4 Tools to Jumpstart Your Email Marketing Efforts

The number of great email marketing tools are endless. Sure, we all know the big players like Marketo and Eloqua, but it’s the small heroes that are truly filling the gaps. Whether you’re an independent blogger or a marketer within a large organization, the following simple tools are sure to improve your email marketing.

Litmus is a fairly familiar name in the email marketing world, and rightfully so. If you’re looking to run testing on your emails in every way possible, this is the tool for you. Litmus’ most known feature is the email preview tool, which allows you to preview your emails in more than 40 email clients. This allows you to refine images and content so they look just right in each client. In addition, Litmus has you covered with their mobile device preview. Are you curious to know what your email looks like with the images off? They can do that too. Plus, they have a host of other features, including plain text check, color blindness check, and subject line optimizer

ConvertKit brings all aspects of email marketing together in one place. Geared towards professional bloggers, ConvertKit does what most other email platforms can do but in a simple, slimmed down format. Start by building flexible opt-in forms and landing pages to grow your email lists. After collecting the emails, automate your communications sequence with their automation paths. CovertKit will suggest how often and when you should email your contacts. And if you don’t like the order of emails, simply drag and drop to reorder. Lastly, segment your lists to ensure you get the right message to the right person using ConvertKit’s segmentation tool

Zapier isn’t an email specific tool, but its email integration is very helpful. Zapier allows you to create Zaps, which are automations that create triggers and actions. In short, you can connect Zapier-approved apps using automation to simplify a number of tasks and save time. MailChimp currently integrates with Zapier, which allows you to automate a number of tasks, such as migrating your lists, removing list members, adding subscribers straight from Google spreadsheets, automatically sharing your MailChimp newsletter on LinkedIn, and more

The Hemingway App will ensure your email content is concise and bold. The idea is simple: just cut and paste the content into Hemingway app and you will get instant suggestions on improving readability. The Hemingway app highlights common problems in sentence structure and points out errors such as complex words or phrases, extra-long sentences, too many adverbs and too many instances of passive voice. In addition, the app quickly calculates the number of paragraphs, sentences, words, characters, letters and read time

The list of email tools doesn’t stop here, plus there’s a myriad of email tips and best practices to consider. Join us at our email marketing event, Tactics in Twenty: Email on Wednesday, November 18 to discover ways to increase your email conversation rates.

Written by MIMA Committee Member Andrew Tewksbury