Email marketing these days offers a variety of opportunities. You can’t use just any email creation platform or email marketing tool. It has to offer flexibility, creativity, and the technology to put your campaigns at the top of the inbox. To help you make the right decision, take a look at some of my favorite email tools.
One of the easiest ways to market your products and services is by using email marketing tools. For years, many marketers have relied on existing email marketing platforms for their email campaigns. But in recent years, more software providers have been offering free online tools that allow you to create professional-looking emails. It’s never been easier to get started with email marketing — and if you want to find the best email marketing tools, you’ll definitely want to keep reading.
We have compiled the best email marketing softwares available in the market for 2021. We have tested each email marketing platform below and summarized our experiences making it easier for you to make an informed decision on which platform is best for your business
Email marketing has been proven to enhance customer engagement with your business and encourage them to either spend more or stay longer with you. But how are you going to do that without the right software? With the right software (see below), you can improve your audience reach and performance of email marketing campaigns.
What Is an Email Marketing Service?
Wondering to yourself how can I send bulk emails? The answer is with an email marketing service.
An email marketing service is a software that lets you send messages from yourself or your business to potential customers and current customers, with the ultimate goal (for most) of growing your income. Using iCloud mail, Yahoo Mail, or AOL mail? You’ll want to step up your game and start using ad-free solutions with a custom domain – which you can do with every service on this list.
So simply put, you send marketing emails with it. Email marketing tools help you promote your services or products through email — just one segment of internet and digital marketing.
While a lead generation form helps you collect emails and generate more leads, an email marketing tool helps you get your message straight into the inbox of those people.
HubSpot.
Best Email Marketing Software for Marketers (Free – $50/month)
Adam’s Take
Are you looking for a combination of marketing power that’s easy to use? In that case, my pick would be Hubspot, as it provides the right mix of both, allowing you to serve your customers with excellent experiences that will enable your business to scale. With various hubs for sales, marketing and operations, you will find all the tools you need for your business.8.5out of 10
Best For
Email Integration
Price
$45/mo-$3200/mo
Annual Discount
Yes – Save 10%
Promotion
HubSpot is the most integrated marketing package on the market. Using their email marketing software is one of the easiest ways to design, optimize, and send fantastic looking emails. They provide a ton of custom features and you can pick and plan and upgrade whether you’re a small business or large enterprise.
When creating an email, you either use one of their pre-made email templates or start from scratch. These templates allow you to add text, images, buttons, dividers, and all different kinds of assets and layouts.
I found their email editor the easiest to use on the market. It’s much faster and more user-friendly than other tools on this list:
Once you’re happy with your email design, preview it based on different recipients, devices, or email clients like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Office 365.
This tool is super useful. Email subject lines, preview text, and the content itself can look very different based on the end user’s email client. These previews ensure your emails look great in any inbox.
Personalization is another strength with HubSpot. Like standard tools, you personalize content based on common merge tags like the recipient’s first name. HubSpot takes it a step further.
You can also personalize content based on a user’s device, list segment, and geographic location. Plus, you can A/B test your subject lines and content to make sure you maximize your email open rates and click rates.
Next, when you’re ready to hit send and publish your email, you can use their Smart Send functionality. This feature allows you to adjust your send time to maximize engagement.
After sending your email, it’s time to view your metrics. The HubSpot analytics dashboard gives you data on your opens and clicks, plus unique information on the amount of time spend viewing your email.
Viewing whether subscribers Read, Skimmed, or Glanced at your email is one of the best reporting tools to observe how engaging your email content is:
For example, you may see that subscribers are only glancing at your emails for a short time. This data helps you know which types of email content need to be improved.
Consistently hitting users’ inboxes is another benefit with HubSpot. They have a healthy 99% email deliverability rate. These substantial numbers are due to proper domain validation settings with DKIM and SPF records, plus the ability to thoroughly preview and test emails.
The main reason that HubSpot is #1 on my list is that their email marketing platform is just one aspect of their product. The real benefits come with their Marketing Hub Starter Package.
This full marketing platform includes email marketing and everything else to align your marketing and sales efforts:
- Full-featured CRM
- Automated sequences
- Mobile optimization
- Personal calendar to schedule appointments
- Gmail extensions to track email sends and automate outreach
- Form builders
- Inbound lead, email, and ad analytics
- Phone and email support
HubSpot is my #3 pick for the best email marketing software for one simple reason: It perfectly aligns your inbound and outbound marketing in the most efficient way possible.
Pricing:
I recommend you get started for free, then upgrade to their Marketing Hub Starter Package for $50/month.
Sendinblue.
Best Email Marketing Service with Automation on a Budget ($25/month)
Adam’s Take
Whether you want to speak to your clients over email, SMS, or chat, Sendinblue allows you to communicate in the best way possible. If you’re interested in getting in touch with your list using multiple methods, I suggest you check out Sendinblue.8.3out of 10
Best For
Email Automation
Price
$0/mo-$65/mo
Annual Discount
No
Promotion
Sendinblue is an easy to use email marketing service with a free plan that allows unlimited contacts, and 300 email newsletter sends per day. If you’re serious about growing your list, you can use their Lite plan which starts at $20/month and allows up to 40,000 sends per month and no daily sending limit.
Their free platform is all built on ease of use. Its simplicity allows you to easily create clean-looking templates, automated welcome emails, and website opt-in forms. They also offer live chat and CRM in their free plan, which includes one automation workflow for up to 2,000 contacts.
Sendinblue also uses machine learning and AI to send 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 open rates, click-through rates, deliverability, and heat maps.
One of their best features is their email automation workflows. These allow you to set triggers and put your subscribers through custom workflows based on actions they take on your website and in the funnel:
These automated triggers create actions like sending emails and SMS messages, segmenting your contacts into separate lists, and updating their information in your database.
