Automated Email Software: How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Automation Tool for Your Business
If you're like most business owners, you know that email marketing is a powerful tool for building relationships with customers and driving sales. But emailing your list can be a drag. You spend hours crafting the perfect email only to get a measly 10% open rate and little to no return on the hours spent putting it all together.
Email marketing doesn't have to be a soul-sucking endeavour, though. With the right email marketing automation software, you can set up emails to go out automatically, saving you time while still nurturing your leads.
This blog post will help you choose the best email marketing automation tool for your business and show you the many benefits of using such a powerful system.
Let's go!
What is Email Marketing Automation?
Let's start with the basics: what is email marketing automation?
Email marketing automation is a way of nurturing leads by sending out emails automatically based on customer behaviours or interactions with your company.
Two standard email automations you may have heard of, and have likely received yourself many times over, are welcome series and abandoned cart emails.
Each of these automations will have a singular goal the company wants the customer to complete, generally the purchase of a product/service or scheduling a sales call.
The email marketing automation has been set up in a personalized manner, optimized to send when the recipient is most likely to complete the goal of the email.
Example: Welcome Series
For example, a welcome series is sent when a person first subscribes as it's a milestone moment in the customer journey, a time when the lead has shown a willingness to invest their time and energy into the company and what it has to offer.
At this point, the person is in an emotional buying state, extremely open to being persuaded into taking whatever action the company wants them to take.
Example: Abandoned Cart Emails
Abandoned cart emails are sent for much of the same reason. The individual has taken the time and energy to research the product or service, visit the website, make their selections, and add their desired purchase to their cart. The only step left is to make the purchase.
By sending a simple reminder email to complete a purchase mere minutes after the potential customer has left their cart, you are again capitalizing on the emotional buying state of the individual.
Email Marketing Strategy
With email marketing automation, the strategy is to send highly personalized emails to customers based on their behaviour, like subscribing to a monthly newsletter (i.e. sending an automated welcome series) or adding products to a cart but not purchasing (i.e. sending an automated abandoned cart email).
The strategy can be further optimized by sending these automated emails at optimal times based on the software's determination of when they will most likely convert.
With the timing fully optimized, companies can spend more time making their messaging even more powerful, often countering common pain points that drive potential customers not to purchase their product or service.
For example, a company selling robotic vacuums is aware one may look at it as an extravagant purchase. Thus, they can counter the potential purchaser’s thought with messaging like, "We know. It costs more than your typical vacuum, but then again, do you want to be standing around vacuuming when you could do so many other things?!"
This ideal combination of perfect timing and personalized messaging results in an average of $42 in return for every $1 spent on email marketing! (Oberlo)
Not bad, right?!
Let's look at the benefits of email marketing automation in more detail now that we have a basic understanding of what it is and how it's commonly used!
The Benefits of Using Email Marketing Automation Tools
When used correctly, email automation has a vast number of benefits. Let's look at some of the most impactful ones and how they can bring value to your company!
1. Time Savings
The first that comes to mind is the hours of precious time you'll save while still providing your customers with the valuable content they crave.
Email marketing automation allows businesses to send large volumes of personalized emails to their customers without manually creating and sending them.
Rather than sending individual emails to each lead or customer, you set up the email once, configure your automation, and let the system handle the rest.
This is great for repetitive tasks, such as sending welcome emails, thank you emails, abandoned cart emails, anniversary emails, etc.
Beyond the emails' automation, you can set up further automations to handle the contacts based on actions taken.
For example, if you are utilizing a CRM, you can set up automations to automatically move a contact from one pipeline stage to the next.
Rather than manually tracking the lead's actions, the software will do it for you, moving individuals around based on specific parameters such as opening/reading emails, clicking links, visiting particular web pages, or scheduling a meeting.
This considerable time saver brings us to our next benefit: tracking!
2. Tracking
When set up correctly, email automation software also makes it easier to manage your email list, segment your contacts, and track and analyze the performance of your campaigns.
Rather than relying on individuals to manually track this data, opening the door to human error and wrong information, email automation software allows you to choose what you want to track and how granular you want to get.
Having this option from the start guarantees clean and accurate data, providing valuable insights into what email campaigns are performing successfully and which may need adjustments.
With this information, you can quickly dial in your best-performing copy, understand which designs are the highest converting, and know what campaigns provide the highest return on investment.
You can also understand which demographic of contact is most likely to convert, at which time of day they purchase, and on average, how much they buy each time you send a campaign.
