Do you own and operate a small, medium, or large business? Email marketing is a major tool to skyrocket your business in a short time. But, before going any further, there’s something really intriguing you should be aware of.
Email is an important part of any digital marketing plan. And, for good reasons, it has been around for a long time, helping businesses meet their marketing needs. It regularly outperforms all other marketing channels when interacting with your leads, nurturing them, and converting them into customers. Therefore, so many businesses make email marketing a priority.
However, choosing the best email marketing service can be tricky and substantially affect how successful a marketing campaign can be. The majority of all the professional email marketing software in the market have similar features such as email automation, analytics, report, third-party integration, etc., which can make user selection complicated.
On the other hand, most users or businesses are concerned about achieving their desired marketing goals with the best software but at the lowest price possible. And so, this interesting article will be beneficial to shed more light on the best professional email marketing software for all kinds of businesses, whether a user wants to start an email campaign from scratch or switch from an existing professional email marketing software to a new one, cheap service, more custom template, ease of use, etc.
» MORE: What is Email Marketing?
What Makes a Professional Email Marketing Software?
A professional email marketing software converts potential customers into first-time/recurring service customers. One of the leading benefits of using email marketing is that you can operate the process automatically. And, here’s a list of features a business user should look out for when choosing a professional email software.
- Contact management tools
- High email delivery rate
- Email automation
- Detailed analytics and reports
- Drag-and-drop design tool
- Third-party integration
Among all marketing strategies for small and medium scale businesses, email marketing is one of the most cost-saving techniques. It has continued to help businesses build worldwide brand recognition, a strong recurring customer base, and increased sales. However, according to statistics by Direct Marketing Association, the Return of Investment on email marketing done by businesses in the USA is about 4300%. And, according to Statista, in 2019, the number of people who use email increased to 3.9 billion and is expected to grow by 40% by 2024.
» MORE: How Effective Is Email Marketing?
Merits of Using an Email Marketing
- Process automation
- A high percentage of ROI
- Easy Customer management
The success of a business email marketing campaign depends solely on the kind of email marketing software used. The use of the proper software guarantees that these emails are delivered to the potential customer.
Again, email marketing software is professional if it correctly manages a business list of contacts, designing, tracking (customer opened and read), and sending enticing emails. However, there are numerous software available all over the world. The quality and pricing of the services vary. And, this will be discussed more in this article to meet the demands of your business. Keep in mind that these factors affect whether a company receives a single or double response.
A professional software should also offer various solution templates, e.g., text-based, HTML/JavaScript, etc. The text-based is just a plain text email without any complex design, while the HTML/JavaScript involves designs with images and responsive designs. Moreover, email software is flexible in accepting integration from other software such as accounting, CRM and Inventory management systems, etc.
Now, here is the list of the best professional email marketing software on the market today.
7 Top Professional Email Marketing Software
- Constant Contact – best for small businesses
- Zoho Campaigns – best for dynamic personalization
- MailChimp – best for eCommerce stores
- Vertical Response – best for analytics and reports
- GetResponse – best for third-party integration
- SendinBlue – best for email and SMS marketing
- Drip – best for digital marketers and bloggers
» MORE: Why Email Marketing Is Important?
1. Constant Contact – best for small businesses
Constant Contact provides a wide range of tools used for email marketing functions. Email campaigns can be created seamlessly on this platform using the drag-and-drop function to design captivating graphics inclined emails. A contact list can be imported from other platforms like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or by uploading a spreadsheet that follows the software’s instructions.
Furthermore, Constant Contact provides more amazing features such as scheduling, questionnaire surveys, feedback forms, email automation, and more. It also allows businesses to manage their social media account and events effectively.
However, small businesses can customize their templates, host images, run analytics. Above all, ROI can be measured after a successful email campaign and change tactics on improving the conversion rate using different methods.
Pros
- Best with a website builder
- Drag-and-drop design tool
- Automation and scheduling
- Split testing
Cons
- No 2FA authentication
- Customer service takes longer to reply to issues
- Poor UI for reports
Pricing
Constant Contact offers two types of services – The Email tier and the Email Plus account. The Email tier offers regular features for a token. While the Email Plus service makes room for split testing, creative and dynamic content, and mobile responsive coupons.
