There remains a great deal of confusion about nearly every aspect of email - from recipient acquisition, campaign strategy and message development, to deliverability best practices and performance metrics. Regardless, today's top enterprises rely heavily on the channel and for good reason - it works (at least when it is done well).
Email marketing, for example, has long been the channel that produces the most holiday sales. According to Custora, in fact, email generated 25.1 percent of all sales during Black Friday 2015 compared to social media, which was responsible for a paltry 1.6 percent of sales on the same day and an underwhelming 1.5 percent of sales on Cyber Monday 2015. It is safe to say that this held true for the 2016 holiday season as well.
Just how important is it that marketers, particularly information publishers and those at service-based businesses, as well as those in the ecommerce vertical, invest or continue to invest in the email channel?
For those with a focus on revenue it is proving essential. A 2016 Salesforce report indicated that 49 percent of marketers surveyed claim email is "directly linked to their company's primary revenue source," and for those already using email as part of their broader marketing strategy, they have likely already seen a payoff.
Experian's Quarterly Email Benchmark Report (Q2 2016) found that while the quarter-to-quarter volume of email remained the same compared to the prior quarter, revenue per email rose. There is an incredible amount of evidence that when best practices are followed, email outperforms other channels consistently. The problem, of course, is that most businesses are overwhelmed by the channel. As such, the most successful have turned to providers such as those listed in this month's Website Magazine Top 50, which profiles vendors that are helping enterprises master the email experience.
Let this list serve as the starting point in the selection process for a provider to help your business optimize its use of this channel.
1. Oracle.com
2. Salesforce.com
3. Mailchimp.com
4. ConstantContact.com
5. Zoho.com
6. BenchmarkEmail.com
7. MyEmma.com
8. InfusionSoft.com
9. VerticalResponse.com
10. CampaignMonitor.com
11. SendGrid.com
12. Pardot.com
13. Aweber.com
14. GetResponse.com
15. iContact.com
16. Act-On.com
17. Cakemail.com
18. MadMimi.com
19. Silverpop.com
20. AutoPilotHQ.com
21. ActiveCampaign.com
22. SubscriberMail.com
23. Bronto.com
24. Informz.com
25. CallidusCloud.com
26. Drip.co
27. BombBomb.com
28. Campaigner.com
29. Aurea.com
30. Mailjet.com
31. StreamSend.com
32. Robly.com
33. Pinpointe.com
34. Listrak.com
35. MooSend.com
36. JangoMail.com
37. Customer.io
38. Dotmailer.com
39. BlueHornet.com
40. ClickDimensions.com
41. Mailerlite.com
42. ConvertKit.com
43. Atmail.com
44. ReachMail.net
45. Rejoiner.com
46. Signupto.com
47. Iterable.com
48. Delivra.com
49. Freshmail.com
50. Mailigen.com
:: Building a Killer Email Marketing List ::
People are overwhelmed by the number of sent and received emails, but there's a lot of hope for marketers looking to build their list of targeted recipients -
wsm.co/7listtips.
