Personalization is like the holy grail of digital marketing. Businesses today aren’t just interested in reaching some broad audiences, but they want to be reaching the right audience. This trend has led to the emergence of platforms like Instantly and Smartlead, both of which promise to help marketers connect with their target audiences through smarter and more effective outreach campaigns. They provide valuable automation for email marketing, but their market approaches are different. Let’s look at the key differences between Instantly and Smartlead, what they offer and where they shine. And while both platforms bring innovative solutions to the table, we’ll show you how MailMoo’s personalized video service may just be what you’re looking for in your email marketing puzzle, because there is nothing more frustrating than the last missing piece.
Problems and solutions arise
Before diving head first into the specifics of Instantly and Smartlead, it’s important to understand why platforms like these even exist in the first place:
Traditional email marketing began to lose its impact as the digital marketing field is becoming more crowded. Consumers are quickly becoming desensitized to generic marketing messages and grow annoyed of flooded inboxes that bring them zero value. In response, companies began looking for ways to stand out and connect with consumers on a more personal level. Automation and AI-powered tools that could help companies send more targeted and data-driven messages saw the market opportunity and ran to the rescue.
What does Instantly do?
Instantly was designed to help businesses maximize their reach. It’s a platform built for high-volume outreach and it allows companies to send hundreds or even thousands of emails per day. It keeps the process efficient and ideal for campaigns where speed and scale are valued and relies heavily on automation.
The platform’s AI-powered scheduling feature helps users determine the best times to send emails for better likelihood of leads opening and engaging with messages. Instantly’s smart delivery feature is another key component; it tracks how recipients interact with emails and automatically sends follow-up messages for better response rates. Businesses gain insights into open rates, clicks, and conversions through analytics. As we go though in our previous article, providing a clear picture of how your campaigns are performing is like a lifeline for successful email marketing.
Instantly’s best features:
Sending hundreds or thousands of emails per day with high-volume emailing.
Determining the best times to send emails with AI-powered scheduling.
Identifying when users engage with an email and sending follow-ups automatically.
Analytics to help businesses track their campaign performance, including open rates, clicks, and conversions.
What about Smartlead?
Smartlead.ai, while also dedicated for email outreach, has a different focus. It’s designed for companies that want to build personalized relationships with their audience by taking a data-driven approach to create messages tailored to each lead’s needs and interests.
Unlike Instantly, Smartlead focuses on the quality of engagement. It analyzes recipient data to create hyper-targeted emails. With behavior-based segmentation, Smartlead tracks how users interact with emails and adapt messaging based on these behaviors. This lets marketers to deliver the right message at the right time. Smatlead’s A/B testing capabilities also give businesses the flexibility to refine messages for efficient campaigns and pinpointing what works best for their audience.
Smartlead’s best features:
Analyzing recipient data to create customized email content.
Offering tools to manage leads throughout the sales funnel.
Tracking user behavior, engagement and segmenting audiences to tailor messaging based on each segment's actions and preferences.
A/B testing capabilities to ensure that emails are optimized for engagement.
So, where does MailMoo come in?
While both Instantly and Smartlead are great solutions for email marketing, they both have a key limitation: they’re text-based. Audiences nowadays have such short attention spans, and tend to interact more with visual content, text alone may not be enough to make a lasting impact. This is where MailMoo steps in with its personalized video service.
MailMoo is designed for businesses that want to make a memorable impression on their audience, and it does so by integrating personalized video messages into email campaigns. By using MailMoo alongside Instantly or Smartlead, you can combine the efficiency of email automation with the power of visual storytelling. There is nothing more powerful than a catchy video that is tailored for your lead. On top of this, integrating MailMoo with your existing tools, like our case studies here, is easy and effortless.
The game-changer is here!
MailMoo’s videos provide you with the following pieces for your email marketing puzzle:
Visual hook: Studies show that visual content is processed by the brain 60,000 times faster than text. With MailMoo, you’re able to give out way more information and do it FAST.
Emotional connection: Video has a unique ability to wake up some emotions and create a sense of connection. A personalized video makes recipients feel seen and valued in a way that text alone simply cannot. Yes, you can mention the lead’s name within text, but wait until they hear it from your mouth, in a video tailored just for them.
Stand out in crowded inboxes: An email with a personalized video link from MailMoo stands out far more than a generic text email. It feels personal, engaging, and 100% worth opening. Who wouldn’t be curious enough to open it?
Tailored messaging: Just like Smartlead’s personalized text, MailMoo allows you to craft messages that speak directly to the individual recipient, but with the added impact of voice, visuals, and tone (+ you or your sales rep’s face).
Combining MailMoo with Instantly or Smartlead for even more conversions
While Instantly and Smartlead both offer powerful email outreach tools, the addition of MailMoo’s personalized video service does miracles for the effectiveness of your email campaigns. By combining these tools, you’re able to create an outreach strategy that reaches more leads, resonates on a personal level, and captures attention through engaging video content. All this leads to…more conversions.
The difference between Instantly and Smartlead comes down to the balance between volume and personalization. Both platforms can be effective depending on your needs, but they still operate within the limits of text-based communication. In 2024, where short-form video content is consumed until people become blind, MailMoo’s personalized video service offers a unique advantage that truly elevate the way your company does cold outreach.
Consider integrating MailMoo’s personalized video into your outreach strategy. Or at least try it out by creating an account today. Now that you have all the missing pieces of your email marketing puzzle, we can promise you that the enjoyment of doing cold outreach is now back (if it was ever enjoyable in the first place, though).
