Excellent Solution for Attracting Customer Attention: Reply.io Email automation and Other Features
Assistants for your business who can take it to the next level
In modern business, the need to automate various processes has become commonplace. It is already becoming difficult to imagine warehouse or accounting without the use of specialized software, sales representatives use special applications to place and send an order to the office directly from a tablet or mobile phone, a fairly large part of orders comes from the site already in the form of documents ready for processing.
And, of course, a business needs to keep in touch with customers and attract new users. The email newsletter has become a very effective tool in this matter. Businesses use email newsletters for different tasks: to tell the news, offer a product or service at a special price, collect feedback, and remind about your company. It is illegal to send bulk emails from personal or corporate mail, data can only be collected and sent from certain servers. Therefore, entrepreneurs use email newsletter services (ESP) - they allow you to safely send emails and analyze interactions with subscribers.
The Importance of Email Newsletters for Business Owners
Based on the results of 2020, email marketing has shown itself to be a very promising direction. For example, about 84% of emails are opened by iPhone users and another 4.5% by iPad owners. They were looking for a solvent audience - so here it is! This means that the correct setup and selection of a high-quality mailing system provides new business opportunities.
The main tools of the service of bulk email-mailings in the database are not only the constructor of letters and delivery reports. These are dedicated IPs, domain warming up, unsubscription management, analytics, and much more. It is difficult and expensive to maintain.
The implementation of the GDPR protocols has also made its amendments: the rules have become stricter, you have to take seriously the hygiene of the email address database and obtain consent to send letters. The ability to collect email addresses legally through forms, Double Opt-in, database validation, and testing of spam filters are also important tools for Internet services that specialize in bulk email newsletters. Beautiful email templates, A/B tests are add-ons.
Correct Service Focused on Company Tasks
The capabilities of popular services for mailing lists differ little, but the needs of businesses differ greatly. There are many solutions for creating mailing lists by mail, even more - combinations of these solutions. And if you can use the English-language interface, the choice of services for automatic mailing of letters expands.
Much depends on what field you work in - e-commerce or SaaS, for example. Large companies may have their own specific needs that require special solutions. This could be sales, marketing communications, or customer service.
So that you do not have to make a painful transition from one solution to another, we wrote this review, starting with the tasks of different Internet businesses. Because this is the best way to choose any marketing solution.
Creating a High-Quality E-Mail Newsletter
For many companies, it is important to link bulk mailings with other tools and solve some tasks through the deep integration of several solutions (CRM, e-commerce platforms, instant messengers, analytics systems, etc.) or within one mail service. For them, the tools of standard email marketing services in the database will not be sufficient. The eyes of such companies should be turned towards Internet marketing automation services and services with the maximum number of ready-made integrations.
Evaluate the opportunity to configure the scripts you need for sending email newsletters in the mail service. For example, emails about the abandoned cart or viewed items, welcome emails, or onboarding emails.
Looking ahead, think about retention and customer return via email marketing. Can you segment users the way you want? Highlight those who have not bought anything in your store for a month, but have made one/two purchases before? Those who read the articles on your blog, but never signed up for the service. Or registered, but for some reason did not start actively using it.
If we are talking about customer service, then it is important whether you can send a response to a chat request in a letter when the user has left the site, and how to use the service to better organize the collection of reviews. And the most important thing is how to make sure that your emails from the mailing list do not end up in spam.
Basic Types of E-Mail Services
• services for transactional email newsletters;
• email marketing services
Services for transactional mailings
These are mainly subsidiaries of other Internet services. They are used to automate simple trigger emails of large volumes to existing databases of email addresses, that is, to send transactional emails. These letters include confirmation of registration/purchase/transaction/delivery, password reset, and the like.
Transport services are used to automate simple trigger mailings of large volumes to your existing address databases, that is, to send transactional letters. Such letters, for example, include confirmation of registration/purchase/transaction/delivery, password reset, and the like.
What can such mass mailing services do? The main thing is to instantly send a huge amount of emails with dynamic content. In addition, they provide domain warming up and usually validate the database themselves to protect your email reputation and not end up in spam.
Why is this an important advantage? It is important to make sure that the deliverability of transactional emails is 100%, and such emails should be sent instantly.
Imagine that you have requested a password recovery by email. The email should arrive within a few seconds. If you have to wait even half a minute for it, you will get angry. If it doesn’t come at all, you’ll be furious. The same goes for proof of purchase or payment. Not receiving such an email or waiting too long is not a great customer experience. In the meantime, research tells us that great customer experiences are essential for businesses to survive the explosive growth of online commerce.
