Just like any other type of direct marketing, relevancy is the key to email marketing. Today’s email marketing software and platforms are making it easier for you to send relevant sales messages in a personalized and targeted ways that can help support consistency to your company’s marketing plan.
For customer acquisition and retention, email marketing is a powerful tool in your marketing kit. And like other digital and offline channels, you’ll want to build testing into your email marketing process. Subject lines and the days that you send and the times you send can all impact your open rates and engagement.
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Email marketing software levels the playing for small businesses who pitted against larger companies with bigger ad spends. Having professional-looking email marketing campaigns that can be managed by someone who isn’t a coder or graphic designer is within reach for small business owners or marketers.
When evaluating your goals and resources, consider email marketing software based on affordability, the technical support provided, simplicity in building and managing your lists, intuitive design, campaign automation and integration with your other digital properties.
Here are our picks for best email marketing software tools and platforms with a few of their key features and benefits highlighted:
GetResponse gives you all the tools to create the right type of mail, depending on what your goals are. Some marketers benefit from one-time broadcasts while others appreciate the ability to automate their emails that are action-based or “triggered,” while still others are using transactional emails with regularity. With a paid add-on, you can use SMTP-triggered emails to send receipts and reminders.
There are no special skills needed to use the drag-and-drop creator to build your own email designs that align with your brand’s other marketing channels or campaigns. Or you can access a library of free, pre-designed templates to get you going quickly or as inspiration.
Pricing is tiered and based on list size, beginning with:
Basic $15/mo. for 1,000 contacts and includes:
Plus $49/mo. for 1,000 contacts
Includes everything in Basic plus:
Professional $99/mo. for 1,000 contacts
Includes everything in Plus and more:
For an advanced email marketing platform, we recommend trying GetReponse.
ActiveCampaign is a robust platform for email marketing, marketing automation and CRM functionality that can professionalize the customer acquisition, customer retention and customer lifecycle activities for businesses of all sizes.
Even if your focus is just email marketing, ActiveCampaign takes your outreach to the next level with features like broadcast emails, triggered emails, targeted emails, scheduled emails and more.
Pricing plans are based on the volume of contacts that you have. There are no set-up fees, and packages are paid yearly (USD). Pricing packages start at:
With a renewed focus across many industry types on customer experience, ActiveCampaign enables your organization to automate your email marketing to shift your time to high-value customer-eccentric activities to drive growth.
Constant Contact is a user-friendly platform that makes list upload, list building, email design and real-time email tracking tools easy for novices. Articles, video tutorials, and QuickStart Guides make getting started less daunting while live support is a click or a call away. Seasoned email marketers will appreciate more sophisticated functionality like email marketing for eCommerce, email marketing automation, surveys, coupons, and pop-up forms.
Some features to enhance your customer contact plan include:
Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have:
*List sizes over 10,000 contacts are automatically upgraded to an Email Plus plan.
ConvertKit is the “extra set of hands” every business needs to grow and nurture their audiences. And you don’t have to have any design chops to deploy professional-looking emails. Simply create your branded experience and include buttons, images and videos through ConvertKit’s streamlined interface. ConvertKit boasts a 98% delivery rate based on their reputation with email providers.
Pricing is based on the number of contacts you have, beginning with:
Free for up to 1,000 subscribers w/ some features including:
Creator starting at $29/mo. for up to 1,000 subscribers and includes the free features plus:
Creator Pro starting at $59/mo. for up to 1,000 subscribers includes all of Creators features as well as:
Mailchimp and its drag-and-drop email editor can help you stand out in an inbox with ease. And with automated campaigns, Mailchimp customers report massive increases in open rates and click rates, compared to bulk email. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Customers voted MailChimp first place in best usability among All-in-One Marketing platforms on TrustRadius.
Plan pricing starts at:
*If your plan’s contact or email send limit is exceeded, you will be charged for overages (except for Free plans, where sending will be paused until the next monthly plan cycle).
Moosend features more than 40 free, responsive email templates to get you started with features for segmentation and personalization, like conditional copy blocks and product recommendations. Unsure of the images you’d like to include? Moosend’s image picker simplifies your search by integrating with stock photos, Google Drive, Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram, and Giphy.
Pricing is tiered, based on the number of contacts:
Free
Pro Starting at $8/mo. for 1,500 contacts
Enterprise Custom Plan
Omnisend is a great choice if you have more than one brand or multiple eCommerce stores as you can easily “toggle” between templates and workflows for faster setup. With a full library of pre-designed templates, you can easily customize to find your brands look and feel, and the reuse for your next campaign. Email marketing is just one feature of this platform that includes marketing automation and SMS marketing and AI-driven customer analytics.
Pick the pricing level that matches your email marketing plan:
Free Trial Up to 15,000 emails/mo.
Includes:
Standard $16/mo. 15,000 emails/mo.
Includes everything in FREE, plus:
Pro $99/mo. 15,000 emials/mo and $99 in free SMS credits/mo.
Includes everything in STANDARD, plus:
Campaign Monitor has some great, easy-to-use tools for hyper-targeted emails, including personalization, that drives more engagement. Still need to build an audience and lists? You’re not alone. Customer data is gold but there’s always a need to continue to fill your pipeline of buyers. Use Campaign Monitor’s signup forms to grow your email list with seamless integration to hundreds of pre-built apps or your website and CRM. Transactional emails are simply part of doing business for many, and with Campaign Monitor you can turn bread-and-butter transactions into branded and optimized outreach just like your marketing emails.
