An email is an important tool for digital marketers, contempt the proliferation of new channels. Beyond direct advertising, email gives marketers exclusive opportunities to engross customers with newsletters, surveys, and singular offers. It’s a confirmed method of increasing customer gaining, holding, and appointments. But to flourish at email marketing means being strategic, and for that, you’ll need tools to help you compose, send, and track email, plus integrate email operation data with your other backend systems.
Email marketing facilities can do all that for you. Here we’ve collected the best email marketing platforms we’ve verified based on their ease of use, support, and other features. Read on for our top choices, followed by everything you need to know about selecting the right platform for your business.
What Is Email Marketing Software?
Email marketing software permits users to create, send, and track emails to their list of subscribers. Using software makes it calmer to create well-designed emails, and also permits you to see the key systems of measurements such as open rates and click-through rates. Progressive platforms allow you to automate sends based on user performance, which upsurges the likelihood of engagement since the email is more personalized to their interests.
Email marketing is an operative marketing tool for almost any industry. For example, an e-commerce store can mechanize a follow-up email if a user leaves an item in their cart, reminding them to make the purchase. A SaaS product can inspire users to demo a product and decide how obstinately to follow up based on whether the lead takes them up on their offer. While email marketing is not by any means a new technique, it has proven its efficiency year after year in industry reports.
Does CRM Software Include Email Marketing?
Some CRM software does give you the functionality to email contacts within the database. However, it does not have the healthy set of features that software devoted to email marketing will have. The email marketing tool in a CRM is really for people that just need to send the infrequent email and don’t need a design or automatic campaigns. If you want to upsurge appointments with your subscribers through automation or get more progressive reporting, then it makes sense to get a distinct email marketing software from your CRM.
What Does Email Marketing Software Typically Include?
Almost all email marketing software permits you to design emails, upload contacts, schedule email campaigns, and see data on how your emails are performing. Progressive software lets you A/B split test aspects of the email, segment your contact list based on interests, and automate emails based on how contacts interrelate with any of your marketing channels. There are also typically lead generation competencies such as putting lead forms on your site and creating landing pages to get more subscribers into the database.
How We Chose the Best Email Marketing Software
We looked at 12 email marketing software platforms before deciding on the top six. We considered price, ease of use, and functionality when determining the best options. We also aimed to get a range of options that work for different industries and business sizes, as every company will have different needs and use cases. In our review, we favored companies that offered a free-forever plan or a free trial so you can test the product’s effectiveness before committing.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the best email marketing software for mechanization because it has hundreds of pre-built mechanizations that help you engrave campaigns for each subscriber. There are help guides throughout the platform as you’re getting things set up, plus ActiveCampaign’s customer support is fast and friendly.
It has a tremendously rich feature set that goes beyond email marketing. The graphic automation builder is extremely powerful – one of the best I’ve tested. However, it has an advanced learning curve than other tools and is best suitable for more advanced users. When it comes to the core emailing functionality, you have all the features you need. For example; you can select from a selection of email templates, or design your drag-and-drop and drop editor.
You have numerous options for sending your campaign emails; one-off emails, timed campaigns, automated emails, RSS-based, A/B testing, or auto-responder. ActiveCampaign has a lot to propose in terms of contact management. You get sufficient ways to filter contacts, and a full history of how your contacts have interrelated with you – this works in sync with their site & even the following functionality. List cleaning functionality is included, which can also be done via automation arrangements.
Segmenting your email list is easy, and you have admission to broadminded functionality such as A/B testing and active content. These two features alone can help you get more opens, clicks, and conversions. You’ll find user accounts obtainable for your team, live chat, on-site messaging, custom realms, CRM & sales automation, and plenty more.
Key features:
- Visual automation builder
- Contact management
- Email templates
- Drag and drop editor
- RSS emails
- Timed campaigns
- A/B testing
- Pre-built automation sequences
- The site and event tracking
- Live chat
- CRM
Pros
- Great automation features that shorten customer interactions
- Helpful, friendly, and fast customer support
- All plan levels include data migration and execution services
- Has 870+ integrations with the most widespread software
Cons
- Learning bend can be a challenge
- The lite plan is very limited (and includes ActiveCampaign branding)
- Plans rapidly jump in price with the number of contacts
Pricing: There’s a 14-day free trial to examine the software. After that, you will need to subscribe to one of the four paid plans, which you can pay monthly or annually. The discount for paying annually varies from 15% to 40% depending on the plan. The cost of each plan also depends on how many contacts you have (nonprofits get 20% off).
Lite: $15+ per month
Plus: $70+ per month
Professional: $187+ per month
Enterprise: Contact for information
MailerLite
MailerLite is an email marketing service that has increased a lot of acceptance in recent years due to its feature-rich free plan. You get entree to a simple boundary, effective subscriber management, drag, and drop editor, and full-featured visual automation builder. You can section your subscribers, remove sedentary subscribers with a few clicks, and view subscriber activity. You can split-test your operation emails, or send emails via RSS.
