Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business

 

Is email marketing a priority for your business?

Are you looking for the best email marketing software?

Choosing the right email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign.

In this article, we will review and compare the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.

Why is it important to choose the best email marketing service?

Email marketing is the most cost-effective marketing strategy for small businesses. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing sees an average return on investment (ROI) of 4300 percent for businesses in the United States.

Not convinced about email marketing? Check out these 6 reasons why email list building is so important today.

It is important to understand that much of your success with email marketing depends entirely on the email marketing software you choose. Because they are responsible for making sure your emails are actually delivered.

If you’re not careful, you’ll end up paying more for less marketing features and terrible email delivery rates (which will cause you to lose even more money).

What to look for in a good email marketing tool?

A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging email newsletters with an easy user interface.

You will be able to easily send bulk emails that are actually personalized and targeted without much work. It is also known as marketing automation.

Apart from that, your email marketing service should make it easy to manage your contact list, segment users into groups and track the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email service provider ensures that your email campaigns don’t end up in the scam folder.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the most popular email marketing service providers and see how they stack up against each other.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is the world’s largest and fastest growing email marketing service. It is very easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.

You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email template, marketing calendar and more.

Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, a free image library, listing section, Facebook Ads integration, and powerful eCommerce integration for Shopify stores.

Their Email Plus accounts come with powerful features like email automation, drip campaigns, surveys and polls, coupons, online donations, and content-free A/B testing, which help you send targeted emails to maximize your open rate.

Constant Contact offers unmatched customer support with live chat, phone calls, email, community support and a vast library of helpful resources.

Aside from online training, they also offer in-person live seminars across the United States. It allows small business owners to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it to grow their business in favor.

For all the above reasons, we rate Constant Contact as the best email marketing service for small businesses.

Fixed Connection has a 60-day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts at $20 per month.

WPBeginner users can use our Static Connection coupon code to get an extra 20% off

2. SendinBlue

Sendinblue is a complete SMS and email marketing software for businesses. They are one of the fastest growing email marketing platforms in Europe.

It is very easy to use platform with excellent tools to create beautiful and highly attractive emails. Their simple drag and drop email editor is perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.

Sendinblue includes beginner-friendly marketing automation tools that allow you to send transactional emails, create workflows for automated follow-up emails, and segment users. It can choose the best time to send bulk emails using their AI algorithms to ensure better email delivery.

Sendinblue offers a completely free email marketing plan that allows you to send up to 300 emails per day, but all your emails will have their branding. Paid plans start at $25 per month. You can also add SMS to your account, but the price varies based on your sending requirements.

They have improved their premium plan to include more advanced features like landing page builder, live chat, CRM and Facebook ads integration. This means users now get more value for the same price.

Sendinblue also offers a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service that you can use to power automated or transactional emails from your WordPress site. You don’t need this for an email marketing campaign, but it’s a good feature to have if you have a large website and you want automated real-time content-based emails.

3. Drip

Drip is a powerful enterprise email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers and digital marketers. They offer a wide range of tools to facilitate marketing automation, sales funnels and personalization.

Their email software offers seamless integration with all popular website builders, including WordPress and Vulk. It allows you to easily add pop-ups / sign up forms to your website and capture more characters.

What separates Drips from the competition like Campaign Monitor are their intelligent marketing automation tools, smart email segmentation, split testing features, list groups, and visual workflow builder. These features allow you to reach the targeted customers in your email list to get more sales.

Support options in Drips include live chat support, webinars, automation training, detailed courses, free guides, and excellent documentation.

We use Drips for many of our businesses because it allows us to send bulk emails while connecting and engaging with each customer using their smart eCommerce marketing automation.

Although it is a bit pricey, we believe that Honey is the best email marketing software for eCommerce websites and business owners who want more advanced features to maximize their marketing efforts.

Drip offers a free trial, and their plans start at $49 per month, which includes all their features.

4. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors and marketers. It is very easy to use and incredibly powerful.

A unique feature of ConvertKit is that it allows you to easily offer content updates and incentives with email signup forms. Autoresponders are easy to manage, allowing you to send drip emails from their email service.

