If you’re just learning how to market your business online, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. There are so many email marketing tools and platforms out there that it can really bog you down. You’re trying to figure out which one to use and how it will fit in with the rest of your marketing schedule without completely losing yourself in the details.
Table of Contents
Best Email Marketing Tools For Beginners
Best Email Marketing Services for Beginners: Our Top Picks
- Constant Contact – With a generous free trial, you can test this service before you buy
- AWeber – Everything you need to create professional-looking emails without having to hire a designer
- GetResponse – The easy-to-use autoresponder feature makes it great for e-commerce businesses
- ActiveCampaign – Great for small businesses with big ambitions
- Mailchimp – The forever-free plan offers you basic functionality for a list of up to 2,000 subscribers
1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is a good option for beginners because it offers a 60-day free trial (for U.S.-based users, but users in other countries get the first month free).
Not only that, but the entry-level plan lets you send unlimited emails and offers customizable templates, an image library, Facebook ads, and integration with Shopify. This makes it a popular choice among users and reviewers.
This set of tools is everything you need to create professional-looking emails and Facebook ads without a designer. In addition, e-commerce stores can add their Shopify customers to their subscriber list, add products to emails, and target specific subscribers with customized offers.
Constant Contact also offers a thorough self-help section you can use to learn about either email marketing tactics, or how to use the platform. There are dozens of video tutorials to answer any question you might have – even the most basic ones.
Constant Contact also holds a unique series of free webinars on email marketing for beginners.
Constant Contact’s biggest problem is that its entry-level “Email” plan costs more than its competitors’. However, the relative price you pay for the functionality and ability to send unlimited emails is low. So, if you’re looking for a very low price point, you’ll need to go elsewhere. But if you’re more focused on value for your money as your list grows, Constant Contact is an attractive option.
One final thing to take into consideration is that A/B testing is offered ONLY for subject-lines. No plan allows you to A/B-test the content of your emails. As you become more fluent in email marketing, you might find this limitation to be overly restrictive.TRY CONSTANT CONTACT FOR FREE NOW
2. AWeber
AWeber is a good option for beginners because its entry-level plan includes 700+ email templates and 6,000+ stock photos to help you create professional-looking emails.
You also get access to templates to create website sign-up forms to grow your subscriber list, and templates to quickly build newsletters to keep in touch with your contacts. Most reviewers agree that with these features, you can create every content asset you need to capture leads and send out emails professionally.
All AWeber plans come with a 30-day free trial.
If you decide to sign up for a paid plan, you should be aware that AWeber uses a unique pricing model. Its entry-level plan offers the same functionality as its highest-tier plan — the monthly price you pay is determined by the number of subscribers in your contact list.
It may seem like there’s no drawback to this, but it’s actually a double-edged sword.
On the positive side, functionally like advanced analytics and segmentation commonly reserved for high-tier plans are available at the entry-level. But on the negative side, the price for just 500 subscribers is more than some competitors will charge for double that amount with a comparable feature list. So, while AWeber can get you access to more features at a lower absolute price point, its relative value as your list grows may decrease.
AWeber offers a lot of video tutorials for beginners, including:
- How to change your list name
- How to add rows and columns to your email template
- How to personalize your emails
- How to add a form to your website
- How to add forms to Facebook
There’s also a knowledge base with over 100 articles, where you can find the answers to more advanced questions, such as:
- How can I change the design of my form?
- How do I get started with campaigns?
- How do I send a split test to a segment?
All in all, if you feel AWeber’s unique pricing model could work for you over the long-term, it’s a good option to consider.TRY AWEBER FOR FREE NOW
3. GetResponse
GetResponse makes email marketing easy, and it gets excellent reviews.
For instance, its autoresponder feature gives you a visual representation of when you’ll send out pre-scheduled emails to contacts. This makes it very easy to send out emails on certain days of the week or in the lead to special events.
It’s excellent for businesses that want to easily offer special discounts at certain times (retailers or travel agencies), or interact with subscribers when they achieve certain milestone thresholds (online coaching).
There are also 500+ email design templates and 1,000 free iStock images that beginners can use to create professional emails. Social integrations to share your content on Facebook and Instagram are available, but there’s no ability to create social media ads.
GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial for all plans.
The templates and workflows offered at the entry-level plan provide good value for all kinds of businesses, and at a price comparable to other solutions. However, the price increases are steep as you scale your list.
You should be aware that GetResponse is geared toward large companies and big e-commerce stores. So, you can get functionality like audience segmentation and abandoned cart follow-ups, but you’re going to pay more than you would elsewhere.
