As email marketing consultants we work with many different email marketing software packages to develop winning email campaigns for our client’s accounts.
You might be familiar with one or more of the following email service providers: Aweber, Constant Contact, iContact, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, Vertical Response, Campaigner or Lyris.
During any given week in the past year we’ve used one or all of these providers to send emails.
Here’s a few tips we’ve learned.
Know your software
We’ve discovered that there are few things more frustrating than to spend extra time trying to figure out if your software provider can do split tests, or segment your list, or handle surveys.
Often, you spend extra time trying to find the feature you need and then figure out how to use it. Or worse, you don’t use a particular feature because you don’t even know it exists.
Get comfortable with support lines
It doesn’t matter which software you use, you’ll be talking to their support group at one time or another. Most companies at this level provide good support but of course your experience will vary.
I know they try hard but sometimes when their software does something it shouldn’t or the application goes down you’ll be impacted.
Take it with a grain of salt and expect an issue at some point. Software is not infallible.
It’s ok to send an ‘Our Mistake’ message
If your software company does let you down (as one of mine did last month for a MAJOR client) or if you make a mistake that got past your quality assurance steps (as we did for the same major client only one week earlier-we’re human too!) you can safely send a correction email explaining your error and correcting it.
Surprisingly, you might find this email gets higher open rates than other messages you send.
Just don’t do it on purpose or get addicted to the bump in open rates!
Remember, the readers of your email are real people, just like you and me, and they know that software and people make mistakes.
