This guide showcases 7 of the best email marketing software out there, compares their top features, pricing, and gives you advice on how to pick the best tool for your individual needs.
Email marketing is a crucial component of many an online marketing strategy. After all, what another channel can you use to reach your customers effectively and carve a minute of their time? Even though it’s 2020, email is still king! So this is where the best email marketing software comes into play.
Lets understand why we are looking for ideal email marketing software?
Price:
This might sound obvious at first. Naturally, you want to spend as little as possible and still get the complete set of features. But, as usual with these things, you will need to make compromises here and there to make it work.
First of all, there are two main pricing models with most of the best email marketing software:
- pay per email sent
- pay per contact – number of people you have on your list(s)
Both have their pros and cons. For instance, when paying per email, you can often end up spending more if you’re communicating with a smaller list of people frequently. On the other hand, when paying per contact, you will spend more if you have a big list but don’t communicate with them too often.
We’re going to present some common pricing scenarios when discussing the individual tools so that you can make an educated decision based on your projected number of emails/contacts.
Free Plan option (initially):
Nonetheless, the existence of a free plan is undoubtedly a nice perk, but you should always compare what the tool will cost you once you outgrow that free plan. In some cases, going with a tool that’s a paid one from the start can be cheaper in the long run.
Let’s stay with the topic of pricing for one more minute. So, as we all know, the best price to pay for anything is $0. And, indeed, some of the best email marketing software do offer free plans, albeit with some limitations.
Most of the time, those limitations aren’t something you need to worry about while testing the tool, but they might prevent you from going too far once you’re using the tool in full swing.
Email Templates (Pre Designs):
Usually almost every email marketing software or company allows you to send plain-text emails, so that’s no problem.
However, plain text won’t get you far regarding wowing your contacts, and especially if you’ve lured them in by offering a “newsletter.”
That is why you need some excellent email designs to choose from – aka templates. Ideally, your tool of choice should offer you enough of those so that you don’t have to hire designers or learn design yourself to be able to send good-looking emails.
Cool Features:
Luckily, the best email marketing software doesn’t disappoint in this department. They all pack a ton of features that go way above just sending the email.
The things you can and should expect:
- Visual (drag and drop) email builders. Design templates are one thing, but you also want to work on your emails in a friendly, visual environment – plus in a way that doesn’t require you to have any design skills.
- Advanced reports. Those will let you check how effective your efforts have been. Good reports will let you know your email open rates, clicks, and other useful metrics.
- Contact management. You want to be able to add contacts to different lists, see how engaged those contacts have been with your emails, update and move contacts around, segment them, etc.
- Integrations with third-party tools. Integrations can be a very useful thing. For instance, you can benefit from connecting your email marketing software with things like CRM systems, project management tools, e-commerce software, or others; and transfer people’s information directly, hence streamlining your email marketing efforts.
- And, above all else, you want your email to be getting reliably to its destination – your contacts/subscribers.
Application Automation Interface:
Automation is an exciting addition to some of the best email marketing software. The idea is to trigger emails based on pre-defined scenarios or actions that your contacts take.
For instance, instead of you sending a standard broadcast email, your email marketing software can trigger an email whenever your user abandons cart or interacts with one of your previous email messages.
The possibilities are enormous, and it’s good to be able to explore them.
Which one is the Best email marketing software (detailed comparison)
Below some of the email service providers which i personally used and loved:
- SendinBlue
- Mailchimp
- Drip
- MailJet
- Benchmark
- OmniSend
- GetResponse