With all the options, choosing the right autoresponder for your business may seem like a chore. How can you tell the difference when there are so many different email marketing tools, all claiming many of the same things? We’re about to make life easier for you by listing our picks for the Top 5 Autoresponders in the industry.
Before we reveal our picks you should understand what a good email marketing campaign can do for your business. Depending on your needs, successful email marketing strategies can deliver and nurture leads, improve conversion and build a strong line of communication with your customers, all through automation.
In the past, email quantity won out over quality, with a direct negative result to sales. Customers don’t like spammy emails from addresses they don’t recognize, which they fear are only trying to sell them something. Today it’s all about making the customer feel as if they are getting something in return for opening your email, whether it is information, coupons or invitations to upcoming events.
To convince your subscribers that your emails are worth opening, you must have a professional email marketing campaign with segmentation options to further personalize your communications. The more information you collect on a customer, the better able you will be to make their automated messages relevant. Most good autoresponders integrate easily with tools like Google Analytics to make this process simple. Keeping quality in mind, here are our Top 5 Autoresponders:
1. GetResponse
For all around value, you can’t do better than GetResponse. With plans that start at $15/month, GetResponse offers highly comprehensive email marketing tools, autoresponding, a landing page builder AND webinar support. Regardless of your technical skill, GetResponse is easy to learn and use, with in-line guides to help you design and schedule perfect emails for your customers.
Small businesses will love their SEO guides and lead building tools, while larger institutions will make use of the detailed reports and extensive 3rd party integration.
2. Constant Contact
Like GetResponse, Constant Contact allows those with little technical skill to create polished emails appropriate for your brand. If you’re obsessed with statistics, they offer real-time reports showing the Open, Click and Bounce rates of your emails.
Constant Contact specializes in event promotion which is nice for brick and mortar businesses. They’ll handle your tickets and registration, including of course the real time tracking of all the important stats.
3. VerticalResponse
Although their features all seem a bit… less compared to tools like Constant Contact and GetResponse (the templates look a bit dated and the interface isn’t as bright or intuitive) VerticalResponse still offers a respectable range of features. More importantly, they have a free plan available if you have fewer than 1,000 subscribers, which can be invaluable to small businesses on a budget.
VerticleResponse should also be praised for their attempt to make it easy for you to decipher reports and analytics with plenty of graphical representation.
4. InfusionSoft
For large businesses or marketing campaigns with more than 40 or 50,000 subscribers, you may look into a tool like InfusionSoft. This powerful solution combines your online storefront with email marketing, allowing you to segment subscribers in more purposeful ways. Once you organize your new leads, InfusionSoft is there with highly personalized follow-ups, collecting more information with every click the new lead makes.
InfusionSoft offers many more features but is probably out of the price range of smaller businesses.
5. Campaign Monitor
If you’re an experienced marketer interested in having more creative control over your email design, Campaign Monitor is for you. They offer the rare feature of a Template Builder, which allows you to create unique campaigns from scratch. Monitor and tweak how your email looks on various platforms and in various email clients to ensure your subscribers get the right message.
Once you’ve created a stunning and unique email, Campaign Monitor has the requisite tools to split test and monitor your success.
Have Fun!
Getting acquainted with a new email marketing tool is usually more fun than it sounds! Even with very little technical knowledge or marketing experience any of these 5 autoresponding tools will have you on the right track in no time.
