Direct mail marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach a large audience while providing tailored content in an attractive and user-friendly platform. It is a form of marketing where you send emails straight to your customers and prospects to reach them directly and intentionally.
However, the major aim of sending direct email is to reach your customers effectively. As a result, you can easily share pivotal information about your company and products rather than relying on general advertising and marketing efforts that may never reach your intended audience.
Another amazing thing is when you send directly to their email, you are not only more likely to reach more of your consumers, but you can track the effectiveness of your campaign’s impact through insights.
The main premise is consumers check their emails often – according to an Adobe Consumer survey, 90% of people check their email multiple times a day.
This shows how valuable direct email communications are, as they tend to reach consumers far more than other marketing efforts. And now, 85% of consumers check their emails on their smartphones, providing them constant access and availability to receive your marketing communications.
In addition to getting in front of your consumers more effectively, direct email marketing promotes more purchases – 59% of marketers see the most return on investment (ROI) from direct email marketing.
More than any other marketing communications method. This means that direct email marketing campaigns typically generate the highest revenue and are most likely to earn the amount of money spent on campaigns (and more) as a result.
Having mentioned that, many industries take advantage of various direct email marketing platforms to reach their consumers and engage with them regularly. So, of course, there are endless options for choosing a direct email marketing software. But the challenging question is, which software is the best?
» MORE: What is Email Marketing?
Choosing Your Direct Email Marketing Software
Before deciding on a direct email marketing software for your communications, you’ll want to consider your specific business goals and objectives for your email campaigns.
To begin your software search, it’s best to first determine your target audience. And, by identifying the audience you are planning on communicating with, you will be able to decide the types of email campaigns you’d like to launch and what these campaigns should look like to capture the attention of your viewers.
After you’ve identified your audience, you’ll want to determine next how often you’re planning on sending marketing communications and the kind of content you want to distribute. Now, picture this, are you looking for a highly customizable platform to arrange specific content with detailed design? Or do you need a user-friendly platform with more templated options to allow for a more rigid email structure?
These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself before choosing your software to help you determine which choice is best for you. Then, once you’ve outlined these objectives and goals for your direct marketing campaigns, you can start to narrow down the best available options.
These direct email marketing software options offer varied capabilities and strengths while providing a great user experience. Review below the best direct email marketing software options available now:
5 Top Direct Email Marketing Software
- HubSpot – best for a personalized audience experience
- MailChimp – best for template building and customization
- Emma – best for in-depth reporting and metrics
- Vertical Response – best for beginners
- Constant Contact – best for overall user experience
» MORE: Why Email Marketing Is Important?
1. HubSpot – best for a personalized audience experience
The Breakdown
- Starting plan at $0/month
- Allows 2,000 emails per month
- Unique audience capabilities
- Best for a personalized audience experience
Hubspot is a direct email marketing software that provides top-notch analytics for your marketing campaigns. When building a campaign in Hubspot, the user can code their unique template using HTML or choose one of the templated designs available.
Hubspot maintains a record of all your drafted, sent, and scheduled emails for easy reference, and even has a search mechanism to find previous emails easily. This allows you to access previous content shared with your audience to ensure diversity in your campaigns.
Furthermore, uploading and maintaining your unique contact database is simple in Hubspot. And the software allows for multiple recipient lists for more targeted email campaigns. Hubspot also enables the user to enact personalized emails, greeting the recipient by name where indicated in your email template. Customers notice this personalization, and it often leads to a significantly higher open rate.
When reviewing your near-completed drafts, you have the option to preview as a particular recipient – this allows you to understand how each contact will see your personalized email. Once an email has been distributed to your audience, Hubspot will keep track of your campaign metrics, including open rates, click-through rates, and any hard bounced or unsent emails in a comprehensive breakdown.
Hubspot allows for email workflows – sending emails to contact once they trigger the determined workflow set by you. A contact can click on a certain link, fill out a form, or complete another action, and by setting up a specific workflow, you allow Hubspot to send them a customized email created by you following that action. This allows you to manage and maintain communications with your varied audiences and takes the guesswork out of email marketing, personalizing your relationships with contacts.
What is Hubspot best for?
Hubspot is a top choice for providing a personalized audience experience to your contacts. The software makes it easy to set up tailored emails for your identified contact groups, leading to an ideal user experience. The software offers a tiered membership plan, giving you various options based on your marketing needs. You can review the packages and what each includes on their website here.
» MORE: How Effective Is Email Marketing?
2. MailChimp – best for template building and customization
The Breakdown
- Starting plan at $0/month
- Allows 2,000 emails per month
- Wide range of customization opportunities
- Superior template building platform
What does MailChimp offer?
MailChimp is an intuitive software that provides a superior user experience. It is accessible and easy to learn regardless of your direct email marketing software exposure. MailChimp’s interface allows users to build their template, code a template or choose from one of their many available themes.
When building your template, MailChimp simplifies the process by offering many options throughout the process with easy drag and drop customization opportunities. After you’ve completed your email customizable, MailChimp makes it easy to review your template, offering both desktop and mobile preview options so you can see how your emails render on each platform.
MailChimp provides varied choices when you are ready to send your email, offering multiple sending options to ensure the right audience is receiving your marketing communications. And after uploading your contact lists, MailChimp offers the ability to send to a smaller group within these varied lists. This helps you send more targeted email campaigns for identified groups, contributing to a more personalized experience for your audience.
