At a certain stage of development, most businesses begin to get consistent organic traffic. It’s that moment when you no longer work for a reputation, but the reputation starts working for you: niche sites and blogs regularly review or feature your product and the word of mouth gets unstoppable.

However, as the time machine hasn’t been invented, you can’t obviously just jump right into this heavenly stage. So what to do when you’ve got a newborn startup on your hands that is known only among your own team and their friends and family? How do you pave your way to sustainable growth?

One effective strategy is to leverage email marketing tools to reach potential customers and build a loyal subscriber base. Apart from that, unfortunately, I can’t give you a simple answer and offer a panacea solution that works in 100% of cases. And I doubt anyone can do that. What I’m going to do is to share our own experience at Everhour, describe what we’ve tried lately, and tell if these promotion tactics have been a boon or a bane.

Everhour is the top choice for small businesses and small to mid-size teams of 5 to 50 members, including professionals like software developers, marketers, designers, consultants, lawyers, you name it!

Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

The majority of first-time IT entrepreneurs believe that the key to success is getting publications on such media giants as TechCrunch or Mashable. They think that once the story is there, nothing can stop their startup from having it all.

• First of all, the chances that they will write about you are not so high, let’s be realistic. They get dozens of thousands of emails daily and reject how much, like ninety-something percent of them?  We’ve also made several attempts to reach out to editors, and those emails are still waiting to be replied to. We’re not going to harass reporters with any more letters, I guess when the time comes, the news will appear on their own.
• Secondly, getting mentioned on a top-rated resource is not equal to long-term success. Yes, you’ll have a surge of visits on your page, but no, this temporary boost won’t necessarily lead to skyrocketing conversion rates. And on the whole, traffic acquisition from the press, blogs, and social channels doesn’t guarantee either uses activation (signing up for your service) or retention or revenue.

Speaking about roads to success, Paul Graham describes a startup life through the following curve:

The graph illustrates hot initial growth might be followed by a plunge. In the ideal world, a growth curve will look like the pink one below, however, in reality, it’s similar to the green line: systematic development involving lots of hard work, trial and error, analysis.

One thing I know for sure – you need to experiment with different tactics and approaches to come up with a perfect balance. Below I’m revealing what kind of promotion we’ve been up to for the last month.

Reviews

One of our first activities was submitting Everhour to a number of blogs and sites reviewing startups or web apps.

Obviously, you come across both free and paid options. We’ve personally decided to pay 3-4 times and haven’t actually been impressed with the results, to say the least. Honestly, we’ve received tons more traffic from free articles while the highest number of visits and conversion rates was from independent reviews we had nothing to do with.

However, we should still give credit to the paid blogs since it’s very likely that thanks to them these “independent” traffic boosting articles have appeared.

In terms of reviews, I’d point out two things to keep in mind:

• Reach out to blogs beforehand: it might be a few weeks till the article will eventually get published because of the number of submissions. For instance, we wanted to get a paid sponsored post on WebAppStorm and at the very last moment found out that the sponsorship option had been suspended which was quite frustrating.

• Don’t be shy to ask for site analytics: views, visits, uniques, etc. By seeing these stats, you’ll be able to decide if a resource is worth spending money on.

Some of the sites we looked into boasted a pretty good Alexa rank but after we contacted the resource representatives for details, we saw that, for instance, the daily visitor figure was around 200. Which doesn’t seem impressive at all when you’re asked to pay $80 for posting an article.

Blogging

Blogging and guest posting are great free ways to attract visitors by generating quality content. We’ve witnessed how such companies as Mint, BufferApp, Groove have gained recognition and acquired a huge audience with their corporate blogs.

Though customers acquisition is vital, remember that your blog should not look like a pure marketing and promotion tool. Always take existing users and readers into account and share thoughts and plans regarding your product, give your opinion on topics that might be interesting for the blog readership to keep them engaged.

Advertising

I know some people have negative feelings about ads but they are a fast and in most cases, guaranteed-results way to gain traffic. It’s a good thing to invest in before other promotion activities start bringing a non-stop user flow.

We’ve tested the waters with three popular options: Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Google Adwords.

I’d highly recommend that you set up quality analytics before proceeding with ads. By quality, I mean that you not only track the total number of visitors to your site but also see conversion rates (a number of signups, for example) for each traffic source, be it Adwords or Reddit. It’d also be great to track referral paths for every visitor you get so that afterward you will be able to make a deeper analysis of churn rates, LTV, etc.

StumbleUpon

We got inspired to try the paid discovery on this site after coming across this success story and thought we’d enjoy the same magic results.

