Email marketing is one of the most effective types of digital marketing you can use. It has excellent returns, it’s easy to manage and it provides a way to maintain direct communication with your customers.
In order to make your email marketing campaigns as effective and efficient as possible, it’s important to have a good email marketing tool. The right email marketing service will provide the following benefits:
- Helps you create engaging emails that are personalized and targeted for your customer base
- Allows you to send out bulk emails quickly and easily
- Has an simple user interface
- Allows you to manage your contact list and segment contacts into groups
- Tracks the performance of your campaign
- Ensures your emails don’t end up in recipient’s spam folders
Fortunately, there are many email marketing services that provide these benefits and more. Read on to find the one that’s right for you.
Free Email Marketing Services
We all like free stuff, so let’s start by looking at some free email marketing services.
Send in Blue
Send in Blue is a French email marketing service so they’re guaranteed to comply with GDPR. Its free plan provides support for SMS text messaging in one dashboard.
The platform provides an unlimited number of contacts, however, you can not send out more than 300 emails a day. Therefore, it’s difficult to send out blasts to all your subscribers, However, if you do a lot of drip campaigns, the lack of the subscriber cap will be helpful.
Here are the plans you can choose from on Send in Blue:
Free Plan:
- Up to 300 emails a day
- Unlimited contacts
Lite Plan, $25 a month
- Sending limit is removed
- Email support
- AB testing
- Advanced statistics
Premium Plan, $65 a month:
- Marketing automation
- Facebook and retargeting ads
- Landing pages
- Multi-user access
- Telephone support
Send in Blue also has an enterprise plan that offers everything in premium plus a variety of other features. Customers must call for a quote.
Now let’s take a look at the pros and cons of the service.
Pros:
- Easy to use drag and drop interface
- Great automation features with capabilities of including coupons in emails and reminders about abandoned carts
- Ingrates with platforms like Shopify, Salesforce and Intercom
- Heat mapping and AB testing available with paid service
- WordPress plug-in allows you to manage everything from your WordPress dashboard
- Chat feature for customers which is unique for an email marketing service
Cons:
- Limited features with the free service including limited email send per day
- Difficult to set up
- Difficult to get in touch for customer support
Mail Chimp
Mail Chimp is one of the more popular email marketing services. It is great for eCommerce and businesses with automated emails campaigns. It’s a favorite due to the great designs it offers.
Here are the different plans Mail Chimp has available:
Free Plan:
- 10,000 emails a month for up to 2000 subscribers
- Marketing CRM
- Creative assistant
- Website builder
- Mailchimp domain
- Forms and landing pages
Essentials Plan, $9.99 a month:
- Up to 50,000 contacts
- All email templates
- Custom branding
- A/B testing
- 24/7 email chat and support
Standard Plan, $14.99 a month:
- Up to 100,000 contacts
- Customer journey builder plus branching points
- Send time optimization
- Behavioral retargeting
- Custom templates
- Dynamic content
Premium Plan, $299 a month:
- 200,000 + contacts with unlimited audiences
- Advanced segmentation
- Multivariate testing
- Comparative reporting
- Unlimited seats and role-based access
- Phone support
Pros:
- Easy to use drag and drop interface
- Beautiful designs
- Landing pages
- Offers tools for creating Instagram and Facebook ads and posts
- Connects with platforms like Shopify, Eventbrite and Salesforce
- Automation tools provide options for welcome campaigns, abandoned carts and product recommendations
- A/B testing and segmentation to make your campaigns more effective
Cons:
- Automations are not easy to manage
- You have to pay more for certain features
- Prohibits affiliate marketing
Benchmark
Benchmark is easy to use making it ideal for busy marketers. Photos can be edited directly and there are a variety of templates that eliminate the need for starting from scratch.
If you decide to go with Benchmark, here are the plans you can choose from:
Free Plan:
- 250 emails a month
- Basic email marketing
- Lite marketing automation
- Simple lead generation
- Basic reporting
- Email whitelabeling
- Dedicated IP
- Basic support
Pro Plan, $13 a month:
- Advanced email marketing
- Pro marketing automation
- Advanced lead generation
- Advanced reporting
- Email whitelabeling
- Dedicated IP
- Premium support
Enterprise, call for a quote
- Advanced email marketing
- Pro marketing automation
- Advanced lead generation
- Advanced reporting
- Email whitelabeling
- Dedicated IP
- Priority support
Pros:
- Easy to build an email campaign
- Easy to custom code emails
- Automation options available including welcome emails, abandoned carts and follow-ups
- Poll and survey features available
- Offers A/B testing
- Integrates with hundreds of apps
Cons:
- Limited features make it frustrating to use
- Difficult to cancel
- Emails go to promotion or junk
Omnisend
Omnisend is a great for eCommerce due to the unique features it provides. It offers high quality and fun designs. Its opt-in form feature will help you increase your contacts.
