Choosing the right and best email marketing service can have a major impact on the marketing campaigns you are looking to run for your small to medium-sized enterprise/business.
You can easily get confused based on various pricing plans, complex email automation, deliverability rates, etc. To solve your query for the best email marketing software, our team at TechNinjaPRO has put together the best email marketing solutions you can go for to run your email marketing campaigns.
Why should you choose the Best Email Marketing Service for your business?
Undoubtedly, email marketing is an economical solution for SMEs. Email marketing allows:
- Establishing direct contact with customers/clients.
- Control over the business.
- Easy management/sharing/measuring.
- Direct revenue.
- Reach to a global audience.
- Targeted marketing to engage the audience.
- Easy to get started.
- Tracking of campaigns to develop effective marketing strategies.
The main agenda behind marketing any service/product is to develop awareness about your business.
When you perform Email Marketing, it helps to build the credibility of your business by staying in continuous contact with your customers. You get the chance to keep your clients up to date about what your business is going through, the services/products you have launched recently, and what they will get (like discounts/coupons) if they opt to buy from you.
The more the customer/client hears from you, the more they learn about your business. All of this helps create trust in your business, which is the ultimate goal businesses are looking for as it helps build a list of loyal customers.
User's Guide for the Best Email Marketing Tool
If you are new to the field of email marketing, then here are a few pointers which you should keep under consideration while making a long-term commitment with one of the below-listed software:
- Spam Folder: A good email service provider will always make sure that your emails do not end up in the spam folders of your targeted audience, thus making sure that your marketing campaigns do not go to waste.
- Bulk Emails: The email marketing software must allow you to send bulk emails. In the marketing industry, the official term is ‘Marketing Automation.’ You can send bulk emails by personalizing each email to your targeted audience without manually configuring each email one by one.
- Management of Contact List: Once you start your email campaigns, the possibilities are endless. You need a very strong management module or process where you can easily and efficiently manage your contact list, track the performance of your email marketing campaigns, and create segments of users into various groups.
- Drag-and-Drop Editor for Newsletters: Most importantly, you need a drag-and-drop editor to create highly engaging newsletters with a streamlined user interface.
- Third-Party Integrations: Your selected email marketing software must be able to integrate with third-party tools like customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, so they can extract and import data directly from one software to another.
Every email marketing service provider has its pros and cons, and some provide you with the best email editors, whereas others offer the best performance tracking analytics. It all comes down to only one factor: what software works best for YOUR business requirements.
Choosing the best provider will be determined by what the software has to offer, its capabilities, pricing plans, and the individual requirements of your business. If you get all of these rights, you will be able to create and launch successful email marketing campaigns with effective strategies.
Best Email Marketing Services in 2021
Here are some of the best email marketing service providers that are popular and hold up their brand names based on quality services.
ConvertKit
The software is specifically for online creators who are email marketing professionals. It offers easy to use interface, customizable forms/landing pages, visual automation, and helps in development of targeted content. ConvertKit focuses solely on growing your business.
MailChimp
It is an all-in-one marketing platform which helps you to grow your business at a quicker pace. With its user-friendly nature, anyone can utilize their AI-powered tools to start and make their customer relationship stronger.
HubSpot
You can run personalized marketing campaigns with HubSpot as its intuitive interface will help you build lists, create content, and send it to relevant targeted audiences in bulk.
Drip
Best for eCommerce businesses as it kills two birds with one stone i.e., email & SMS marketing. You can create custom email marketing strategies using Drip based on your customers behaviour in buying, browsing, and clicking across your online store.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue is a SaaS solution for relationship marketing. Using its smart and intuitive interface you can start promoting your brand instantly.
Constant Contact
You can connect with your customers and extract valuable prospects for your email marketing strategy via Constant Contact. Features like one-click editing, real-time tracking, and detailed reports will help you plan your next steps seamlessly.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit was launched officially in the market in 2013. It is astringent email marketing platform that is meant for:
- Bloggers
- Authors
- Marketers
- etc.
The feature list offered by ConverKit is powerful and allows you to perform content upgrades and incentives simply with email signup forms. You can also send drip emails with ConvertKit by utilizing their feature of auto-responders. Thus, management is made easy.
Also, for complete beginners, ConvertKit offers detailed guidelines in their support platforms where you can solve all of your queries and run campaigns based on those ultimate user guides. Their customer support is email-based, where you can ask them about the issues and problems you are facing while using their product.
Most of the features offered by ConvertKit are for professional bloggers and content creators. You can develop customized newsletters that can be designed specifically based on the audience whom you are targeting. Some experts have even termed ConvertKit as the best email marketing service for bloggers.