The campaign lasted for three weeks with the $50 budget for each week and we rotated ads for the app landing page and blog posts.

The results: 1,200 visits and an average CPV of 13¢. Unfortunately, of all the visitors only ~10 did sign up while the average visit duration was just 30 seconds.

Note: I’m not sure if it’s us or the service, but we haven’t managed to pay with VISA after trying to do it several times, so we had to use PayPal.

Reddit

Here is a case study that urged us to go with Reddit ads. We’ve tried displaying the ad both on the main page and in subreddits and limited the budget to $40.

The main page ad slots are available for almost every day BUT! here you pay per impressions and, given the number of Reddit visitors, you can imagine how much money you’ll need.

Finding a free slot in subreddits is not as easy. We’ve chosen 5 or 6 of them relating to our app purpose but eventually managed to buy ads only in two since all the others weren’t available for almost a year ahead.  Besides, we had to wait for over a month for the ad to appear and got disappointed with a small number of available impressions.

The results: CPC of around 20¢, average visit duration of ~1.5 min, but only about 10 signups in the end.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords advertising is in fact not as complicated and expensive as many may think. We had already had experience in dealing with the service so we launched the campaign really quickly. Since our knowledge of the subject is quite comprehensive, we thought it’d be helpful to describe the whole setup process and share some tips & tricks in one of the next posts.

Here the budget turned out to be the biggest, so in total, we spent $500 in a month but we got 4 campaigns with a $40/day limit for the price.

The results: AdWords ads have been boasting the best figures so far, namely, CPC of 20¢, 2,300 visits, and over 100 signups.

Other ideas

• We haven’t tried Linkedin ads yet – with the minimum CPC of $2 they look quite expensive.
• As for Facebook, we haven’t considered it because we simply don’t have a dedicated Everhour page there, only a company one 🙂
• Twitter promoted tweets seem to be really promising and I guess we’ll test them later as well.
• Some of you, especially those in the clothes, food, or travel business might also be interested in Pinterest-promoted pins that will be launched soon.

Finally

Promotion and acquiring customers are important for startups, but make no mistake – the most sophisticated marketing strategies will just suck without a truly great product. So make sure you offer users a quality solution to their needs and have a crystal clear understanding of what your unique selling point is, since this is what your whole campaign will be based on – telling people why they should use exactly your product.

What has been your experience with startup marketing? What works best, in your opinion?

The post Early Stage Startup Marketing Tips appeared first on Everhour Blog.

There are a lot of things to take into account before you start your email marketing campaign.

Usually, you will need to decide who your target audience is. Your next step then would be coming up with a content strategy and scheduling your weekly or monthly newsletter items.

It’s not an easy task, but it’s definitely worth it. Email marketing might help boost lead generation and increase your conversion rates. Moreover, it is very targeted, measurable and it’s an easy way to start reaching consumers without investing a lot in new technology or software.

On your way, however, you will need a few tools to help you get things done. So, let’s see what are the best email marketing tools for you to use?

Everhour is the top choice for small businesses and small to mid-size teams of 5 to 50 members, including professionals like software developers, marketers, designers, consultants, lawyers, you name it!

Seamlessly integrating with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira, its user-friendly interface and customizable reports make it the ultimate time tracking solution for small and mid-size teams.

With dedicated support ensuring you receive timely assistance, our team is here to help you promptly and with a smile!

MailChimp

OK, MailChimp might be one of the most popular tools out there since it is good for both remote teams and small projects. MailChimp’s user interface is really intuitive and super easy to use. And the functionality is excitingly powerful too.

Below are a few facts you should know about MailChimp.

MailChimp is an easy and a down-to-earth tool. Even a total beginner can use it and build effective campaigns with the help of it. In addition, you can easily import and export any kind of list.

MailChimp is exceptional in the fact that it is the only email marketing tool that offers a completely free account. For the first few hundred contacts, you will enjoy MailChimp free of charge. It makes sense to start with them since it will allow you to learn, experiment with figuring out what works for you without costing you any money. Then, at a later date, if needed you can move to a more powerful or affordable service. MailChimp Pro is $199 per month.

Another benefit of MailChimp is that it allows a lot of integrations. There are hardly any services MailChimp cannot be connected to. For example, let’s take WordPress, Hubspot, Facebook, Instapage etc. This list can go on and on and on.

Along with its advantages, MailChimp has got a few drawbacks too. For example, it forces users to first join your list by getting subscribed on your website, and then by confirming their email. MailChimp does this to make sure its email delivery servers are not spamming. However, a considerable number of subscribers might just skip double signing and might simply leave.