GetResponse’s support is not geared toward beginners. There are no video tutorials available. The knowledge base offers answers to some basic questions, like how to add contacts to a list or how to create a form. A few guides are available, such as “How to Plan and Send Your First Email Marketing Campaign,” but they assume you have some previous email marketing experience.TRY GETRESPONSE FOR FREE NOW
4. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign offers an entry-level plan with three user accounts. This is an excellent feature for small businesses, and this plan definitely won’t break the bank. There’s also a 14-day free trial.
However, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer some of the basic functionality most beginners want. For example, while the entry-level plan comes with a drag-and-drop email designer, it only has about 25 email templates available.
There’s Facebook integration, but only at the mid-tier plan or higher. And there are no integrations for Shopify or any other e-commerce platforms.
There are a few tutorials geared toward complete beginners, such as how to create an email campaign or a basic form. Most of the content is geared toward advanced users looking to learn more about email marketing strategy, but don’t let that scare you off – this kind of knowledge can be valuable down the line.
One of the reasons ActiveCampaign gets such good reviews is that it offers some standout features you won’t find in many other places, including:
- Machine learning that analyzes every piece of data generated about a customer at every touchpoint — including website interactions, phone calls, and email activity — to answer questions like when you should send emails.
- Win probability scoring that uses data to estimate the chances of converting a lead, so you know where to use your resources
At the end of the day, ActiveCampaign offers the basic functionality that beginners need, but also a lot of advanced functionality that beginners will have no use for. However, if you’re a small business with big ambitions, ActiveCampaign will scale up nicely with your business.TRY ACTIVECAMPAIGN FOR FREE NOW
5. Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers a forever-free plan that gives you access to basic functionality for a list of 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails per month without ever having to pay a dime. If you’re looking for a low-cost option to use while you learn more about email marketing, you can’t beat free.
Some of the features included in the Forever Free plan are:
- Email Campaigns
- Landing Pages
- Pop-up forms
- Google remarketing ads
- Facebook and Instagram Ads
- A/B testing
- Marketing automation
MailChimp has a drag-and-drop email designer that can create professional-looking emails quickly and easily. It offers only 100 email templates, which is fewer than many other alternatives. Beginner e-commerce merchants can also benefit from over 300 integrations, including Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
One standout MailChimp feature is that it’s the only email service provider that offers a WordPress widget to embed popup forms. Unlike extensions, widgets are available on lower-tier WordPress plans. This means you can have a popup form to collect email addresses from your visitors without paying for WordPress’ most expensive plan.
Where beginners will struggle with MailChimp is the user interface. Building emails with the drag-and-drop editor is straightforward, but understanding how to connect landing pages and other conversion assets to your subscriber lists is not intuitive. Most beginners will have to spend time learning the platform before they can get started.
MailChimp’s self-service knowledge base is an excellent resource for beginners. It answers questions about basic functionality, such as:
- How to create a landing page
- How to add a video to an email campaign
- How to create a Facebook or Instagram ad
One final thing beginners should be aware of is that, from a cost perspective, MailChimp doesn’t scale well. You can upgrade from the Forever Free plan to a “Grow” plan that offers a bit more functionality, but whose main benefit is the removal of MailChimp’s logo from your emails. From there, the only other option is the “Pro” plan — which offers a real jump in functionality but costs 20x the “Grow” plan.
In other words, there’s no middle price point. If you decide later on to upgrade to the advanced functionality offered in competitors’ mid-tier plans, you’re going to have to pay a lot more for it here. For more information, don’t miss our in-depth review.
best email marketing platform 2021
Email marketing still remains one of the most effective and the most powerful digital marketing strategies in the world today. In fact, on average, for every dollar that companies spend on email marketing, they earn $38 in revenue in return. This translates to an astonishing ROI of 3,800%.
As a company grows and expands, it is crucial for it to be able to effectively use email marketing to connect and engage with its customers. This is why over 80 percent of small-to-mid sized businesses rely on email marketing as their primary customer acquisition channel. In order to use email marketing effectively, businesses must select the right email marketing platform to use.
Here is a list of the top 10 email marketing platforms that your company should consider using to do email marketing effectively:
1. Pabbly Email Marketing
Pabbly Email Marketing is an email service provider that is highly desirable for larger-sized companies. This is because all the plans Pabbly include access to workflow automation, email scheduling, and SMTP routing in addition to many other desirable features.
Pabbly also has a drag-and-drop email editor that makes it extremely easy for customers to customize their emails. Scheduling emails to be sent in the future is also very easy with the Pabbly Email Marketing automation and autoresponder tools.
