It’s easy to think emails are no longer effective marketing tools. Why send emails when you have platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor available? We encourage you to read this post and think critically about that assumption. Email is alive and well in 2023. It is one of the best ways for any company to reach engaged customers—as long as you do it well.
This is why, even in 2023, we have no shortage of email marketing software to choose from. To help you sort through the noise, our experienced team of writers, developers, and marketing experts have evaluated some of the most popular email marketing services available. These are the ones we think you should pay the most attention to and which one is best for what function.
Table of Contents
Best for All-In-One Marketing: Mailchimp
Starting price: Free; $13 per month for up to 2000 contacts
Pros:
- Beginner-friendly email builder
- Segmentation
- Automation
- Website builder
- Landing page builder
- Easy to spot alerts on what may prompt your emails into landing in spam folders
- Some generative AI tools with more expensive plans
- Drag and drop editor
Cons:
- Maximum of five users without a Premium account
- Price increases greatly if you have more than 2000 subscribers
Best for Full Business Tools: Zoho Campaigns
Starting price: Free; $3 per month
Pros:
- Free version for up to 2,000 contacts
- Up to five users in free plan
- Low monthly price for paid versions
Cons:
- Max of 20 users
- Pricing increases rapidly if you have a large number of contacts
Best for E-Commerce Businesses: Drip
Price: $39 per month for up to 2500 contacts
Pros:
- 14-day free trial
- Straightforward pricing based on volume and contacts
- Specially designed for e-commerce businesses
Con:
- No free plan beyond the trial period
Best for Medium-Sized Businesses: MailerLite
Starting price: Free; $9 per month for up to 1,000 contacts
Pros:
- Free version for up to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited emails with paid versions
- Website and landing page builder
Cons:
- No templates available with the free version
- HTML editor is only available at the highest price point (which is only a problem if you want to do really complex things)
Best for a Huge Number of Contacts: Brevo
Pricing: Free, $25 per month for unlimited contacts
Pros:
- Unlimited contacts on all plans
- Advanced segmentation on all plans
- Drag-and-drop editor
- No daily sending limit on paid plans
Cons:
- Pricey
- Low price plans include Brevo trademark
Best for Advanced Segmentation: Campaigner
Price: $59 per month for up to 5,000 contacts
Pros:
- 30-day free trial
- Automate campaigns around previous conversions
- Multi-workflow enrollment
- Advanced segmentation, automation, and reporting
Cons:
- Really expensive
- Some branding on the lowest plan
Is Email Marketing Software Really Worth It When WordPress and Wix Offer Plugins and Tools?
Email marketing software is designed to enable you to easily create and send marketing emails to potential, current, and previous customers. Some wonder why they should pay for email marketing software when WordPress, the world’s most popular website-building tool, and Wix, the world’s second most popular website-building tool, include features that can do the same thing.
But the truth is that dedicated email marketing software beats these plugins and tools every time. The problem is that free plugins for WordPress don’t offer the same perks and detailed data that paid versions on separate email marketing platforms do. There also aren’t as many templates to choose between and you can only have a certain number of contacts.
The same is true for the free email marketing tool offered through Wix’s free plans. They only offer 3 templates. You have to pay to upgrade to up to 500 contacts (although you’ll then get more templates). Wix branding is all over the free versions, which can confuse visitors. They may accidentally end up going to Wix’s site instead of yours!
How to Choose the Best Email Marketing Software
Choosing the best email marketing software comes down to what you need. The most basic email marketing tool will help you create, send, and track emails. They’re perfect for companies that don’t have a lot of contacts yet.
For more advanced needs, consider an email marketing platform that offers more than just email sends. Look for all-in-one solutions that let you create landing pages on your website directly related to the email, set up email sign-up intake forms, and include automation to make your job easier.
Ask these questions before narrowing down your selection:
- Send volume: Do the send limits and their price points make sense for your business’s plans within the next 6 months?
- Migration: Can you easily migrate customer emails from an existing platform into the new one?
- Integrations: If you need to, can you use your email list for retargeting ads on social media?
- Design: Are there enough templates to fit your needs? How can you customize them?
- Ease of Use: How easily can you create and send an email or set up analytics? If the software is too complicated, can you afford a third party’s fees?
- Other Branding: Will your customers see the software’s logo on your emails?
At the very least, you should be able to segment your audiences into two or more categories. For example, if you sell jewelry based on astrological signs, you should know when each customer’s birthday is so you can send them an email about jewelry related to that zodiac sign. You should also expect basic reports, including what your open rate is on an email campaign and its click-through rate.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence
The best email marketing software features automation and artificial intelligence (AI). This means you should be able to set up a series of emails for a segmented audience. You’ll also be able to set a schedule for each email to send based on certain conditions. For example, if someone opens an email, they get another email that says X a few days later. If someone doesn’t open an email, they get an email that says Y a few days later. If someone opens an email and clicks on a link, but doesn’t complete the desired action, they get an email that says Z. This makes each campaign more effective and requires less headaches for the marketing team.
As far as AI goes, you may find machine learning features, including predictive analytics, helpful in figuring out which users are ready to take action sooner than others. Other AI tools will generate subject lines and even entire emails for you. But we do warn you – AI is robotic. That’s what it is, after all. People can quickly tell when a real human has composed something versus AI. We recommend using AI as a starting point, but not a deliverable.
Design and Templates
To find the best email marketing platform for your business, consider how each one works from a design standpoint. Most people prefer drag-and-drop editors, which make it much easier to create emails that look great without requiring much design experience or talent. You can also benefit from pre-made templates, so you don’t have to create a newsletter design from scratch. Finally, you can reuse previous templates if you liked how they looked but just change the words or images.
Customization
Some free and low-priced plans for email marketing tools are great to use when you’re just getting started. But remember that these are for-profit businesses. The less you pay, the fewer customization options you’ll have. Part of the reason they may have such a low cost is because the companies may include their branding on your emails. Their logos can be really distracting to users. You don’t want to confuse the people reading your emails about who is sending the email, and why. You might want to consider choosing an email marketing platform that costs a little extra to give you more control over branding, customization, and analytics depth.
Get Help With Email Marketing From SEO Design Chicago
If you’re overwhelmed by all your options, we understand. Remember that you can always reach out to SEO Design Chicago’s experienced team for a consultation or to take over your email content creation needs. Social media and other forms of marketing matter, but email is still relevant, too. We can help you make the most of this marketing medium for your business.
FAQ:
- Why should I use email marketing software?
- What is the best email marketing tool for segmenting audiences?
- What is the best email marketing platform for small businesses?
- What should I look for in an email marketing platform?
- How much does Campaigner cost?
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