Email Marketing Tools and Resources for Bloggers

This is a guest post by Marice Lupoy.

Ideally, promoting your website or blog should not be limited to SEO alone. There are various ways to do this, but the easiest, most convenient and probably most effective of them all is email marketing. It can be quite complex, but with the right tactics, these various aspects of SEO and email marketing can effectively work together to bring more traffic and conversions. In fact, in a recent article study by Econsultancy, 75% of global marketers rated SEO and email marketing as good and excellent in terms of return on investment.

To develop email marketing in conjunction with your SEO, you have to keep in mind that it is important to use a legitimate mailing list and never send spam. Sending spam emails will affect your whole domain (it will end up being blacklisted, blocked by ISPs and reported) and will definitely affect your SEO. Never buy or rent mailing lists. Create a genuine list by creating a sign-up form on your blog, and make sure it will be visible to all your blog’s visitors. Make sure that you follow the anti-spam acts by including your company’s address and an unsubscribe option in your email. Minute details like these are very important and it gives your company good credibility. Also, put an effort on your newsletter. Make sure that the content is informative and well-written and the layout is beautiful and easy on the eyes.

There are also various email marketing tools that can help you develop email marketing further. One of the most common tools that digital marketers advise small businesses to have in order for them to succeed with email marketing is an autoresponder. In simple terms, an autoresponder is a kind of email marketing software that delivers your newsletters to everyone in your mailing list. Some of the popular autoresponders in the market are:

1. GetResponse

   Recommended for beginners, GetResponse is very easy to use and offered in a very affordable price. It lets you publish newsletters and offers hosting features as well as autoresponders to deliver your message to everybody in your mailing list. The company also boasts its high email deliverability percentage due to their established relations with various ISPs and email service providers. They also offer a free version to those who want to try their services.

2. Lyris

   Lyris offers impressive digital marketing features that include enterprise email marketing, integrated digital marketing and real-time automation and analytics. However, their packages can be quite pricey compared to other email marketing software in the market. If you have a budget, this is a good software to look into because they have very good client support. They do have account managers assigned for every high-volume account to ensure that all your needs are being met, and they will also continuously evaluate the progress, performance and achievement of your email marketing campaign.

3. AutoResponsePlus

   AutoResponsePlus is recommended for those that have more than 25,000 subscribers in their mailing list. This autoresponder requires installation on your own server unlike GetResponse. They also cater to those that have more than 100,000 subscribers though they recommend a dedicated server since it will take up a lot. The software is easy to use and they let you have the total control over your email marketing. You have the freedom to design and stylize your own HTML email. They also offer tracking for open rates, bounce rates and link click-through rates.

4. Campaign Monitor

   Campaign Monitor offers beautiful email designs, sending your email campaigns and results tracking. The unique feature of this site that others do not have is their template builder that will let your create email layouts that are automatically optimized for mobile devices. Adding content is also very easy on their template and they also offer one click content.

Aside from these email marketing tools, you can also look into various email marketing resources to help you with your email marketing strategies. There are various blogs that talk about email marketing and reading them will inspire you to improve your strategies and techniques. Becs Rivett talks about email marketing in her blog and she adds visuals to her posts too. You can also check Email Marketing Reports for their articles on the basics of email marketing or how to improve it.

About the author
Marice Lupoy is a marketing specialist for Scorch who specialise in marketing, digital, and creative services in Australia. Scorch will help you promote and maintain brand awareness through the use of social media and various digital channels.