Email Marketing & Zoho Campaigns
Email marketing remains one of the most cost effective digital marketing tools for businesses to use today with email campaigns being an asset for any marketing strategy. It has become a great way to engage new and existing prospects. Businesses have turned to email-marketing software with infrastructure dedicated to helping successfully carry out this type of marketing effort. The digital space has become ramped with different platforms and the competition is as fierce as ever. Zoho Campaigns is among the most popular email service providers (ESP) on the market offering a myriad of beneficial features including automation, customization, and detailed reports.
In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about Zoho Campaigns including; detailed features of the software, the integrative capabilities, plans and pricing, and also highlight the pros and cons of the platform.
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is an automated email marketing software suitable for any size business. The system is designed to help you create, send and track email campaigns with highly tailored and personalized content. The platform’s key features include:
● Email templates and editor
● Subscriber management tools
● Automation functionality
● A/B testing
● Detailed reports
Let us dive deeper into the five key features of the software.
Email Templates/Editor
Compose customizable email templates that draw the attention of the recipients
The drag-and-drop feature allows you to add elements such as pictures, videos, text blocks, buttons, email polls, and other dynamic content
Select pre-designed HTML email templates and layouts that fit the companies’ style and that format themselves to the recipients device
Apply conditions to one email to personalize certain aspects
Zoho campaigns makes you send test versions to up to five recipients and provides a reputation score to ensure you are abiding by their anti-spam criteria
Subscriber Management
Create mailing lists by importing subscriber details from a customer relationship management tool like Zoho CRM through the use of an API or simply manually enter them into the platform
You can then segment your lists based on different criteria, like: contact source (cold call, social media, ads, etc.), purchase history, subscribe date and other demographic data
Signup form templates can be added to your website, blog, or social media site to let the audience subscribe and get added to your mailing list. This reduces spam complaints and unsubscribes as only people interested in the information you provide opt in for your newsletters
Embed a QR code onto your website so smartphone users can immediately get added to your mailing list
Duplicates, bounces, and unsubscribes are removed from your mailing list automatically to ensure the health of your mailing list stays intact
Reports
Zoho Campaigns allow you to receive reports on a per list or per campaign basis
They have an extensive toolbox that helps analyze detailed analytics in areas of your list like opens, clicks, automatic bounce and spam handling, and social engagement
The software also provides information about performance of past campaigns using metrics such as: opens, clicks, opens by location, device and email client, as well as performance over time
A/B Testing
Customize your A/B test to obtain insights and improve future email campaigns.
Test different variables such as subject line, senders name, or the content of your message and see what gets the best response from your audience
The reports show you the different interactions subscribers had with your campaign emails and which ones performed the best
Customize your test by choosing your audience and how long it should run. The best performing email can then be automatically sent to the rest of your audience
Automation and Workflows
Zoho Campaigns helps you create autoresponders with a suite of templates based on your audience and desired goal
You can create automated emails for initial sign-ups, holiday sales, special occasions, targeted groups, etc. for a more focused outreach
Create tailored or use pre-built workflows that learn how contacts engage with emails and respond automatically through triggers and other actionable elements
Drag-and-drop elements into the workflow that allow you to define when a contact should enter and leave the workflow based on their previous email interactions
Monitor a contact’s progression in the reports of the workflow path so you can run targeted actions such as adding contacts to a different mailing list or sending a personalized email series
Integration Capability
Zoho Campaigns APIs help you access data to and from other Zoho applications and various other third party services to integrate them under one email marketing management umbrella without having to toggle between apps. You can integrate apps for services such as:
CRM – Sync sales software such as Salesforce or Zoho CRM with the platform for seamless data flow between the sales and marketing teams
E-Commerce – Connect Shopify and WooCommerce for data-driven targeting, promotion crafting and revenue tracking
Survey and Forms – Use surveys made in SurveyMonkey or Zoho Survey in the platform to create an email survey campaign
Webinar and Event Management – Import webinar attendees and registrants from GoToWebinar or Eventbrite into the platform and into segmented mailing lists
Social Media – Integrate with social media such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to expand the reach of your offers
Cloud storage – Import data from Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, or Evernote
Analytics – Integrate Google Analytics or Zoho Analytics to view all the analytics related information such as site visit report, site traffic by source, and page visits from your email campaign
Video Marketing – Zoho Campaigns allows you to create video merge tags for email campaigns from Youtube, Wistia, and Vimeo
Image Hubs – Image hosting sites such as Bigstock, Giphy, Google Photos and more also integrate allowing for imported images to be used for email campaigns
Contact Management – Connect Paypal, Microsoft Office 365, or Unbounce to import contacts through transactions and organize campaigns through your calendar
Zoho Campaigns Pricing
Zoho Campaigns offers a free plan, which allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 contacts. They also have three paid options that provide more of the features the platform has to offer. The three options are:
● Email-Based Pricing Plan
● Subscriber-Based Pricing Plan
● Pay by Email Credits Pricing Plan
Email-Based Pricing Plan
This plan is based on a monthly or yearly subscription and is catered to those that have a monthly estimation of emails they will send. Though, this plan does lack some features, like the ability to send polls via email. The pricing plan starts at $3 per month for up to 500 emails and increases to approximately 12 per month for 3001 to 4000 emails a month, increasing in increments up to 100000 emails monthly.
Subscriber-Based Pricing Plan
This plan is also based on a monthly or yearly subscription and it caters to those that desire unlimited emails. This plan has all the desired features that Zoho Campaigns has in its arsenal. This plan starts at $5 per month for up to 500 subscribers and increases up to 100,000 subscribers.
Pay By Email Credits Pricing Plan
This plan allows you to purchase email credits based on your needs and works as a pay-as-you-go system. This plan caters to the occasional email sender but who still wants to take advantage of the Zoho Campaigns software. This plan comes with the least amount of features out of the three pricing plans but still has many useful applications. The plan starts at $6 for 250 email credits and increases up to a possible 100,000 credits per month.
The platform does have pricing plans for businesses whose email or subscriber requirements exceed 100,000 per month and who are in need of a more custom plan, but the price will vary. For more details on Zoho Campaigns Cost, please see Zoho Campaigns Plans & Pricing for detailed information on pricing.
Zoho Campaigns Pros & Cons
We are now going to highlight the pros and cons of the platform found through Zoho Campaigns reviews to help provide a general overview of the ESP.
Pros
Integration capability with Zoho apps, social media platforms and other 3rd party services
Personalized A/B testing
Easy to set up and configure sign-up forms
HTML content easily imported into templates
Offers a free plan
Cons
Lack of fonts in editor
Some unattractive templates
Clunky interface
Slightly steeper learning curve
Conclusion
As stated before, email marketing has become a staple for businesses looking to grow their customer base and drive sales. Zoho Campaigns remains one of the top tier email marketing solutions on the market allowing for complex campaign creation through customization, automation and robust analytic feedback. For further details on how Email Marketing could help your business, check out our article on 15 Email Marketing Best Practices.
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