So you’re going to market using email. Awesome! Would you like to be efficient, effective, and professional? Of course you do. That means you’re going to want to use email marketing software services to help you out.

There are dozens of email marketing services online. Just do a search for “online email marketing services” or “bulk email marketing platforms” and you’ll be able to see plenty of reviews for many of them. Choose a free one to get started. You can always switch later.

Some folks tell me they run their own email marketing program using their own email account. If you have a small list (i.e. under 50 people), that might be alright, but beyond that, I think it can be downright dangerous to use your personal or business email account to send out bulk emails. Your ISP could block your email or suspend your account because they think you’re spamming. Where would you be without email? Not a good situation to be in.

Here are some advantages of using an Email Marketing Service (EMS) for your email marketing campaigns:

• Bulk Mailing with No Limits. Your ISP will probably limit how many recipients you can send to at once. Using an EMS allows you to send to hundreds or thousands of people at once.
• Better Deliverability. EMS companies work hard to ensure email send through them is delivered. They keep spammers off their systems and anti-spam systems generally recognize that mail coming from these services is safe.
• Easy Email Message Designing. Most EMS companies provide a variety of templates for your email. You can send in plain text or HTML, and your emails are also likely to be mobile-friendly. You’ll save a lot of time using the design tools these services provide. Your messages will also look better.
• Automatic List Management. Anyone who sends bulk email is required to include an unsubscribe link in each message. Email marketing services manage those unsubscribe requests automatically, and most give you code to add to your site to integrate their signup forms so new subscribers can be added to your list with ease.
• Group and Segment Your Subscribers. In my earlier post on being relevant I said it’s important to give your audience information they will find useful. Segmenting your list means you can send better targeted messages to groups of subscribers with special interests. That can boost your ROI significantly.
• Analytics and Reporting. Want to know who opened your emails? EMS companies give you tools to get a better understanding of how your email marketing campaigns are performing.
• Scheduling of Messages. Remember how I said you can schedule your WordPress blog posts in advance? Using an email marketing service lets you schedule messages to your subscribers in advance.
• A/B Testing. Marketing means testing. Many EMS companies let you send one email to part of your list and another email to the rest. This allows you to test differences in design or wording that can produce better results.

There are plenty of free and low-cost email marketing software options. The benefits of using one to manage your email marketing campaigns are many and there are no real downsides I can think of that would dissuade me from using one. If you’re not using one yet, I highly recommend you get started with one soon.

I hope you found this article relevant and informative! Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s pointers on how to create email marketing campaigns that succeed!