Pricing is tiered, and starts at the following rates for up to 500 contacts:
Basic: $9/mo.
Unlimited: $29/mo.
All the basic features plus:
Premier $149/mo.
All the features of the Unlimited Plan plus:
Do you just want to send emails occasionally? You can also pay per campaign, instead of a monthly subscription for $5 per campaign/1 cent per recipient.
If your company is a nonprofit, Campaign Monitor offers a 15% discount.
Pair the ease and convenience of a drag-and-drop design-builder with unlimited lists and contacts, and you have the basic ingredients for an email strategy that delivers with SendInBlue. You can segment your contacts based on attributes that you determine, like geography, past purchases, or sign-ups, and adapt your outreach plan or messaging with conditional content that only displays to those you select.
All plans come with unlimited contact storage and are based on monthly email volume.
Free
Lite – Beginning at $35/mo. for 10,000 emails
Premium – Beginning at $65/mo. for 20,000 emails
Learn more about SendInBlue, including transaction email, signup forms and landing pages.
Benchmark email marketing tools are designed to be welcoming to an entry-level email coordinator up through a skilled HTML coder who knows exactly what they want and how to code it. Those looking for more a more customizable option will appreciate the code editor that gives you a live preview with every line of code.
Pricing is tiered and is based on the number of contacts. Package pricing begins at the following levels for 500 contacts:
Basic Email Marketing – $0 /mo. (250 emails/mo.)
Pro – $13/mo. Perfect for small to mid-size businesses
For a custom solution, you can contact Benchmark’s Sales Team for additional features like:
Pabbly gives you delivery options: send with Pabbly or connect with more than 50 SMTPs for delivering your emails. There are no connection limits. Pabbly also handles bounce and spam issues for all popular SMTPs. All plans support full-on marketing automation for those looking to take their CX and sales planning to the next level.
Email campaigns can be built in a matter of minutes. At first, there is a 500 email per day sending limit which increases as you start sending emails.
Pricing plans are based on the number of subscribers:
All features are available with every plan:
Mailerlite has a host of features that are ideal for marketers and business owners who are short on time but have a goal to grow their company through engaged customers.
You can get acquainted with Mailerlite with a free account for up to 1,000 subscribers and sending up to 12,000 emails/month. The available featured are limited.
Standard pricing
Mailgen offers hundreds of pre-designed email templates that can get you on your way to reaching the inboxes (and minds) of your most valuable customers and contacts. You enjoy full integration with your blog, eCommerce site or CRM. A convenient feature is a multi-use account that gives everyone on your team permission-based access with your account owner in full control.
Mailgen offers pay-as-you-go and monthly plans. Plan pricing begins at 500 subscribers:
Across every plan, you get:
A free trial gives you full access to the Mailgen platform with 100 free emails.
Hubspot offers many facets to any marketing imitative, but their Email Marketing Tools are feature rich and easy to use. Specifically designed for marketing professionals, you can create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.
Develop email campaigns that look professionally designed and display perfectly across any device with an easy-to-use drag and drop editor. The editor allows you to customize your layout, add calls-to-action and images, and modify the email content and colors to match your branding. Get started with one of their goal-based email templates, or choose from dozens of other templates already available in the marketplace that are proven to convert your customers.
Free
Access to Hubspot’s Free Tools
Starter beginnnig at $45/mo. for 1,000 contacts
Free tools with increased limits plus:
Professional starting at $800/mo. for 2,000 contacts
Includes Starter features plus:
Enterprise starting at $3,200/mo. for 10,000 contacts
Includes Professional features plus:
It’s no surprise that your customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from you when you connect with them on multiple channels. Moonmail achieves this by offering an all-in-one platform for email marketing, SMS, voice, What’sApp, FB Messenger, and more.
By connecting on multiple channels you are likely to see the following benefits:
Lite $44/mo.
Starter 186/mo.
Professional $374/mo.
Enterprise for high volume plans
Email marketing is the most effective marketing channel available. The business benefits are limitless and will only grow in the future. Keep these email marketing best practices in mind, and you’ll be able to set some higher sales targets.
To use most email marketing platforms, you will be required to have a professional email address. This also means that if you don’t already have a domain name you will need to purchase one and connect it to an email service provider.
It’s all about personalization! A reader is much more likely to open an email from you if you address them by name. This helps to grab their attention, and it also helps to build a personal relationship with the reader.
You may be tempted to speed up your list-building efforts by purchasing an email list, but doing so will result in poor email results and may harm your mailing reputation for a long time. If you send to a purchased list of unused contacts, you will see higher bounce rates and overall campaign stats that are likely to be underwhelming because the majority of the list is likely to be undeliverable.
People, no matter what they say, do judge emails based on their subject lines. While they may appear to be a minor component of your message, they are one of the first impressions you make on your email recipients. They’re also a marketer’s ticket to stand out in a crowded inbox. Do you want your email content to be read, opened, and clicked? Everything starts with the subject line. Improve the readability of your emails by changing the subject lines.
If your emails are going to spam, ensure that you are following these recommendations.
With so many options, it’s best to go into your own research knowing what’s critical for your organization: price, technical support, simplicity, automation or the ability to grow into and use a full marketing automation platform.
Our final recommendations are:
Last updated on by Joshua Holdeman