MailChimp newsletters are of course customizable but since a lot of marketers use them, they seem to look very similar to one another. If you want to really stand out with your newsletter design, maybe you should opt for another email marketing tool.

GetResponse

GetResponse just like MailChimp is good for small and mid-sized businesses. Unlike many other email marketing tools, the pricing of GetResponse remains affordable even for a growing number of contacts in your list. And just like MailChimp, GetResponse is intuitive and easy to use.

You can enjoy the variety of more than 500 nicely-designed email templates. They all make it really painless for beginners to come up with gorgeous newsletters and even autoresponders.

And again, just like MailChimp, GetResponse can be integrated with a lot of other tools and services like WordPress, Zendesk, Shopify, PayPal and many others.

“Which one is better, Getresponse or MailChimp?” you may ask. This is a tough question.

Using Getresponse might work out cheaper than MailChimp, particularly for larger lists. Getresponse offers far more email templates than MailChimp. Getresponse is a bit more flexible when it comes to form design.

On the other hand, MailChimp generally integrates better with a wider range of third-party tools. You can use web fonts out of the box and it provides translation functionality. Last but not least, it is free to start.

We would recommend that you try both services and choose the one that you like best.

ConvertKit

If you are a blogger or a media product marketer, then ConvertKit might be just for you. This tool has been designed with bloggers in mind. That’s why it has got a range of tools to make it easy for writers and authors alike to build their contact lists and to promote their books or pieces of writing or whatever it is.

ConvertKit has got one really valuable feature: it helps build email campaigns for online courses. This is an awesome feature for media marketers, bloggers, and writers.

The functionality is powerful enough. However, the automation features are done just right too. It is easy to create segmented campaigns for different occasions and different marketing needs.

Also, this email marketing tool prides itself with a range of non-standard integration services. For example, BookLaunch is a tool that many bloggers and authors might use.

You can also tag and untag your subscribers. For example tag people who visit your sales page and then untag them if they buy. You cannot do it with MailChimp.

However, again, ConvertKit cannot be just perfect. Like any other email marketing tool, it comes with a few drawbacks which we cannot but introduce to you. One such drawback is that ConvertKit is quite expensive. If you have 3k-5k subscribers, you will have to pay $79 per month. But there is a reason for that – it does more.

Constant Contact

Are you a total beginner? If yes, then this email marketing tool is just for you! Constant Contact provides a personal coach for every user. However, most Millennials might find the user interface really outdated and the service of low-quality.

However, not even considering these drawbacks, Constant Contact is expensive. It charges $50 per month for 2,501-5,000 users. That’s a lot, right?

But at the same time, this email marketing tool does offer a few interesting features that are worth mentioning.

As mentioned above, it’s the marketing coach that is assigned to each customer. This can make using Constant Contract a really nice experience. If you are doing this all for the first time, then autoresponders and newsletter can be quite hard to configure. So, maybe this is what makes Constant Contract such a valuable tool for many beginners.

In terms of features available, MailChimp might work better for eCommerce companies, while Constant Contact works for companies hoping to integrate their social media and email marketing.

MailChimp has built in A/B testing of subject lines and will test your emails in 10 popular email clients (called Inbox Inspector) if you have a paid account.

But, some marketers preferred Constant Contact because they saw greater email deliverability with Constant Contact. And Constant Contact has a wider variety of templates.

As a conclusion

Hopefully, this article was helpful and has given you at least some insights on which email marketing tool to choose.

Marketing in general and email marketing specifically would be really hard to carry out without the right tools, strategies, techniques, and services. So, if you are really into it, then make sure you take your time to do proper research and to find the best tool that fits your business needs.

If you are a beginner marketer, maybe you had better start off with Constant Contract and make use of their awesome feature of providing a marketer to each client.

Or if you are a blogger or a writer, you might want to try out ConvertKit since it is all for writers and has cool integrations with other services that bloggers and writers regularly use.

Or if you have got a small project and you want a really simple tool, maybe MailChimp is the best option for you. Do not forget that its user interface is too intuitive, even dummies can use it. And you might not want to waste time on figuring things out or setting up difficult configurations.

GetResponse, on the other hand, can be quite handy for mid-sized projects. And it has a lot of customizable templates to offer.

As you can see, the choice is all yours. If you are not yet sure which tool to choose, feel free to go on with the search. And if you have already chosen your tool, make sure you share your ideas about it.

Let us know what its drawbacks are or what its benefits are? Are you satisfied with your choice or not? Leave us a comment below. And do not forget to share this article. Cause, yes, we all know that sharing is indeed caring!    

The post 4 Best Email Marketing Tools You Were Dreaming About appeared first on Everhour Blog.