got to email

You’ve Got (to e-) Mail

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.