The 5 Best Email Marketing Tools For Every Type of Business

Email marketing is one of the most popular forms of digital marketing. It is a formidable communication channel for both B2C and B2B enterprises. And to make the best of email marketing efforts and nurture customer relationships effectively, businesses need email marketing tools.

Currently, there are 4.2 billion daily email users in the world (Statista). 87% of marketers use email as a content marketing strategy (CMI). But not all business emails are read or even clicked by users – about 78%, according to LinkedIn. Thankfully, there are plenty of email marketing tools that can help you overcome such challenges.  

Today, you will find out the top email marketing tools that will help you boost your email marketing campaigns.  But first, have a look at

• Elements of email marketing that work better with software
• Defining email marketing tools
• Top 5 email marketing tools 

• Mailchimp
• HubSpot Email Marketing
• Sendinblue
• Benchmark Email
• Campaign Monitor

Elements of Email Marketing That Work Better With Software

Email marketing is a direct type of digital marketing. Businesses send emails to promote products or services to a contact list that subscribes to their email newsletters. By sending emails, prospective and existing customers are made aware of discounts, offers, and product launches. 

But there are different types of email campaigns businesses use. You have transactional emails, sponsorship emails, email newsletters and much more. Read more about them in What is email marketing?

As you saw earlier that emails are hardly read, marketers actively consider the following elements. 

• A catchy subject line that hooks readers instantly
• Uncluttered email design that is also mobile-friendly
• A clear call-to-action button that makes the reader click on it and/or share
• Personalisation and proper timing for each buyer journey stage through scheduled automation
• Regularly updating email lists and A/B testing email campaigns

Now, dedicated email marketing tools cater to these elements through their in-built features. These features reduce the manual work and remove the guesswork when it comes to sending bulk emails to a specific contact list, along with email templates and design. Further, they are capable of much more. 

Defining Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools are software and applications that help in creating, sending, and optimising emails. They are also necessary for measuring the performance of email campaigns and help in creating reports. 

In the market, there are both free and paid email marketing tools. Many paid ones also offer free plans, but they have certain daily or monthly limits. But most have common features such as

1. Email automation for different stages of the buyer’s journey
2. Professionally designed email templates for your business niche
3. Drag-and-drop editors

Top 5 Email Marketing Tools

Here is a list of the best email marketing tools out there. Though not in any particular order, this list of tools for email marketing is based on their popularity and features. 

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a widely used email marketing software. It allows users to maintain all information about customers in one place. But that’s not all. 

Features of Mailchimp

There are many important features of Mailchimp that you will immediately see when you open your account. You have 

• Audience tool to store contacts 
• Campaign tool that tells you which campaigns are in draft or completed
• Automation tool where you can choose among pre-determined customer journeys. Other related tools include transactional emails, retargeting ads, and postcards. 
• Website tool that allows you to create your own Mailchimp website.
• Content Studio tool to give your website a new look from your existing website
• Integration tool to integrate survey sites, website builders, etc

Why Mailchimp?

• It is used by 13 million active users in the world, according to Business Wire. 
• You do not need any HTML or CSS knowledge to create your email marketing campaigns
• You can use automation triggers such as ‘re-engage contacts’, ‘share information’, etc for the entire customer journey. These help when you want to use different types of content and templates to remind users of abandoned carts, send welcome emails to new subscribers, etc
• There are different reports for each type of campaign you are going for – email, social posts, surveys, etc
• One of the many benefits of using Mailchimp is that the application is web-based. For others, you may have to download heavy software and then run them on your system. 

Is MailChimp Free?

Yes, it is free, but it also has a three-tiered paid plan. 

The free plan offers up to five ready-made email templates, and seven marketing channels, and you can send emails to up to 2000 subscribers. If you are just starting out with your business, the free MailChimp version is ideal. 

HubSpot Email Marketing 

This email marketing tool from HubSpot guarantees a boost in email click-through and open rates. You also do not need to have coding skills to design templates or automate emails. 

Features of HubSpot Email Marketing

The tool has the following features. 

• Contacts tool for prospects, companies and calls. Further, you can check out the Activity Feed dashboard that gives you the option to track your email sends through Gmail, Outlook or HubSpot CRM. 
• In the Conversations tool, you have the Inbox feed that lets you manage and respond to messages. You also get 5 Templates for free that you can use. 
• The Marketing tool is a nifty feature. It includes stats from your emails and campaigns, ads, forms and landing pages. You can also create your landing pages and emails from this dashboard and see real-time stats. 
• Other tools include Sales, Service, Automation and Reports.

Why HubSpot Email Marketing?

• You can integrate the HubSpot CRM for other marketing activities such as reporting for free. You can also integrate it with Salesforce. 
• The drag and drop editor is intuitive. You can create up to 20 landing pages, or personalise emails using the templates through the drop-down menus.
• Check out different email marketing metrics without hassle

Is HubSpot Email Marketing Free?

It is a free email marketing tool. But for more integrated features, you will have to purchase the Sales Hub Starter which costs $50/month. 

Sendinblue

Touted as the best Marketing Automation platform, Sendinblue is a recent choice for many small to mid-size businesses. It has a variety of tools for all online marketing needs. But, let’s look into the email marketing specs. 

