Yesterday, I covered an email marketing software called AWeber, which is a nice choice for lawyers who are looking for an array of email marketing features with a very reasonable price tag. Today, I’ll critique Cakemail, another marketing automation tool.
If you’re looking for other email marketing software reviews, you can visit our series page about Email Marketing For Lawyers. Are you interested in an email marketing software that we haven’t yet blogged about? Send us a message to make a request, and we’ll be happy to review it.
Cakemail’s Main Features
Email templates and design: Much like some of the email marketing software I’ve reviewed in this series (Drip, MailChimp, Campaigner and others), Cakemail has a number of predesigned templates, as well as giving users the ability to create their own templates with HTML. Users can also upload template designs from elsewhere. Additionally, all of Cakemail’s templates are customizable, regardless of whether users have HTML knowledge or not. Conveniently, Cakemail’s pre-designed templates are automatically optimized for inboxes. They also offer users unlimited image hosting.
Cakemail contacts: If your contacts are in .csv form, they can be quickly imported to Cakemail. This company gives users the ability to segment their contact lists with customizable fields or based on previous newsletter activity. One major benefit of Cakemail’s contact features is that it automatically detects duplicate emails.
Sign-up forms and follow-up emails: Cakemail allows users to make sign-up forms for their website and Facebook, and also gives users the opportunity to send welcome and confirmation emails when subscribers sign up.
Sending emails: Cakemail offers A/B (split) testing, as well as autoresponders and email scheduling.
Analytics: This software gives users performance graphs and can be integrated with Google Analytics and social media. They provide users with detailed stats about emails, including who’s opening, clicking, unsubscribing or labeling your emails as spam; all of these statistics can be exported elsewhere and can be used in contact list segmentations — for example, if you’d like to create and send a newsletter specifically to those who’ve clicked on a certain link, you can. Users can also view list engagement and subscriber history, as well as examining reports that compare sent messages.
Cakemail’s Pricing Structure
Among the email marketing software I’ve reviewed, Cakemail is rather reasonably priced for the number of features it provides users. Also, Cakemail offers prospective customers a free, 30-day trial. Below is a screenshot of their pricing structure:
Advantages for Law Firm Email Marketing
An advantage or a drawback, depending upon your style: While some of the email marketing software I’ve reviewed boasts hundreds of email templates, Cakemail takes a different approach by giving users only a handful. For those who feel overwhelmed by hundreds of choices, this could be a good thing: fewer choices can mean fewer things to worry about when it comes time to actually send your content to subscribers — and plus, if users don’t like the templates that Cakemail offers, they can always upload a design or create their own with HTML.
Cakemail has a number of useful tools for law firms, including list segmentation and A/B (split) testing. List segmentation can help law firms organize their contacts appropriately and provide subscribers with tailored content of legitimate interest to readers, rather than sending the same emails to every single email address. A/B (split) testing can be valuable for law firms that want to see what sort of layouts appeal best to their readership.
Of course, having access to data — such as what is included in Cakemail’s analytics — can help law firms make decisions such as what time is best to send an email, what sort of content engages readers, and more. Autoresponders and email scheduling can be useful in automatically sending emails and responses that, when handled by an actual person at various points in the day, can often cut into overall productivity.
Cakemail’s Potential Drawbacks For Law Offices
As noted above, the lack of templates could be a drawback for those who like numerous options when it comes to template design. Additionally, users may find the handful of templates that Cakemail offers may not be appropriate for their law firm’s emails. Furthermore, it’s not abundantly clear from Cakemail’s website what sort of features they offer. For example, their blog offers information on A/B testing, but it seemed difficult to find anything about that feature on their website’s homepage. However, by testing the software and reaching out to one of their product experts, I was able to quickly see that this software has a large number of effective and practical tools that will likely benefit law firms.
Summary of Cakemail for Law Firms
Overall, Cakemail will likely give law firms the sort of tools they need to do better email marketing at a price that will meet most budgets.
