Email marketing is the best way to stand a chance in your audiences inbox and mind. A killer email marketing strategy not only helps you to convert anyone into your customer but also helps you to stand out in a crowded field. Besides, email marketing is king and probably the next big marketing tool that engages, and builds relationships with your customers.
Besides, email campaigns deliver a higher ROI than any other marketing. So, not leveraging the use of this marketing properly is a grave mistake as it can get extremely lucrative. But to be successful, you need to find the best email marketing service, which ultimately helps you to manage your campaigns. Although most email marketing services have similar features, we have rounded up a few best to help you choose the best all at once and without breaking your head.
How to Find the Best Email Marketing Service For You
Every email marketing service has its own set of pros and cons. However, choosing one from the 450+ different email marketing software in the market can get difficult. That’s why we present to you a few factors to consider while evaluating the best email marketing software.
Price Points
The price point of the email marketing software depends on the number of subscribers on your mailing list. Some software like Mailjet, price their products depending on the number of emails you can send every month. So, your mailing list determines your budget and the price you pay for the software.
Therefore, keeping a budget aside right from the start will help you to stay focused on your business goals. Plus, if you’re able to readily monetize your marketing campaigns, you have already won half the battle.
Pro-Tip: If you’re a new small business owner start with the trials and free options to understand the nitty-gritty and then choose one email marketing software.
Functionality
Even before you start to choose – sit down and think. What do you aim to achieve with email marketing software? A solid segmentation of your target market, sending out bulk emails that align with your marketing campaigns, and analyzing the results!
Well, every email marketing software will be able to get you these basics, but are they enough? For some yes, some not so much. You might need a software that lets you craft unique, beautiful email designs and also align with your brand visuals. Or a software that lets you track buyer shopping patterns, create email funnels, and also lets you run A/B testing!
Therefore before even paying for the software, understanding your business needs would help you eliminate email marketing software that offers functions you’ll never use.
For instance, Drip is both a CRM and an email software specifically designed to help Ecommerce websites. While ActiveCampaign is a full-service sales CRM. Thus, if you don’t need any of these advanced features, you can always look for a much simpler option, like Mailchimp or MailerLite.
Customer Support
What’s an ideal scenario on a good business day? Being flooded with questions, inquiries, and customers looking for assistance. And, whenever this ideal day arrives, you need to be prepared.
Therefore, it’s crucial to find an existing email service that can also provide unmatched customer service. Some of the best email services offer 24/7 live chat and email support.
This, whether you are migrating your entire email list to software or building your email list from scratch, is important to know which app does all of it for you without breaking the bank.
Lastly, the email marketing software that you ultimately choose must help you grow your business. From saving you time to converting your leads into recurring customers, email marketing software is a dream tool that you need, to have a sound sleep.
Now, you need not go through hours of the survey, rather go through this roundup article from TargetBay that will save the day for you. So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started quickly!
Top 5 Email Marketing Software
- ActiveCampaign – best for small businesses & enterprise
- Moosend – best for small agencies & non-profits
- Hubspot – best for B2B service companies
- Omnisend – best for ECommerce
- ConvertKit – best for bloggers
Below, we’ve reviewed each tool’s pros and cons and have broken it down to all the factors that define great email marketing software.
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#1 ActiveCampaign
Best for small businesses & enterprises
Although this was considered once an underdog, now, ActiveCampaign is one of the most sought after sales CRM for small businesses and enterprises. with email marketing capabilities. It now has over 90,000 small businesses as its customers.
Moreover, they have achieved all this feat by building a killer product that is not only easy to use but also affordable and comes equipped with unparalleled features. And in such a competitive email marketing space, Active Campaign has made a name for itself organically.
Let’s look at the hits and misses!
Hits:
- ActiveCampaign, helps you run A/B testing, send dynamic content, along with segmenting your subscribers to improve personalization.
- You can run broadcast emails, scheduled emails, targeted emails, autoresponder emails, triggered emails, even make an email funnel with this software.
- This platform integrates with over 250 apps like Facebook, PayPal, Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, Stripe, and much more,
- Now, synchronizing all your email marketing strategy with your existing CRM system is super simple with ActiveCampaign.
- As a professional marketer, Active Campaign’s ‘Deals’ section lets you add detailed notes to your subscriber list. Besides, you can also send direct messages to your contacts list, right from the app.
- Activecampaign also allows you to improve your subscriber database with geo-tracking, custom data, site behavior tracking, and link actions.
- ActiveCampaign also allows you to take advantage of their extensive analytics that offers you tons of insight like page-visits, followers, etc.