Pricing:
If you want advanced email marketing automation software on a budget, you can get started with their Lite Plan for $25/month.
Moosend.
Excellent All-In-One Email Marketing Automation Tool (Free – $8+/month based on list size)
Adam’s Take
I highly recommend Moosend if you want to send custom emails that look great on any device. With a drag and drop email client that’s easy to use, list segmentation tools, and in-depth data analytics, Moosend allows your business to sell itself.7.9out of 10
Best For
Email Personalization
Price
$9/mo-Custom plans
Annual Discount
Yes – Save 22%
Promotion
Moosend is an email automation tool that helps you build your email list, personalize your messages, and automate tasks so you can focus on customer relationships.
They have intuitive drag-and-drop email templates in their campaign builder. This tool lets you add images, text blocks, social icons, and more to your emails. They have a large library of email templates with different layouts that are responsive and look great on desktop or mobile.
The area that Moosend stands out is the automation features. Using their “Recipes” (pre-built automation templates), you can automate messages via upsells, customer engagement, and customer loyalty. Every automation has three main components: the triggers, control steps, and actions. When you combine all three, you can filter email list segments and send sequences when your specified actions occur.
Some other key Moosend features include:
- Landing Page Builder Tools: Create custom webpages with email sign-up forms to increase conversions.
- Automation Workflows: These templates let you personalize your emails and nurture customer relationships with ease.
- Custom Opt-In Forms: You can design and create custom forms to let visitors subscribe to your email list.
- List Segmentation: Segment your list based on customer behavior like engagement metrics, abandoned cart emails, and more.
- Reporting Tools: Their analytics tools provide a bird’s eye view of all of your important email metrics.
- Customer Support: Each paid plan provides phone support. Custom enterprise plans all provide an account manager and support via email, phone, and live chat. They also have video tutorials and a huge knowledge base to answer your questions.
Pricing:
The pricing for Moosend is based on the number of subscribers in your email list. They provide a free plan for users with under 1,000 subscribers and includes sign-up forms, reporting, and the ability to send unlimited emails.
Moosend paid plans begin at $8 per month and scale up with the number of subscribers. Every paid plan comes with access to transactional emails, page builders, and SMTP servers. Their enterprise plans provide migration and onboarding support, and Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).
If you’re looking for advanced email automation tools, give Moosend a try.
ActiveCampaign – The Best Email Automation Platform
ActiveCampaign’s main goal is to help you send fewer emails with better results. To that end, the American provider clearly focuses on marketing automation and highly targeted messages in order to make sure your marketing efforts are fruitful. Though other email marketing tools we’ve tested are working to improve their automation features, ActiveCampaign continues to rein in that field. With ActiveCampaign, you can automate everything based on your website visitors’ behavior with complex if/when/then logic. The CRM also makes it easy to manage sales directly from the backend and target ‘at risk’ or ‘hot’ leads.
What we like: Great design with clean, responsive templates. The automated workflows, as mentioned above, are absolutely some of the best around. The prices are reasonable considering all that you get, and the support is excellent. Plus, you can add live chat to your site, build landing pages with their excellent landing page builder, and manage various marketing channels through their deep integrations. Also, it has good email deliverability rates.
Where they can improve: The amount and complexity of the features can be a bit overwhelming for complete beginners. Some might also find it slightly expensive if they’re just starting out.
Who ActiveCampaign is for: ActiveCamapign offers more advanced automation features than other popular email marketing services. I’d recommend it to power users who need complete control over their automated workflows. Small businesses have a lot to gain by turning their email communications into sales channels with ActiveCampaign.
GetResponse
GetResponse is another leading email marketing tool to use in 2022. Unlike MailChimp, GetResponse has no free email packages. However, you get a 30-day free trial on any package.
You have to pay for their services – but it’s affordable and flexible. For as low as $15 per month, you can send unlimited emails with subscriber count being the only restriction.
GetResponse charges on the basis of number of subscribers you have on your mailing list. The lowest package ($15/month) allows for only 1,000 subscribers. Anything above 1000 subscribers will cost you extra (but little) charges per month.
The other three plans PLUS, Professional, and MAX costs $49, $99, and custom price respectively. For the MAX plan, the base price supports up to 100,000 contacts in your email lists.
GetResonse now has a lot of features that makes it a versatile marketing automation software and one of the best content marketing tools.
You can now create landing pages, create sales funnels, sell electronic goods, and host webinars without needing another software.
Why Get Started with Email Marketing?
Because over 70% of website visitors abandon your website and never return, small businesses looking to grow should definitely get into email marketing. Email campaigns are a great way to stay in touch with site visitors once they leave your website.
Here are some other benefits of email marketing:
- Increase Sales: Email campaigns are the perfect way to get people to come to your website and buy. Plus, email is known for outperforming both social and organic search traffic.
- Boost Repeat Visits: 96% of people who come to your website aren’t ready to buy on their first visit. But if you can get them to subscribe before they leave, you have another chance to encourage them to come back and make a purchase.
- Build a Loyal Following: Repeat visitors to your website are more likely to convert when compared to first-time visitors. That’s why campaigning to those that have visited your site before, and convincing them to come back, helps you build a larger following.
- Save Money: Email has one of the highest ROIs out of any marketing strategy. In fact, according to the DMA, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32.
Conclusion
Email marketing has always been a very important part of any marketers strategy for gaining new customers and staying in touch with existing ones. Email marketing’s importance is not diminished by the rapidly changing technological development in the digital world. In fact, the more our lives are based on internet and the change of traditional media increases, the more email marketing becomes important.
We spend a lot of time working on the actual content we push through marketing tools like email clients, landing pages and blogs. However, an undervalued element to this puzzle is how these various email tools work together.