The visual email builder has some nice templates included and it can be used to design emails used within your automation (paid plan required). One chiefly neat thing about MailerLite is that accounts necessitate endorsement. This stops spammers from signing up and confirms the platform preserves better email deliverability rates.
MailerLite is the calmest email marketing software to use because it has a drag-and-drop boundary that makes it fun and instinctive to generate the design you want. Easiness is at the heart of the company’s mission, which is why the software has a clean and streamlined look.
Overall, I was very overwhelmed by the simplicity of the service, given the features included.
Key features:
- Drag and drop editor
- Graphic automation builder
- Email builder
- Templates
- Subscriber organization
- Split testing
- RSS emails
- Landing page & opt-in form builder
- Transactional emails
- Website Builder
- Email voucher
Pros
- Drag-and-drop boundary makes it easy to design emails
- Free plan for up to 1,000 contacts
- Email support
- Lots of email templates to choose from
Cons
- Doesn’t contain CRM functionalities (Though it allows for integration)
- Limited incorporations
- Need to deliver a lot of company information to get an account set up
Pricing:
- Up to 1,000 contacts: $10 per month
- 1,001 to 2,500 contacts: $17 per month
- 2,501 to 5,000 contacts: $32 per month
- 5,001 to 10,000 contacts: $54 per month
MailerLite comprises all of the fundamentals for email marketing, without encumbering their system with progressive features. This makes it the faultless fit for businesses looking for a straightforward method to email marketing that they can master in days, not months.
Drip
Drip spot itself as an e-commerce CRM, and while they do that job amazingly well, they are one of the all-around best email marketing services I’ve tested. So, if you don’t run an e-commerce store, don’t let their attention on e-commerce put you off – the platform is well-suitable for a diversity of business types. Create drip email campaigns, separate broadcasts, or use their robust visual mechanization builder. One predominantly great feature is the aptitude to split tests within automation. You can send simple emails that do a good job of getting out of the elevations tab or use their visual email builder for branded emails.
They have sufficient reporting functionality obtainable. And for those of you with e-commerce sites, you’ll find e-commerce-specific reports that are useful. Even if you’re not running an e-commerce site, Drip is well worth testing out. Hands down, it’s one of my favorite email marketing platforms. And it offers outstanding email deliverability.
Drip is the best email marketing software for e-commerce businesses because of its classy workflows combined with progressive list segmentation. This combination means that subscribers obtain modified emails triggered by their shopping performances on your site and collect timely follow-ups based on how they interact with your emails.
Pros
- Simple yet powerful drip campaigns
- Easy to set up and use
- Outstanding customer support
- Sophisticated contact list segmentation
Cons
- Lacks a few key integrations
- No drag-and-drop functionality for designing templates
- Very incomplete support options.
Pricing: Drip has a 14-day free trial and has one plan that ranges from $39 to $1,899 per month contingent on how many contacts are in your account. Here are a few of the price points:
2,500 contacts: $39 per month
10,000 contacts: $154 per month
170,000 contacts: $1,899 per month
For costs above this number of contacts, it’s best to get details straight from the website. The tier upscale goes up to 170,000 contacts for $1,899 before you need to contact them for custom initiative pricing.
Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest-growing email marketing facilities in the world. It is also the easiest-to-use and beginner-friendly email marketing service. You can easily accomplish your email lists, contacts, email templates, marketing calendar, and more. Each account gives you admittance to unlimited emails, easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, a free image library, list subdivision, Facebook ads incorporation, and a powerful eCommerce incorporation for Shopify stores.
Their Email Plus accounts also come with powerful features like email automation, drip movements, surveys & polls, vouchers, online donations, and subject line A/B testing which helps you send targeted emails to exploit your open rate. Constant Contact offers supreme customer support with live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and a massive library of helpful resources. Aside from online training, they also offer in-person live seminars across the United States. This allows small business proprietors to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business like a pro.
For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact as the best email marketing service for small businesses and startups. You can induce email arrangements based on things like how receivers interrelate with your preceding emails. For example, you might choose to resend emails with an adapted subject line to contacts that don’t open them the first time. Once your campaign is up and running, real-time analytics let you see who’s opening and clicking your emails as soon as they interrelate with them. Constant Contact also gives you admittance to basic list management features. You can upload contacts from Excel, Outlook, Salesforce, or anywhere else with ease.
Another feature we liked about Continuous Contact is the survey tool. You can create surveys and polls to collect feedback from your spectators and embed them in your emails (or share them on your website) in a few clicks. In addition to all the core email marketing features, Constant Contact also gives you admittance to tools to help with other areas of your marketing operations. This comprises landing page tools, paid ad tools, SMS marketing features, social media marketing features, and more.
Pros:
- Respectable balance of affordability and features
- Ideal for small businesses
- Easy-to-use
Cons:
- Automation features are only encompassed in the advanced-priced plan
Pricing: Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial (no credit card obligatory). After that their valuing starts as low as $ 9.99 /month. WPBeginner users can use our Constant Contact coupon code to get an additional 20% off.