However, the users can access their basic email plan for 500 contacts at $20/month. Constant Contact also offers an Email Plus Plan starting at $45/month, offering a discount rate of 15% discount for both the plans for 6-12 months subscription.
» MORE: Best Looking Email Marketing Software
2. Zoho Campaigns – best for dynamic personalization
Zoho Campaigns is one of the professional email marketing software with interesting features. It’s already known for offering varieties of software like Office suite and CRM. And, the IT support service has deployed Zoho Campaigns as their email marketing software platform, indicating that the software is of great value. However, this software was created to meet the demands of clients in terms of sales and email marketing. Zoho Campaigns also addresses the need for improved customer communication and relationships, as well as conversion.
Zoho Campaign provides a wide range of services, including newsletter templates that encompass all, from events to sales (Black Friday). These templates incorporate enticing graphics for both recurring customers and potential clients.
The software also offers email automation, allowing for the use of a drag-and-drop design tool to set up the templates and automate functions and events to make a large email marketing campaign seamless and successful.
Zoho Campaign also offers integration from the other Zoho software products deployed in the market, like the products listed above. And, third-party integration is allowed, e.g., Facebook, WordPress, Yahoo, YouTube, SurveyMonkey, etc.
Pros
- Seamless integration with third party apps
- Efficient Tracking feature
Cons
- Poor interactive design
- Poor customer support
Pricing
Zoho Campaign pricing is nominal, starting at $5/month. They also offer a free Email tier, allowing for an email campaign of up to 12000 emails to 2000 subscribers.
» MORE: How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?
3. MailChimp – best for eCommerce stores
MailChimp is the most popular and the first email marketing software that springs to mind, possibly because they have great marketing features and tools and good reviews over time. It was launched in 2001 and has been a leader in the email marketing campaign space, enabling the users to design, create and send a captivating, visually rich professional email to a list of customers.
Like every other email marketing product, MailChimp has an inbuilt template designer in the software alongside custom templates that can be modified to suit the taste of the business. In addition, components such as business logos, graphics, and clickable text can be added to an email. MailChimp also allows users to design their email from scratch if they have the required coding skill.
Furthermore, MailChimp also allows integrations from third-party software, especially for retailers who sell their services online. Such third-party services are Shopify, Magento, etc., allowing users to send email campaigns on targeted products from those listed eCommerce sites. Once a user sends an email campaign, it can be analyzed based on performance, and various reports can be generated.
Pros
- A user-friendly mobile app
- Useful analysis reports
- Free tier
Cons
- UI might be challenging at times
Pricing
The free tier is offered for 10000 mails to 2000 contact for a month. The free emails have the MailChimp logo watermark in the footer. While the premium package for business allows 500 thousand emails to be sent to 500 contacts starting from $9.99.
» MORE: How Much Does an Email Marketing Campaign Cost?
4. Vertical Response – best for analytics and reports
Vertical Response’s main objective is to offer users all the tools required for a successful email marketing campaign. These tools are custom templates, template designer, email automation, reports, and analytics, and survey.
The template designer is an easy-to-use editor with drag-and-drop functionality, allowing users to point and click on the selected template. This feature allows any inexperienced user to operate the software and design a visually creative email template from scratch in a short time.
Vertical Response also has several other features such as email automation (allowing users to use the autoresponders and automatic emails to reply to customers based on their inquiry), enabling a time and cost-saving environment while still making good and efficient communication available to the customer.
Furthermore, this software also offers analytics which provides a wide range of data such as customer device, click rate, geo-location, type of web browser used, and more. The analytics feature allows a user to compare current and previous campaigns to know which feature or design works better for future implementation.
In addition, Vertical Response allows a user to create heatmaps allowing the user to have a better view and understanding of how potential clients view and interact with the email sent.
Pros
- Easy email designer
- Survey option
- Landing pages
- Affordable
- Great reporting feature
Cons
- Fewer custom template
- Slow integration
- Not user friendly
Pricing
Vertical Response offers cheap and affordable, with virtually all the features available across all packages. The premium package starts from $11/month.