- Lastly, with the help of ActiveCampaign anyone – from a small business owner to an email marketer can craft email automation sequences with ease and doesn’t require any form of prior experience.
Misses:
- Although ActiveCampaign offers insights, the purchase tracking statistics in this email marketing tool are noticeably absent.
- ActiveCampaign is constantly innovating but their reporting isn’t quite at the level that is offered by Hubspot or Autopilot.
Therefore, if you are a small business looking for an email marketing tool at 1/10th of the price ActiveCampaign is likely your best bet.
Pricing:
Here’s a quick overview of the ActiveCampaigns plan based on the number of subscribers you have:
ActiveCampaign Lite:
- 500 subscribers for $15/ month
- 1,000 subscribers for $29/ month
- 2,500 subscribers for $49/ month
- 5,000 subscribers for $89/ month
- 10,000 subscribers for $139/ month
- 25,000 subscribers for $225/ month
ActiveCampaign Plus
- 1,000 subscribers for $70 / month
- 2,500 subscribers for $125 / month
- 5,000 subscribers for $169 / month
- 10,000 subscribers for $249 / month
- 25,000 subscribers for $339 / month
ActiveCampaign Professional
- 2,500 subscribers for $159 / month
- 5,000 subscribers for $239 / month
- 10,000 subscribers for $349 / month
- 25,000 subscribers for $599 / month
This platform also offers enterprise-level plans or you can also get a custom-made plan too. Well, if you are still not convinced, take advantage of their 14-day free trial and save a lot more!
If you aren’t sure about ActiveCampaign as your option, check out our ActiveCampaign alternatives page to get more information.
#2 Moosend
Best for nonprofits and small agencies
If you scour the internet market, most of the beginner email marketing tools are over-simplified and lack features. However, that’s not the case with Moosend. It is a much easier-to-use tool that offers all of the essential features like well-designed templates, visual campaign builder, along with some advanced features, like AI-powered cross-selling recommendations and weather-based email triggers to drive sales.
Hits:
- This email marketing software is a great option for all small agencies as they don’t break the bank for it.
- Plus, anyone with little to no knowledge can handle this platform easily and it is powerful enough to drive business goals.
Misses:
- This is not a robust email marketing platform like ActiveCampaighn.
- Moosend’s analytics are fairly weak when compared to other platforms like Hubspot. Their analytics are limited to basics like email insights, etc.
Pricing:
Moonsend features are best for small businesses and nonprofits as you can get access to all the features at an affordable $10/month.
#3 Hubspot
Best for B2B Service Businesses & Large Agencies
Hubspotis probably one of the most popular marketing tools. For some, it’s the best option, hands down. This one-stop sales and marketing platform offers a range of features that includes CRM, email marketing, landing pages, automation, forms, and much more. With HubSpot, you can get back every single penny that you invest in marketing for it.
Hits:
- This robust platform offers a range of tools including an email marketing platform that allows you to craft, personalize, and optimize your trigger emails without the need of any designer.
- Hubspot has exceptional reporting or analytics features.
- Their custom-made email templates allow you to craft your emails with the help of just Hubspot’s drag-and-drop editor.
- You can modify and customize your layout, add appropriate calls-to-action and images, aligned with the colors to match your brand style.
- Hubspot allows you to use advanced personalization tools to create the email, personalize it all you want and boost your email open rates!
- Hubspot also has an A/B testing tool that is also top-notch and these would help you to dive into the in-depth analytics.
Misses:
- Hubspot is not affordable and not every small business can afford it. The cost rises exponentially as you add more features and subscribers to your list.
Pricing:
Hubspot is not for every business. With the HubSpot email tool you can send up to 2,000 emails per month, and if you upgrade it may start at $50/month.
#4 Omnisend
This email marketing software is the new kid on the block that is quickly garnering a lot of attention. It is an easy-to-use email marketing platform that’s tailor-made to handle and improve your Ecommerce business.
And as the name already suggests, they are an omnichannel marketing software that is just not limited to sending emails and offer much more than that. From sending automated emails on the go to retargeting ads, their advanced features help you to meet your business goals! This platform is solely focused on ECommerce and has built an innovative tool that is designed by a team that is aware of all the hacks that work in ECommerce.
Hits:
- Omnisend is largely designed to help eCommerce brands keep a tab of their marketing across channels. So, from automated emails, SMS to push notifications, integrating with different platform ads just through email marketing.
