Is email marketing a priority for your small business? If so, you may wonder what the best email marketing software is?
Picking the right email marketing service can make or break your small business marketing strategy and your email marketing campaigns.
This post has rounded up 10 of the top email marketing services for small businesses.
Why Email Marketing Service Is Here to Stay
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small businesses. Take a look at these statistics as proof:
- There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. (Source: Statista)
- 64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach customers. (Source: Campaign Monitor)
- Active email accounts surpassed 5.6 billion in 2019. (Source: Statista)
- 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
- Launching a mobile-responsive email design can increase unique mobile clicks by 15%. (Source: MailChimp)
- Mobile-friendly email is the second most-used tactic email marketers use to improve their performance. (Source: HubSpot)
- Although people primarily check email on iPhone devices, Gmail is still the most-used email service, with more than 1.5 billion users (Source: CNBC)
- Nearly 22% of all email campaigns are opened within the first hour of sending. (Source: GetResponse)
- 45% of internet users avoid opening emails from unknown addresses. (Source: Statista)
- 99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning. (Source: OptinMonster, 2020)
- On average, Home and Building services have a click-through rate of nearly 19%. (Source: Constant Contact, 2021)
- 59% of Millennials primarily use their smartphone to check email, while 67% of Generation Z scans their inbox on mobile. (Source: Bluecore)
- 74% of Baby Boomers think email is the most personal channel to receive communications from brands, followed by 72% of Gen X, 64% of Millennials, and 60% of Gen Z. (Source: Bluecore)
- 91% of women in the US use email, compared to 89% of men. (Source: Statista)
As you can see from the statistics above, email marketing is here to stay. Email marketing is simple to manage, gives you greater control, and allows you to communicate directly with your clients.
Why Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service Is Important?
It's critical to recognize that a large part of your success with email marketing is dependent on the email marketing software you use, as they are responsible for ensuring that your emails get sent.
If you aren’t careful, you will end up paying significantly more for fewer marketing features and poor email deliverability rates.
What to Look for in a Good Email Marketing Tool?
When it comes to finding a good email marketing tool, here are a few things to look out for:
- An email marketing service that allows you to create highly engaging email newsletters with an intuitive UX.
- Easily send customized and targeted email messages without any effort.
- Make it simple to maintain your contact list classify users into groups or buckets.
- Track the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
- Guarantee that your email campaigns avoid a user's spam folder.
Top 10 Email Marketing Services for Small Businesses
Now let’s take a look at ten of the most popular email marketing service software as a service (SAS) platforms and how they stack up against each other. It should also be noted that these are in no particular order.
1. Constant Contact
One of the world's biggest and fastest-growing email marketing services is Constant Contact. It is also one of the most user-friendly email marketing services for beginners.
With them you can quickly manage your contacts, email lists and templates, your marketing calendar, and other important information.
Each subscription includes unlimited emails, simple tracking and reporting, a free image library, list segmentation, built-in social media sharing capabilities, and Facebook ads integration.Their Email Plus accounts also include advanced tools such as email automation, drip marketing, surveys & polls, subject line A/B testing, and much more, allowing you to send tailored emails to maximize your open rate.
Constant Contact provides unrivaled customer service via community support, live chat, phone calls, email, and an expansive library of helpful information.
Pros:
- Easy to set up and use
- Detailed analytics reports to help you improve conversions
- Audience segmentation to target subscribers
- Other marketing tools for faster growth
- Automated campaigns and drip series
Cons:
- No free plan
- Plans start at $20 a month for 500 email subscribers, 501-2,500 is $45
2. SendinBlue
SendinBlue is a full-service email marketing and SMS (text messaging) platform for businesses.
They are very user-friendly platform with fantastic features for creating highly engaging and visually appealing emails. Their easy-to-use drag-and-drop email editor is ideal for newbies with no prior experience in email marketing.
SendinBlue features marketing automation tools for beginners that allow you to send transactional emails, establish workflows for automatic follow-up emails, and segment users. They also uses artificial intelligence algorithms to determine the optimal time to send your emails to ensure maximum email deliverability.
Pros:
- Offers a 100% free email marketing service with an infinite number of contacts
- You can send up to 300 emails each day, but they do include SendinBlue branding.
- You can also add SMS to your account, but the pricing will vary depending on your messaging needs.
Cons:
3. Drip
Drip is an enterprise level email marketing platform that is ideal for e-commerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. They provide a variety of solutions to help with marketing automation, sales funnels, and personalisation.
Pros:
- Sophisticated marketing automation tools
- Smarter email segmentation
- Split testing features
- List groupings
- Visual automation workflow builder
Cons:
- No free plan, just a 14-day free trial
- $19 per month for 500 emails, $29 for 501-1000
- SMS is an additional cost based on messages sent
4. HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the most well-known SAS platforms, and they are known for their customer relationship management (CRM) and email marketing space.
