The ideal type of opinion (unrelated to your expertise) is one that doesn’t offend anyone, but makes some people relate to you more. For example, I’m a vegetarian. I used to protest whenever there wasn’t a big piece of meat on my plate. But when I tried eating just veggies for a couple of months, I realized I felt a lot more energetic. Sure, it’s more ecological. And often animals are treated cruelly. But those aren’t the things I emphasize if someone asks why I’m a vegetarian. No one in their right mind has a strong negative reaction to someone eating food that makes them feel energetic, right? But for some vegetarians it’s a very meaningful choice, so it might have a positive impact on those people. That said, I highly doubt that my choice of diet have any direct impact on my sales.
The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.

CakeMail is an email marketing tool intended for small businesses that makes sending out emails very easy. All users to have to do is title their new campaign, set up list of recipients, give their email a design and select a time to send it out. There is also an advanced editing section which is great for users who are more experienced with HTML. CakeMail can be integrated with Google Analytics so users have access to detailed reports on insights such as open rates, unsubscribe rates, click and bounce.

Crystal is a communication tool that enhances your emails by telling you anyone’s personality. Using Personality AI, a new technology that employs machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict personality based on someone’s online footprint, Crystal can help you better understand your audience, increase your open and response rates, and see higher conversion.

Fantastic article, thank you! I was wondering if I could ask some advice — we are only a small company that doesn’t need automation or a CRM, we just want to be able to send out monthly emails to 6000+ subscribers that can be categorised into industries or groups. We don’t need bells & whistles. Due to our industry, the chunky CRM doesn’t integrate into a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. so it’s all very labour intensive but lucky for them I do love a spreadsheet. Thanks in advance for the advice.

On a more basic level, AI improves email marketing mechanics such as A/B testing and smarter audience segmentation. This can have immediate benefits in terms of optimizing your marketing strategies for different customers and sending the right content to the right people. On a more advanced note, AI can actually optimize email content for specific audiences and product campaigns. Additionally, it can help with personalizing email content right down to the individual customer level, depending on how much information you can feed it from your CRM and sales systems. AI delivers strong capabilities, which means determining exactly how a potential email marketing service has implemented AI should be key criteria for most marketers before purchasing.
Promotional emails are one of the most economical ways for any business to connect with customers. Research shows a message is five times more likely to be seen through email than on social media like Facebook or Twitter. That’s why musicians use email marketing software to share their performance schedule with their fans, non-profits use it to get donations and photographers use it to promote their portrait services. It just works.
Emma has tons of email templates to choose from, as well as drag-and-drop editor for custom designs. This is their main value proposition (superior design qualities). You can integrate this software with lots of other programs such as Google Analytics, Aviary and several social media sites. Reporting features are very easy to use and give a good overview of results.
Sender Score is Return Path’s comprehensive reputation measurement. Sender Score is a number between 0 and 100 that identifies your sender reputation and shows you how mailbox providers view your IP address. Your Sender Score is like a bank running your credit score to gauge your credit history. Knowing your score is the first step to improving it (and therefore your email deliverability).