professionally tested. From a full email marketing strategy development to its implementation, and guaranteeing that your brand identity is consistent in messaging, an email marketing tool can just do that all for you. When looking for the best email marketing tools, keep the following campaign management features in mind during your evaluation.
| Feature | Description |
| Campaign analysis | Offers a complete analysis of a campaign's performance in terms of parameters such as successful deliveries, bounce rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. |
| Campaign planning | Allows marketers to effectively plan and run email campaigns by defining parameters like objectives, target audience, content, campaign theme, etc. |
| Campaign segmentation | The ability to segment the entire customer base into smaller groups and subgroups to deliver a personalized campaign for a particular audience subset. |
| Drip email marketing | The ability to set up an automated chain of emails that gets delivered to prospects as soon as they complete a certain activity. |
| Email distribution | Allows businesses to build a distribution list and send bulk emails to the entire list or a particular section. |
| Multi-campaign | Allows running more than one campaign simultaneously with different goals and objectives, if necessary. |
Campaign tracking features
Once you've mastered the creation and management of email campaigns, you should be sure to track and measure the success of these campaigns over time. Campaign tracking will help you understand which techniques worked best for you and which should be thought through again. Below are few of the key campaign tracking features which you might find in an email marketing tool.
| Feature | Description |
| Bounce tracking | Tracks and records the number of emails that couldn't be delivered to an email address, resulting in a failed marketing attempt. |
| Click-through tracking | Lets marketers track how many subscribers clicked on links embedded in the email newsletter and landed on the page. |
| Conversion tracking | Tracks the number of actual conversions made after the prospects clicked on a promotional link. |
| Event tracking | Tracks key event milestones such as campaign initiation and completion date, highest converting days, poorest performing days, etc. |
| Email tracking | Enables marketers to track the number of successful email deliveries along with the number of unsuccessful email rebounds. |
| Visitor tracking | Allows businesses to track visitor activities like time spent on landing pages, bounce rate, conversions, etc. |
Contact management features
At their simplest level contact management features let you maintain and organize your list of names and email addresses of your customers. You can also create a complex databases of your customers segmented by engagement levels and demographic slices. Here are some common contact management features you'll find within many email marketing tools.
| Feature | Description |
| Contact database | Allows businesses to build a central database of all their prospects with details like personal details, email ID, order history, previous engagements, and more. |
| Contact history | Supports the option to store past communications with customers in a searchable database. |
| Customizable fields | Gives the freedom to personalize the email templates or contact forms with selected fields or headers (such as customer name, occupation, age, address, or general preference), to collect relevant information. |
| Customer analysis | Offers an in-depth analysis of customers' activities and the level of participation in the campaigns. Some advanced solutions even give suggestions and recommendations based on the past analysis. |
| Lead capture | Automatically captures new leads from emails, websites, chats, phone, social media posts, and other sources, and adds them to contact database. |
List management features
Do you worry that many of your key customer contacts are getting lost while you collate your email list manually? For an email campaign to be successful, you need to have a solid, well organized email list. Fortunately, the best email marketing tools offer list management functionalities to help you update, manage, segment, and centralize your email list with little human intervention. Some of those features are listed below:
| Feature | Description |
| Custom forms | Custom forms are used to create subscription forms, promotional contests, inquiry forms, campaign registrations and others. The information filled into these forms is recorded automatically into the contact database |
| Custom landing pages | Enables marketers to create interactive landing pages, which customers can reach when they click on 'call-to-action' link in the newsletter. A landing page can be used to provide campaign details to the customers. |
| Customer segmentation | Allows segmentation of the the entire contact database into groups and subgroups based on geography, demography, occupation and other factors, helping marketers to run targeted campaigns with a defined set of clients. |
| Subscriber management | Lets marketers manage and record new subscriber details in an organized manner. Some software also supports information verification by authenticating subscribers' email and phone number. |
| Unsubscribe database | Builds and maintains a record of prospects unsubscribing from email subscriptions, along with the reason for dropping out. |
Automation features
Automating tasks like sending a thank you email or simply acknowledging a customer when he signs up on your website can free you and your marketing team up for more interesting and engaging work. Let's explore below what automation functions you can expect to see in email marketing software and what their benefits are.