If you are interested in the segmentation of your subscribers, then ConvertKit is the software for you. You can easily segment your subscribers and customers based on various factors. For instance, you can create separate segments for visitors on your website into those interested in your product/services, those who have made a purchase, and those who filled the shopping cart but didn’t go through with the purchase.
The segmentation of subscribers allows you to run targeted email campaigns and helps you in increasing your conversions with automated emails. This process is known as targeted email marketing.
Furthermore, ConvertKit comes with a powerful set of features (which you’ll also find in the top-notch email service providers) such as:
- Email templates.
- Landing page builders.
- Smart workflows.
- A/B testing.
- Creator Pro.
- And more.
Recently ConvertKit has added a feature by the name of Commerce where the user will get the chance to sell digital products & subscriptions from the same platform.
Creator Pro option allows you to perform advanced functionality like:
- Advanced reporting
- Newsletter referral system
- Facebook custom audiences
- Subscribers scoring
- etc.
MailChimp
Mailchimp is one of the oldest and most popular email marketing service providers in the market. They have been the first choice of users for a very long time now based on their free email marketing service plans.
The best part about Mailchimp is the integration flexibility it allows the user to have. You can integrate Mailchimp with Magento, Shopify, WordPress, along with several other CRMs.
Mailchimp’s customer support is the same as ConveritKit, i.e., via email (see ConvertKit Vs Mailchimp). However, they have recently started to offer live chat support where they have live agents set up to solve the queries of their loyal clientele. In addition to these support platforms, Mailchimp has a huge amount of literature available on their website, which you can go through to understand everything about email marketing and how you can use Mailchimp to its fullest.
Coming to the features offered by Mailchimp, they are pretty advanced. The drag and drop email builder allows you to edit your emails by simply dropping the elements into your email designs to save a bundle of time. You can also use Mailchimp’s pre-designed templates to create relevant and engaging emails.
Some of the highlighted features offered by Mailchimp are:
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Autoresponders
- Tracking analytics
- Segmentation of subscribers
- Delivery time setup based on geolocation
- Content Studio
- Marketing Automation
- Real-Time Analytics
- Transaction Email
Instead of saving all of the content of your emails on your PC, you can use the feature of Content Studio, where you can keep all your images and files and manage them so that you can always find what you need for your campaigns instantly.
One of the most vital aspects of email marketing is to reach the right audience at the right time. You can use the marketing automation tools offered by Mailchimp to generate automated emails or use their customer journey tool to build relationships with your subscribers/customers/clients.
People linked with Ecommerce can utilize the feature of Transaction Email to send fast and personalized transactional emails when the customer is expecting them, like order confirmation using API or SMTP.
Taking a look at the plans they have to offer to the public shows us that their free program only allows you to send 12,000 emails to almost 2,000 subscribers. The plan not only limits the quantity of emails & subscribers, but you will also not gain access to features like send-time optimization, multivariate testing, and advanced segmentation. Also, their brand name will be displayed like a watermark in your email.
Premium plans start from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers. The unlimited plan starts from $299/month.
HubSpot
Similar to Mailchimp, HubSpot is also one of the most renowned email marketing software and CRM in the marketing industry.
HubSpot is available for the general public for free, and you can start immediately after downloading the software. It has a wide variety of templates from which you can select the best one following your brand and customize it accordingly.
The features offered by HubSpot are as follows:
- High email deliverability.
- A/B testing.
- Marketing automation.
- Drip campaigns.
- Send time optimization based on geolocation.
- Performance analytics.
- Free CRM.
- Landing pages.
- Paid Ad tracking.
- Integration of social media and management software.
- And more.
Ranging from the development of custom newsletters, you can use HubSpot as an all-in-one marketing platform and use it as:
- An email marketing tool.
- CRM
- Sales tool.
- Operation hub.
- Website builder.
- Workflow automation.
Personalization of emails can also be done with HubSpot if you integrate your HubSpot CRM or any other Customer Relationship Management software. You can create segments of your subscribers relating to device types, memberships, location, and any additional information you might think is relevant to your business’s sales process.
HubSpot Email Marketing is completely free to start along with its own CRM and sales tools. If you opt for the free version of the software, you will be allowed to send a total of 2,000 emails in addition to an unlimited number of subscribers. You will be given access to creating custom signup/popup forms, management/tracking of online ads, building custom-designed landing pages, etc.
However, if the free version is not enough for you, the premium version is also available, where you’ll have the freedom to access advanced capabilities. The paid plan starts at $45.00/month.
