Online marketing can be an exhaustive part of running an e-commerce business, but with a high ROI—$57.25 for every dollar spent according to the Direct Marketing Association— it makes sense to do it.

When it comes to marketing, one of the biggest challenges site owners face is figuring out which engagement tools to use. Many platforms offer just e-mail marketing tools, leaving out the necessary tools to help you better engage customers with community building and social media marketing. For many, it means investing in multiple products—often from different vendors —to cover all aspects of online marketing.

Connecticut-based eWay Direct Inc., a provider of e-mail marketing tools and services, hopes to ease the pain of online marketing for e-commerce businesses.

The company recently launched its new Direct Connect 4.0 platform providing Web-based businesses with access to a more complete set of services and tools for online marketing, including e-mail marketing, Web site re-engagement and social media tools—all from within a single platform.

EWay Direct’s Chief Revenue Officer, Marty Donner, believes that an all-in-one solution is important for today’s busy Web-based business owners.

“When all the tools are built in to a single platform it saves business owners time as it carries fewer IT and integration requirements,” he said. “Plus you also benefit from not having to gather customer data from multiple sources.”

Direct Connect 4.0: What’s Inside

eWay’s Direct Connect 4.0 platform offers  a number of integrated Internet-based applications to create a single online-marketing platform for Web-based businesses.

The e-mail marketing solution offers industry-standard features such as A/B split testing, dynamic list creation, auto-responders and other features you need to deliver your marketing campaigns.  The platform also includes several unique tools for auditing inbox delivery and priority e-mail handling for your best subscribers.

When it comes to e-mail marketing, your current customer's friends are really your next best customers. With this in mind, one of the new features in the suite, FriendsFirst, can help you control the messages your subscribers forward to friends.

Often e-mail forwarding can cause broken images and links in the message, but FriendsFirst allows for perfect delivery of forwarded messages, plus you can track open rates and collect data from any e-mail forwarded on by your subscribers.

“Most business find open rates higher on forwarded messages simply because it is a friend and not the brand sending the message.” said Donner, “This is why it is so important to control and track e-mail forwards and also to ensure that any forwarded messages remain intact with no broken images or links.”

Web site re-engagement is another powerful tool in the Direct Connect 4.0 platform.  When a subscriber clicks an e-mail link to your site, and browses without making a purchase, for example, the re-engagement tool will send additional information to the subscriber based on what was of interest to him or her.

Direct Connect 4.0 also lets Web businesses leverage social media in branded and controlled communities. According to Donner, using social media tools can help you build better relationships with your customers, increase sales and decrease acquisition costs. The social media tools within the platform include branded message boards, feedback collection, and also private social networks so you can offer customers exclusive content and access to your brand and promotions.

Pricing and Availability

Direct Connect 4.0 is available now, and includes a full suite of tools for e-mail marketing, audited inbox delivery, priority e-mail, widgets, social media, Web site re-engagement, search marketing and Friends First.  While eWayDirect does not have a public rate card, pricing for Direct Connect 4.0 is based on the number of messages deployed per month on a CPM-basis, with volume discounts offered.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.