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3 New Features Available For Your Next Mailchimp Marketing Campaign

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An email to your clients, consumers and other stakeholders is one of the quickest and most effective ways to send out a key message instantaneously, but when you’ve got hundreds of contacts to get in touch with, it can no doubt be quite an exhausting task.

 

Email marketing platform Mailchimp allows businesses and e-commerce retailers to send marketing emails, automated messages and targeted campaigns in a straight forward way, and their continuous innovation in technology is allowing businesses to grow and gain more ground with their target markets.

 

The latest resources of Mailchimp allow you to communicate to your audiences faster, and here at WK Digital we can help you implement best practice email marketing so that you can run with it and utilise it for your business.

 

We’ve put together a list of the platform’s most recent features to show you not only how easy it is to use, but just how beneficial it can really be.

 

  1. Facebook ad campaigns

Mailchimp has taken a major step from email-only to marketing, now allowing subscribers to create beautiful Facebook ad campaigns. In the same familiar interface, you can produce an effective campaign strategy to match your branding style and target your audience.

 

Not having to spend time navigating through two different sites is one of the stand-out elements within this new feature. Also, because you integrate Mailchimp with Facebook, you’ll be able to track your return on investment, how many new customers you’ve gained, your orders total, the amount of people you’ve reached, and whether or not you should improve your marketing strategy.

 

Often it’s an easy decision for a business to advertise – after all, it makes sense to let the public know you exist. But choosing how and where to advertise can be problematic, especially when you’re a small business and your budget just can’t cater to the larger-fit costs of a broader campaign.

 

Mailchimp’s Facebook Ad Campaigns feature allows you to utilise the most popular social media platform in the world today, and target actual people. Other ad systems use cookie-based advertising to limit showing ads on a particular device or browser, but Facebook works quite the opposite. As most people access their Facebook profiles on varying equipment almost on a daily basis, you’re guaranteed to be seen.

 

  1. Integration to CRM programs

It makes sense for some businesses to integrate their email marketing component with a customer relationship management (CRM) application, which can make your three marketing components – contact lists, content and results – a lot faster and easier.
Mailchimp provides a connection to other websites and services, which you can plug in to your account, and they are so easy to use because there’s no need to learn about programming or coding.

 

The newest integrations, of which there are more than a dozen in Mailchimp, allow you to add subscribers, sync data, import content and see how successful your campaigns are. As an example, some of the integrated systems include Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Shopify and PayPal.

 

It’s a brilliant way to learn what your customers are purchasing and then progress to creating more email campaigns customised to their interests!

 

  1. Stylish and customised email templates

You can truly design an appealing email campaign with a large variety of Mailchimp’s templates. There’s a choice of three ways to go about it – working with a basic layout, a pre-built theme or a template based on the message you want to communicate.

 

One of the best things about this particular feature is that for e-commerce retailers, you can actually showcase and sell products this way. You’re not limited to what you want to put across, and it can be anything from presenting special discount offers to offering vouchers and special packages to loyalty consumers.

 

These features, plus more within the platform, is why you use Mailchimp as a primary email marketing service, but here at WK Digital, we can help you apply all of that and guide you. If it helps your business grow, then we are at the forefront of making that happen.

How to Get the Marketing Gold

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Anyone who wants to harvest details (names and email addresses) from potential customers who visit their website knows it’s not as easy as it sounds. But, if you’re creative it can be easier than you think. All you need to do is offer them something in return for the gold.

Getting people to part with their email address doesn’t have to be all that difficult if you offer them something of real value. A free giveaway will also add interest to your website and make your visitors think twice about leaving it without giving you some contact details, especially if you make it super easy to signup.

Also keep in mind is the free gift or offer should align to that of the service or product your business offers. This is to make sure your website visitors will be actually interested in signing up. So what can you offer? It really depends on the kind of business you have, but here are a few suggestions:

A White Paper

This will usually be on a topic of interest to your visitors and is more in the academic line. It is usually around 7 pages, but can be more or less, so long as it contains important information that they are unlikely to find elsewhere. It may also contain validation links to certain points that are made as well as links back to whatever you are selling or whatever else it is you would love to encourage them to do. Ours is a 2 page jargon free guide to website design that you can download from this page here.

Free Designs

Free designs can be as elaborate or simple as you like. They can be in template form or in the form of an offer, depending on how much time and effort you are prepared to give. Templates are the easiest and quickest to do as they can be made in advance.

An Informative eBook

This can be on a topic that your visitors are sure to be interested in. For instance, if you are selling cat food, an appropriate eBook could be on cat health, different types of cats or even cat training. You can put links in the eBook back to your website products, or to other websites that sell cat items, so long as they are not in direct competition to your own products.

A Fiction eBook

If you are selling fiction eBooks, offering a short fiction book is sure to be a winner with visitors to your website. It should be one that is not available anywhere else. If your books are for adults, offering a free one for their kids might work. Or you could offer another eBook that they would be interested in – this is usually a short story or novella.

A Short Email Course

If you are offering training of some kind, a short course will be the ideal free giveaway. It should contain valuable information while offering hints about how much more your training can offer them. It is easy to automate sending this course using an email responder such as Active Campaign or MailChimp (we have put more information together about these email services in a previous blog). You can offer something like one email containing tips and hints a week for 4-6 weeks. Links should go to your main course at the end of each email.

A Special Offer

Again, it totally depends on what your business is, but offering a special promotion in exchange for signing is a good idea especially if you are trying to increase sales. Whether it’s a free valuation or a 10% off coupon, you can get really creative and your potential customers will appreciate the thought.