From there, you can further segment your email list, sending different campaigns to different contact demographics and presenting different messaging, designs, and call-to-actions depending on how each cohort has responded in the past.
This can continue indefinitely, becoming increasingly granular as more data is gathered and a better understanding of your audience is developed.
The power of tracking cannot be overstated and is one of the many benefits of email marketing automation.
3. Personalization
We touched on it briefly, but personalization is another significant benefit of email marketing automation.
By adequately tracking individuals and their actions, you gather the information needed to further personalize your communication with them.
With email marketing tools like personalization tags, you can begin to craft messaging that directly references actions the person has taken or milestones in their customer journey.
For example, email marketing automation software allows you to track every link in your email marketing campaigns, letting you know how many times each link has been visited and by which contacts.
With this information in hand, you can set up secondary emails to be sent depending on what link the contact has visited.
Perhaps one link directs to a blog post about SEO services, while the other discusses social media management. Depending on the link the contact visits, you could send a follow-up email saying, "Hey, we noticed you visited %blog_post_name%, so we thought we'd send you more information about %blog_post_topic%. Check it out here!"
By understanding the topic the contact is interested in, you can provide secondary touchpoints with additional value, improving the chances of that contact converting.
Another great example of personalization is sending emails based on milestone events in the customer journey.
For example, you could track when a contact makes their first purchase with the company and set up an email marketing automation to send an email 1-year after that date to celebrate them joining your company's community. Typically you would offer some discount as well to incentivize a purchase further.
It's a simple automation to set up but, at the same time, is highly personalized and sure to impact the email recipient.
Without email marketing automation tools, this would be a very cumbersome task, requiring an individual to reference contact purchase data daily to see who purchased on that date. From there, each email would have to be manually created and sent, adding to the already tedious task of doing it manually.
As business owners, we want to make our customers feel valued and excited to be a part of our company's ecosystem. You are one step closer to achieving this with the power of email marketing tools and the personalization functionality they provide.
4. Testing
Once again, we touched on it briefly while discussing the benefit of tracking, but testing is another massive plus of email automation tools.
Any email marketing software worth its salt will offer the ability to A/B or split test email marketing campaigns.
Doing so allows you to test different versions of your emails to see which generates the highest return on investment. Email marketing software is especially good at this as you can set strict parameters on what contacts are entering the test, ensuring the source data is clean and representative of what you want to test.
We often start with two drastically different emails to quickly see what design/messaging works best. Once we choose a winner from this stage, we test slightly different campaign variations, further narrowing in on what converts at the highest percentage.
The ability to continually test campaigns in this manner provides immense information. It can be an eye-opening experience, as what you expect to work doesn't always happen, and campaigns you thought were sure to fail end up performing the best.
Anyone unable to implement this automated testing is at a considerable disadvantage, having no way to accurately or efficiently test their email marketing efforts, leaving a huge blind spot to what actions they need to take to improve their email campaigns.
How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Tools for Your Business
The benefits of email marketing automation have convinced you to invest in email marketing automation software. Great!
But how do you go about choosing the best email marketing automation software? What should you consider when making your decision?
Let's break it down!
1. Goals
You should first consider your goals and what you want to accomplish before you move on to investigating the multitude of email marketing tools on the market.
Your goals will vary greatly depending on your business type and who the recipient of your emails will be.
For example, for smaller B2C companies, goals will likely revolve around sending highly personalized emails to many customer segments. Design capabilities and CRM integration may also be highly valued. Thus, email marketing software that offers robust segmenting functionality, a great email builder, and a native CRM application will likely be necessary.
For larger B2B companies, personalization, segmentation, design, and CRM are probably less important, whereas continuing to use third-party applications (like Salesforce and Microsoft) and controlling the access of many users on the platform are more important goals.
The number one goal for an eCommerce is likely to have a seamless integration between the email marketing automation software and their eCommerce platform, whether that's Shopify, WooCommerce, or another provider.
As you can see, determining your goals and detailing how email marketing automation software will help achieve them is the first step to choosing your preferred platform.
2. Features
Once you have solidified your goals, it's time to start assessing which email marketing automation features you require, which would be nice and which you don't need.
From there, you can investigate the many email marketing automation software companies on the market, looking at their specific features and what they offer.
Some good places to start are:
There are tens, if not hundreds, of providers, so be sure to look around and see what catches your attention.
Most companies will be happy and even bug you to schedule a call with one of their sales representatives. While this can become time-consuming, speaking to individuals at different companies lets you ask very detailed questions and get more detailed information than what's available on the website.
