Email marketing is known to be one of the most valuable business revenue drivers. It’s easy to see why — people of all walks of life spend hours in their inboxes managing their finances, appointments, work responsibilities, and everyday communications.
Your customers will likely prioritize what they are reading. So how do you make sure that you’re optimizing your email sends for success? Here are five email marketing tools that will improve any campaign’s performance.
1. Crystal Knows
One of the toughest judgment calls to make when creating content is hitting the right tone. Yes, your brand has its own communication style. But how do you make sure that you’re reaching your audience in a way that makes sense to them yet also embodies your brand’s personality? After all, tone of voice is often subjective.
Crystal Knows can help overcome this challenge. The platform analyzes an individual’s public social media profiles to make an educated guess on the best way to reach out with content that’s compelling, attention-grabbing, and impactful. (You can also learn more about Crystal Knows on the ManyChat blog.)
The platform uses three personality tests to analyze your recipient’s preferred communication style, including:
- DiSC assessments: A test that groups people based on four different personality traits: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness.
- Myers-Briggs: This tried-and-true assessment tool helps people make sense of their personalities based on how they perceive situations and reach conclusions.
- Enneagram: This personality test groups people into nine personality types based on their deepest thoughts and approach to life.
Because it’s such a personalized tool, the most effective way to use Crystal Knows is by assessing your customer personas. Organize your audience segments into groupings that make sense. One example grouping could be “job title”; another could be “place of residence.” You can also create segments based on past purchase patterns.
From there, choose a few people from each grouping to research. Who are they? What are their purchase histories with your business? Use this information in conjunction with the data you get from Crystal Knows to identify a tone and content that will resonate with them. A Crystal Knows report will look like this:
Armed with this information, you can create a few Crystal Knows profiles based on actual people in your audience, which you can use to develop campaign copy and messaging that reflect this audience’s preferences. Take advantage of their free trial and see how it works for you!
2. Mailshake
When you’re sending cold outreach emails, it’s critical to stay organized (especially if you’re using software in lieu of manual outreach). Running a campaign manually can be incredibly inefficient, especially if you’re contacting hundreds of people a day. Not to mention, you may find it beneficial to connect with your audience on social media, which also requires manual legwork. What’s a business to do?
One resource that can help is Mailshake. It’s technology that enables you to orchestrate cold outreach campaigns across email, social media, and SMS messaging. This coordination can ensure that you’re reaching out in a way that is tactful, efficient, and effective.
Mailshake allows email senders to pre-plan outreach sequences, time sendings throughout the day, and coordinate touch points across different marketing channels.
Just remember: It helps to have automation software, but you need to ensure that you still comply with global spam regulations.
3. Boomerang
When you’re sending email outreach campaigns, it’s important to reach people at a time when they’re most likely to notice email. To better understand this trend, ManyChat has published a series of analyses (like this one) about the best time to send an email.
Boomerang can help you optimize your email campaigns by proactively telling you when to follow up with a recipient. Use it to schedule email sends and follow-ups. The tool will also remind you when to nudge a recipient who has an unanswered email in their inbox. Even better, Boomerang has a built-in scheduling tool to streamline the process of booking appointments, which helps boost your call to action’s effectiveness.
This tool can help you stay on top of routine communications, improve your email outreach etiquette, and ensure that you’re tactfully reaching back out to your contact list rather than annoying them
4. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
At ManyChat, we’re all fascinated by optimizing email subject lines. We’ve learned that the process is an art and a science that requires a mix of creative and analytical thinking.
A well-optimized email subject line will catch your recipient’s attention in a fleeting, unpredictable moment. So how do you consistently come up with unique ideas?
The short answer is to use existing data to inform your judgment calls. That’s where CoSchedule’s headline optimizer can truly shine.
CoSchedule specializes in editorial planning tools for content marketers, blog owners, and publication managers. The company has collected a wealth of data on headlines, which it has used to build a free headline analyzer.
This tool can help you:
- Determine the right word balance
- Convey the right emotions
- Use the ideal number of characters
- Learn about different types of headlines
- Optimize the number of words that you’re using
- Improve skimmability for an easier read
CoSchedule’s headline optimizer will give you a free report like the following:
5. Social Media Chatbots
With a chatbot, you can increase the quality of your audience interactions in conjunction with your email marketing program.
For example, ManyChat uses its own chatbot software to generate interest in its software. It uses a feature called the Growth Tool to route audiences from all pages on its website with “/blog” in the URL into a conversation with its chatbot. Once a website visitor clicks the chat bubble, they enter into an automated flow that promotes the newsletter and asks for their email address.
At the end of the conversation, this bot routes audiences back to relevant information, such as a case study, free account trial access, or additional blog articles.
One campaign saw a 50% increase in lead generation for the ManyChat pro subscription product in two months. (You can try out the bot yourself by clicking on the Messenger icon in the bottom right corner of this webpage.)
Learn more about ManyChat’s approach to list-building in its article, Take Your Email List from 0 to 1.
Choose software that will make measurable improvements
With an overwhelming variety of email marketing tools to choose from, it may be challenging for you to know where to start. Before you move forward, it’s essential to clarify your needs and objectives so you can select email marketing tools that provide tangible value to your business.
Though these tools are all excellent, this list is not comprehensive. Keep in mind that many of the suggested software have competitors with their own benefits, features, and drawbacks.
Make sure to conduct your due diligence, run smaller experiments to assess the value of your campaigns, and focus on improving specific areas of your email marketing strategy. Software is only as useful as the minds that operate it.
Level up your brand communications with a chatbot. Sign up for a free trial with ManyChat.
