{"id":6555,"date":"2019-09-10T16:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-09-10T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/?p=6555"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:33:31","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:33:31","slug":"8-essential-characteristics-of-an-email-marketing-service-for-your-business-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/getdevdone.com\/blog\/8-essential-characteristics-of-an-email-marketing-service-for-your-business-promotion.html","title":{"rendered":"8 Essential Characteristics of an Email Marketing Service for Your Business Promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are <\/span>numerous types of online marketing<\/span><\/a>. One of the oldest and most effective of them is email marketing. <\/span><\/p>\n

The first promotional email <\/span>was sent<\/span><\/a> out to a few hundred consumers late in the \u201970s, bringing the vendor millions of dollars in sales and giving rise to an entirely new industry \u2014 digital marketing. With the number of email users worldwide expected to <\/span>grow to <\/span>4.4 billion<\/span><\/a> by 2023, emails are sure to remain one of the most valuable tools for drawing attention to a brand and acquiring new customers. <\/span><\/p>\n

To be successful, email marketers need to create an effective marketing strategy. That involves defining the target audience, understanding the goals, picking an adequate campaign type, analyzing the results, and <\/span>other important considerations<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from those essentials, selecting a proper email marketing<\/a> service to deliver promotional messages is equally important. Choose the wrong software with limited capabilities and your meticulously designed marketing campaign will fail miserably with dire consequences for your business. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here are <\/span>8<\/b> key characteristics<\/b> of an email marketing service you should consider before choosing one of the dozens of options available on the market in 2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

#1: EFFICIENT MAILING LIST MANAGEMENT<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Efficient<\/p>\n

Managing a list of contacts is one of the staple features of any email service. Why waste resources on trying to reach out to someone whose email address doesn\u2019t really exist or someone whose address is real but all messages sent to it return for an unknown reason? We call these two categories of contacts <\/span>hard bounces and soft bounces <\/span><\/a>respectively. <\/span>A good email service provider (ESP) must be able to keep the contact list free of clutter. Whenever a hard bounce is detected, it must be deleted then and there. A soft bounce gets more time since the cause of the problem may be as simple as an overflowing inbox.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the software must provide customization options for users to ensure the latest changes (e.g., opt-outs) get reflected in their lists automatically.<\/p>\n

Example<\/b><\/h3>\n

MailChimp <\/span><\/a>provides an efficient list management mechanism. If an email returns from a soft bounce, three days later another attempt is made. If the situation is repeated in the course of several campaigns, the status of the contact changes to a hard bounce and it gets removed from the system right away. For more information on managing a contact list in MailChimp, read their <\/span>guide<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

#2: PRECISE LIST SEGMENTATION<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Just like the <\/span>divide-and-conquer algorithm<\/span><\/a> in programming helps solve a complex problem by breaking it progressively into smaller pieces, identifying different groups of customers (segmenting them) in a contact list, and targeting those groups with specific promotional materials helps email marketers achieve their goals. <\/span><\/p>\n

A good ESP gives users the ability to segment customers in a list based on a multitude of criteria that can be mixed together in a variety of combinations. Among the traits that distinguish one group of contacts from another can be the following:<\/p>\n