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Top 7 Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools provide powerful customer contact channels

As with most marketing activities, the Internet offers much more than merely implementing a digital version of paper-based systems. The email system linked to special email marketing tools can run an entire campaign that combines advertising, mail shots, customer tracking, sales conversion, and after-sales service. Check out these recommended email marketing tools to bring your marketing drive into the Digital Age.

1) MailChimp

One of the biggest advantages of email marketing tools over traditional, paper-based methods is that you can merge your customer data with the actual delivery system. You probably have a contact list in your home email system that allows you to create different email groups and note address and name data about each contact. Email marketing tools such as MailChimp expand the contact list feature to become mini customer relationship management tools. Rather than just noting a contact’s name and address, you can make notes about communications and sales to that customer in MailChimp. The system also allows you to create workflows to direct different groups and individual contacts to different email campaigns, setting up a series of emails to be sent out at specified intervals. MailChimp allows you to create graphic-rich emails, and, as with most email marketing tools these days, you can access the service from your smartphone.

2) HubSpot

HubSpot produces software for digital marketing. The company’s products include an email marketing tool. As with MailChimp, HubSpot’s email marketing tool includes a graphics editor to enable you to create the layout of your email. You can “merge” contact data with your email templates to create personalized emails. HubSpot’s email marketing tool has a lot of similarities with MailChimp’s offering. Like MailChimp, the system produces analytical reports and enables each contact’s communications and actions to be recorded. You can set up a workflow to sequence a series of emails to different contact groups and preview your emails with text in-boxes. One great advantage of the HubSpot email marketing tool is its ability to integrate with other HubSpot tools like HubSpot CRM and Sidekick. These enable you to integrate your presentation, sales and after-sales service into one customer contact database.

3) AWeber

AWeber is an email marketing tool based on autoresponders. An autoresponder is an automatic response to an incoming email or entry into a database. If you ever sent an email to a company and immediately received an email saying, “Thank you for contacting us; a specialist will contact you shortly,” then you have dealt with an autoresponder. As the name suggests, autoresponders are principally designed to respond to an initial incoming email. The very first email can be a post from a form on your website. You then set up a series of emails to send over a period of time to lists of different contacts. Because the entries in your contacts list are usually generated from a name and email address entered into a web form, you are unlikely to capture much information about your potential customers through AWeber. This email marketing tool includes HTML email formats and a library of email templates. AWeber offers a one-month trial for $1. After that, a subscription to the service costs $19 per month.

4) Constant Contact

Constant Contact is very similar to AWeber in that it is an email marketing tool based on autoresponders. The tool includes an email editor and a series of timed autoresponders to send an email campaign as a series of mails spaced over specified intervals. The service costs $15 a month, with a discount for prepayment. You can get a one-month free trial of Constant Contact.

5) Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft’s package involves a lot more than just an email system. It includes scheduling, team management, shopping cart and payment collection software as well. Consequently, it is much more expensive than the other email marketing tools in this list. Plans start from $199 per month and go up to $379 per month.

6) Exact Target

Exact Target is a division of Salesforce.com, so its main package is called both Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Exact Target Marketing Cloud. It doesn’t sell a stand-alone email marketing tool but integrates email functions into a wider bundle of sales and marketing functions. The email section of Exact Target Marketing Cloud includes an email editor, a contacts database, mail group managers, and sequenced email campaigns.

7) Emma

Emma offers the best email presentation options of all the email marketing tools on this list. It particularly aids the design of mobile presentation, which is increasingly important in the modern market. As with the other email marketing tools on this list, Emma offers analytical reports, and they are beautifully presented. Like MailChimp, Emma offers analysis reports and alerts through a mobile app. Two distinctive attributes of Emma are its mobile capabilities and its look and feel, both of the user interface and the email creation capabilities it offers through its email design tool.

Decision Time

MailChimp and HubSpot probably offer the most comprehensive utilities for managing an outbound email campaign. AWeber and Constant Contact would be your best choice if you want to drive your email marketing by autoresponders. Emma probably has the best facilities for reaching out to a mobile or social media audience, and is perhaps more attuned to businesses catering to the youth market. These five are pure email marketing tools. Exact Target and Infusionsoft offer email functions as part of integrated packages, and you would have to examine each in detail to decide whether you need all the other products each company’s bundle includes.

 

The Top 4 Webinar Tools for Businesses

Even high street businesses can benefit from webinar tools

A webinar is a way to conduct sales meetings, training courses, customer support, or collaborative work. It is a form of video conferencing that enables you to lecture or chat interactively with an audience that logs in from remote locations. You don’t have to be an online business and you don’t even need to have a website to use webinar tools. With new services entering the webinar tools market every day, you have plenty of options to choose from. This roundup highlights some of the best webinar tools available today. Choose one to enhance your company’s communications with customers, suppliers, and associates.

1) Go To Meeting

Go to Meeting is a video conferencing platform that allows you to invite up to 100 attendees and broadcast live and interactively. The platform can be accessed via a smartphone, so the attendees don’t need to be sitting at their desk. You can communicate by voice only or choose to show a video from your webcam. The platform includes a number of presentation and drawing tools, but you can also switch the display to your computer screen, which enables you to broadcast output from your favorite presentation software. Go to Meeting will broadcast your webcam and your presentation to all attendees, unless you enable breakout sessions with subgroups interacting with one another. You can also record your session for rebroadcast at a later date. These webinar tools are particularly suited to corporate communication in such areas as internal news and conferencing, sales conferences, technical conferences, and work collaboration. This webinar tool offers the most functionality and is easiest to use of the bunch.