Features of Sendinblue

• The Email Campaigns tool is extremely intuitive. It has blocks and styles that you can add. Then to personalise emails, you just have to add the contact’s information. For customer segmentation, you can send group emails based on a variety of factors – geography, location, past purchases, etc
• Do check out the Transactional Email tool as well. You can send emails to your lists without using our own server through SMTP Relay. All you have to do is set up a Sendinblue SMTP account and that’s it. 
• Other tools include the chat, automation and landing pages, among others

Why Sendinblue?

• According to the official website, it has over 300,000 users in 160 countries
• You can automate emails for email addresses you have right after your list of contacts buy or complete a survey
• Sendinblue helps in good reputation management through different workflows in autmotation. You can look into engagement stats among your email contacts. You can find out the subscribers who do not engage much with your emails. With automation, you can test out new forms of content for that specific list. 
• The platform offers an Email Heat Map where you get to know how the audience engagement. 
• Sendinblue lets you integrate with different platforms such as WordPress, WooCommerce, etc. In fact, it allows more than 150 integrations.

Is Sendinblue Free?

It has a free plan with a limit of sending 300 emails per day. 

Benchmark Email

This email marketing solution is ideal for all business sizes. It has a variety of features, and it also helps non-coding people as well as those who know the basics of HTML. 

Features of Benchmark Email

• It features an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. But it also lets you customise your emails more with its HTML editor. The HTML editor appears on the left and any line of code you write lets you preview the changes simultaneously on the right. 
• You can use the RSS email option that instantly sends your subscribers when you update a blog post
• If you are including photos in your email, you can use the native photo editor too
• There are in-built templates depending on your industry. Along with that, you also have the option of changing the colour schemes according to your liking.
• It comes with an A/B testing feature with stat reports that give you an objective understanding of which email works best.
• It has an Inbox Checker tool. The unique tool gives you an idea of how your email looks in the inbox of your subscribers, across all devices. You can check the screenshots and test the spam filters as well to know if the email you sent will be opened or not. 

Why Benchmark Email?

• Benchmark Email has 500,000 customers worldwide
• It provides you with real-time reports for all types of email marketing activity
• You can choose from 54 email templates that are categorised into occasions, industries, promos, etc
• It provides outstanding customer support that gets even better with the pricing tiers

Is Benchmark Email Free?

With its free plan, you can send up to 250 emails per month. The free plan allows marketing automation, basic reporting, etc. 

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is a part of the CM Group family. It is an all-in-one solution for automation, customer segmentation, personalisation, and integration. Find out what sets it apart from the rest in the feature list below. 

Features of Campaign Monitor

• You can choose from the list of email templates based on announcements, deals, transactional emails, newsletters and more. One unique feature of these templates is that you can use the same colour as in your website and/or brand logo. For that, you just have to type the URL of your website, and it will automatically pick up the colours. 

• Segmentation is quite intuitive in this email marketing software. You can store the customer details such as location, gender, etc like others. But Campaign Monitor goes beyond that. It allows your subscriber to fill in their own details through the tool’s dedicated ‘preference center’. This is specifically helpful when email recipients do not want constant emails or prefer one type of email over another. In short, the email recipient has more control and this provides lesser reasons to unsubscribe. 

• The tool allows seamless integration with other CRM platforms such as Salesforce. You can also connect with WordPress and eCommerce platforms. Apart from that, you can also integrate your own app or other third-party software through its native API. 

• You can combine email marketing with SMS campaigns using this tool. You can use your subscriber data to send SMS. And creating an SMS campaign in this tool will take you a few minutes, as it contains an in-built link shortener and an opt-out option for each SMS you are planning to send. Better yet, you can manage both campaigns through a single platform. 

• Email automation is super fast and easy with this tool as well. For instance, you can choose a trigger at any point in the beginning or middle of the customer journey. When the customer spends a certain amount, you can create a personalised offer targeted to that customer. Post that, you can create unique content. This is also one successful email marketing example of a top brand, Sephora. 

• Campaign Monitor provides deeper analytics for your email marketing campaigns. It has an Insights tab that gives you in-depth information and comparison of all your email campaigns. Along with that, you can use different filters to narrow down data. 

Why Campaign Monitor?

• About 250,000 businesses use Campaign Monitor. Top brands include Sephora, Buzzfeed, Jaybird, etc. 
• Campaign Monitor has superior customer support with dedicated teams. It does not suspend accounts if the email recipients complain about spam emails. Most of the other email marketing tools do that. Instead, it has a team that works on resolving such issues. 
• Not a lot of email marketing tools provide automation capabilities for every type of email recipient. Campaign Monitor has them all. 
• Campaign Monitor reviews and lets you know if there is anything wrong with your links. 

Is Campaign Monitor Free?

Campaign Monitor is not exactly free. Its pricing plan starts from $9 with a limit of 2500 emails per month. But if you want to use it for free, you are limited to sending emails to five email recipients only. 

Parting Thoughts

So these are among the most popular email marketing tools. If you want to start using these tools and grow your business, consider taking up the top email marketing courses.