If it’s free, it’s for me—that’s my motto. I’m a sucker for things given to me freely. Something as small as a keychain can be fun to receive—but what’s even better is something that makes life easier and saves me time.
There are loads of free tools to help email marketers be more effective, achieve better email performance and (hopefully) win some much-deserved kudos from their higher-ups.
Tools like these are especially handy in times of economic uncertainty, when marketing budgets are tighter than usual and senders are asked to do more with less.
Let’s explore some of the best free resources available for email marketers and discuss how to use them to achieve maximum results.
Google Postmaster Tools
http://www.gmail.com/postmaster/
If you’re a B2C sender, this free tool is critical, since Gmail users probably makes up the better portion of your audience. Gmail remains the most popular email platform with over 1.8 billion users worldwide. So, it’s important to understand how this mailbox provider views you as a sender.
Google offers a free online tool that allows you to analyze your performance at Gmail. Here, you can directly access reputation, deliverability, security, and performance diagnostics from Gmail about your email domains and IPs. The tool uses digestible graphs and color assignments so you can see clearly see how Google views you as a sender and make adjustments if needed.
Sender Score
Sender Score helps senders up their game by assessing where they are today and giving them (free!) education and resources to grow their email knowledge.
Start by checking your Sender Score. Understanding this number is the first step to reaching subscribers’ inboxes, as mailbox providers rely on it to make filtering decisions.
On Sender Score, not only will you learn your score (from 0-100, with 100 being the best), you can also use the free assessment tools to alert you to problem areas in your program and point you to the right resources to help make improvements in your email performance. Sender Score really is the ultimate free tool!
After you’ve learned where you stand, be sure to check out the “learn” section of the site to level up your email knowledge. Listen to the podcast, earn your Fundamentals of Deliverability badge, and browse our other educational content, all of which are easily accessible and ungated.
Then, apply your newfound knowledge by using tools like Blocklist Remover to start improving your reputation as a sender.
My personal favorite resource is the podcast, which is easy to listen to while multitasking!
The Subject Line Previewer is also a handy tool that lets you see how your subject line renders on different devices before you hit send.
This is important to check since you wouldn’t want your subject line to cut off in an awkward place. I’ve seen qute a few shortened subject lines that ended up being offensive when that was never the intention.
Subject Line Testing
http://emailsubjectlinegrader.com/
An effective subject line is important to grab the attention of your subscribers. Net Atlantic knows this, and offers an easy-to-use Email Subject Line Grader to help.
You simply enter your subject line, click “GO,” and your subject line will be given a grade as well as suggestions to improve that grade.
Senders can test an unlimited number of subject lines to see which might perform best. The tool uses a combination of word choice, word type, line length, character length, headline type, and other factors to predict potential responses and actions of email recipients.
Pair this with the Subject Line Previewer from Sender Score to maximize the impact of your subject lines and win those all-important opens.
MailCharts
Need email inspiration? Want to scope out your competition’s emails without subscribing to dozens of programs and clogging up your own inbox? MailCharts empowers marketers with free competitive intelligence, industry insights, and inspiration for both email and SMS campaigns.
MailCharts gives email marketers access to curated emails grouped by industry (over 85 are represented) so you can search by industry or by brand name. With over eight years of historical campaign data from more than 2,500 brands, you’ll be able to easily browse millions of email examples.
Specific email types like win-back, cart abandonment, and holiday campaigns are part of the collection, along with journey types like birthday, loyalty or purchase cycles.
Email Template Builder and Editor
I can edit some lines of HTML code (mostly the alt-text stuff) but ask me to create an email template from scratch and I’d be completely lost. One day I stumbled across BEE and it’s been a game-changer. BEE stands for “The Best Email Template Builder and Editor.” Once you create a simple login, you’ll have access to loads of pre-built email templates and the freedom to select from a vast template catalog that includes:
- Usage category: Select from Events, newsletters, product promotions, and re-engagement templates
- Industry category: Options include ecommerce, food & beverage, and lots of options for non-profits.
- Automated category: Here you’ll find suggested templates for welcome or abandon cart emails.
- Seasonal category: As expected, you’ll have access to seasonal promotions and holiday emails, including global events and observances. This category even includes lesser-known holidays like Earth Day, when you could highlight your brand’s ways of reducing their carbon footprint.
Each template offers senders an opportunity to customize, yet keeps things simple enough for most users to get started right away. BEE will also auto-save your work, so you can pick up right where you left off when logging back in. When you’re ready, you can export a ZIP file that will contain the HTML and images.
BEE also offers a free Landing Page Creator, where you can create web-specific elements like forms, video, and scripts, or embed your own survey tools to correspond with your email campaigns.
Online communities
Sometimes you just need to bounce ideas and challenges off your peers. If you find you’re in that boat, be sure to check out #EmailGeeks on Slack, or Women of Email on Facebook (obvious restrictions apply for acceptance to this group). I even find useful tips from browing the subreddit “r/emailmarketing.”
There are many intricacies that go into creating a great email that most people don’t stop and think about. Hopefully utilizing these free tools will help you save time, be more efficient, and take your email program to the next level in the new year.
For even more expert guidance to level up your email program, tune into our Inbox Insiders webinar series.