There are many different email marketing platforms out there, and it can be tricky to figure out which one is right for your business. This page will help you find the best email marketing platform for your needs.
The best way to engage with your audience is through emails. This is an easy way for customers to see where they need to go or what they need to do in order to accomplish their goals (whatever those goals may be). It provides a direct line for communication between you and your customers so that both parties can be on the same page about what’s happening at any given moment—without having to deal with pesky phone calls or meetings.
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Best Email Marketing Tools 2018
Why use an email marketing platform?
Crafting the perfect email takes blood, sweat, tears – and time. Email marketing services are designed to make the process as painless as possible with customisable templates, scheduling capabilities, analytics and more. A good tool will help you build engaging emails that will resonate with your audience, as well as manage all your contacts and workflows in one place.
What service you go for will depend entirely on your needs, business size and budget. Whether you’re looking for a basic text editor or something a bit more complex, there are a variety of options to choose from with different ways of using your contacts. While certain features of free email marketing tools may be restricted, they still offer plenty for small businesses to get their teeth into. For those that need a more comprehensive service, there are paid plans to suit every budget. So, who made the cut into our top five tools?
MailChimp
One of the most popular tools, MailChimp offers an impressive array of features that are pretty easy to get to grips with. While most services offer a free trial before you have to buy, MailChimp boats a ‘free forever’ plan. This is particularly useful for small businesses with up to 2,000 subscribers, as you can send 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. This package includes the ability to set up automated email campaigns, build sign-up forms, access personalised reports, and even create Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns.
If you need to send more emails than this each month, MailChimp’s subscription plans start from $10 for up to 500 subscribers. Paid plans also offer more advanced reporting and testing tools, as well as access to their support team. While these advanced plans are good, MailChimp really can’t be beaten when it comes to free email marketing tools for beginners.
The simplicity of the tool can be a downside, however, if you’re looking to flex more advanced email marketing muscles. Changing default settings can be frustrating and requires some digging, as MailChimp prides itself on making the initial setup as easy as possible. The service also undergoes constant updates, which can be irritating – much like apps that always need to be updated on your phone. But, this shows that the team is always striving to improve the product, which can’t really be a bad thing.
GetResponse
Starting from £10 a month, GetResponse is an investment for growing businesses. The platform offers a variety of useful features that go beyond simple email templates, such as the ability to build landing pages and host webinars to increase engagement and generate leads. GetResponse also includes marketing automation tools to help you create workflows and transform subscribers into customers.
Of course, the email marketing tool has not been forgotten. In fact, the service offers over 500 templates to choose from, complete with 1,000 iStock images to bring your emails to life. GetResponse excels at making the building process as easy as possible with a drag-and-drop feature, or you can opt to use HTML code if you prefer. With no free subscription, this service is more suitable for medium-sized businesses that will make the most of its features.
Arguably, GetResponse is a little dated compared to its competitors and lacks some design functionality that would cements its place as one of the best email marketing services around. For instance, you can only use ‘web-safe’ fonts that can make your designs look a bit bland. The user interface could also do with a makeover, but a new beta version of the tool suggests this is well on the way.
Emma
If the name wasn’t inviting enough, the friendly logo should do it. Emma (short for “email marketing”) offers a lot of bang for your buck – considering the lowest price tag is $89 a month, you can see why. Emma prides itself on marketing automation and knowing when to send the right email at the right time. By accumulating CRM and sales data, Emma allows you to personalise and automate emails to your segmented subscribers.
The service also facilitates dynamic content to make each email unique, as well as providing A/B testing so you can determine which design works best for you. Paired with an attractive landing page builder and on-the-go analytics, Emma is an impressive tool for businesses looking to take drip campaigns seriously.
Where Emma falls down, though, is limited formatting and design functionality. If may not be possible to get your emails exactly how you would like them to look, but that’s the sacrifice you have to make using templates. The support response time may also be a little slow for some users, as there is no live chat option available.
SendinBlue
Hailed as a true alternative to MailChimp, SendinBlue offers a completely free option to send up to 300 emails a day to an unlimited number of contacts. This package includes a large template gallery to build mobile-friendly emails using a similar drag-and-drop functionality seen on most services. You can also access the automation tools and contact manager to keep on top of your subscribers, as well as view real-time reporting on your efforts.