Here’s a rundown of the variety of plans Omnisend offers.
Free Plan:
- 15,000 emails a month
- Easy to build email campaigns
- Sign up forms, boxes and pop ups
- Reports
Standard Plan, $16 per month:
- 15,000 emails a month
- SMS campaigns and automations
- Email segmentation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
Pro Plan, $99 per month:
- 15,000 emails a month
- $99 in free SMS credits a month
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google customer match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
Enterprise Plan, call for quote:
- All features of Premium Plan
- Email account migration
- Dedicated account manager
- Deliverability support
- Custom IP address
Pros:
- Great free plan with flexible upgrades
- eCommerce integrations automatically pull products you want to sell into the email
- Creative popups, landing pages and wheel of fortune game that helps you grow your email lists
- Ability to send out discount codes and scratch cards
- Creates automation reports
- A/B testing available
- Mobile friendly email templates
- Sends out automated emails for abandoned carts and order confirmations
Cons:
- Some confusion with set up but support is available.
- Does not go back to add previous customers to automation, only moves forward
- Limited sample templates and campaigns
ConvertKit
Convert Kit is easy to use making it extremely beginner friendly. It allows you to upload emails in bulk, add individual contact and import email contacts from another service. It provides a course for building and launching email campaigns and allows you to send out an unlimited number of emails to your contacts.
ConvertKit has a variety of plans including the following:
Free Plan:
- Manage up to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited landing pages and forms
- Send email broadcasts
- Sell digital products and subscriptions
- Email support
Creator Plan, $29 a month
- Includes all features of the free plan
- Free migration from another tool
- Automated funnels and sequences
Creator Pro Plan, $59 a month
- Includes all features of the Creator Plan
- Facebook custom audiences
- Newsletter referral system
- Subscriber scoring
- Advanced reporting
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Allows you to build your email list by importing contacts from another system, by uploading contacts in bulk from a CSV and by adding individual contacts
- Allows you to schedule emails
- Provides a course to help you develop successful email campaigns
- Lets you send an unlimited amount of emails
- Has automated options allowing you to personalize content, build contacts with sign up forms and use tag based customer segmentation
- Offers over 70 integrations with 3rd party apps
- Good customer service
Cons:
- No drag and drop features
- No cut and paste options for building contact lists
- Only three templates available
- No mobile app
Paid Email Marketing Plans
If you need an email marketing service with a lot of features, you may not want to bother with a one that offers free plans. Here are some services you will have to pay for, but the expense may be worthwhile.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the fastest growing email marketing services around. It is easy to use and gives you the capabilities to manage your email list, contacts, templates, marketing calendars and more. It offers great support and provides online training that teaches small businesses email marketing basics.
Here are the plans Constant Contact offers:
Email, $20 per month:
- Email marketing
- Customizable templates
- Branded or industry templates
- Tracking and reporting
- Automated resends to non-openers
- Subject line A/B testing
- eCommerce marketing
- Online donations
Email Plus, $45 per month
- Everything offered in the email plan
- Advanced eCommerce marketing
- Customizable pop-up forms
- Automated email welcome series
- Automated email behavioral series
- RSVP
- Surveys and polls
- Coupons
- Dynamic content
- Consultation for new customers
Both plans also offer additional features for marketing, ecommerce, websites and support.
Pros:
- Easy to use, beginner friendly
- Unlimited emails
- Built in social media sharing tools
- Free image library
- List segmentation
- Integrates with Facebook ads and Shopify
- Great customer support
- Online training available
Cons:
Not recommended if you need advanced automation.
Drip
Drip is recommended for eCommerce, bloggers and digital marketers. It offers tools that make marketing automation, sales funnels and personalization easy. Unique features include its intelligent marketing automation tools, smarter email segmentation, superior split testing features, list groups and visual workflow builder.
Drip offers one plan which costs $19 a month. You can reach 500 people and send unlimited emails. Here are the features offered:
- Free limited SMS
- At a glance revenue attribution
- Detailed email analytics
- Impactful third-party integrations
- Behavior and event tracking
- Multichannel automations
- Unlimited users
- MyDrip learning hub
- Flexible API
- Simple opt-in forms
- Email support
- Powerful segmentation
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Wide range of tools that can be used for marketing automation, sales funnels and personalization
- Integration with popular website building platforms like WordPress and WooCommerce
- Pop ups and opt-in forms help you capture more leads
- Intelligent marketing tools help you reach targeted customers
- Great support
- Allows you to send personalized emails in bulk
- Revenue attribution shows you how much revenue each campaign is generating
- SMS notification feature
Cons:
- Automation fails or stops working over time
- Display features need improvements
- Learning curve for beginners
Get Response
Get Response is a popular email marketing service. It is easy to use and comes with terrific marketing automation tools. It allows you to create campaigns, segment contacts and create targeted emails.
