Sending out marketing emails has been a hugely successful strategy for many small businesses. However, without the right software, this important part of your business can be very time consuming and expensive. That’s why today I’m going to help you find the best email marketing software for beginners.
With the internet becoming an integral part of business operations, email marketing has become even more important. Email marketing is a great way to create awareness about your company and products, entertain your customers, build relationships with prospective clients and finally let them know about any upcoming events or promotions that you may have.
This is a list of the best email marketing software for beginners. Scout out different tools and features to find an email marketing platform that fits your business needs. In this article, I’ll review the top email marketing software for beginners.
Email marketing software can help you grow your email list, nurture leads and convert them into customers. In this article we take a look at the best email marketing tools for beginners and how to get started with each.
What Are Some Email Marketing Best Practices?
Email marketing isn’t as simple as writing a message and sending it to a list of contacts. There are a lot of email marketing best practices to follow and email marketing industry benchmarks to hit.
Here are some of the top email marketing best practices to be successful this year:
1. Do Not Use Purchased Email Lists.
Email marketing is so effective because people want to engage with your business and receive your message. Buying email lists takes away this trust by spamming their inbox with something they don’t want.
And the penalties for not following these rules are severe. According to Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), you can be fined up to $16,000 per incorrect email under the CAN-SPAM Act.
This means that hitting the spam folder would be the least of your worries.
The health of your email campaigns depends on a healthy open rate. If you are interacting with a purchased list, you’re bound to have super-low open rates, spam complaints, and can even be blacklisted.
With the recent General Data Protection Guarantee (GDPR) rollout, it bears repeating – never purchase email lists. You should also clean your email list regularly to ensure your contacts are up to date.
2. Personalize Content with Merge Tags.
An email titled, “Dear {first name}” is much more personal than “Dear Member.” Any piece of data that you collect from your email subscribers should be used to personalize the content they receive.
If the item fits in a column within a CSV file next to their email address, a merge tag can fire. A merge tag is a piece of ESP-specific code that allows you to place unique pieces of user data from your email list into your emails.
First and last names are the most popular merge tags at an email marketer’s disposal. Plus, you can use other cards like company name, date of the previous visit, the number of emails opened, products purchased, or information from a survey.
Using merge tags in your initial greeting is a great place to start making your email more personal.
3. Write Compelling Subject Lines.
Email subject lines should be concise, compelling, and create a sense of urgency while providing enough information, so the user knows what they’re opening. Sound confusing? Don’t worry – it isn’t.
Subject lines should be between 30 and 50 characters (many email providers cut off subject lines more extended than that). They should cut through the noise and entice users to act. The use of numbers and symbols, well-thought-out emojis, and exciting offers and discounts will increase your open rates.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most recognized and celebrated email marketing service platforms. This top-rated email service is suitable for freelancers, those who manage small-to-medium businesses and brands, and budget-conscious startups.
The interface is straightforward. The service (at least in its basic version) is free and offers a wide variety of integrations with other platforms including Facebook and WordPress.
Mailchimp does require users to double-confirm their registration (on the website and via email), This can be annoying to many users, resulting in inevitably reducing email lists. This can turn down many potential subscribers, but it dramatically lowers the percentage of rejected emails and prevents email delivery servers from potentially being blacklisted.
Benchmark Email
Free Plan: Up to 2,000 subscribers and 14,000 emails per month
Paid plans: Start at $13.99 per month
Benchmark Email allows you to send beautiful, responsive campaigns in minutes with customizable email templates. The free starter plan allows you to send email campaigns to up to 2,000 of your subscribers. All paid plans include Automation Pro and personal contact follow-up tools (CRM).The free plan includes a wide range of email features, including the drop and drag editor, responsive templates, and multiple forms, campaigns, reports, and integrations. You do need a paid plan, however, if you want to engage in A/B testing and targeted emailing. All plans with 2,500 subscribers and above include 133 features.
