According to recent studies, the average American checks their email as much as 20 times every day. Close to 60% of people check their email before they do anything else online, and even teens who are ardent fans of social media platforms still spend the lion’s share of their time on email. To top it all off, statistics show that people prefer email for communicating with their favorite brands more than any other method of contact.
Bottom line, email marketing is a great way of reaching your customers, which is even more important in challenging economic times. Now, you just have to know how to maximize this gold mine of an opportunity. Not sure you’re getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns? Here are 10 of the best email marketing platforms that will help propel your business forward.
| Compare the Top10 Services | 1  | 2  | 3  |
|---|---|---|---|
Price | Starting at $20 per month | Forever free plan, $800 for business plan | Starting at $10.50 |
Free trial | First month free | Forever free plan | 30 days |
Number of email sends | Unlimited emails | 2,000 | Varies |
Contact management | Upload from Excel, Outlook, Salesforce, etc. | Full contact management, migration | Helps determine best send time per contact |
Tracking and reporting features | Tracks opening, click-thru, sharing | A/B testing, device tracking, time tracking | Real-time tracking of open rate, CTR |
Email automation | Plan marketing calendar | Scheduled emails, triggers, workflows | Welcome emails, thank you emails |
A Closer Look at the Top 10 Email Marketing Services
- PriceStarting at $20
- Free TrailFirst month free
- Email AutomationPlan marketing calendar
Constant Contact is one of the 3 biggest email marketing services in the industry. It has affordable plans starting at just $20 a month. With this reasonable pricing comes a whole slew of useful features, including customizable and branded templates, Ecommerce options, automated abandoned cart email for Shopify, and WooCommerce integration.
Constant Contact will let you import your contact list for fast and easy email campaigns, and it’s even got list building tools and list segmentation to help you get started. This service incorporates Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads into its mix, and Constant Contact has a useful marketing calendar for keeping it all straight. And these are just the standard features. If you want to upgrade, you’ll get a wide variety of even more advanced features like surveys, dynamic content, RSVP, and automated email behavioral series. Check out what Constant Contact can do for your email marketing campaign today.
Pros- Extremely affordable pricing plans
- Easy drag-and-drop editing
- Email templates and automation even with basic plan
Cons- Editing user records is cumbersome
- Premium plan could use more advanced automation tools
- PriceForever free plan, $800 for business plan
- Free TrailForever free plan
- Email AutomationScheduled emails, triggers, workflows
If you needed to pick one brand to represent professional digital marketing, hands down, it would be Hubspot. It's not just that the company manages all aspects of marketing, including lead generation, ad management, and email, but Hubspot does it all with style.
Hubspot really pulls out all the stops when it comes to email marketing. You’ll enjoy the attractive email templates that are responsive and totally customizable. The drag-and-drop editor is even more intuitive than the ones you are used to using, and it’s got a lot more functionality and depth to it as well, including brand-matching color palettes, call to action buttons, and images.
Hubspot has incredibly detailed analytics and reporting. It includes data that many other marketing firms leave out, like what device is being used and which links are the hottest. And Hubspot even goes big data on you, pulling info from all over the web to help businesses craft the perfect email messaging to target their audiences for maximum success.
Pros- In-depth analytics and reporting
- Data-driven email design options
- Forever free plan
Cons- Huge price jump from free to paid-for plans
- Many features only available with paid plan
- 4
Campaigner
Conversion-focused email marketing toolsRead Campaigner Review- PriceFrom $59 per month
- Free Trail30 day free trial
- Email AutomationWorkflows, scheduled emails, triggers
Campaigner is ideal for experienced marketing teams using email campaigns to convert their audience. Beyond an easy-to-use drag-and-drop email editor, it helps you target specific customer segments through dynamic content blocks, as well as use A/B testing and other experiments to optimize engagement rates.
Its Starter plan has more than enough features to get you sending personalized, high-conversion emails, but it’s limited to 5,000 contacts. The Essential and Advanced plans cater to up to 25,000 and 100,000 contacts respectively, and provide tools such as eCommerce integrations and automation workflows.
Campaigner’s main drawback is a limited toolkit for social media marketing and lead generation, and a lack of SEO features.
Pros- Advanced email personalization
- Automation workflows
- Experiments including A/B testing
Cons- Limited social media marketing
- Limited third-party integrations
- 5
Brevo
- PriceStart for free and get 300 emails per day
- Free TrailYes
- Email AutomationEasy-to-use email marketing templates
- PriceStarting at $10.50
- Free Trail30 days
- Email AutomationWelcome emails, thank you emails
GetResponse is a lot more than your average email marketing service. In fact, it offers a tremendous variety of features and services that will only bolster your team's productivity and profit. GetResponse takes things to the next level with features like webinar hosting, full customer retention management software, and dedicated IP addresses. As you climb the ladder of pricing tiers, GetResponse offers more and more impressive services. Get deliverability consulting, transactional emails, and a dedicated account manager to help with troubleshooting and campaign consulting.