Features of services for transactional email newsletters:
• Integrate via API or SMTP, so you need a developer.
• No block editor, maximum - HTML templates.
• Low cost of sending letters. And it decreases as the volume of emails increases (the more emails you send, the cheaper it is to send each one).
Evaluation criteria for transport email services:
• Deliverability of letters.
• Speed.
• Price.
• Analytics.
• Support.
Best Services for Sending Email
Many different companies are offering their services. But it is important to choose a reliable and professional partner that will allow you to act most effectively. We bring you a list of the best services that can help you take your business to the next level.
Reply.io
Reply is a great service with straightforward tools and audience segmentation that will suit most entrepreneurs. Here you can collect the user base, run A/B tests and watch analytics. And for a small fee, you can clean the database of inactive contacts using an email validator - this will improve the deliverability of mailings.
Advantages:
• Simple and intuitive interface, easy to understand, even for beginners.
• User-friendly interface and professional technical support.
• Limits of the free version: up to 100 subscribers, up to 1500 letters per month.
• 48 integrations with CMS, CRM, and other services, Google Analytics connection, unique integration with Facebook Lead Ads, and API.
• Six scripts of mailing automation are available.
• An account can be managed by multiple users.
• You can set up SMS and Viber-mailing.
• Hundreds of free templates for different categories: e-commerce, tourism, restaurants, blogs, and news, universal.
• Free DKMI is an email authentication method that guarantees email services that an email was sent from your domain.
If you don’t want to understand email marketing tools, or if you are struggling with something, Reply will provide marketing advice or training. Additionally, you can purchase help with the operation of your account and set up automatic mailing. The service also has an extensive knowledge base with free tutorials and a marketing blog that is regularly updated.
Customer
Another partner who can help you send effective messages to your clients. You can work with emails, push notifications, and SMS to reduce user churn, increase sales and loyalty. To work, you need to connect your product to the service using an API or use integration to collect information about users, for example, Segment. You can also load data from a CSV file.
Advantages:
• Only two tariffs - basic and premium, easy to choose.
• Test period: 14 days, you can try the basic tariff without linking a bank card.
• Built-in letter editor.
• View analytics and data about sent emails.
• Setting up auto funnels.
• Export data to CSV.
• Conducting A/B testing.
• Tracking the life cycle of the client.
• Segmentation and automation of mailings.
• Collecting data on user activity.
Disadvantages:
• There are no ready-made templates.
• Import and export of data only in CSV.
• Minimum of integrations.
Integration with Customer.io will help you learn the most about your customers: what they did, on which pages of the site, what is their order and subscription history. Based on this information, send personalized messages and increase sales.
SendPulse
It is a convenient service for sending personalized emails, SMS, and creating chatbots. The newsletter is sent through their SMTP server, which helps to improve the security of the newsletter and its deliverability. There are many features for omnichannel marketing, there is even a landing page builder and CRM.
Advantages:
• Easy to sign up and get started, even for beginners.
• Responsiveness, a preview of letters on mobile devices.
• Limits of the free version: up to 500 subscribers, up to 15,000 letters per month.
• You can start sending SMS and contact database in Viber and also set up chatbots in WhatsApp and Facebook.
• 130 templates for different topics: restaurant, education, holidays, general, business, online store, tourism.
• There are ready-made scripts for email newsletters that you can use for free.
• On the free plan, you can try auto-sending, push notifications, or A/B testing.
Disadvantages:
• Many automated scripts need to be customized with the help of a developer.
• Integration with Google Analytics is available only in the paid version of the service.
• Sometimes users complain that Sendpulse periodically blocks emails without giving a reason.
Additional features are options for monitoring and analyzing bulk mailings, multithreading, proxy settings, and text rotations. There is a large number of free materials in the knowledge base, and if something does not work out, then the support works around the clock.
ZohoCampaigns
Quality email marketing service for small and medium businesses. It helps automate the entire marketing process - from managing your email campaign to maintaining your mailing lists. Thanks to the integration with Zoho CRM and social media, you can quickly sort all your customer information.
Advantages:
• Integration with Dropbox, Shopify, Flickr, other Zoho services, as well as API.
• Intuitive and user-friendly interface.
• Fast pre-moderation of mailings.
• Convenient letter editor, you can upload your templates.
• Rich functionality - A/B testing, list analysis, campaign goals, social statistics, personalized greetings, synchronization with Zoho CRM, email scheduling.
