Creating an effective email full of engaging content for your readers is crucial for achieving a good open rate, strong inbox placement, and generating business, too. But how can you take your emails from good to great? Here, we’ve listed some advanced email tools you can use in conjunction with your VerticalResponse account to turn up the volume on your marketing:

1. Popup Domination
Once you have an email sign up form set up on your website, how do you get your visitors to take notice? A pop-up form! Yes, pop-ups may have been huge annoyances in the past, but they’ve come a long way. Popup Domination allows you to determine the amount of time a visitor is on your site before they see the sign up form, and how often. They also offer analytics, testing, and provide a variety other cool features. You get all these features and a guarantee that your list will grow for a one-time fee.

2. COLOURlovers Photocopa
Add a little oomph to your email or website design by creating a color palette based on any image. Colourlovers is a free service. Simply, upload your own photo from anywhere on the web and add it to the gallery for others to use as inspiration or keep it private for only your use.

3. Litmus Scope
Have you ever received an email that you loved and wished you could recreate it? Litmus Scope can help you out. Currently it’s only integrated with Gmail, so if you don’t have a Gmail account, you’ll need to set one up. Litmus Scope requires that you either know HTML (to make edits) or that you use the Canvas tool in VerticalResponse Classic. Below, a screenshot from our VerticalResponse newsletter illustrates what Litmus Scope does. The left side is the scoped email and the right side shows is HTML code for it.

4. Premailer
If you want your emails to match your website, meet Premailer. Just paste in your website URL and Premailer will create inline CSS to use in the HTML of your email. For your email to work best on all email programs, your CSS should be inline, and a lot of websites use External Style sheets. This works fine for websites, but if a browser-based email program is in the mix, all your hard work will be ignored. Premailer is a free program, and they give you the code you need to use without having to set up an account.

5. Email Spam Test
Here at VerticalResponse, we work hard to ensure your email gets safely delivered to your subscribers’ inboxes. However, if your content and HTML aren’t up to snuff, it can cause delivery issues. Email Spam Test can help you identify any issues before you send your email. To use Email Spam Test, you’ll need access to your email’s HTML. Once you’ve run a test, you’ll receive a score and a report of things that may need to be changed. Here’s an example below:

6. Dasheroo
Your VerticalResponse account provides reporting on the emails and social posts that you create. But, if you want to dig deeper and track email reports over time, or track other social accounts like LinkedIn, check out Dasheroo. It enables you to track the following:

• Performance of your most recent emails (subject line, date, sent, opens, clicks, bounces and unsubs)
• List size
• Engagement (trending open and click rates for past 30 emails)
• Trending Bounce and Unsub rates for past 30 emails.

The best part? Being able to see all this next to your Google Analytics, Adwords, Facebook, Twitter and other apps all in one place – for free. Find Dasheroo in our VerticalResponse Integrations Marketplace.

7. VerticalResponse
We couldn’t write a blog post about email tools with out mentioning some of our own features, of course. You need a sign up form to grow your email lists, and you want something easy to use. No sweat, use your VerticalResponse account to create a sign up form. Embed it on your website, or use a hosted version with various templates. You can share your sign up form on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere you can share a URL. There are just a few steps to set it up and it is customizable, so you can add any fields you want to collect. The best part? It’s free to set up and use.

These seven tools should help you pump up the volume on your marketing for little to no cost. What other products do you like to add to your email tools? Let us know in the comments.

Be sure to visit the VerticalResponse Integrations Marketplace for other cool tools that play nice with VerticalResponse.

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