Email marketing software gives you the highest return on investment (ROI) among marketing channels – $38 for every $1 spent.
Plus, there are 1.5 billion active Gmail users – all of them could be potential customers for your business. Additionally, it’s the best way to retain your brand value by constantly engaging with your audience.
In this guide, I ranked and researched the best email marketing service providers to help you pick the best one for you, and save the most money.
Also, Make sure you choose the web hosting that integrates with these tools if you are just getting started. Finally, these are tools that are not industry-specific and work well with all different verticals.
So let’s get started.
What is the Best Email Marketing Software?
Choose from the best email marketing software, research reliability, template designs, price, technical support, automation, integrations, deliverability, and any additional features you need.
The best email marketing software should allow you to view analytics reports, personalize your messaging, segment your list, and design emails easily. And they should most importantly hit users’ primary inboxes.
In the end, email marketing is about sending the right user the right message at the right time.
Here are my picks for the best email marketing software and services to try this year.
1. Constant Contact
Best Email Marketing Service for Small Business (Starts at $20/month)
Constant Contact has been in the email marketing space since 1995. After becoming part of the Endurance International Group in 2015, it has only grown bigger with time.
As stated on its website, the company’s ultimate goal is to assist small businesses to navigate the power, potential, and promise of the web.
They feature 100+ modern, mobile-optimized templates to convert and engage customers, real-time analytics and reporting, and bonus features like polls, events, and coupons.
One of their most unique features is event management and the ability to manage tickets, registrations, and invitations. Email deliverability is above average and one of the highest among email service providers at over 90%.
Key Features of Constant Contact
- Provides a comprehensive image library for emails
- Drag-and-drop email editor
- Intuitive and easy-to-use drip campaigns
- Provides up to 2 GB of hosting space for the tool managing documents and images
- Intuitive Landing Page Editor
- Offers List-building tools for SMS, social media sites, and websites.
- Smart Auto-adjust of columns for emails
- Over a hundred responsive, customizable email templates.
- Provides real-time campaign tracking with a heatmap feature
- Allows you to conduct custom polls and surveys to better understand your audience.
Pricing Plans
Constant Contact offers two paid plans and their price varies according to the number of contact lists you have. The Email plan starts from $20 per month and their Email plus plan starts from $45 per month.
2. Sendinblue
Best Email Marketing Service with Automation on a Budget (Starts at $25/month)
Sendinblue is an easy-to-use email marketing service with a free plan that allows 300 email newsletter sends per day with unlimited contacts. Moreover, You can opt for their $25 per month plan that offers up to 100,000 emails and no daily sending limits if you are serious to grow your email list.
Their free platform is built for ease of use. Its simplicity allows you to easily create website opt-in forms, automated welcome emails, and clean-looking templates. They also provide CRM and live chat tools in their free plan, which includes one automation flow for up to 2,000 contacts.
Sendinblue also uses Ai and machine learning to push emails at the best time of the day to maximize engagement. You can also view real-time statistics with necessary reports that provide metrics like heat maps, deliverability, click-through rates, and open rates.
Key Features of SendinBlue
- Enables you to track your website visitors for better insights
- Offers an A/B Testing tool for you to see what works and what not
- Offers customizable CTA’s (Call to action) to increase conversions.
- Lead Scoring option to prioritize according to engagement.
- Custom Landing Page/Web Page for email signup
- 24/7 customer support
- Lead segmentation according to a specified classification
Pricing Plans
SendinBlue offers three paid plans along with a free plan to get a hang of their tool.
- Free Plan – $0 per month
- Lite Plan – Starts from $25 per month
- Premium Plan – Starts from $65 per month
- Enterprise Plan – Custom quote according to the requirement
3. Moosend
All-In-One Email Marketing Automation Tool ( Starts from $8/month)
Moosend is an email automation tool that helps you automate tasks, personalize your messages, and build your email list so that you can focus on customer relationships.
Additionally, They provide an intuitive drag-and-drop email template in their campaign builder. This tool lets you create social icons, text blocks, add images, and more emails to your emails. Plus, They have a large library of email templates with multiple layouts that are responsive on both mobile and desktop.
One of the prominent features offered by Moosend is automation. Plus, using their “Recipes” (pre-built automation templates) you can automate messages via customer loyalty, customer engagement, and upsells. Every automation has three main components – actions, control steps, and triggers. When combined, you can filter email list segments and send sequences at particular actions.
Key Features of Moosend
- Provide custom landing pages and web pages with email sign-up forms to increase conversions.
- Offer Automation templates (templates) to personalize your email experience for every customer type.
- 24/7 support via email. phone, or live chat.
- Provide a huge knowledge base to answer all your queries.
- Advanced Analytics and ROI tracking of the emails sent.
Pricing Plans
Moosend has 2 paid plans with a free option available.
- Free Plan – $0 per month
- Pro Plan – $8 per month
- Enterprise Plan – Custom quotation
So now let’s cover the basics.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a method where you use emails to promote your products or services to potential customers. Nowadays, it’s also a medium to develop relationships with your email subscribers to complete the end goal which is Sale.
Plus, email marketing is just one form of digital marketing, which also includes things like blogging, SEO, social media, search engine marketing, etc.
Before email, direct mail was a way to reach consumers in their mailbox. Email marketing strategy takes this online by sending messages to users electronically inside their inboxes.
How Do You Choose the Best Email Marketing Software?
1. Email Automation
You should make sure that the software allows you to send a sequence of emails once a user subscribes to your newsletter. This gives your users the impression that you are actively involved in sending the relevant information to them.
Plus, you should also be able to create custom triggers or events in case you want to send your subscriber’s emails at a different timeframe from the time they opted-in.
2. Excellent Deliverability
Make sure that the average deliverability rate of the emails sent from the software hovers around 80%. Plus, make sure you compare other benchmarks like DMARC to make sure that the email hits the user’s inbox.
While using aliases make sure your name is prominently visible to your email readers.
3. Pre-built Email Templates
Ensuring pre-built email templates offered by the software provider is very crucial. It not only saves time in designing but also helps you engage your audience with the right template with the right message format.
Also, check if they offer an industry-wise segmentation of the email templates. That will further save your research cost on A/B Testing involved in the success rate of the email deliverability.
4. Reporting and Analytics
The Email software provider must provide you with vital analytics like the total number of clicks, click rate, opens, open rate, bounce rate, sales, and more.
Plus, they should offer interactive charts and dashboards for you to reach a decision very quickly. Additionally, they should also export these reports to you over mail to help you keep in touch with real-time updates.
5. Opt-in Forms
Without an embedded opt-in form, you cannot capture email addresses from your audience. Make sure the email service platform provides opt-in forms that work seamlessly on both mobile and desktop devices.
They should provide you with easy-to-embed javascript or HTML so that you have the flexibility to embed it where you want to. Also, make sure you are able to customize the opt-in forms with relevant changes.
Email Marketing Software – Final Summary
This is the list of top email service providers that will help you choose the right platform for your online business this year. I will keep updating the list with other email marketing platforms available in the market.
There are a ton of great tools out there, it’s ultimately about your price point and the features that you are looking for. Focus on ease of use, template designs, deliverability, price, and unique features you need and everything will go right.
Do you like the recommended suggestions? Are there any important platforms not mentioned? Let me know in the comments.
More from Smashitbuck: Do check out my articles on graphic design software, VoIP providers, and POS software to read this year.
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