2. SendPulse
An integrated messaging platform, SendPulse has crafted an artificial Intelligence-based system that enables it users to communicate with all devices by email, SMS, Web push and SMTP (users enjoy a free SMTP server). Renowned for its ease-of-use, SendPulse can be relied on to carry out enterprise-level email campaigns. Offering a pretty extensive free trial period, you’ll be able to send bulk emails (i.e. 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers, SendPulse’s equivalent of HubSpot’s contacts). We recommend you check out the GIF-creation feature. Adding these to email campaigns can result in major spikes in click through rates.
3. MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular email service providers in the world. In fact, this company has millions of users in over 175 countries. Large and small companies alike use MailChimp due to its simple, yet highly-effective features and tools.
One of the most important benefits of MailChimp is the fact that there are over 300 integrations on MailChimp that help you match the perfect tool to your business. MailChimp also allows you to create and implement landing pages, and other digital marketing tools. So, if you want to create more advanced strategies, you can do so with MailChimp. MailChimp also has a free email service plan.
MailChimp is also compatible with Cincopa, a video email marketing software program that makes it easy to embed videos into emails. Cincopa helps companies to see a 150% increase in click-through rates with video thumbnails. Cincopa can also be integrated with other top-tier email service providers like GetResponse and ConstantContact. Cincopa can capture lead information from people who interact with videos. It can also provide in-depth analytics which are extremely beneficial. Did we mention that you can send videos in email from within MailChimp when using Cincopa?
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the most widely used email marketing platforms in the world. This is because it is highly user-friendly, it comes with over 100 email templates, and it is extremely easy to manage contact on the platform. Further, setting up and running drip campaigns and scheduling regular emails at certain points of the year such as holidays or birthdays is very simple with Constant Contact. In addition to these beneficial features, bounces and unsubscribes are updated automatically, give you tremendous insight into your email lists.
5. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a wide variety of email templates that users can choose from. Additionally, the ESP makes it easy for users to create custom email templates. So, whether you prefer custom or stock templates, HubSpot is ideal. With this platform, you can also run A/B testing so that you can see which email version is having the most success.
This is very beneficial for any company trying to generate leads or revenue through email. HubSpot also has a very high deliverability rate, and allows you to personalize your emails based on factors such as country, device type, and list inclusion. You can also get highly detailed analytics regarding your email campaign performance with HubSpot, and you can easily integrate with social media. As with MailChimp, integrating HubSpot with Cincopa can yield amazing conversion results.
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6. AWeber
Unlike email marketing tools such as HubSpot and MailChimp, AWeber is primarily aimed at entrepreneurs and smaller sized businesses. Simplicity is the primary goal of AWeber and they accomplish this goal very well with their software. People who are just getting started with email marketing often find that the AWeber setup is ideal. AWeber also has a very high deliverability rate, which ensures that your emails actually make it to the recipients as they are intended to.
7. iContact
iContact is an email service provider that is mostly known for having excellent customer support. This makes this service ideal for customers who are not very tech savvy and who will need a lot of help getting set up and running the emails on a regular basis. iContact has been in existence since 2003 and was one of the pioneering companies in this space. All customers get matched with strategic advisors who assist with email marketing efforts and help customers to use tools effectively. This is a very nice feature.
8. GetResponse
GetResponse is another top ESP. This platform offers landing pages, a CRM, and other helpful tools such as a webinar solution in addition to offering a great email platform. One of the most important features of GetResponse and one of its key competitive advantages is that it is available in over 20 languages. This makes GetResponse a truly global ESP. It also has a lot of storage space. Additionally, GetResponse has over 500 email template and a calendar interface-based drip campaign tool. This makes it much easier to schedule email send dates.
9. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is another email marketing tool that offers live chat. So, if having good customer service is important to you, then this is a good option for you. ActiveCampaign also has a high-quality CRM, which is a beneficial tool. The CRM can help you to provide your customers with high-quality content in within your emails. Further, ActiveCampaign has a tool called “lead scoring” which rates the quality of your leads. Tools like this are extremely valuable for sales teams.
10. SendinBlue
SendinBlue has many different pre-made automation campaigns which you can browse. You can select the campaign that you feel is best for you or your company and get started on it. SendinBlue is a widely used platform and that is why over 30 million emails and texts are sent on it every single day.
Even though SendinBlue has create pre-made automation campaigns, it is also easy to create custom ones. So, if you do not find a pre-made campaign you like, then you can easily build one from scratch with your own preferences. SendinBlue also has a forms tool that you can use to collect leads with. You can categorize your leads into lists once you capture them.
Conclusion
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