- You can integrate Omnisend with most of the eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. But, you know what’s the best part? Omnisend also allows you to integrate with different help-desks, review, and loyalty platforms like ReCharge, Yotpo, and Smile.io.
- Omnisend not only enables you to look at how your campaigns impact your sales but also offers you pre-built automated trigger emails and SMS according to your customer behavior based on to reduce losses in the form of cart abandonment, etc.
- As an email marketer, you can also segment audiences to target the right audience who are looking for your products or services.
Misses:
- One of the biggest concerns most people have is the cost of this platform. Plus, you need the PRO account to stand out that starts at $199/ month for 10,000 subscribers.
- Besides, another concern is the amount of time it takes to set it up and run it successfully. However, if you are a successful and large eCommerce brand, Omnisend will be your best bet.
Pricing:
Now, let’s look at their annual plans based on how many contacts you have:
- Free: Offers up to 15,000 emails per month or 2,000 emails per day. Omnisend also offers a free 14-day trial on Standard and Pro tiers.
- Standard: Starts at $16 per month for up 5,000 subscribers and 60,000 emails per month. Pricing increases based on subscriber count.
- Pro: Starts at $199 per month for up to 9,000 subscribers, with unlimited emails. Pricing increases based on subscriber count.
- Enterprise: Costs a flat $2,000 per month and includes features designed for enterprise use, like single sign-on and unlimited emails and subscribers.
If you are still not convinced, learn more and sign up now at Omnisend.
#5 ConvertKit
If you are a content creator, blogger, or even an online course instructor, you have struck gold. Convertkit is a relatively simple email marketing service that is all you need to whip up a great personal brand! After all, the whole world is thriving on personal branding.
Hits:
- The tool encourages users to use simple and plain text to engage with your customers and build loyalty.
- Convertkit is easy to use if you’re a beginner and affordable as well.
- Besides, this tool also helps you to build automated email funnels to get better conversions.
- This platform is equipped with more than 70 third-party integrations for your landing pages, Ecommerce sites, customizable forms, and custom-reporting.
- You also have access to email and live chat for 12 hours every weekday with limited support on weekends and nights.
Misses:
- Convertkit doesn’t have tons of pre-made beautiful email templates. Therefore, if you need one this is not the right tool for you.
- This platform requires you to manually tag all your customers in the contact list to improve personalization.
Pricing:
Just like the other software, ConvertKit pricing is also based on the number of customers /subscribers on your mailing list.
- 0 – 1,000 Subscribers for $29 per month
- 1,000 – 3,000 Subscribers for $49 per month
- 3,000 – 5,000 Subscribers for $79 per month
And once your contact list reaches the magic number of more than 5,000 subscribers, you can opt for Converkit’s free concierge migration service. With this service, you save a ton of money when you sign up for its annual plan.
If you’re still in two minds, sign up for ConvertKit’s free 14-day trial to test it out on your own.
Special Mention: #BayEngage
BayEngage is another email marketing software that helps your ecommerce scale new business heights as the ecommerce landscape constantly evolves. Email marketing is not only known to deliver high ROI along with delivering powerful results. You don’t need any expertise to use this platform and you can create tons of beautiful trigger emails, newsletter and much more in no time.
Hits:
- Anyone with this software tool can craft emails. Newsletter and therefore in a way saves time for the Shopify merchants.
- This platform contains more than 250 templates, millions of stock photos with a drag and drop editor will help you optimize the emails as you like.
- You can also send trigger emails to your segmented audience in no time with features like use of emojis, personalize it and reap benefits.
- BayEngage also offers phone, email and chat support where you have access to an email marketing expert to help you sail through the ordeals.
Misses:
- If you are looking for various pop-ups, this platform still misses it.
- Currently, BayEngage also doesn’t allow you to send automated emails, trigger emails, and SMS.
Pricing:
If you have less than 250 subscribers, you can use this platform for free and send up to you can send almost 2,500 emails free every month. And, if your subscribers are over 250 subscribers, you just have to pay a negligible $10 per month. ( Pricing )
Wrapping up: What’s Your Decision?
One of the most important business mantras is to look for progress over perfection. After all, time and tide wait for none, and it doesn’t make sense to waste an indefinite amount of time to find the perfect match.
So, even when capable email marketing software floods the market, you should only be focused on using and finding the one that suits your business the best. Besides, if you are here, you have consumed hours of research, that 99.99% of marketers haven’t done it yet. We hope that this roundup from TargetBay helps you to find the best possible marketing tool for your business.
So, just gear up and test the waters and put your business on the map!
