7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016)

Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2016? Are you looking for the email marketing software? Choosing the best email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tool. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. For more on this topic, see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.

While you can use OptinMonster to easily get more email subscribers, the actual email delivery part comes down to your email marketing service provider.

If you aren’t careful, then you might end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliverability (which causes you to lose even more money).

A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email marketing service ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.

You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, and more.

Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, an image library and 1GB of storage for your own files.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, email, community support, and a vast library of resources.

They also offer online training as well as live seminars in your neighborhood. This allows small business to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it like a pro.

For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing service for small businesses.

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as /month.

2. AWeber

AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seemlessly to most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.

You get access to ready to use email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a 30 day free trial. After that, their pricing starts from /month.

3. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.

ConvertKit allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails.

With ConvertKit, you can easily segment contacts into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This is great for marketing automation.

ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.

Pricing for ConvertKit plans start from /month with a 30-day refund policy.

4. GetResponse

GetResponse is a hugely popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses and absolute beginners.

It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns. With a drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send content designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.

Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30 day free trial. Their pricing starts from /month.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. They offer a very easy to use interface with great tools and awesome support.

It integrates beautifully with WordPress, Magneto, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.

MailChimp also comes with easy email creator, merge tags, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking and analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on user’s timezones and setup segmenting based on geolocation.

Support is offered by email, live chat, and a huge knowledge base with how-tos, videos, and tutorials.

MailChimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for upto 2,000 subscribers. Their paid plans start from /month.

Because of their free plan, we rate MailChimp the best email marketing software for nonprofits.

6. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular email marketing solution. It gives you everything you would need to run successful campaigns and then some more.

They have a beautiful drag and drop email builder. It allows you to use professionally designed email templates and make them your own. They also offer a drag and drop segmenting tool to create different campaigns for different contacts based on behavior and actions.

You can personalize each message using the rich customer data. This makes your emails more personal and gives much better results.

Not to mention their easy to use A/B testing, tracking, optimization, and social sharing tools.

Support is available 24/7 via email and support forums. Premier customers can also avail phone support. They have extensive documentation step-by-step how-tos to help you get started and fix things on your own.

Campaign Monitor’s pricing plans start from /month.

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with CRM and sales. It comes with all the tools you will need to create smarter email marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign comes with a beautiful email template editor and mobile friendly signup forms. It allows you to segment contacts based on their actions, location, behavior, and social data. It can also fetch additional data about your contacts using only their email address.

It integrates beautifully with many third party software including WordPress. You can also send SMS messages to your contacts for follow up on campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s plans start from /month. You can also request a demo with limited features for a test run.

Although the pricing on ActiveCampaign gets quite high, it’s totally worth the money if marketing automation is what you’re looking for.

We hope this article gave you a good overview of the best email marketing services for your business. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Key Advantageous of Cloud Hosting for Small to Medium Businesses

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Introduction

The competitive advantage presented by href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-hosting-guides/a-brief-on-cloud-hosting/">cloud hosting and platform as a service vendors to large scale national and international businesses has been well documented over recent months, with the opportunity for a highly scalable service alongside excellent reliability and near 100% uptime proving to be key factors in such companies uptake of these services. Larger businesses have been able to roll out PaaS and SaaS to their sales forces and other arms of their operations – safe in the knowledge that they are receiving strong reliability, performance guarantees and 24 hour technical support.

However, as knowledge of such services gradually becomes more widespread, it is not only blue chip organizations that can benefit from the advantages that cloud hosting, PaaS and SaaS can bring to a business environment. Indeed, small to medium sized businesses are gradually beginning to take the plunge and begin to embrace these emerging technologies; seeing an opportunity for cost effective and secure solutions for their IT, software, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-reviews/">website hosting, system backup and electronic communication needs under 1 fully managed roof. Some of the potential advantages of such services for SMB’s are discussed below.

