Falling in Love with an Email Service Provider

Understanding Your Digital Marketing Toolbox

As the adage goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

People normally reserve the right for this quote to businesses and monolithic structures. However, at the end of the day, I feel that of all the conceptual tools in a digital marketing toolbox, this ancient saying can easily be applied to email marketing, as well. 

That’s right, not all digital marketing tools are created equal. After all, other tools in your digital marketing toolbox are usually set aside on dedicated platforms. 

Think SEO and you’re probably using a CMS platform like WordPress or Wix to build up your content. Of course, there are a flurry of SEM tools out there – Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Taboola to name a few – but you are using their proprietary tools. Not so when it comes to email marketing; Gmail does not exclusively own the gateway to their inbox (of course, they filter what goes in, but the point is that you don’t need to exclusively email from Gmail to Gmail).

That said, when you build up your email marketing program on an email marketing service provider’s platform – Mailchimp, Iterable, GetResponse, and ActiveCampaign to name a few – you are putting heavy stock into this platform. It goes without saying that you must put considerable thought into what your needs are. And not what they are today, but rather what they will be in 5 years, because it will be extremely difficult to migrate to a new email service provider. 

Beyond pricing, here are some crucial factors that you need to consider when migrating to a new email service platform: the amount of content you have stored (including images), all of your automation and customer journeys (both tagging/non-email processes and drip campaigns), and don’t forget the technical side of integrating with a new platform. And remember, this process is a two-way street as you need to close down one SaaS platform and then build your second Rome. 

Betting on ActiveCampaign

Trust me on this. I am in the midst of a project now where I am migrating to ActiveCampaign. There are a lot of things that I love about this platform and other things I don’t – I’ll be totally honest in my assessment, but this first part of this article is just setting the framework down.

Going back to the quote at the top of this article, you can think of the lesson of being intent when choosing an email service provider akin to the “engineering” and “foundations” of your email marketing efforts. In the next installment, we will dive right into the “architectural” and “interior design” plans and explore some pros and cons of ActiveCampaign. 

One caveat, though before I sign off, the cons are not showstoppers; rather, they are things that I am personally used to from other email service providers. Before you dig into this piece, sign up for an ActiveCampaign trial account and see for yourself because, at the end of the day, you need to be confident in the email service provider you choose. Once you do that (or any other system for that matter), we will compare notes!

Check back this coming Monday for part two of this detailed review!

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