Many companies don’t yet understand how impactful email marketing can be as a method of growing their business. The marketing budget for email is minimal and many businesses use inexpensive platforms such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact and iContact, to send mass emails.
While these platforms are less money and do offer some ability to track emails sent, they are not at all comprehensive. The services they provide are somewhat limiting.
Companies who are serious about using email marketing to generate sales should invest in an email marketing platform such as Infusionsoft. It is one of the top email marketing platforms currently on the market. There is also Ontraport, Marketo, and several others. At CWD, we use Infusionsoft, so we will briefly highlight its benefits.
Purchasing an email marketing platform
What is Infusionsoft?
Infusionsoft is a comprehensive email marketing platform that’s hosted by the company Infusionsoft. To purchase Infusionsoft the initial investment is $1,000 to $2,000 for setup. There is also a monthly hosting fee of $300 to $500 per month. (Price is based on number of email addresses you’ll be sending to and features used.)
It offers more features than most basic email marketing platforms. Here are some of its advantages:
Email automation. You can set up large networks of automated email systems. Infusionsoft allows you to easily see what emails are being sent and when. Each email you create is mapped out on a grid, which provides a visualization of the system you design.
Web forms and landing pages. You can build web forms and landing pages in Infusionsoft. You can hook them up to email or you can use the url to post the form or page online (on social media, for example). When you build web forms the information that a contact enters into the form can be set up to populate under that contact’s record in the Infusionsoft database.
Lead score system. Infusionsoft allows you to track your hot leads. Based on information such as open rates and number of links clicked or actions taken, the system will rate the engagement levels of your contacts. You can set it up so you receive an alert when a contact is ready to buy. Or, you can nurture contacts that are losing interest, or have gone cold.
Keep your contact list organized. You can upload all your contacts into your Infusionsoft database and categorize them appropriately. You can apply tags, which are labels, to contacts based on their characteristics and behaviors.
Build emails. You can build your emails inside Infusionsoft. It’s very easy to create emails and upload pictures, email headers and footers. You can add links to your emails or upload attachments. It’s all very user-friendly.
Track engagement levels. There is an entire section with conversion reports that you can review on a regular basis. It provides you valuable information such as how many people are opening your emails, how many of them are clicking on links in those emails, and how they get into your system.
Customer support. Infusionsoft has live support staff that can help you with your campaigns and teach you how to use thesystem’s features.
Templates: Infusionsoft offers a marketplace that includes a gallery of email campaigns. Based on the emails you’d like to send, you can upload a template directly into your system and then personalize it. This makes it very easy to set up email marketing funnels if you are not yet an expert.
