5 Things to consider when changing email marketing programs

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Very often when people start with email marketing, they just want to send out a regular newsletter to their contacts, build their list and raise their profile.  Now many of the basic programs will do this without a problem.  However, what many people fail to do is plan ahead and pick the right program at the start.

What happens when you want something more sophisticated?  For example, you may want to start using your list to sell products.  If your current program can’t do this in the way that you want then you’ve got to change suppliers.  But this may be harder than you thought…

So here are 5 things to consider when changing your email marketing program.

Upload contacts.  You might have several hundred contacts on your database that you’ll need to switch over but many email marketing programs are very strict about uploading names on to their database.  Most email marketing programs will force people to go through the double opt-in process before allowing them on to their list.  It doesn’t matter whether your contacts did this when they originally signed up with your previous supplier, they will have to go through the process again and there’s going to be a large percentage of your contacts that aren’t going to do this.  Also, some email marketing programs will strip out names that are generic, eg email addresses beginning with “sales@” or “info@”.

Segment lists.  If you segmented your lists according to topics or categories that your contacts are interested in then you will need to set these up in your new email marketing program and ensure that all your contacts transfer correctly to the appropriate list.

Change templates.  Unless you’re an HTML whizz and have designed your newsletter template yourself using an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, then you’ve got to redesign a new one using the tools in your new email marketing program.   This obviously takes time depending on the ease and simplicity of the design tools.  The branding will need to look similar to the old template so that recipients can instantly recognise it’s from you.

Sign up forms.  When changing email marketing suppliers, you will need to create new sign up forms for your website.  OK, the program will give you the code but very often this needs tweaking so that it fits in with your branding.

Autoresponders.  If you have set up a series of autoresponders to go out to contacts after sign up, then these will need to be recreated in the new email marketing program for each list as appropriate.

So as you can see, there are various things to think about when changing email marketing programs.  It therefore pays to plan ahead at the start, and think about how you will be using email marketing in 12-18 months from now.  You may start off by paying for features that you don’t need now but it will save you a lot of time and stress in the future.

If you need any help with your email marketing, whether it involves setting up a campaign from scratch or managing your existing activities, then check out our email marketing services.

Valerie Eaton is a virtual assistant who provides online admin and marketing support to small business owners and self-employed professionals who are feeling overwhelmed by their workload and want more time to focus on growing their business.

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