It also gives you a good insight into the company's culture and whether their way of doing business aligns well with you and your company. If you're left with a bad taste in your mouth after speaking to a sales rep, chances are you aren't going to enjoy dealing with their customer service department further down the road.
If you are left with a good impression or were convinced by what you saw on the website, I recommend starting a free trial. It'll let you get your hands on the email marketing automation software and dive into how things work.
While this will vary depending on your goals and what you need, there are a few key features I would spend some time looking at during your free trial.
Email Builder
Take a close look at the email builder and how it works.
The emails are the foundation of everything, so if it's challenging to build them or you cannot design them how you'd like, the software won't work well for you and your marketing efforts.
Automation Builder
Like the email builder, if the automation builder is difficult to use or doesn't provide the functionality you need, it's probably best to move on to the next software.
Be sure to consider all the automations you may want to set up so you can thoroughly test whether that flow is possible.
Reporting
As we've mentioned, the data provided by email marketing automation is extremely valuable. As such, gaining access to that data is equally important.
Suppose the software has poor reporting functionality, meaning it's difficult to gather the data or it's not presented in an easy-to-understand or useable manner. In that case, it may not be worth putting any time into the emails or automations as the information they provide will be unusable.
CRM Integration
CRM goes hand-in-hand with email marketing, and we highly recommend you don't undertake any email marketing efforts without a robust CRM system.
If you currently use CRM software like Salesforce, Pipedrive, or Zoho, investigate the integration between that software and the email marketing automation platform.
If you aren't currently using a CRM, look closely at the CRM provided by the email marketing platform. If they don't offer an in-house or native CRM application, then you're probably best to move on to software that does.
Having multiple functionalities in one software's always more straightforward and efficient, and we recommend you avoid integrating different applications whenever possible.
3. Ease of Use & Price
Once you've narrowed down what you feel are the best email marketing automation tools for your business, the final decision comes down to two points: how easy they are to use and how much they cost.
I would recommend placing ease of use above price. Regardless of how cheap one software may be compared to the others, if it's impossible to use, then you will never use it, and the return on your investment will be zero.
You should have gotten a good feel for each software and how easy it was to become comfortable with it during your free trials. Refer to this and try to remember which software left you with the least frustration.
From there, the final factor is going to be price. Depending on your goals and required features, this will vary widely within the same software and when comparing different platforms.
The pricing decision will be significantly influenced by budget, but do your research and consider your expected ROI. The greater your confidence in your projected ROI, the more you should invest in your email marketing automation software and its functionality.
The Best Email Marketing Automation Tool on the Market
We invested more heavily in our email marketing efforts roughly one year ago. During that time, we wondered what the best email automation tools were on the market.
To find out, we undertook the abovementioned process, reviewing our goals, investigating different features, and trailing various companies in the space.
After a couple of months of discussions with sales reps and free trials, we finally settled on what we feel is the best email marketing automation tool on the market: ActiveCampaign!
To say we love the software would be an understatement. It's been an absolute pleasure to use thus far, and every person at the company has been a joy to deal with.
Let's take a closer look at why ActiveCampaign is the best email marketing automation software on the market.
Why ActiveCampaign?
1. Customer Service
From the start, ActiveCampaign had the most responsive and helpful sales reps and customer service agents.
Any question we had was promptly answered, and requests that required a more detailed investigation on their behalf were taken seriously and always presented back to us with a thorough and well-informed solution.
They were willing to demo the software and work through our specific use cases. Every person we dealt with was genuinely interested and excited to work with us and help offer solutions to our requests.
We've yet to experience this level of customer service from any other company, regardless of the industry they're operating in. It's a standout feature of ActiveCampaign that will certainly not go unnoticed if you need a quick fix to a problem.
2. Ease of Use
Simply put, ActiveCampaign had the easiest-to-use and most intuitive user experience of the many email automation tools we tried.
Processes we found very difficult in other marketing automation software we're effortless in ActiveCampaign. Here are a few highlights:
Automation Builder
The automation builder was by far the easiest to use, offering a very visual and intuitive drag-and-drop builder that quickly allows you to build complex automations with various branches.
Tasks like setting up goals or split testing, both difficult to do in other software, were simple and required little explanation in ActiveCampaign.
The entire system integrates seamlessly with your contacts and lists, making it easy to use. No tedious settings to deal with, complex field matching, or custom coding, just simple connections between the software's core features.
CRM Integration
Our fundamental goal was to have an email marketing automation software that also offered a CRM platform.
