There are numerous types of online marketing. One of the oldest and most effective of them is email marketing.

Late in the 1970s, the first promotional email was sent to a few hundred consumers, resulting in millions of dollars in sales for the vendor and the birth of a whole new sector – digital marketing. With the number of email users predicted to reach 4.4 billion by 2023, emails will undoubtedly remain one of the most useful methods for attracting new consumers and bringing attention to a company.

Email marketing is a critical part of any business’s marketing strategy. Email Marketing enables you to target different segments of your audience on a one-to-one basis with highly customised and personalised messaging. Unlike ephemeral media, such as social newsfeeds, where content is only available for brief periods, Emails exist in recipients’ inboxes until they take action on it; hopefully by reading it, clicking the link(s) inside the email, and moving to designated website or webpage.

Key advantages of Emails in your marketing strategy are: 

• Emails directly communicate with audiences on a  1-2-1 basis 
• Emails are permanent until acted upon, and so they  can be used to amplify and prolong social media &  website content 
• Email campaigns can target various audiences,  effectively & efficiently, with personalised    messaging 
• Analytical data on Email campaigns can be used  across all marketing efforts

Therefore, it becomes very crucial to select a proper email marketing platform for your engagements. Choose the wrong platform with limited capabilities and your well-planned marketing campaigns will fail miserably, resulting in disastrous implications for your firm. Being an email marketer, you must have an effective marketing plan and an effective platform. An ideal email marketing platform provides you with tools that help you identify the target audience, comprehend the objectives, select an appropriate campaign type, assess the outcomes, and other critical aspects.

Characteristics

Email marketing is a great way for small businesses to connect with their customers and promote their products or services. However, with so many different email marketing platforms available, it can be difficult to know which one is right for your business. Here are some of the must-have characteristics/ features of an ideal email marketing platform.

• Precise Segmentation
• Email list management
• Right time 
• Fine-tuned A/B testing
• Detailed Analytics and Reporting
• Flexible Autoresponders
• Email builder
• Integration with other channels
• Third-party software integration

Segmentation

Identifying different groups of customers (segmenting them) in a contact list, and targeting those groups with specific content can help you achieve your goals more effectively.

A good email marketing platform allows users to categorise clients in a list based on a plethora of criteria that can be combined in several ways. Among the characteristics that separate one set of contacts from another are:

• Purchasing preferences
• Gender
• Devices or browsers that recipients use
• Click-through rates
• Recipient’s location
• Lifecycle stage, etc.

Email list management

One of the most important elements of an email marketing platform is the ability to manage a contact list. Why waste time and money attempting to contact someone whose email address does not exist, or whose address does exist but all messages sent to it are returned for unclear reasons? These two types of encounters are referred to as hard bounces and soft bounces, respectively.

A competent email marketing platform should be able to maintain the contact list clean. When a hard bounce is discovered, it must be destroyed immediately. A soft bounce is given more time since the underlying cause of the problem might be as simple as an overcrowded inbox.

Furthermore, the platform must provide customization choices to guarantee that the most recent modifications (e.g., opt-outs) are instantly reflected in the lists.

Sending emails at the right time

Email delivery is about timing. An ideal email marketing platform enables you to send emails instantly within a few seconds for instant gratification and schedule your emails to be sent at the perfect moment: either by picking a date and time, a precise hour, or even an exact minute.

Fine-tuned A/B testing

A/B testing (also known as split testing) is an important marketing approach that helps you to determine whether the subject line, content or design performs better for a specific group of recipients. Make two copies of the same email. Then, send the first version to a subset of your contact list, then the second to a subset of about comparable size. You can evaluate which email version is more effective by measuring the replies of each group.

Detailed Analytics and Reporting

Data is king in email marketing. It’s like being in the dark if you don’t know if your campaign is working or not. As a result, a successful ESP must give its users thorough analytics and reporting features. A clean and informative dashboard with all of the relevant indicators, such as these:

• Types of devices recipients use to open emails
• Actions that contacts perform on emails (removing, forwarding, etc.)
• The time they spend reading emails
• The portions of emails where they click
• Contacts of which gender are more engaged

By obtaining all this data, you can adjust your email marketing strategy for better results.

Trigger-based emails/ autoresponders

An ideal email marketing platform provides flexible autoresponders for the various stages of the customer journey. A new customer has signed up on your website? Send a welcome email. A purchase has been made? Send a confirmation email. Cart left abandoned? Send a cart abandonment email.

Convenient email builder

Finally, the design of an email is crucial for proper engagement. Nothing can spoil the reputation of a brand so much as a badly structured or poorly designed message. A good email marketing platform must provide a convenient and efficient tool for building emails that offer:

• Integration of HTML or CSS forms into an email
• A set of ready-made templates
• Image-editing tool
• Responsive design
• Drag-and-drop editing

A user should also be able to save previous designs to re-use them with some modifications later.

Integration with other channels

Email marketing is a highly effective way to reach customers, but it should be carefully and strategically utilized. Email campaigns should work in tandem with your other marketing channels, including SMS, WhatsApp, and even social media. The key to a successful strategy is reaching relevant groups of people and targeting specific buyers with offers they’re likely to be receptive to.

Third-party software integration

An ideal email marketing platform should be able to sync with an e-commerce platform like Shopify or WooCommerce, as well as any third-party software that provides scope for integration. The best tools won’t just allow you to send emails from a shopping cart or fulfil orders from a customer list; they’ll allow you to use almost any feature of the e-commerce software you already use, merging the two services in one place.

Hippo

Hippo is one of the best email marketing platforms in the world. It provides you with every feature of an ideal email marketing platform and much more. With Hippo, you can create and manage your email lists, automate your email marketing campaigns, and track the results. You can create beautiful email newsletters that help you engage with your customers and grow your business.