Mailgun
Free Plans: Includes up to 5,000 emails per month and a max of 5 Authorized Recipients.
Paid Plans: Mailgun’s paid plans start at $35 per month. There’s also a pay-as-you-go flex plan.
Mailgun is an email marketing and automation software built with developers in mind. The platform doesn’t include a drag-and-drop interface, so if you’re a user with limited technical skill this might not be the email marketing service for you. But, since this platform was built for developers, you’ll get complete flexibility so you can build your campaigns and emails exactly how you want them. Mailgun includes a reliable API-first architecture and a powerful sending infrastructure with advanced email validation so your transactional emails can go out in bulk and you don’t have to worry that they’ll bounce back or end up in the spam folder. Mailgun also has robust reporting, tracking, and analytics tools so you can stay on top of how your email campaigns are performing.
TinyLetter
Free Plans: TinyLetter is free
Paid Plans: No paid plans; you can sign up with TinyLetter creator Mailchimp, though.
TinyLetter is entirely free. You can have up to 5,000 contacts—any more and they recommend signing up for Mailchimp. With TinyLetter you can create forms to let people sign up for your email newsletter, complete with a custom background and some branding, but that’s all you get for customization. The TinyLetter email editor is simple and similar to Medium’s post editing tool. You simply type out your thoughts, add a bit of formatting, and send it off. You’ll get stats on how many people opened each of your emails, but that’s all. If you’re looking for a simple solution, this is as simple as it gets.
Sendicate
Free Plans: Sendicate is free up to 500 subscribers and 1,000 emails per month.
Paid Plans: Sendicate’s paid plans start at $9 per month.
Sendicate is almost as easy to use as TinyLetter, but comes with a few more customization tools. You can change the layout of your emails using columns, headlines, and image or video blocks. You can also add sections to create longer emails. Once you’re done, preview your email in one of Sendicate’s templates.
VerticalResponse
Free Plans: Includes up to 300 contacts and 4,000 emails per month.
Paid Plans: Pricing starts at $11 per month.
VerticalResponse lets you send emails and share them on Facebook and Twitter, too. This helps you build an audience through email and social media with customizable emails and landing pages. Designing emails is easy with pre-built sections for galleries, quotes, coupons, and more. Plus, you can schedule social media posts and emails to go out when you want.
CleverReach
Free Plan/Trial: 1,000 emails/month for 250 subscribers
Best for: B2B, SMBs, eCommerce
Unique feature: Reminder emails and autoresponders
CleverReach is among those free email marketing services that started as something else. In this case, the tool is a technology service provider for email marketing that has come to be one of the free email marketing tools to talk about.
But is CleverReach as clever as it claims to be when it comes to its free email tools? Well, CleverReach earns points for its clean and straightforward UI and short learning curve. While the drag-n-drop builder is fairly easy to use, there’s still some room for improvement.
The free tool also allows you to connect your CMS, CRM, and shop systems via the CleverReach Plugins. Among others, you can benefit from the service’s reminder emails to give your webinars and other reminder-needing events a boost.
CleverReach Features
- Plugins such as Shopware, WordPress, and Salesforce
- View unsubscribes from contact list
- Import HTML campaign
- Automated reminder emails
CleverReach Pricing
CleverReach’s free plan is great for beginners who don’t need many features. Paid plans start at $20, giving you access to autoresponders, removing ads, and lifting your email marketing automation limitations.
Pepipost
Free Plans: You can send up to 30,000 emails for 30 days for free. After that, you’re limited to 100 emails per day on the free plan.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $17.50/month for up to 150,000 emails per month when paid annually.
Pepipost is an integrative SMTP relay service that provides fast email delivery, getting your emails to the intended recipients in under three seconds. After you’ve sent your emails, you can check the dashboard for real-time updates on your email campaign’s performance. You’ll be able to see the number of deliveries, opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces. Pepipost uses AI-powered servers to optimize your emails based on the metrics for the type of email. So, using the predictive engagement features will automatically prioritize delivery to users who are most likely to engage with your email campaigns.