Drip
After performing deep research on Drip, we concluded that Drip is an ideal email marketing service for Ecommerce and digital marketers. Bloggers can also use this software. However, it’s not the best choice for them.
They offer a wide range of tools for executing tasks relating to sales funnel, personalization, and marketing automation.
The best part about Drip is that they offer proper live chat support to their users and email support. So, if any of their clients have problems or require a solution to a specific query, they can get an answer out of Drip instantly. In addition to all of this, they also offer webinars, automation training, guides, documents, step-by-step process, and detailed courses on what email marketing is all about.
Integrations can also be done with all types of popular website builders, including WooCommerce and WordPress. The integrations are streamlined, and you can effortlessly add signup forms/popups to your website and gain more leads.
Ecommerce revenue attribution feature illustrates how much revenue the user has generated from running each marketing campaign. You can also send bulk emails to several customers/subscribers at once by personalizing each email using Drip’s Ecommerce marketing automation. This makes connection and engagement with every customer straightforward.
Marketing automation tools offered by Drip are intelligent, and they work hand in hand with their smart email segmentation. You can reach your target audience/customer by utilizing the fields of split testing, list groups, and visual automation workflow builder.
A rarity that you’ll not find in other email marketing platforms is the SMS notification feature. Drip allows you to connect with your customers on email and SMS marketing channels, thus making it an all-in-one email marketing service provider.
Unfortunately, there is no free version of Drip, and you’ll have to subscribe to one of their premium plans. They do offer a free trial, and their plans start from $49.00/month.
SendinBlue
Like Drip, SendinBlue also offers an SMS notification feature along with email marketing services. It is two-in-one marketing software for SMEs to grow fast and develop their brand trust.
It is one of the easiest software to deal with and is a beginner-friendly automation tool. You can send transactional emails, segment subscribers, and it helps you create workflows for automatic follow-up emails.
Furthermore, the software automatically analyzes your business’s niche, and its AI algorithm automatically tells you the best time to send emails to your customers and clients based on their geolocation. This way, you can send bulk emails without worrying about manually setting up the time of each mail. It makes sure of the best email deliverability.
SendinBlue can create marvelous and exuberant emails that will help you connect and engage with your customers. Similar to other email marketing services providers, SendinBlue also offers the drag and drop email editor tool, which can enhance the overall efficiency of your email marketing process.
Some of the highlighted features offered by SendinBlue are as follow:
- Email marketing
- SMS marketing
- CRM
- Marketing automation
- Transaction email
- Segmentation
- Landing pages
- Signup forms
- Facebook Ads
- Open & click-through reports
- Email heat map
- A/B testing
- Real-time statistics
- Send time optimization
- API
- Plugins
If we take a look at the plans offered by SendinBlue, they offer a completely free email marketing plan where you’ll get to send 300 emails/day to an unlimited number of subscribers. However, like Mailchimp, the branding of SendinBlue will be written at the bottom of each email.
To get an exclusive deal and gain access to all the premium features of SendinBlue, you’ll have to pay for their service. Their plans start from $25/month (charges for SMS notification features are extra).
Constant Contact
Constant contact started in 1995 in Brookline, USA, as an online marketing company. Since then, it has grown a lot and is gradually becoming one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing email marketing services.
They have made their tool beginner-friendly, where you can seamlessly manage your email lists, the marketing calendar, contacts, email templates, etc.
Moreover, Constant Contact offers unparalleled customer support where you’ll get live chat, phone calls, email, community support (forums), and a huge collection of literature on the agenda of email marketing. Their online training sessions, along with live seminars, are conducted all around the globe, where you can join in to learn all about email marketing from experts and become an email marketing professional in no time.
With Constant Contact, you are given access to unlimited emails, built-in social media sharing buttons, segmentation lists, and integration of Facebook Ads & Ecommerce integration for Shopify stores, free library for images, tracking & reporting of your email campaigns. Other highlighted features include:
- Design-templates
- Google Ads/Facebook Ads/Instagram Ads
- Lead generation landing pages
- Sign Up forms
- Marketing automation
- Reporting
- Customer list management
- Text-to-join
- Survey, polls, & event RSVP
- etc.
To maximize your open rate, you can utilize the features of email automation, drip campaigns, online donations, surveys, polls, coupons, and A/B testing. This way, you will be able to send targeted emails to your potential leads and subscribers.
Lastly, the pricing plans offered by Constant Contact are also great as they offer a 60-day free trial to all of their subscribers. The 60 day period is enough to try out Constant contact’s email marketing service, and if you like it, you can make a long-term commitment as their paid plans start for as low as $20/month.