HubSpot Marketing Hub (which contains the email marketing service) is a full-service digital marketing platform that seamlessly merges CRM, email marketing, and campaign automation. HubSpot provides a wide range of features and customization in one platform.
Pros:
- Offers a 100% free email marketing service with 2000 emails per month
- CMS and sales integrations
- Ability to personalize emails
- Easy to set up and use (if you need help, contact us as we are a HubSpot Agency Partner)
- Detailed email engagement analytics
- Built-in A/B testing and send-time optimization (available at higher tiers)
- Email segmentation using smart rules
- Email autoresponders
Cons:
- Cost to remove the branding ($50 per month for Marketing Starter)
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an advanced email marketing tool designed for professional bloggers, authors, and small business marketers. It is both simple to use and tremendously powerful.
Pros:
- Ability to offer content upgrades and incentives using email registration forms
- Simple auto-responders that allow you to send drip emails.
- Divide your subscribers into interested prospects and current clients
- Enhance conversions by sending personalized automated emails.
- A/B testing
- Email templates
- Smart workflows
- Ability to sell recurring subscriptions
Cons:
- 300 subscriber limit on the free plan
- Paid plans start at $9 per month when billed annually, $15 month to month
6. Moosend
Moosend is another well-known and affordable priced email marketing service for small businesses. It includes everything you need to create effective email campaigns.
You might want to start by using one of Moosend's professionally created email templates, of which there are more than 70 to pick from. Alternatively, you may use the drag and drop editor to create your own personalized email template from scratch.
Pros:
- Detailed email analytics, including email, opens, clicks, bounces, custom event tracking, and even predicted demographics data
- Separate mobile editor
- A/B testing
- Heatmaps
- Email analytics
- Simple list segmentation
Cons:
7. AWeber
AWeber is ideal for people who are looking for a dependable solution on a tight budget.
Pros:
- Access to html email templates
- List management
- Autoresponders
- A/B testing
- Email tracking with detailed insights
Cons:
- The free plan is limited to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails per month
- Pro plans start at $20 per month, but there isn’t a limit to sends per month
8. MailChimp
Another one of the world's most popular email marketing service providers is MailChimp. They can hold this moniker because of their free email marketing service plan.
As an agency, we no longer suggest it to our clients for several reasons, one being they took away the ability for an agency to help small businesses. Now it requires us to log in with your credentials, which we would rather not be responsible for.
However, if you are looking for a good email marketing solution for your small business and don’t want help, MailChimp might be a good choice.
Pros:
- Easy drag-and-drop email builder
- Autoresponders
- Segmenting including geolocation
- Simple tracking analytics
- Delivery times based on user’s timezones
- List management
- Autoresponders
- A/B testing
- Email tracking with detailed insights
Cons:
- Free includes up to 2,000 contacts, with 10,000 sends per month and a daily limit of 2,000
- Pricing plans are difficult to understand
9. GetResponse
GetResponse is an email marketing platform for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as individuals that have just launched a new business.
It is a highly cost-effective and simple-to-use solution. They provide a wide range of services and integrations and extensive data.
Pros:
- A/B testing
- Scheduling
- Predesigned templates
- Unlimited email sends
- Drag-and-drop email builder
Cons:
- Underdeveloped automation methods
- The free plan is limited to 500 subscribers and includes branding
- Pro plans start at $12.30 per month for 1000 subscribers
10. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an affordable email marketing platform that is simple to use and offers various specialized functions for SMBs.
This platform includes a CRM system for managing leads and, as a result, automatically organizing sales and marketing. Active Campaign includes process automation. This provides cutting-edge, insightful reports that tell users what is and isn't working in their email marketing efforts.
Pros:
- Unlimited Email Sending
- Drag & Drop Email Builder
- 125+ Email Templates
- Segmentation
- SMS Marketing
- Predictive Sending
- Custom Mailserver Domain
- Custom Domain
- Unlimited Email Design Testing
Cons:
- Lack of a free option
- Plans start at $9 per month when billed annually, $15 month to month
3 Bonus Tips to Improve Your Email Deliverability
All of the email newsletter services mentioned in this post have high email deliverability rates.
There are, however, a few things you can do to ensure that your marketing emails are always delivered.
Use a Professional Email Address
Email platforms like Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail, and others have anti-spam algorithms on of which is the sender's email address.
As a small business, it’s important that you use a professional business email address (like yourname@yourcompany.com) and not a generic Yahoo or Gmail address.
Send Targeted Emails Based on Interests
Personalize your emails based on user segments. Many of the email marketing software platforms mentioned above make it easy to split your subscribers into categories.
Don’t Try to Do Bulk Email Marketing From My Gmail or Outlook?
While in theory, yes, you could send out your email newsletter from your personal email. The problem is that it will quickly get your email accounts suspended or sent to users' spam folders.
Final Thoughts: The Best Email Marketing Service
While are there are dozens of email marketing services out of which I have only scratched the surface. I hope you are empowered enough to choose the right one for your small business.
If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you with your small business with email marketing, reach out to us! We are here to help your small business grow!