Of course, GetResponse has the usual features you'd like to see with an email marketing platform, as well. Features like autoresponders, landing page designer, automation templates, Facebook Ads, and contact scoring and tagging will help your company maximize those leads and convert them into paying customers. Find out more about what GetResponse has in store for your business today.
Pros- Premium features and services outside the standard suite
- Autoresponders, RSS to email, and other campaign tools
- Web forms, list builders, surveys
Cons- Gets expensive quickly if you want more advanced features
- A/B testing could be stronger
Email marketing services help improve the visibility of your business by creating, scheduling, and sending email campaigns to high-volume contact lists.
Most email marketing services charge for high-volume emails. Hubspot is one of the more popular email marketing services and offers free plans, though you'll need to pay for premium plans in order to send out bulk emails.
FAQs
What Is an Email Marketing Service?
An email marketing service helps businesses manage and use email effectively as a marketing tool. Basic features include the ability to create and send email messages to large contact lists, to design attractive emails using email templates, to create and format newsletters, and to gather the contact information of people interested in your offers.
Is MailChimp Really Free?
MailChimp is a good email marketing service that offers Ecommerce integration, marketing automation, landing pages, social media advertising, and much more. While there are paid-for plans, MailChimp's free plan is feature-rich and will do the job for most SMBs. It includes 2,000 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. You also get premium features like automation, A/B testing, and reporting, things you usually have to pay for with other services. If you need more than this, though, you’ll need to pay for an upgraded account with MailChimp.
Is Email Marketing in Danger of Being Replaced by Social Media?
This has been the battle cry of doomsayers for decades, but email is still here, and it’s not going anywhere. According to all the data, people actually prefer email to interact with brands they love working with. The average US citizen checks their email 20 times each day. That's more than once an hour. And email marketing campaign click-through and conversion rates are significantly higher, even when compared to social media marketing. Yes, email is here to stay. So, start beefing up your email marketing strategy with the right software today.
Key Facts About Choosing an Email Marketing Service
The Benefits of Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best investments a business owner can make. Perhaps the most important benefit is the sheer value. Basic email marketing services are almost always free. Of course, it will cost money to build your list of customers and prospects, but sending an email costs nothing, but can earn you a substantial consumer following. It's an online advertising channel that's almost free, so for most businesses, it's a no-brainer.
Another excellent benefit is the ability to track almost everything. This includes being able to see who opens your email, which links are being clicked, who has forwarded your email, how many have bounced (not delivered), and how many unsubscribed.
You can also automate your marketing, to comfortably schedule emails at your convenience. Email marketing is an easy and fast way to connect directly with customers and prospects. It is far more personal than any other kind of online advertisement, arriving directly to a customer’s inbox, and is therefore beneficial for any type of business. Let’s face it. If you're still sending your newsletter via snail mail, you’re simply behind the times!
Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service
All of the email marketing services listed above have been rated and evaluated on a number of important factors. The first criteria we evaluate is value. Obviously, all businesses want to keep costs low and profits high. This is why we work hard to break down the value of each service by comparing what you pay against what you get. We also consider the feature set. What exactly does the specific software offer? The best email marketing services should all include industry standards such as email templates, subscription forms to put on your site in order to add people to your list, tracking tools, tools to manage your various lists, and HTML coding features.
Our evaluation continues with other factors. We look at how user-friendly the interface is and what type of support is included. Finally, we evaluate the marketing analysis tools included (reports, graphs, other tools). To provide you with as much information about email marketing and email marketing services as possible, we invite you to take advantage of all of the following resources on our site:
- Email Marketing Reviews Through and methodical reviews by our own editorial staff of the most popular and highly rated email marketing services. Each review is based entirely on the personal experiences of the author and outlines the various features and tools that contribute to its effectiveness.
- Customer Reviews Genuine customer reviews submitted by visitors like you. These are given by ordinary people, just like you, who are currently, or have previously used these services. Who should know better what exactly is offered and how good it is?
- Informational Articles For anyone new to email marketing and email marketing campaigns, these articles are designed to help you get started. You’ll find a plethora of helpful advice written by marketing professionals in the industry. This will give you plenty of ideas and ways to integrate and implement email marketing into your particular business marketing plan.
- Feature Comparison A side-by-side comparison of the essential features offered by each company. This is a handy way to compare and contrast the top services on our site.
