Top Five Email Marketing Software in 2017

Email marketing is one of the oldest and most effective forms of digital marketing. Email marketing cost less and produces the highest ROI, but least used amongst all the channels by digital marketers. Email marketing can help improve inter-personal relationship between users and customers. It is also one of the most effective ways to reach the target audience directly, on a one-on-one basic without the usual crowd associated with the other channels.

What is Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is a form of marketing whereby an advertiser offers a bait in form of freebies, in exchange for an email subscription, which grants permission to the advertiser to use their contact email to send product updates, newsletters, and other marketing campaigns to subscribers via email. By definition, email marketing is a process through which a business entity promotes or solicit patronage by email distribution of adverts, newsletters and content to a targeted audience who grant their permission.

Types of Email Marketing Software

Email marketing has two essential software components, and they are the opt-in subscription form and email distribution software. The opt-in subscription tool is a form that prompt customers to enter their contact details in exchange for a free download or discount promo codes. While on the other hand, the email distribution software is for sending emails using the mailing list created by the opt-in subscription form.

The email distribution software has several features that allow the user to create personalized messages, automate mail distribution and sample templates for easy use. These two email marketing tools, when used in combination, produces great results, that has made email marketing the veritable tool it is today.

Features of Email Marketing Software

Email marketing has several features, which makes it quite effective and easy to use. Some of these features include the following:

Opt-in Subscription: To engage in email marketing, you required a mailing list, which must be built-up from opt-in subscribers who must grant permission to be included in your mailing list and to send them emails of their marketing campaign, which could either be in form of newsletter, product updates, video streaming, personalized messages or eBook.

One of the salient features of email marketing is its opt-in functionality. This feature is a form where visitors to the sites are asked to supply their contact details in exchange for some freebies which may be free downloads, discount offers or promo codes. The opt-in features of email marketing also addresses the age-old issue of spam emails, and this type of emails are often unsolicited, and sent to individuals and companies’ mailbox without their consent.

Email Distribution: There are several email distribution software available in the market that addresses different aspects of email marketing; for instance, the opt-in subscription form which only helps create a mailing list. Some other applications are to generate and send standard email messages. Few applications provide both features, and some are installable versions, others are online applications, some of which are free.

Automation: Another great feature of email marketing is automation. This feature have the ability to schedule the delivery of email messages by assigning specific dates the messages are to be sent. The automation feature allows the user to compose several emails messages and schedule delivery at a specified day and time. This email marketing automation feature allows users plan their campaigns in such a way that it does not require much of their attention, thereby allowing them time to focus on other important aspects of their digital marketing strategies.

Personalization: Email marketing helps users to send personalized messages to subscribers on first or last name basis, thus creating a sense of closeness. Personalized emails are most effective when sending birthday wishes, wedding anniversary messages and reminders of new stocks or availability of certain regularly purchased items by the customers.

Pre-formatted Emails: Some email marketing software come with pre-formatted email templates. These templates allow users to alter them to suit their individual requirement, therefore, making the entire email messaging process a fast and easy experience.

Five Top Email Marketing Software

There are many email marketing software in the market, but in the past one year, the top five most used email marketing software are:

1.   Mailchimp,
2.   Constant Content
3.   Campaigner
4.   iContact and
5.   GetResponse

When I ran a comparisons text on Google Trends on all five applications, the result I got was startling. I discovered that Mailchimp appears to be the only software in the race, considering the very wide margin between it and the other four. Mailchimp is clearly the top most searched emailing marketing software in 2017 globally. In a scale of 1 to 100, the gap between Mailchimp and the other top four email marketing software, Mailchimp led by as much margin as 90 to 10, leaving the other four to struggle for the remaining 10 points.

Constant Content follows in distant second, while Campainger, iContact and GetResponse followed closely with third, fourth and fifth places respectively.