Upon sending your communications, MailChimp maintains a record of your delivery, open, and click-through rates and provides a list average along with an industry average for comparison. The industry average is critical information to help you determine where you stand amongst your competitors. MailChimp can also be integrated with an e-commerce store to track the emails that are generating revenue. Paid plans offer more advanced reporting, but the free plan gives you all these rates with timestamps, so you can see how your email is performing over time.
What is MailChimp best for?
MailChimp is the best option for template building and customization capabilities. The software is free for users with under 2,000 contacts and allows up to 12,000 emails per month. Beyond this, you are required to pay for the software. You can find out more about MailChimp’s capabilities and subscriptions here.
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Software for 10,000 Contacts
3. Emma – best for in-depth reporting and metrics
The Breakdown
- Starting plan at $80/month
- Unlimited emails
- In-depth metrics reporting dashboard
- Quality performance insights
What does Emma offer?
Emma is a cloud-based direct email marketing software that provides comprehensive views of your marketing communications performances over time. Ideal for small and large businesses alike, Emma is easily customizable and offers various options for building your email templates. What’s more? Emma allows more control over formatting white space and layout in an easy-to-use platform.
Upon logging into your Emma account, you immediately have access to a visual breakdown of your previous emails’ performance and rates. The dashboard provides a visual representation of each email distributed, as well as a summary of your performance average over the last 30 days and insight into your account activity.
Looking into individual communications, Emma provides a visualization of click rates throughout the email to give you an idea of the user experience when viewing your communications. You also have access to view individual links’ performance in your email and see which users clicked on your embedded links.
When distributing emails to your selected client lists, Emma simplifies the process and allows for easy segmentation of your identified audiences. The software also allows for easy integration with other platforms, including SurveyMonkey, Salesforce, and more. Should you run into any issues or have immediate questions, Emma’s support is easily accessible and provides helpful guidance to solve any problems.
What is Emma best for?
Emma is a top choice for in-depth reporting and metrics. The reporting dashboard makes it simple to visualize your email campaigns’ impact and reach. In addition, Emma offers four-tiered subscription plans targeted to your specific industry. To find out more about Emma’s capabilities and membership plans, visit their website here.
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4. Vertical Response – best for beginners
The Breakdown
- Starting plan at $11/month
- Unlimited emails
- Easy for first-time users
- Intuitive support & guidance when building templates
What does Vertical Response offer?
Vertical Response is simple to understand for any user – both first-time and seasoned professionals. This software provides a custom template design that is easy to learn and use to its full capabilities, creating unique templates for your distinct email campaigns.
For those unfamiliar with email template customization, the “Wizard” email builder walks you through step-by-step instructions and recommendations to assemble a strong and visually appealing email template. You’ll have the opportunity to personalize each area of your template to your liking through Vertical Response.
In addition to their intuitive template design tool, Vertical Response has various automation features that allow you to maintain contact with your audience even when you are not at your computer. For example, the software allows you to set up automatic responses to reach out to customers instantly if needed. These features save you time in your email campaigns and allow for stronger management of your sent emails and contacts.
After sharing your emails with your audience, Vertical Response offers advanced reporting insights into your campaigns. The report highlights background information on your audience, including where they’re located, the internet browsers they use, and which areas of the email they clicked through and interacted with.
This deep insight allows you to do further research into your client base and tailor emails to different groups in the future for more successful email campaigns.
What is Vertical Response best for?
Vertical Response is the best choice for direct email marketing novices, providing a top-tier user experience with intuitive support to easily walk you through the process. In addition, vertical Response offers Basic, and Pro plans at competitive prices based on your email lists. To learn more about what Vertical Response has to offer, visit their website here.
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5. Constant Contact – best for overall user experience
The Breakdown
- Starting plan at $20/month
- Unlimited emails
- Overall high-quality user experience
- Wide range of capabilities and constantly evolving
What does Constant Contact offer?
As one of the more recognized direct email marketing software, Constant Contact is ideal for small to midsize businesses and meets varied marketing needs. The software offers two plans: Email and Email Plus, which offer varied capabilities and contract provisions.
The platform offers both split testing and automated workflow, which help you send more customized, contact-specific content through your email campaigns. Beyond typical direct email marketing tools, Constant Contact also orders surveys, social media, and event marketing tools to organize and plan more in-depth campaigns within one software.
The template design tools are simple yet allow for thorough customization to ensure a unique user experience for your audience. Constant Contact allows you to assign tags to your contacts for in-depth email personalization, allowing you to customize communications to groups based on their tags.
After sending your emails, the software provides in-depth metrics regarding your engagement reports, including heat-tracking maps and click segmentation. Constant Contact always allows you to compare engagement reports across campaigns to track your progress and successes.
Though Constant Contact is easy to understand and use regardless of experience or technical skill, they have a library of resources for users to educate themselves on the platform. Constant Contact offers webinars, tutorials, and user guides to ensure you utilize the platform to its full capacity for your marketing communications needs.
If you need further support, they have online customer service available to answer your specific questions when you’re utilizing the software.
What is Constant Contact best for?
Constant Contact remains the best software choice for the overall user experience. From audience personalization to insight reporting abilities, Constant Contact offers a superior experience for direct email marketing.
The software continues to improve its capabilities and offerings to ensure you have everything you need to achieve your business goals. You can learn more about Constant Contact’s membership plans and details on their website here.
The Bottom Line
When choosing the right direct email marketing software for you, there are plenty of options available to meet your varied needs. Each of these platforms offers exceptional capabilities that can help you build your audience and maintain consistent and effective communications regardless of your industry. In addition, choosing any of these platforms will allow you to create detailed, tailored templates and provide you with in-depth insight into your campaign performance.