Cost Effective, Manageable and Scalable

By selecting a cloud hosting, PaaS or SaaS package that is tailored to the individual needs of their business, SMB’s can create uniquely bespoke, cost effective solutions that save money on “lump sum” direct costs (such as software licensing, servers etc), and instead replace them with more manageable monthly payments on fixed budgets. Bespoke software packages that are accessed remotely allow also small businesses to pay only for what they need and are easily scalable as a business grows.

Convenient, Secure and Reliable

With near 100% uptime and 24/7/365 expert support, cloud hosting services can allow SME’s to focus on the core aspects of their own operations with a minimum fuss, downtime, maintenance and hassle. With this greater reliability and continuity, there is also no need to call in an IT consultant every time there are any issues with your server – thus allowing for further time and cost saving opportunities and greater productivity.

Space Saving

Many small businesses simply do not have sufficient office space to house a large, bulky, in house server unit. The remote access available through cloud hosting services therefore gives SMB’s a much needed opportunity to save on precious office space and therefore maximise the potential of the small amount of room they have available for other more pertinent purposes relevant to the core aspects of their business.

Eco Friendly

By eliminating the amount of power consumption that may be used by in an house server and other electronic equipment and instead remotely accessing their hosting, data storage and backup facilities via the cloud platform, SMB’s can in essence become much more eco friendly and green in their day to day business operations – diminishing their carbon footprint while simultaneously saving money by reducing associated costs and electricity bills.

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How to Use Twitter for Small Business

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If Justin Bieber can use Twitter to drive sales of his albums, surely there must be a way for small businesses to tweet their way to success. While Tweeting alone may not increase your sales figures into the millions, as part of an overall social media campaign, tweeting is vital.

The great thing about Twitter is that you can tweet from anywhere, assuming you have an Internet connection or a mobile media device. If you have five minutes between appointments, you can shoot out a tweet to your followers about an exciting event coming up at your store. This type of on-the-fly promotion will help you stay in constant contact with your customers and build a community of followers who will tell others about the exciting things happening in your business.

href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2383408,00.asp" target="_blank">PCMag offers some insight into why people love Twitter and why it is effective for businesses:

“People go to Twitter to share what they know and learn in return. Twitter users are hungry for new ideas, opportunities, information, services, and products. If your business is not part of this exchange, you’re leaving two huge opportunities untouched: growing your business and improving it.”

Five Reasons You Should Use Twitter for Your Small Biz

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Show You’re Current

It seems nearly everyone is on Twitter these days. Celebrities tweet, individuals tweet, politicians even tweet. When your business has a presence on Twitter, it shows that you understand the importance of this social media model.

Watch the Competition

Have you ever wondered why your competition is so successful? You may be able to glean an answer from their Twitter posts. Follow your competition’s Twitter feed and you’ll get tweets about events and promotions they are offering. Watch the posts that others seem to retweet the most and see what makes those posts successful.

Get the Word Out

When you want to run a quick sale or offer an event for your customers, Twitter offers a quick and easy way to let people know what is going on in your small business. Not only is tweeting short and sweet, but it is free for those who already have access to the Internet. While there are some paid models within Twitter, such as advertising options, small businesses will benefit from the simple act of having an active profile on Twitter.

Network with Others

When it comes to growing your business, finding like-minded business owners and sharing contacts and promotions can take your business to the next level. Combine promotions, hand out each other’s coupons and promote each other on sites like Twitter. How does this work exactly? Let’s say you have four businesses in your networking group who offer products that complement yours but are not the same. These businesses also have profiles n Twitter. When one of these businesses tweets something that you think might interest your followers/customers, you simply retweet it. The other businesses should do the same for you. Now, instead of only your followers seeing your post, the followers of your network partners also see your tweet.

Build an Online Community

Years ago, people connected via chat rooms on sites like AOL or various forums across the Internet. While these models are still out there, they aren’t as popular as they once were. However, those who are interested in what you have to say will follow you and you can build quite a following. Here is one example of how you could build a community via Twitter:
You write an article about how to know when grapes are ripe enough to pick. You shoot out a tweet that reads: “Are your grapes ready to eat? Find out. http://shorturl.com #WhenAreGrapesRipe #GrapeVinesForYou. Please comment.”