2) Fuse

One great feature of Fuse is that you don’t have to pay for it. This webinar tool comes in three types: Free, Pro, and Enterprise. You can conduct webinars with the free version with up to 25 attendees. If you want to go up to 125 attendees per webinar, you would need to subscribe to the Pro version, where the cost starts at $8 per month. As with the Go to Meeting and Click Webinar webinar tools, you can communicate by voice, video, or screen capture.

3) Any Meeting

Like Fuse webinar tools, Any Meeting has a free version. The Any Meeting free plan is advertisement-supported and includes voice, video, and screen-sharing methods of communication. You can have up to 200 attendees at one of your webinars conducted with the free version of Any Meeting. The two paid plans are called Pro 25 and Pro 200. Both offer more features than the free version. For example, you can record your webinar only if you broadcast on one of the Pro plans. The Pro 25 plan allows up to 25 attendees at each webinar and costs $18 per month. You can have up to 200 attendees with the Pro 200 plan, which costs $78 per month.

4) Click Webinar

Click Webinar offers webinar tools as part of the Click Meeting platform. This service is a great medium for offering training courses and can even translate the written communication that goes on in its chat windows. You can broadcast in either speech or video, and you can switch to a view of your desktop to present slides and technical data. Click Webinar also has a record function, so you can replay your webinar to future visitors to your site. Click Webinar includes analysis reports that detail how many people attended your webinar and the changes in attendance as the webinar proceeded. This information will enable you to examine your scripts and rewrite any sections that seem to be losing you attendees.

Which One?

You may be daunted by the variety of webinar tools available. The best way to approach the selection process is to focus on your exact needs and then try the free version of each of the services listed here. Once you have become familiar with the features of each service, you will be in a better position to plan your webinar strategy.

 

How to Land Proofreading Jobs

Five easy steps to help you land exciting proofreading jobs

Have you recently wondered how to become a proofreader? Many proofreading jobs are offered both online and offline. However, before discussing the type of work available and how you can land a proofreading job, let’s briefly discuss the definition of a professional proofreader and what the work entails.

Professional proofreader is a generic term for someone who ensures that the final version of any written work is grammatically correct and free of spelling and punctuation errors. Proofreaders check a written text after it has been edited and before it is printed or published, providing a final quality check to make sure that the copy editor didn’t miss anything. A proofreader must be accurate, pay close attention to detail, and be sufficiently self-motivated to meet deadlines. This is a very general definition; there are many different levels of proofreading, just as there are many different fields and industries that offer proofreading jobs.

1. Qualifications

You do not need any particular qualifications to land a proofreading job. Employers will usually be more interested in your experience than your qualifications. However, proofreaders are often graduates, so it could be an advantage if you have a degree in English or in a subject in which you would like to concentrate your proofreading efforts. For example, a science degree would be useful for proofreading scientific textbooks or manuals.

Technically, a professional proofreader is someone who has taken and passed an approved proofreading course. Many college or online courses are available to give you a leg up on the competition and help you get hired for proofreading jobs.

2. How to Get Started

To begin your search for proofreading jobs, start by sending inquiry letters. Start small, perhaps by contacting local newspapers or classified ad papers. Even though you might consider yourself an expert proofreader, have someone else proofread your letter and resume. Nothing kills your chances of getting a proofreading job faster than a typo on a resume!

If you need to accumulate some experience, look around and offer to do free proofreading for school newsletters or small business web sites. Perhaps your neighborhood association or favorite hobby could open doors to some proofreading experience.

Build and maintain a strong network of colleagues, acquaintances, and friends. You never know who may be able to give you a good lead on a proofreading job.

It might be beneficial to join or obtain certification from a professional body, such as the Editors’ Association of Canada, the American Copy Editors Society, or the UK Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP).

Looking for work has become much easier due to the advent of search engines (which you can set up to alert you automatically when a specific company has openings). You can use both LinkedIn and Twitter to craft the image you wish to project (truthfully, of course!). There are quite a few LinkedIn groups that specialize in different types of editing and editors/proofreaders. These groups have archives that will answer many of your questions about proofreading jobs. On Twitter, you can also follow the tweets of people, companies, and industries that interest you.

3. Freelancing

Freelance proofreading jobs are another great option. If you are detail oriented, able to meet deadlines, and have excellent grammar and spelling skills, you’re well on your way to making a living from your home office.

Web sites such as Freelancewritinggigs.com find freelance proofreading jobs for you. These listings come from multiple sources, and employers can post job ads as well. Check the jobs and comments on such sites daily as the jobs tend to close fast due to the large number of applicants.

Register with directories that provide lists of proofreaders to the public, such as Findaproofreader.com or the Editorial Freelancers Association.

4. Advertise Yourself

Advertising yourself means building your own web site. Some free platforms exist; some cost extra for security or other built-in features. It’s a good idea to look at other proofreaders’ web sites to see what information they include and how they display it. Potential clients like to see details about a proofreader’s background and experience. Testimonials from previous clients are always good. You may also want to include information about how you charge for your services: by the word, by the page, by the project, or by the hour.

5. Job Listings

Here are some web sites where you may be able to find proofreading jobs and gather a group of satisfied clients:

  • Louise Harnby lists job directories for editors and proofreaders, divided by nation.
  • Katharine O’Moore-Klopf has been in publishing for several decades, and she has a long list of job boards.
  • Wordy.com contracts copyediting and proofreading jobs.

So, there you have it—five easy steps to landing your dream proofreading job. Remember to be careful with web sites that sound too good to be true; investigate before you provide any personal details. And remember, all editors and proofreaders need to brush up on their skills to keep their clients and employers happy.

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