The platform offers a variety of plans. Here are some you can choose from.
Basic Plan: The Basic Plan starts at $11.07 for a 1,000 person list size but the price increases for larger lists. Features include:
- Email marketing
- Auto responding
- Unlimited automation templates
- Unlimited landing pages
- 1 sales funnel
- Unlimited lead funnels
- Facebook ads
- E-product selling options
Plus Plan: The Plus Plan starts at $36.16 for a 1,000 person list size but the price increases for larger lists. Features include:
- Everything in Basic
- Automation builder for 5 workflows
- Webinars
- Contact scoring and tagging
- 5 sales funnels
- Work Together for up to 3 users
- Webinar funnels
Professional: The Professional Plan starts at $73.06 for a 1,000 person list size but the price increases for larger lists. Features include:
- Everything in Plus
- Unlimited automation builder
- Web push notifications
- Paid webinars
- Unlimited sales funnels
- Unlimited webinar funnels
- Work Together for up to five users
- On demand webinars
Max: Call for Quote:
- Everything in Pro
- Transaction emails
- Dedicated support
- Dedicated IP address
- Microsoft dynamics integration
- Deliverability consulting
- Single sign on (SSO)
- Email campaign consulting
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Superior marketing automation tools that help you create smart automated campaigns
- Drag and drop builder that lets you create campaigns, segment contacts and personalize emails to increase revenue
- Great designs on forms and landing pages
- A/B testing
- Unsubscribe tracking
- Autoresponders
- Integrates with lead generation software like Sales Force, Google Docs and more
- Great customer service.
Cons:
- Drag and drop feature can be difficult to use
- Landing page does not update to GDPR compliance
- Phone support only offered with Max plan
Active Campaign
Active Campaign is extremely easy to use. It has a separate mobile app that allows you to check your reports, track customer activity and access your CRM. It has many of the features you’d expect from a modern emails marketing service as well as a machine learning aspect that helps you to send emails and create engaging content.
The platform has a variety of plans to choose from. These include the following:
Lite Plan: $9 per month:
- Marketing automation
- Email marketing
- Unlimited email sending
- Newsletters
- Subscription forms
- Segmentation
- Site and event tracking
- Campaign and automation reporting
- 500+ automation recipes
- 300+ integrations
Plus Plan, $49 a month
- Everything in Lite
- Landing pages
- Facebook custom audiences
- Contact scoring
- SMS marketing
- Automations map
- Conditional content
- Advanced performance reporting
- Custom branded forms and landing pages
Professional Plan, $129 a month
- Everything in Plus
- Website personalization
- Predictive sending
- Predictive content
- Marketing attribution
- Split automations
- Conversion reporting
- Site messages
Enterprise Plan, $229 a month
- Everything in the Professional Plan
- Custom reporting
- Custom mail server domain
- Custom domain
- Free design services
- Unlimited email design testing
- Social data enrichment
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Automatically transfers contacts from other email services
- Allows you to add tags to keep contacts organized
- Various templates, layout designs and editing tools available
- Spam check
- Mobile app to check reports, track customer activity and access CRM
- Learning machine helps you send emails and create unique content
- Unlimited emails with all plans
- Good customer support
Cons:
- Higher price points as compared to competitors
- Some features can be laggy.
- Limited email templates available.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a well designed tool that is easy to use. One unique feature is its ability to allow you to change templates without starting from scratch. This saves a lot of time when you are looking to go in a different direction with your design but don’t want to lose your content.
Campaign Monitor has three plans available including the following.
Basic Plan, $9 a month:
- Send up to 2500 emails
- Customer support via email
- Provides all core email marketing features
- Insight analytics suite
- Link review
- Marketing automation
Unlimited Plan, $29 a month
- Send unlimited emails to your contacts
- Priority customer support via email
- Provides all core email marketing features
- Insight analytics suite
- Link review
- Unlimited marketing automation to your contacts
- Unlimited inbox previews
- Time zone sending
- Unlimited spam testing
- Countdown timer
Premier Plan, $149 a month:
- All features of the unlimited plan
- Premier customer support via email
- Pre-built engagement segments
- Send time optimization
- Advanced link building
- Email builder section locking
Pros:
- 81 templates included but you can also build your email with text or HTML code
- Compact design tool with drop and drag functionality
- Seven content blocks available
- Content can be previewed for desktop or mobile
- Ability to save template without losing content
- You can add contacts right before you send your email
- Email send times can be scheduled in advance
- Real time world map view shows you when emails are opened around the world
- Live countdown to when your email hits
- Offers 20 different email views
- Customer segmentation options
- Email automation flows
- Personalized content
- Sign up forms
- 250+ integrations with third party apps
Cons:
- Fewer options when building emails as compared to competitors
- No separate mobile app
- Customer support available via email only
Now that you are familiar with the email marketing services out there, which will you be using to help your business grow?