| Feature | Description |
| Automated scheduling | Allows marketers to automate the release of emails and newsletters on a fixed schedule. |
| Automatic notifications | Delivers an automated notification to users and stakeholders via email or text message based on specified criteria being met. |
| Auto-responders | Sends an email - or series of emails - to people automatically, when they are added to the email list. |
| Event triggered actions | Sends automated emails to customers or real-time notifications to users when an event occurs during a campaign. |
| Event triggered email | Event-triggered emails are sent automatically based on specific actions a user takes. |
Reporting and analytics features
Reporting and analytics features within email marketing let you access and analyze your email data to discover customer insights in real-time. By analyzing this data, you can see which devices and apps your customers use to open the emails, as well as track metrics like clickthrough rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, duration of engagement, return on investment, and a lot more.
| Feature | Description |
| Customizable reporting | Generates custom reports that can give marketers a holistic view of campaign performance, sales, customer engagement levels and other key performance indicators. |
| Engagement analytics | Tracks how many prospects opened the emails, clicked on a Call-to-Action button or subscribed to the campaign. |
| ROI analytics | Allows users to define campaign metrics and monitor those indicators in real-time via a dashboard or generate return on investment (ROI) reports. |
| Real-time analytics | Lets marketers analyze campaign performance data from multiple sources and present that data in a way that can be used to make informed decisions or identify weaknesses. |
Integration features
Before you decide to settle for a tool that you think best suits your business needs, make sure to check that it integrates seamlessly with your existing software stack. Thankfully, many email marketing apps integrate with other cloud-based software facilitating uninterrupted data sharing between applications. Below are some features that will help ensure your email marketing solution integrates well with other applications you use.
| Feature | Description |
| API | Allows users to interface the email marketing software with external applications such as business intelligence, CRM, and others. This helps to extend capabilities of the combined system. |
| CRM integration | Ability to integrate with third-party CRM solution to seamlessly transfer contact details and communication history between applications. |
| Data import/export | Supports the importing or exporting relevant business data like contact list, email templates, digital files, and analysis reports in multiple formats. |
| eCommerce integration | Allows the email marketing tool to integrate with leading eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, etc., enabling users to send promotional emails, announce new offers, announce new products, and even ask for feedback. |
| Mobile integration | Allows marketers to access campaign data on their smartphones through native mobile apps or via mobile web browsers. |
| Social media integration | Integrates with social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to sync marketing campaigns. |
| Website integration | Integrates website links in the email for generating more leads from website visitors. |
Additional features
In addition to the key features listed above, there are a lot of other specific features that you can find in an email marketing tool. Here are some other features to consider:
| Feature | Description |
| Activity tracking | Keeps track of core activities performed by marketers and campaign designers. |
| Activity dashboard | A custom user interface that allows marketers to track key campaign metrics along with daily 'to-dos' on a single screen. |
| Knowledge base | Serves as a pool of information for customers looking for basic information about the product or general terms and conditions. |
| Multiple user accounts | Creates multiple accounts for users and teams. |
| Rules-based workflow | Defines the steps and course of action to be followed during any event or upon completing an action. This feature allows marketers to send action triggered emails to their customers without any manual intervention. |
| Widgets | Widgets are the link-activated text or buttons that are embedded into email newsletters and websites to trigger particular action like unsubscribe, mini calendar, traffic monitor, support requests, and more. |
Discover which apps stand out for specific criteria according to our users opinions.
Each app is scored using 5 factors, worth 20 points each, for a total possible of score out of 100.
Email Marketing Category Leaders Q4 2018
GetApp's quarterly ranking showcases the leading 10-15 Email Marketing apps based in the cloud. Each app is scored using five factors, worth 20 points each, for a total possible score out of 100. These factors include user reviews, integrations, mobile app availability, functionality, and security. Each app's score is independent of commercial interests and existing relationships that GetApp has with app vendors.
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