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Software for 10,000 Contacts
5. GetResponse – best for third-party integration
GetResponse is a professional email marketing software that includes a video conferencing feature as part of its standard. It is the perfect solution for product marketers and various business users. It encompasses everything from sales meetings to CRM (customer relationship management).
This platform also makes available landing pages, automation of email. As a result, a user can use the automatic reply to follow up with potential customers. Users can also integrate other third-party services such as SalesForce, PayPal, Woocommerce, Shopify, etc.
Pros
- Ideal for business
- Marketing platform
- Landing pages
Cons
- Unreliable autoresponder
- Poor deliverability service
Pricing
GetResponse offers one of the cheapest email tiers in the market, with up to 1000 email subscribers. The pricing is directly proportional to the number of subscribers a user wants. To get the premium features such as video conferencing and webinars, the user must pay for the more expensive service. The Basic starts from $10.46, Plus $34.15, Professional $69, while the MAX would come with a quote.
» MORE: Best Cheap Email Marketing Software
6. SendinBlue – best for email and SMS marketing
SendinBlue is a professional email marketing software with several distinct features. It is a new SMS and email marketing campaign for businesses in the European market today. And, they are the fastest-growing company in the email marketing industry currently.
SendinBlue includes email marketing automation tools for dummies, allowing users to send emails, create auto-response workflows for follow-up. With the implementation of AI algorithms in sending bulk emails, the software notifies the user of the best time to send an email to ensure the best email marketing campaign output.
Other amazing features include the standing alone SMTP bulk email marketing campaign feature, which can be used to generate automated emails based on a transaction from WordPress.
Pros
- Best Email and SMS marketing platform
- Easy to use
- Seamless setup process
- Affordable
Cons
- Poor customer support service.
- Unreliable automation
Pricing
It offers a free email tier that allows a user to send up to 300 emails daily, but it would contain a SendinBlue watermark. Their paid plan starts from $25 for 10,000 mails, $65/month for 20,000 mails, while the more advanced would require a quote. The SMS feature can be added, but it will change based on the user requirements.
» MORE: How To Start With Email Marketing In 10 Easy Steps
7. Drip – best for digital marketers and bloggers
Drip is an efficient enterprise email marketing service for eCommerce, digital marketers, vloggers, and bloggers. They offer users a variety of tools to make email marketing automated, sales deliverability, and user personalization easy.
They offer seamless third-party integration to major social media and website builder’s platforms such as WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify. It also allows the user to add pop-ups and signup form features to their site to entice potential customers, thereby capturing more leads.
What makes Drip stand amongst other competitors in the email marketing service market is their AI-driven market automation tool, which offers smart email segmenting, contact list grouping, split testing, and template builder for visual workflow. This feature allows the user to gain more grounds and reach the right customers, thereby converting more leads.
They have an efficient support service available always. Their support service includes chatbots, live chat service, training on automation, a free course with detailed documentation on how to use the software.
It allows any business owner to send bulk emails and still able to contact and engage every customer on a one-on-one level using their smart email marketing automation tool.
A user also has access to the eCommerce revenue attribution feature, which displays the analysis of the revenue generated on each email marketing campaign.
Pros
- Best email marketing platform for eCommerce
- Easy to use
- Smart automation
- Customer Support
Cons
- Pricey
- Automation inconsistency
Pricing
Drip is quite expensive, starting from $19 with a 14-day free trial, but any business in the eCommerce industry would like to go for this.
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Service for Bounces
Is Email Marketing really necessary?
It is advisable for any user or business owner who turns a deaf ear on email marketing to re-evaluate their strategies as email marketing service is the future for businesses. Email marketing is of utmost necessity because it delivers many leads and returns to businesses that have incorporated this as part of their business culture. Therefore, it is a priority for any business to grow.
According to Litmus’s State of Email 2020 research, statistics has shown that the Return on Investment (ROI) via email marketing is about 42:1, i.e., for every 1 dollar spent, an ROI of 42 dollars is gotten.
Again, reports have it that 78% of email marketers have notice growth in email engagement.
However, to run a successful email marketing service depends on budget and what a user wants to achieve from the campaign. This article has shown the light on the path to selecting the right email marketing service for any business based on the features, pros, cons, and price highlighted.