• In the free plan, you can add up to 5 admins to your account.
Disadvantages:
• Interface, support, and unsubscribe page in English.
• There are no subscription forms.
• No segmentation and heatmap.
With such a company, it's easy to focus on creating emails. The service will conduct A/B tests and suggest which design works best, and managing your mailing list will improve delivery. The system monitors what happens after your mailing and, what is important, there is a check for spam and a high level of deliverability in the inbox. Another nice bonus is the built-in manager of deferred publications in social networks.
MailChimp
It is one of the most popular web services in the world that will help you manage lists, add new subscribers, create campaigns, and view reports. Conveniently, you can create a campaign on a computer and start sending it out on a smartphone via an application.
The free plan contains many useful email marketing tools. For example, create landing pages, signup forms, and social media posts. Or watch statistics and segment your audience by behavior - who abandoned the cart, viewed but did not buy, or did not read the article to the end.
Advantages:
• A complete web service with a mobile application.
• Integration with external services: Tilda, Google, Facebook, Shopify, as well as through the API.
• Preview letters for mobile devices.
• Integration with Google Analytics.
• Detailed reports, including in the mobile application.
• The free version has DKIM.
• Management of mailing lists.
• Stylish templates for different topics.
• Convenient block email editor.
• Comparative reports for different industries.
• Limitations of the free version: up to 2000 subscribers, up to 10,000 letters per month.
Disadvantages:
• Interface and technical support in English.
• Users note that technical support answers only by mail and often these are template letters that do not help.
• Limited scope for automation.
• One of the most expensive mailing services.
Users note that the service is ideal for gathering an audience because the company has a strict approach to the purity of the database. When uploading your lists, errors often occur if contacts were not collected through the subscription form with double confirmation. To do this, the user needs to enter his email in the subscription form, click the "Subscribe" button, and after that, he will be sent a letter where you need to follow the link. Only after clicking on this link, his address will be included in the mailing list.
eSputnik
A dedicated high-quality and professional marketing automation service that helps launch omnichannel advertising campaigns: Email, SMS, Web-push, and Viber. The system brings all of these channels together in one scenario and helps entrepreneurs manage all of their marketing in one interface.
Advantages:
• Delivery speed - more than 1 million letters in 5 minutes.
• Conveniently, the current email balance is visible on the main page of your account.
• Test period: you will receive a package of 2500 letters and 10 SMS, as well as a letter template in the corporate style of your company.
• Users note high-quality technical support at all stages of mailing list creation.
• You can run email, SMS, Web-Push, Mobile-Push, and Viber-mailing.
• Free help with data transfer when switching from another service.
• Multitasking automated adaptive email editor.
• Easy setup of selling triggers: abandoned cart, abandoned views, and others.
• Flexible segmentation of the database according to contact info, activities, data from external sources.
• Integration with hundreds of services and APIs, customizable subscription forms.
• Detailed reporting for each mailing.
Disadvantages:
• The setting of some automatic functions must be purchased.
• It takes time to understand everything in all the possibilities of the service.
The service offers a set of tools for small and businesses, as well as the services of an email marketing agency. You can independently configure simple automation for five ready-made scenarios, including abandoned carts and viewed products.
GetResponse
It is a comprehensive internet marketing platform that includes email marketing, automation, conversion funnels, landing pages, and CRM. The service's tools help businesses of all sizes to collect a contact base, create effective mailing lists, set up automatic emails and triggers, warm up leads, build auto funnels, and host webinars.
Advantages:
• Lots of templates for different industries: over 500 for email, over 100 for landing pages.
• Various integrations, including through the API.
• The service itself determines the best time to send a letter, considering time zones.
• Test period: 30 days, you can try all tools of any tariff without linking a bank card.
• More than 30 ready-made automation scripts that can be sorted by task.
• Points and tags for advanced segmentation.
• Analytics and reports in real-time.
Disadvantages:
• There is no free plan.
• High price.
• It takes time to understand the interface.
• User complaints about the service.
The service is suitable for marketing automation and setting up paid advertising. If you are just getting started, you should choose a simpler service.
Conclusion
The choice of email marketing services is huge, so for the start, we recommend choosing those that will be of the highest quality and most understandable for the user. For example, Reply . Use the free version or trial period to test the platform's capabilities. And after you get the hang of the basic settings, try the paid features or subscription plans. You shouldn't pay for a lot of features right away if you are not sure for sure that you will use them.
