Email marketing as part of your mobilisation stack
In times of an increasingly monetised social media landscape, independent channels like email are one of the vital building blocks for digital mobilisation. Email allows cost-effective, direct interaction with your supporters while also providing you with the option to build journeys based on the relationship with the individual supporter.
At Impact Stack we follow a technology strategy called “best in class”. In summary, this strategy suggests that it’s better to have a few tools that are excellent at one thing and integrate well rather than to have a single tool that attempts to offer “everything” in one package. Email marketing tools focus on delivering the best emails, analytics platforms are for analysing your supporter data and advocacy tools are for actions.
In our view it is simply an honest principle: our software platform can’t be the best at everything. Our mission is to help you deliver impact.
Instead of building half-baked features into Impact Stack, we embrace the ethos of “best in class” and offer excellent integrations with other systems. There are powerful, exciting email marketing platforms, CRMs and digital marketing tools out there that we integrate with. Our email marketing integrations automatically sync data in the background and we offer a range of APIs, export options and opportunities for other systems to interact.
Our technology strategy and the resulting approach to features is particularly important when it comes to email marketing.
Choose technology based on market indicators
Not all technologies are the same. Some areas of technology are very novel, cutting edge but probably also less reliable. Other digital systems have been around and have matured for many years. Big companies have formed around these, typically highly commoditised, fields of tech.
Email marketing is one of the sectors that has been well established for a while and the market has developed to a degree that email marketing software is fairly cheap as well as reliable. The market is very saturated and you will find a range of different providers with almost identical feature sets, technology as well as support.
In markets like this it can be cost effective to rely on big companies that can make use of the efficiencies that come with scale. With this approach you are also most likely to end up with the latest technology there is.
Get the best features email marketing has to offer
A “best in class” approach allows you to pick the most advanced provider in one particular field, such as email marketing. In a market that is very saturated with many excellent and comparable options to choose from, you don’t have to wait a long time for new features.
The risk of investing in a platform is low and the cost of moving away from the platform will be fairly small as well.
With an approach like this you will be able to adapt faster. If the provider no longer delivers you can switch to a different vendor.
Vendor lock-in
One of the reasons why many organisations choose to use niche tools rather than “all in one” systems is simple: the internet changes all the time. Changing all systems at once is a lot of work, costly and therefore often a barrier for organisations.
However, if your email marketing tool is failing you, you can replace this layer of your stack without changing all of your systems at once.
Impact Stack will never hold you back when it comes to replacing your email marketing system - in fact we will support you along the way. Our entire system is built to interact with other tools and most bigger email marketing tools will fit perfectly with our platform.
Best for your specific organisation
While a lot of organisations have similar needs, they are not the same. A “one size fits all” technology provider will always have to compromise.
By adopting a “best in class” approach and using Impact Stack you can choose the email marketing tool that fit your organisation best. Do you care more about the email building interface or do you care more about the automation of journeys? What CRM system will the email tool integrate with well? Are other parts of your organisation already successfully using an email marketing system?
In other cases organisations simply have certain tools in place and are not looking to switch. Impact Stack is not trying to do more than you need it to do. If you already have an email marketing tool that serves your organisation well you can integrate it.
Free report - creating richer supporter experiences through integrated technology.
Would you like to discuss your stack for campaigning and fundraising?
You can explore the integration options that are currently available on Impact Stack. But we'd also be happy to show you how other organisations are using our platform and we can discuss how your existing tools can be integrated.