When it comes to online marketing, email can’t be ignored. People depend on their emails for multiple activities, such as shopping, registering on sites and transactions, end-user and software updates, participating in surveys, etc. You should use this medium that has been around and reliable throughout the years to connect with your customers or prospects.
Experienced email marketers know that there are a lot of email marketing tools out there. Some cheap and free, others more expensive. And sometimes, it’s hard to find the best email marketing software that fits your need and budget. That’s why we put together this list of the best email marketing platforms you should consider when starting your next email marketing campaign.
When it comes to applying best practices to email marketing, the stakes are high. No matter what your niche or goals, you need to know how to inventively apply modern communications expertise towards capturing and holding onto customers in a highly competitive landscape. The marketer is obliged to perform. It’s his or her role to increase open rates and identify new ones. But it can be hard to tell where to start, with so much information out there and so many tools that could work well together.
Email marketing software is an internet-based application that allows you to create, send and monitor emails. The email software helps you design email newsletters, share them on social media, integrate with services you already use, manage subscribers and track your results.
Typical features of email marketing software
- CONTACT DATABASE: Store information about email subscribers, leads, and customers in a centralized location. Some email marketing tools integrate with CRM software and/or other systems to automatically retrieve customer and lead data.
- MASS EMAIL DELIVERY: Send promotional and other marketing emails to a large group of recipients and ensure correct delivery.
- SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE: Give users subscribe and unsubscribe options for each email.
- CAN-SPAM COMPLIANCE: Ensure that emails don’t contain misleading headers or deceptive subject lines, and do include your business’ registered, physical address as well as a proper opt-out mechanism.
- MAILING LIST MANAGEMENT:Create email address lists and groups based on contact types. Users can send emails to the entire list or specific groups within a database, and export contact lists as CSV or XLSX files.
- TEMPLATE MANAGEMENT: Customize built-in email templates with your company’s logo/branding using a drag-and-drop editor. Users can select templates based on theme, layout, or campaign type.
- REPORTING AND ANALYTICS: Track email campaign KPIs such as delivery rates, click-to-open rates, and unsubscribe rates in charts and graphs.
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most well-known softwares in the CRM and email marketing space.
Their email marketing service is free to start, and it comes with a lot of powerful automation features designed to grow your business.
You can use their easy drag-and-drop email builder and a selection of templates to create a completely custom newsletter that matches your brand’s personality and colors.
Because of the native integration with the HubSpot CRM, you can personalize your emails for each subscriber based on things like device type, country, list membership, or any other custom information you might have on the individual subscriber.
HubSpot comes with all the powerful feature you’d expect from an enterprise level email marketing software such as send time optimization, high email deliverability, A/B testing, detailed performance analytics, marketing automation, drip campaigns, and more.
One of the main reasons why small, medium, and enterprise customers choose HubSpot is because they offer an all-in-one marketing platform that includes email marketing, CRM, automation workflows, sales tools, website builder, operation hub, and more.
Hubspot Email Marketing has a free plan, which includes the CRM and all of HubSpot’s free marketing, sales, service, and operations tools.
The free version allows you to send 2,000 emails and store an unlimited number of subscribers. You can create custom signup and popup forms, build landing pages, manage and track your online ads, and more. It has all the tools you need to get started.
If you need more advanced capabilities, then their paid plans starts at $45/month.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.
ConvertKit’s unique feature is that allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails from their emailing service.
With ConvertKit, you can easily segment subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This helps you increase conversions with automated emails that feel more personal. In marketing terms, this is called targeted email marketing.
They have all the powerful features you’d expect from a top-notch email marketing service such as a/b testing, beautiful email templates, landing page builder, smart workflows, and more.
ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.
A lot of ConvertKit features such as paid newsletters are specifically designed for creators and professional bloggers that’s why we rate them the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
They even added the ability for you to sell digital products & subscriptions from the same platform.
ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, and their pricing starts from $29/month. They also offer a 30-day refund policy.
Their Creator Pro plan also includes advanced functionality like newsletter referral system, subscriber scoring, advanced reporting, and Facebook custom audiences.
Moosend
Moosend is an affordable email marketing service for small businesses. It comes with a suite of powerful marketing automation features, email list building tools, landing pages, and more.
You can quickly create an email newsletter and customize the email design to match your brand within minutes by either choosing from their dozens of pre-made email templates or by creating a completely custom template.
The nice part about Moosend is that they offer marketing automation features to all plans including the free plan. You can use their automation workflow designer to offer a personalized subscriber journey for your newsletter subscribers.
Moosend offer detailed email analytics that shows you important metrics such as email opens, clicks, bounces, product views, purchases, custom event tracking, and even predicted demographics data.
