How to Choose Email Marketing Software

No matter how good your email marketing campaign is in terms of content, no matter how big your mailing list is, if you do not have the proper tool to distribute it and then check the results, all of your hard work will be in vain. Email marketing software is designed to make this final step easier and more beneficial.

There are a large number of companies currently offering different email marketing solutions. Some of them can be integrated in your current CRM system; others are simply stand alone programs. Some email software can only help you distribute your emails, while others feature comprehensive statistics facilities.

When choosing email marketing software, keep in mind the following:

Integrated or stand alone; online or offline

As mentioned some email marketing software can be integrated in your current CRM software. This might be more expensive however, depending on your needs, may be the best solution for you. Some email marketing tools are online, meaning you can manage your campaigns and check the statistics on another site, while there are programs that need to be installed on your computer. Think in advance what the best solution for your business is by taking into account how many people will use it.

The features of the email marketing software

The tools that come with the email marketing software are the heart of the issue. If you do not receive the right tools then there is almost no point to the software you are using. Decent email marketing software should have tools that:

• Allow easy management of your subscriber lists;
• Allow distribution of targeted emails i.e. you should be able to easily create different group of subscribers and post messages to each group;
• Provide easy subscription/un-subscription management;
• Provide sophisticated statistics showing the number of the emails sent, the number of the emails opened, link tracking and percentage information about various ratios such as the ration between the people who opened the email and those who received it, the people who received it and who unsubscribed, the people who opened it and those who clicked on a link or made a purchase, etc...

Email marketing software reports

Ideally, good email marketing software has a number of automatically generated reports. While this is not a vital part, it is a tool that will ease your workload a lot.

The price of the software

Set a budget and find software within that budget. There are plenty of programs that will do the work you need and some of them are not that expensive. Be careful about the cost – some companies charge per number of emails sent, while other companies have flat fees.