A standout feature of SendinBlue is the ability to create SMS campaigns, which work much the same as email campaigns. You can import contacts, create filters, schedule text messages and analyse results with the same granularity. If you want to invest in a paid plan, starting from £15 a month, you’ll have no daily email limit, more reporting capabilities, no marketing automation limits, and more. While it is not as polished as MailChimp, it certainly emulates many of the same features that make SendinBlue a great choice from small businesses.
However, the tool does not seamlessly use third-party integration, so you cannot upload your contacts directly from another source for instance. There is also no social media integration, which can be frustrating. Arguably, SendinBlue is not as easy to set as MailChimp either, but this will differ from person to person.
Constant Contact
An old-timer, Constant Contact has been around for well over 20 years now. But, it has earned its stripes as one of the most reliable email marketing services around, especially for small businesses. Starting at £15 a month, with a 30-day free trial included, you can send unlimited emails to your subscribers using a variety of drag-and-drop templates optimised for mobile devices.
Constant Contact goes beyond your typical tool by allowing the integration of surveys, discounts, invitations, donations and more, in your emails. These go a long way in nurturing your existing contacts and attracting new ones to stay. Constant Contact’s automation service is also useful for gathering existing emails and personalising them, before sending them out to your cohorts at specified times. Add integration with others services like WordPress, Formstack and Hootsuite, and it’s easy to see why this tool has stood the test of time.
While Constant Contact may seem like an affordable option upfront, the cost soon creeps up if you want more storage space, to increase contacts, and add more team members to the service. You are also limited when it comes to customising your own HTML designs, as the service tends to cater to beginners
best free email marketing software
1. HubSpot Email Marketing
HubSpot, probably best known for their marketing automation platform, recently launched a free email marketing tool that can support a lot of a small business’ transactional email needs.
Whether you need to send kickback emails from lead offers, thank you emails after purchase, or just promote current campaigns, HubSpot Email Marketing’s free version can do that. One of the best parts of HubSpot’s free email tool is its ease of use. The tool features a handy drag-and-drop visual editor, and it also comes equipped with ready-made templates to get you up and running immediately.
What makes HubSpot Email Marketing stand out is, of course, its native integration with other HubSpot tools, such as the free-forever CRM. Once you start an account, you get access to both tools so you can create a centralized contacts database, organize it in lists, and manage and track email performance.
2. Sender
Sender is one of the best free email marketing tools in the market with features to ensure deliverability. It lets you create stunning newsletters without any HTML knowledge. Just choose from a template and customize it with elements like images, videos and text. You can even personalize your newsletters for each recipient to create an even bigger impact.
Sender’s robust analytics feature is one of the top reasons why it’s on our list. It lets you track who opened your emails and clicked on the links, when they were opened and more. It even helps you build accurate buyer profiles based on your subscriber actions, so you’ll be able to optimize your existing email strategy and craft compelling offers.
3. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a marketing communication platform that features both email marketing tools and additional functions such as customer relationship management and landing page creation. With over 70 design templates, Sendinblue’s email design functions make it easy to create a great-looking email. Plus, all of these templates are responsive, and you can preview your results to can ensure your design looks the way you want on any screen format.
After you design your email, you can use features like A/B testing and segmented recipient lists to take the manual effort and guesswork out of optimizing your campaigns and targeting your ideal audiences.
4. Omnisend
Omnisend is a sophisticated ecommerce marketing platform that integrates all your communication platforms in one place. Its free plan includes only email, but it’s more than enough to support the email marketing efforts of small and medium businesses. It allows you to automate your email delivery using behavioral triggers and easily time your communications based on your customers’ convenience.
You can utilize its comprehensive audience insights to send out more relevant email marketing messages. Design attractive newsletters using time-saving features like the Product Picker, which lets you select all the products you want to include in your email. You can also include scratch cards, discount coupon codes and gift boxes to further optimize your email performance.
5. SendPulse
SendPulse advertises itself as a multi-channel marketing platform, but its email marketing feature is the most popular. It comes with a ton of professionally-designed email templates that you can easily customize using a drag-and-drop editor. You can then set up these customized emails to be automatically sent out at the right time based on user behavior, event trigger and other variables.
SendPulse’s subscriber rating feature is an excellent way to identify your most valuable subscribers. It lets you analyze the open and click rates as well as the read and unread rate of each subscriber. You can even set replaceable text fields to personalize your emails by name, gender, date of birth, age and job role.
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Conclusion
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