This will bring your followers to your website or blog where they can then comment on the article and share with one another. In addition, many will @GrapeVinesforYou, which essentially tags you in their tweet. This can get a conversation going amongst your followers about grapes. Of course, there are other social media platforms for this type of thing, but Twitter is so quick that people are more likely to tweet back quickly.

How to Tweet Effectively

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You can throw stuff out there about your business, but that doesn’t mean it will translate into sales leads. However, there are a few things you can do that will increase your chances of tweets translating into potential customers.

1. Engage with Others

The whole idea behind social media is to interact with others. If you set up a small business profile and just throw tweets at people, they aren’t likely to respond. Especially in the early days your business is on Twitter, you need to follow people you know or who have similar interests. Comment on what they are discussing and be engaged in trending topics on Twitter.

When responding to something another tweeter posts, you simply use the @ sign and their username. So, if your username is GrapeVinesForYou, then someone responding to one of your posts would write:

“@GrapeVinesForYou my grandmother always said the grapes are ready when the skin turns translucent.”

To respond to a post from someone else, you do the same thing. Use the @ sign and their username. Engage in interesting conversations. Add something worthwhile without trying to promote your business. Over time, you will build up followers who are also interested in what you have to say. Don’t try to build a false audience, however. This almost never works. Enjoy the atmosphere on Twitter and let your followers build naturally from your current customers, family and friends.

2. Tweet Frequently But Don’t Drive People Crazy

Many business owners struggle with knowing how often to blast out tweets. There is a line between staying in touch and driving people crazy by tweeting too often. A good rule of thumb is to post no more than one or two tweets a day on your own wall and no more than one or two a day where you tag another user, but these should not be commercial or advertising of any sort. Only post conversational notes when responding to someone else.

If you’ve done any advertising, you’ve likely heard of the “Rule of 7”. This is simply a rule of thumb that the customer must see your product or service 7 times before she will take action. In actuality, it may be more or less than that. However, try to get the idea across 7 times in as many different ways as possible. Twitter is just one stop on the way to your 7. Start with a tweet on there about a new product that just arrived. Follow-up with post cards to your current customers. Run an ad in the paper, etc. You get the idea. Get the product in front of your current and potential customers at least 7 times.

3. Use Hashtags Correctly

Hashtags are typically a short word or phrase. They have the “#” in front of the word. Examples of hashtags:

• #comedy
• #savingmoney
• #wines
• #valentine

The hashtag lets people track a conversation on a topic. You will notice trending topics on Twitter’s homepage. If you notice a topic is trending that is related to your business, you can use the hashtag to get people’s attention. Here is an example:

A hurricane just hit part of the country and one of the trending topics of the day is #survival. You just happen to sell survival kits. When you tweet your promotion for the day, you add the hashtag “#survival” to the end of your post.

4. Use Twitter’s Marketing Tools

Twitter offers href="http://business.twitter.com/marketing-twitter" target="_blank">marketing tools for small businesses to track how effective various campaigns are. If you choose to take advantage of one of their ad campaigns, you can then target how effective the ad was. Find out who clicked on it and get details on how engaged they were with the campaign. This can help you target your advertising dollars to get the most bang for your buck.

Why You Should Tweet

According to href="http://www.slideshare.net/sbcmurphy/twitter-for-small-business-17759510" target="_blank">LocalVox, a marketing company, about 85% of people think that companies should have a social media presence. Twitter is an excellent place for small businesses to dip their proverbial toes into the water and test the temperature of social media. Tweets don’t take a lot of time to formulate or send out and with around half a billion users, the potential reach is enormous.

Infographic source: title="Infographic on Twitter" href="http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2011/06/twitter-relationships-and-branding/" target="_blank">Bruce Clay

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