The free version of Pepipost gives you the freedom to store an unlimited number of contacts. In the first month of your free plan, you can send up to 30,000 emails. After that, you’ll be limited to 100 emails per day on the free plan.
Kickbox
Free Plans: Your first 100 email addresses are free.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $5/month for up to 500 email addresses.
Kickbox is an integrative email verification software you can use to make sure that your emails are getting where they’re supposed to go. When your emails are verified, it’s less likely that email providers will mark your emails as spam. This means better deliverability for your emails. Kickbox will go through your email list to ensure that the recipients are real and not outdated, saving you time and money with a more accurate email list.
YMLP
Free Plans: YMLP is free for up to 1,000 contacts.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $3.75 per month for unlimited contacts and additional features.
YMLP (Your Mailinglist Provider) is a bare-bones free email marketing tool. You’ll need to have an understanding of HTML (or have someone around who does) to get the most from this tool. You can also use MS Publisher to create your emails and YMLP does have some email templates available in its builder.
This tool is surprisingly full of features, from scheduling emails to social media integrations; it just takes some work to get it to, well, work. It’s not a straightforward software and feels a bit clunky and outdated. However, if you can get past the late-90s feels of the software, this could be an excellent email marketing tool for you.
VerticalResponse
Free Plans: VerticalResponse no longer has a “forever free” plan, but it does offer a 60-day trial that should be more than enough to let you know if this is the email marketing tool for you.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $11 per month and are based on the size of your email list.
VerticalResponse offers several nice features even for the pared-down 60-day free trial. It has an easy to use email editor with an HTML editor, customizable mobile templates, and access to a stock image library. VerticalResponse also includes contact list management, basic reports and analytics, automated email, Facebook and Twitter sharing, customizable popup forms, and more.
Revue
Free Plans: Revue’s free plan lets you send emails to up to 50 subscribers as well as monetize your newsletter with a paid version.
Paid Plans: Paid plans start at $4.50 per month for up to 200 subscribers when paid annually.
Revue is one of the more interesting free email marketing tools we’ve found. It acts as a curation tool so you can create a newsletter that includes everything you’ve published or read to share with your email list. You can save articles and videos with the Revue browser extension or connect your Twitter account, RSS feed, or another source to pull in the content you’ve already shared.
Once you’re ready to send your email, Revue will show you each of the items you’ve saved in your sidebar. You then simply drag and drop them into your email, customizing the descriptions, and adding sections and dividers to organize your email.
What to Look For in A Good Email Marketing Platform
There are around 4.6 billion active email users in the world. And on average, around 320 billion emails are sent out every day. That means each person receives about 69 emails every day including business, digital marketing, and spam mails.
It’s not easy to stand out in a crowded inbox. That’s why it’s so important to pick the right email service that will give you all the tools you need to make your campaigns a success.
When shopping for an email marketing service, here’s what we suggest keeping an eye out for:
- Beautiful templates to create engaging emails
- Customization options and an email builder that’s easy to use
- Options to create drip series and triggered emails to automate processes
- Support for bulk and broadcast emails
- High deliverability rate so emails go to the inbox and not the spam folder
- Contact segmentation to engage with subscribers based on what they are interested in
- Analytics and performance tracking to improve results
- Email support and phone support
These platforms will give you a robust infrastructure that makes sure emails will hit the subscriber’s inbox and not the spam folder.
Conclusion
Small and medium businesses use email marketing software to stay connected with their customers and prospects. However, numerous free and commercial email marketing tools are available that can help you create the best marketing campaigns to promote your products or services. The key to choosing the ideal email marketing software for your business is to ensure that they will work in sync with your current brand identity, web development platform and CRM system.
One of the best things about email marketing is that it’s so easy to get targeted traffic to your website with it. To do this, you simply have to select a popular and trusted email marketing platform for free and sign up for their income generating program.