Others on the market offer this, Zoho and HubSpot, to name two. Still, ActiveCampaign once again provided the easiest-to-use and most intuitive CRM solution of any software we tried.
Their CRM dashboard is visually easy to understand, providing a clean and straightforward view of all your required information.
Customization was also far more accessible than other software, letting us quickly add custom fields, decide what information we wanted to see and change various settings to our liking.
The ease of their automations also proved valuable when considering the CRM side of things, as we were once again able to easily build out several automations to help direct our CRM efforts.
Third-Party Integrations
I know; we said we don't recommend third-party integrations if possible. But, as most know, today's tech stack continues to grow, and the chance of needing to integrate a third-party app is essentially 100%.
For us, this included integrating Instapage, WebinarJam, and Calendly, to name a few.
Luckily, ActiveCampains offers 870+ integrations, many of them native, meaning the process was relatively seamless and, once again, so easy compared to other software we looked at.
If considering ActiveCampaign, take a look to see how your tech stack can be integrated, if it'll be easy, and if the information you need to be transferred in will be. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!
3. Price
Many other minor points won us over to ActiveCamapign, but the final big reason was the price.
Compared to other email automation tools, the marketing automation capabilities of ActiveCampaign vs. its price are nearly unbeatable.
It's pretty impressive the amount of functionality offered for the price, especially compared to competitors offering the same or lesser features and far worse customer service but charging 2 or 3 times the cost.
As usual, it depends on the features you require and your number of contacts. However, you can get an excellent foundation for just $ 39 CAD/month (from our experience, competitors charge anywhere from $75-$100/month for similar functionality and contact numbers).
This is a considerable saving and offers a great starting point for small businesses or those with smaller budgets.
Having this option to start at such a low price lowers the barrier to entry and allows for progressive growth into additional features and more contacts as you need them.
You pay for what you need and work from there. No substantial monthly payments for features you don't use and contacts you don't have - a business model most other competitors follow.
Wrapping Up: Is an Email Marketing Tool Right for Your Business?
Email marketing can be a great way to reach potential and current customers.
It can be a cost-effective way to stay in touch with your audience and a powerful tool for promoting sales and events.
However, email marketing is not suitable for every business. Before you invest in an email marketing tool, it's essential to consider whether email marketing is a good fit for your business. If you're not sure whether email marketing is right for you, here are some things to consider:
Do you have an extensive email list? Email marketing may not be the most effective way to reach your target audience if you don't have a comprehensive email list.
Are you willing to invest the time and resources necessary to create quality email content? Creating quality email content takes time and effort. Email marketing may not suit you if you're unwilling to do the work.
Do you have the budget to invest in an email marketing tool? Email marketing tools can range in price from free to thousands of dollars per month. Email marketing may not suit you if you cannot invest in a tool.
If you've decided an email marketing automation software is right for your business, then make sure you consider the points mentioned in this post to ensure you end up choosing the best email marketing software for your business:
Goals: Ensure you clearly understand your goals and what you want to achieve with your email marketing software.
Features: Determine what features will facilitate your goals and investigate how various companies approach these functionalities.
Ease of Use: Prioritize ease of use, as you'll never use your chosen email marketing automation software if it's challenging to use.
Price: Assess your budget and expected return on investment, and choose your features and software provider based on this.
As with anything, we recommend you do your due diligence, testing various email marketing automation software to see how well they mesh with your business and its marketing functions.
That said, we can't wrap up this post without one last shout-out to ActiveCampaign - we sincerely recommend you look at their platform and what they offer. We couldn't be happier with their service and genuinely feel they offer the best email marketing automation software today.
You can sign-up for a free trial, no credit card required, by clicking this link!
Thanks for reading!
About Noetic Marketer
Noetic Marketer is a full-service digital marketing agency with roots in Ottawa and the GTA. We specialize in creating and optimizing digital marketing campaigns for higher education, e-commerce, professional services, and contractors.
As digital marketers, we strive to find solutions to every company’s lead generation challenges, creating personalized marketing strategies that suit the specific needs of our clients.
We offer both email marketing services and CRM implementation. If you would like to discuss either, you can book a free 30-minute consultation with one of our experts.
About the Author
Garrett Evans
While not overseeing Noetic’s work as a Project Manager, Garrett enjoys writing about the latest trends and strategies in digital marketing.
Having seen the power of effective marketing, Garrett particularly enjoys discussing different digital marketing strategies both individuals and companies can use to help find success and grow.
He hopes his writing provides unique insights and applicable recommendations to all those reading.