What to consider when choosing an email marketing tool for your business in Tanzania

Business today has become very competitive, even for Tanzanian businesses. Questions is, how do you stay relevant?

An email marketing tool is the answer to help you establish a long-term relationship with your customers and also promote your business.

What email marketing does for you:

• It allows you direct contact with your prospects.

• You get to offer them value through your visualized content.

• The memory of your brand gets to stick with them especially if its visually appealing.

• You finally have a channel that you can directly control unlike social media and other digital channels.

But to excel at email marketing, you essentially need a tool that will elevate and transform your campaigns.

Why a good marketing tool is essential for your Tanzanian business

• Most SMEs in Tanzania are one-man kind of business with no additional team to run operations; a good tool saves time and resources that would have been invested in manual effort.

• Email marketing runs on lists; a good tool will be able to segment your list into different target audiences based on behavior and interest. You are then able to send targeted messages that will personally appeal to those segmented groups.

• Its ability to automate workflows and repetitive tasks is a no brainer thus saving Tanzanian businesses a great deal of time.

• Email marketing tools offer features for tracking your campaigns which are great insights for determining campaign performance and how to strategically improve.

In this guide, we will highlight the key features to look out for in and Email marketing tool before you even consider using it.

Some features are a must have regardless of size or nature of your business.

1. Swahili language support and Multilingual capabilities

This particular local consideration is key for Tanzanian businesses since Swahili is the primary language in Tanzania especially for business communication.

We cannot negate the fact that English is used in formal business settings but the consumer market, your prospects and customers, are majorly comfortable in their native language.

• Look out for a platform that supports Swahili in their dashboard and email builder as well to allow you create email content in Swahili if that is your preference.

• A business operating in East Africa and beyond should look out for a platform that supports multi-lingual campaign management with proper segmentation. This would contribute great value to the effectiveness of your team.

As you look out for language support. ensure that your team has the ability to write compelling Swahili content that resonates with your audience in case the tool of choice is limited in language support.

2. Ease of use and User-friendly interface

A tool that you or your team are unable to use without any complications will not effectively add value to your campaign.

Pick a tool that:

• supports drag and drop email builder to enable you create visually compelling email for your audience.

• Pre-designed templates are a must have for businesses that do not want to create their own templates.

  
  

  3. Pricing and local payment support

  Tanzanians are comfortable with mobile money payments (M Pesa, Tigo Pesa, Airtel money). The tool of choice should support that function.

• For business that are just starting, it is important to make use of the available free tiers to help you test deliverability, your strategy and also learn the platform before committing to a paid subscription.

• If you have irregular sending schedules, you may opt for platforms that offer pay-as-you-go credits. This particularly favors businesses that send high email volumes in peak seasons and low email volumes in low seasons.

4. Email Deliverability in East Africa

Whether the emails you send land in the recipient's inbox or spam folder is a factor that will greatly affect the effectiveness of your campaign.

What to look out for:

• Email authentication protocols (SPF, DMARK, DKIM) - technical factors

• Dedicated IP addresses unlike shared IP pools especially for businesses that send lare volumes of emails.

Extra caution on this feature will ensure that your emails get to the intended recipient increasing the level of engagement and possibility of sales.

5. Multi-channel Communication

For visibility and a wider market reach, multi-channel messaging will ensure all prospects are communicated to on channels they are most comfortable with like WhatsApp and SMS.

• With 47% of smart phone users in Tanzania, it's important to try and reach them all especially on their devices. WhatsApp open rates have proven to be higher than email open rates so, what they cannot see on email, they are able to get on WhatsApp.

  High competition of businesses calls for business owners to be shrewder and make use of what is available to stand out.

6. List Segmentation Market automation

Tanzania is a very diverse market, consumers' needs and behavior differ. One message to serve all audiences won't cut it.

• It is important to divide subscriber lists based on shared characteristics and craft messages that will resonate with that particular list. This will ensure the right message is sent, opened and engaged to.

