This is how you choose the right email marketing tool for you and your newsletters.

1. 1. What basic requirements do you have for your email marketing tool?
2. 2. What functions does your email marketing tool need?
3. 3. How can the email marketing tool be integrated into your IT?

Email Marketing Tools are as numerous as grains of sand by the sea. And their functions no longer solely consist of sending traditional newsletters. Users thus face the challenge of fishing out the most suitable tool for their own project or company. To make this process a little easier, email marketing expert Bjoern Sjut of Finc3, explains what to look for when choosing a newsletter tool - including a checklist.

For a long time, Email Marketing Tools were rather lean solutions with just one function: sending emails. Friday afternoon at 3 pm, a particular recipient pool received more or less the same email. Newsletter2Go, which was acquired by Brevo (ehemals Sendinblue) in 2019, was an example of such a tool for a long time. Today it already looks a little different: In addition to automated email dispatch, email marketing tools offer deeper segmentation and individualization options as well as the integration of various other marketing channels. The tools Emarsys and GetResponse are good examples of such a strongly developed product.

Depending on the orientation of the provider, e.g. for e-commerce or content, the various Email Marketing Tools mainly differ in terms of pricing models, automation and business intelligence functions. The following checklist from Finc3 is intended to make your search for the right tool easier.

1. What basic requirements do you have for your email marketing tool?

Does the country of origin of the email marketing tool play a role for you in terms of data protection?

Here you should carefully consider whether it is crucial for you that the provider itself comes from Germany - and also hosts in Germany. Or whether it is sufficient to secure data protection via international agreements, such as the EU Contract Model Clauses. There are hardly any providers who obtain both their own service and all subcontracting services for data processing exclusively from German providers. Discuss the following scenarios with your data protection officer:

1. Your email marketing provider is a German provider,
   
   • but may have subcontractors from other EU countries
   • but may have subcontractors from other third countries, which it secures, for example, via EU Model Clauses
2. A provider from the European Union, like GetResponse
   
   • may have subcontractors from other third countries, which he secures, for example, via EU Model Clauses
3. A provider from a third country, like the USA, which you secure via EU Model Clauses.

How important is the backend language to you?

If your employees or colleagues who are supposed to use the email marketing tool, for example, only speak and understand German well, you should make sure when selecting the tool that the tool is available in German.

Which people or which team should use the tool? Do you need different permissions?

This point in the checklist is often forgotten, but it is crucial that you consider who will work with the email marketing tool and what the knowledge level of this person(s) is. It is also important whether you need different permissions. Mailchimp for example, offers both an „Author“–, and an „Admin“ permission. This means that not all people who build templates also have access to the database. This makes a lot of sense, especially when you work with freelancers.

What budget is available to you for your email marketing tool?

Here it is important that you understand the whole pricing model. Brevo (ehemals Sendinblue) for example, is priced solely on the basis of activities. You do not pay for storing data and therefore get a small customer data platform, so to speak. This is particularly attractive if you have many customer data, but do not communicate actively with all customers. In contrast, for example, Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, offer a kind of flat-rate model in which the database size is priced. All customer data that you can theoretically write to must also be paid for. This model is therefore particularly suitable if you are generally always in contact with your entire database.

Do you need telephone or online support?

What I always liked about Mailchimp for example, is that they have a very good chat support. The people really know what they're talking about“, says Bjoern Sjut from Finc3. „German companies often make the mistake of preferring a key account manager as a personal contact, who is then anyway never available. If you want to send out something urgently on Friday evening, for example, and something doesn't work, you need to be able to reach someone spontaneously.“ He therefore recommends testing the support of an email marketing tool beforehand.

Checklist for your Email Marketing

2. What functions does your email marketing tool need?

Subscriber Handling

Opt-In processes can be quite complex. Therefore, ask yourself whether you can achieve this with a different approach such as a Customer Data Platform, a Marketing Automation Solution or a CRM System or whether your email marketing tool should take over the subscriber handling for you.

Segmentation

Think about the basis on which and the criteria according to which you want to segment your database. A typical case is the tool Mailjet. Mailjet always had a lot of data types, but for example these cannot be properly segmented on date fields. Mailchimp on the other hand, can do this very well, you can segment before, on or after a date, such as a birthday.

Email Automation

Here the question is whether you want to automate content with your email marketing tool based on triggers. Because you don't just want to send newsletters, but ideally have triggers for them. Here you can trigger either on subscriber attributes or also on-site behaviour, i.e. when customers move on the website. HubSpot Marketing Hub, for example, has its own tracking SDK, which can then be used as a trigger when someone is looking for a specific page.

Editor

Think about whether you really have in-house HTML expertise or need an editor for it. Again, you should definitely test the email marketing tool beforehand. Mailchimp and emarsys are very robust in this respect, but in very different ways. With Mailchimp, the focus is more on creativity, so that every email can look different. Emarsys, on the other hand, is designed to have all elements technically set up at the beginning and then an email template is built from these elements. This is technically safer, but the emails look a bit more uniform and conform.

Mobile Optimization

Since most emails are read mobile nowadays, mobile optimization is an important function for your email marketing tool. Again, the tools differ. Mailchimp, for example, simply breaks around rule-based and other tools offer a complete mobile editor. So you should ask yourself: How much depth do you need?

3. How can the email marketing tool be integrated into your IT?

If you use a standard shop system like Shopify, WooCommerce or Adobe Commerce Cloud, then you have to develop against the API interfaces. To find out how complex this is, you should test it. Simply sending over subscriber information usually works quickly. But if you want to send the purchases and shopping carts in real time, this can be very complex and quickly cost 40,000 euros in the connection. So you should think about this beforehand.

Last tip for you from the pro for the email marketing tool selection: Companies often buy expensive email marketing solutions, even though they neither have use for the numerous functions, nor the personnel who have time to really use these functions effectively. Bjoern Sjut from Finc3 therefore recommends, you use a high end CRM with low infrastructure costs. Think about who will operate the tool beforehand and how much time can be allocated for it. So choose a tool that provides all the functions you absolutely need and maximize its use.