The best email marketing solution for businesses in South Africa?

Considering that more than 3.9 billion people use email worldwide, it’s safe to say that email isn’t going anywhere. And with that, email marketing continues to rise in effectiveness and popularity, with 78% of marketers seeing an overall increase in engagement over the last twelve months. This means that email marketing will continue to remain relevant for your business for the foreseeable future. While some emails are destined for the trash without so much as a glance, well-crafted emails are a fantastic way to connect with potential and existing customers. With the sheer number of emails that people receive daily, personalisation is a great way of creating engaging emails that stand out and speak to the consumer’s wants and interests.

A number of email marketing providers have sprung up over the years to fill this gap, with feature sets growing along with the industry. This has led to a variety of packages and offerings, making it tough for a small business or entrepreneur to decide which email marketing provider is best for their needs. Here we look at which features are important for entrepreneurs, to ultimately help you decide what the best email marketing provider for your business so you can connect with your customer’s via their inbox.

Which features should I look out for?

Costs and contacts: As your business grows, so will your amount of email contacts so it’s important to get an idea of the costs you can expect once you’ve surpassed the free tier that some providers offer. Generally speaking, there are two costs you’ll need to consider, as well as how many contacts you get:

1) Setup Cost – how much opening an account will set you back.

2) Ongoing Cost – your monthly subscription fee if you do not exceed the number of contacts.

3) Contacts – this is the number of addresses/subscribers you can send your email campaigns to before having to move to a higher package at a greater cost.

Ease of use: Here you should consider how simple the platform’s signup process is, how simple the user interface makes customising emails or accessing reports and analytics, as well as whether it offers templates. This should be a painless process that lets you focus on getting great campaigns sent out.

Features: While some providers may offer a lot of extra features that others do not, it is important to consider the extra costs that they may incur and if the features are needed. There are three broad areas of feature sets that email marketing providers offer:

1) Integrations – can you connect your website, blog or online shop to your email marketing provider for additional features such as tracking or order follow-ups?

2) General Features – there are a number of features that are designed assist your email marketing campaigns, making them simpler to create with drag-and-drop campaign building and templates or more effective with A/B testing and product recommendations. While some providers offer all features regardless of the package, this is reflected in the price, meaning you can end up paying for features you don’t need.

3) Automations – as the name suggests, automations are actions that happen automatically when a certain trigger, such as a specific date or time, happens. While not necessary, automations make it simple to add another personal touch to marketing emails and connect with consumers or follow-up on interactions. As they are not essential, you should consider if your business needs automations at this stage before choosing a package or provider that offers them.

Support & reviews: Considering these providers are responsible for sending out your email campaigns to your businesses’ contacts, should anything go wrong, you want to know that there is a good support system that gives you the assistance you need when you need it. It’s important to know what kind of support is offered and during which hours. Online reviews are often a good indication of what kind of experiences real-world users have had.

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