Be Daring

Remember, the best giveaway will solve a problem for your visitors, be easy for them to follow and also remind them of your brand in the future. Doing something a little different will also get their attention, so try and be creative when brainstorming a way to get their details. Don’t forget, once you’ve got their details that’s when the real marketing fun can begin.

Its also important that your website has the latest tools to help you market your giveaway and connect your new client details directly to your email marketing program – give us a call if you would like to discuss a more connected online marketing strategy than you have today – 1300 796 771.

You’ve Got (to e-) Mail

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When starting a small business or even when you start opening up to new marketing tactics as a business owner of old, you can be sure to hear a lot about the importance social media, SEO optimisation and the likes of Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising.  While each of these marketing strategies can hold their own, nothing will do as well as marketing to people who have: a) already purchased your product or b) signed up to your email database. Why? Because these people are opting to hear from you. They are choosing in a world full of advertising to hear more from your business. Now that’s special. How you talk to the people who want to hear from you is a whole different ball game and to do it well, you need an email marketing platform that you can rely on.

Email Marketing is relatively low cost in comparison to other marketing strategies, it is also simple to set up and most services make it easy to measure and tweak your email campaigns in order for you to see the best results. But how on earth do you choose which platform to choose?

We have done a quick comparison below of the three main platforms used in Australia covering three important areas:

  1. a) Ease of Use
  2. b) Campaign Analytics &
  3. c) API Friendliness (which basically means which other digital platforms the software can sync to).

We will rate each area out of 5 stars and then it’s up to you to choose which one suits your needs more.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is up there with the most popular Email Marketing software in the world. The main reason for Mailchimp’s worldwide popularity is simply because of its – simplicity. The interface is clean, has lots of walkthrough tours and provides heaps of ready to go email templates – which is great news for the non-technical folk.

For all you ‘show me the statistics’ people out there, as far as who’s opened it, who’s clicked it, who’s forwarded it, who’s ignored it and which subject line did better- Mailchimp can tell you a lot. What’s even better? Is that you don’t need a marketing degree to interpret the statistics available to you. Which means you can actually work towards improving the results by tweaking your email strategies.

Due to the wide reach of Mailchimp the list of app integration is phenomenal. I dare you to try and find an app that does not sync with Mailchimp. Even if you find one, it won’t be long until they’ve included it.

So as far as our little rating system goes this is how Mailchimp has scored:

Ease of Use: 4 Stars

Campaign Statistics: 4 Stars

API Friendliness: 5 Stars

 

Vision 6

Next up, Vision 6. This one is a little smaller in terms of reach in comparison to Mailchimp and Active Campaign, but that’s because it’s an Australian company. But never fear, this Brisbane based e-messaging platform can stand on its own two feet in the international email marketing game.

What makes Vision 6 alluring for Australian businesses, is that their servers are all hosted right here in Brisbane. For businesses that hold sensitive data this is a big plus and certainly make for a lot less risk. Being based in Australia has other perks too, the same time zone (most of the year), support that is easy to understand as well as if required potential face to face training and sales help.

As far as Ease of Use is concerned, Vision 6 have a done a lot in the past couple of years to come to the party. They have created more email templates, have greater support options available and have video training tutorials at the ready.

And what about Campaign Analytics? Well, the features here for Vision 6 don’t leap out with anything too original, but that’s not too much of a worry as it does provide you with what you need to call some e-marketing shots. As with Mail Chimp, the opens, clicks, bounce rates and click maps are all here.

Vision 6 were clever enough to partner with Zapier which basically means the platform can integrate with almost every web app. It’s easy to move data between them and automate the stuff you don’t want to do or don’t have time to do.

So here’s the verdict for Vision 6:

Ease of Use: 3 Stars

Campaign Statistics: 4 Stars

API Friendliness: 5 Stars

 

Active Campaign

Last but certainly not least, say hello to Active Campaign. Although Active Campaign is certainly an email platform, it offers its difference by realising the importance of knowing as much as you can about your customers. Active Campaign uniquely combines its email marketing software with that of an integrated CRM that can track what your customers get up to on your website and when. Thus helping you identify which emails to send and when.

While these bonus features of Active Campaign are super awesome, if we are to compare apples with apples, in this article we will continue with our focus of ease of use, campaign metrics and API integration.

Active Campaign also has a wide range of templates to use and offers certain fail safes to help you from losing work that was unintentional (helpful for beginners). Although Active Campaign is relatively straight forward, it could do with a bit of TLC in the intuitive design department as seemingly natural shortcuts and user experience features somewhat lack.

Campaign Measurement is where Active Campaign shines. Lots of clear tools that demonstrate where your customers have opened, clicked and bounced but also with the added transparency that tracks where your customers go on your website! Pretty cool huh?

As with both Mailchimp and Vision 6, API integration has never been easier with Zapier. You won’t even need a developer to hook up the apps you need. So it’s a 3 way tie as far as API friendliness is concerned.

So let’s get out the measuring tape and see how Active Campaign shaped up:

Ease of Use: 3 Stars

Campaign Statistics: 5 Stars

API Friendliness: 5 Stars

 

So, as the results get tallied you can see that it’s a relatively close game! Mailchimp and Active Campaign tied and Vision 6 was only one point behind. But what really matters when choosing which platform to go with is what your business needs most.

Mailchimp: 13 points

Active Campaign: 13 points

Vision 6: 12 points

 

Most importantly, you need to comfortable and understand the software you choose to implement- especially if you’re the one who has to do the set-up and the emailing. Like we said, the three platforms we have compared each have their merits, and you will not be disappointed with any of them no matter which one you choose. Worse-case scenario, if you don’t like the one you end up going with- change. Simple as that.

Now go forth and start email marketing, we know you won’t look back.