All plans come with powerful conversion optimization features such as A/B testing, email heatmap analytics, countdown timers, conditional content, AI-engine for product recommendations, popup forms, floating bars, newsletter signup subscription forms, and more.
Moosend offers a forever free plan for up to 1,000 email subscribers and unlimited number of emails (no credit card required). After that their pricing starts at $8 per month for their Pro plan which includes landing page builder, transactional emails for eCommerce websites, team management, and more.
STREAM SEND ($19.90/MONTH)
Stream Send is developed by StreamSend Email Marketing Inc. The main features include creating and sending newsletters quickly and securely, more than 100 professional email templates, built in SPAM compliance, tracking the email campaigns, no hidden costs and yearly contracts, integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, supports both low and high volume senders etc.
AWEBER ($19/MONTH)
AWeber app is developed by AWeber Communications. The main features include creating and sending professional marketing newsletters, great looking signup forms, creating and managing segment of subscribers, autoresponder, over 600 email templates, tracking email campaigns, integration with third party applications, creating emails automatically from your blog posts, email deliverability rate, templates for signup forms etc.
MAILERLITE (FREE FOR 1,000 USERS)
MailerLite is an affordable app for email marketing. The main features include creating and sending professional newsletters using drag and drop editor, mobile friendly newsletters, managing subscribers by segmenting them, tracking the email campaigns and generating reports, comprehensive list management etc. The app is so simple even a person without knowledge in HTML or design skills can use it.
ICONTACT ($14/MONTH)
iContact email marketing app is developed by iContact LLC. The main features include creating and sending newsletters using easy-to-use tools,over 100 well designed email templates,simple message builder for adding text, links, images etc, messagecoder for HTML pro,spam checker, adding signup forms, tracking the email campaigns and newsletters, accurate delivery of the mail, autoresponders, hosting images, archiving messages, split testing, generating reports from email campaigns, integration with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc.
Omnisend – Best Omnichannel Email Marketing Platform
- PRICE STARTS AT $0
- TAILOR-MADE FOR ECOMMERCE BUSINESSES
- PRE-BUILT AUTOMATIONS
- CROSS-CHANNEL SALES TRACKING
Omnisend is an easy-to-use email marketing solution that’s tailor-made for ecommerce sites. They offer multiple features such as automated email and SMS messaging in order to convert leads into customers.
They do this by going a step further than most, combining text messages, web browser push notifications, email marketing, Google Customer Match, and Facebook ad retargeting to ensure your connect with the most customers as possible.
All of their channels allow for segmented campaigns. That means you’ll be able to target exactly the customer you need to for your product or services.
They also have pre-built automations for actions your customer might take such as cart abandonment emails/messages, along with welcome emails/messages.
Their library of themed drag-and-drop templates makes creating gorgeous, on-brand emails simple.
Their annual plans and prices are based on how many contacts you have. Below are what it’ll look like based on 500 contacts:
Free — $0
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Omnisend-branded email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
Standard — $16 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
Pro — $99 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- $80 in free SMS credits / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
Enterprise — Custom pricing
- Unlimited emails
- Free SMS credits
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
- Email migration
- Dedicated account manager
- Deliverability support
- Custom IP address
Remember: This is based on a contact list of 500. If you have more, the prices will go up.
I highly recommend at least the Standard plan. Having unbranded emails alone is worth the cost and you’ll also get access to their email and SMS automation tools. The 24/7 email and chat support is a must-have too.
DOTMAILER
dotMailer app is developed by dotDigitalGroup PLC. The main features include creating and sending newsletters using drag and drop campaign editor,adding dynamic content to the campaign, optimizing templates for mobile, personalizing the content of the email, embedding online surveys with the campaign, adding trackable buttons for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, landing page builder, editing HTML code in the templates and customizing it, tracking the email campaigns and creating reports based on them etc. Pricing structures are available for small as well as medium businesses.
The cost of email marketing software
Most of the products in the market are priced on a “per month” basis with a monthly limit on subscriber or email number, and can be broken down into three pricing tiers based on their STARTING PRICE:
PRICE RANGES:
- $0-$10
- $10-$20
- $20+
*The pricing included in this list is for the entry-level/lowest priced offering that was found on vendor websites on August 16, 2018. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.
The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most email marketing platforms. Enterprise or premium plans that are priced higher than basic plans often include additional features such as unlimited emails, an analytics dashboard, multivariate testing, and advanced link tracking.
Conclusion
Choosing the right email marketing service, you have to pay attention to all the features and offerings that are included in the system. Some key factors to consider are: functionality, template library, support, reporting, integration with other programs and WordPress email lists plugins.
Email Marketing Software has become a common practice in the marketing strategy these days. The reason of its success is the ability to reach directly to the customers and stay in contact with them. Even you can create an email marketing software free download.