6. Marketing automation

Tanzanian businesses that have automated their workflow are working smarter and will yield more than those still on the traditional path.

What to automate:

• Welcome sequences to new subscribers introducing your business and what you offer.

• Birthday or anniversary emails allowing you to send personalized emails or offers to your customers on their special days.

• For e-commerce businesses, abandoned cart reminders. You can make offer a timely discount to compel them to complete the purchase.

• Post-purchase follow ups with a thank you and product review request.

• Re-engagement messages for those that did not engage when messages were sent out.

7. Analysis and reporting

If you cannot, measure the performance of your campaigns, you will not be able to make improvements overtime.

Metrics to look out for:

• Open rates - number of deliver emails that were opened.

• Click-through rates - percentage of recipients that clicked through one or more links shared.

• Bounce rates - percentage of emails that were not delivered

• Unsubscribe rates - recipients who unsubscribed after receiving the email.

• Conversion rate and revenue attributed - helps to track which email campaigns drove actual purchases, ultimately helping you measure your Return on Investment. This should be a priority for e-commerce businesses.

8. Integration capabilities

   The conversion rate and revenue attribution mentioned above are only possible if your email marketing platform and your e-commerce platform are integrated.

Not just e-commerce platforms.

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for easy management of email lists.

• Payment gateways should also be integrated for Tanzanian businesses that prefer local payment methods like mobile money.

• WhatsApp business API since WhatsApp is widely used in Tanzania.

9. Customer support

The quality of customer support is very vital for any campaign incase emails fail to send, automations refuse, deliverability drops. All these are possibilities of occurrences that can highly disrupt the timelines of your campaigns leading to frustration in case you do not get the help that you need.

Considerations:

• Time zone support especially when using a global platform. Time differences should be highly considered.

• Live chat availability ensures real time support availability and issues are fixed on time.

• Email support response times. Longer response hours can be frustrating if there's need for urgent support.

• Phone support is considered the fastest and issues are resolved in real time.

• There is need for onboarding material to make getting acquainted to the tool easier.

10. Scalability

The platform you choose today needs to grow with you as your list grows. It is important to understand their long-term tier pricing to avoid switching tools which is very inconvenient and may lead to data loss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pngCuf1JPN4

Most popular email marketing tools available for Tanzanian businesses to soar

1. Trembi

Trembi is built for African business where SMS and WhatsApp matter just as much as email.

• It is an all-in-one marketing tool that combines email campaigns, WhatsApp messaging, SMS marketing and customer management (CRM).

• It runs on advanced automation that triggers emails based on user actions, follow ups are sent automatically and customer journeys are built from lead generation to retention.

• With Trembi, you pay based on emails sent and the deal is sweetened with free credits.

• It supports strong analytics that help you track the open rates, clicks, engagement behavior among others.

2. Brevo

This is a global tool with email first capabilities.

• It has good email designs and templates

• Supports integrations and advanced segmentation

• Has a free plan that allows sending of about 300 emails per day, making it suitable for small businesses.

  
  

  

Frequently Asked Questions about email marketing

1. What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending emails to a contact list or subscribers. These emails can be both transactional and promotional or a combination of both with goal in mind, building long lasting customer relationships.

2. Why is email marketing a good option for my small business?

Email marketing is an effective tool for reaching your customers directly and keeping them informed about your business. It may in the long run build customer loyalty and business growth.

3. How can I start working with email marketing?

You need to create a list of email contacts which includes existing customers, social media contacts and site visitors among others or even from tools like Trembi that generate customers for you.

Then choose an email marketing tool that resonates with your business needs and start to create and send your emails.

4. How can I measure the success of my email marketing campaigns?

The tools usually offer analysis and monitoring that allow you to measure key indicators like open, click though and conversion rates.

This data helps you understand what works and what does not, giving you a basis for future campaigns.

In conclusion

Email marketing done well is one of the most respected forms of marketing. It reaches out to people who have intentionally chosen to hear from you. Translate this intention into sales by creating appealing and valuable content that will make their time worth it enough to trigger a purchase.