With ConvertKit, you can easily segment subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This will help you increase conversions with automated emails that feel more personal. In marketing terms, this is called targeted email marketing.

ConvertKit offers email based support and extensive knowledge along with great learning materials.

A lot of ConvertKit features are specifically designed for creators and professional bloggers, which is why we rate them as the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.

ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, and their pricing starts at $29 per month. They also offer a 30-day refund policy.

5. AWeber

AWeber is one of the oldest and most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide range of tools for small and medium-sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seamlessly to most platforms, including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.

You get access to HTML email templates, list management, autoresponders and email tracking with detailed insights.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a free plan limited to 500 subscribers. After that, their prices start at $19 per month. You can sign up for quarterly or annual plans to save even more.

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is another very popular email marketing solution. It is very easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses.

It also comes with some amazing marketing automation tools that enable you to create smart automated campaigns.

With their drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts and send any number of emails designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective email campaigns to increase your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, unsubscribe tracking and autoresponders. It integrates with third party leading generation software like OptinMonster, Salesforce, Google Docs, ENDesk etc.

Support is provided via phone, live chat and email. Their help section is full of free learning materials including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30-day free trial. Their prices start at $15 per month.

7. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world because they offer a free email marketing service plan forever.

MailChimp comes with an easy drag-and-drop email builder, autoresponders, grouping of contacts, and simple tracking for analytics. It also allows you to set delivery times based on users’ time zones, and you can set segmentation based on geolocation.

You can easily integrate MailChimp with WorldPress, Magento, Shopify and many other platforms. If you’re using WordPress, see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.

When it comes to marketing automation features, the MailChimp platform is quite limited compared to other providers on our list, such as Drip or ConvertKit.

In recent years, MailChimp has tried to add many “advanced” features, but many of these are not really advanced after testing.

Mailchimp support is offered via email, live chat, and a large tutorial knowledge-base. However their support is usually slow and doesn’t match the quality of service you get from a fixed connection.

Mailchimp offers a free plan forever, which lets you send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is quite limited as you don’t get features like send time optimization, advanced segmentation, multi-variate testing etc. You also need to display their branding in your email. Last but not least, support is limited to email only, which means if you’re a hobbyist but a good business, you need reliable support you can trust.

Their paid plans start at $10 per month for 500 subscribers and the price increases in increments of 500 subscribers.

Final Thoughts: Best Email Marketing Service

There are many email marketing services out there, and we want to make sure you choose the right one for your business needs. Below is our expert’s pick:

If you’re a small business, non-profit, or new blogger, we recommend using a static connection. Their pricing is amazing, and the support team is absolutely top notch. Their onboarding team will help you find success with email marketing right away.

If you are running an online store / ecommerce website, we recommend using Drip because its the best ecommerce email marketing software. Their personalization and automation features are extremely powerful. Our own business websites use Drip.

If you are a professional blogger or content creator, we recommend using ConvertKit. They offer an easy-to-use platform with advanced segmentation and funnels that will help you take your blogging business to the next level.

If you’re a business owner who wants a powerful marketing automation tool that integrates email marketing, SMTP bulk emails, and SMS messages, we recommend using SendinBlue. Their platform is easy to use, and they allow you to manage both email and SMS from a single interface. They also offer a pretty generous perpetual free plan, which makes them the best free email marketing software.

Pro Tip: Get More Email Subscribers, Faster!

Once you’ve chosen an email marketing service for your business, you’ll want to start getting more email subscribers.

We use and recommend Optin Monster. It is a powerful conversion optimization toolkit that helps you turn abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers.

OptinMonster integrates seamlessly with all the best email marketing services we mentioned above and dozens more.

Founder of WPBeginner, Syed Balkhi, co-founder of Optin Monster. They initially built Optin Monster to help grow our email list. Since its launch in 2013, it has grown tremendously in popularity.

Today OptinMonster is used by some of the biggest brands in the world, including McAfee, Experian, TripAdvisor, Pinterest, Harvard University, Pateron and more.

Bonus tip: Improve your email deliverability

All the email newsletter tools we have shared in this article have good email delivery rates.

However there are some things you can do to make sure your marketing emails always reach.

1.Use a Professional Email Address

Gmail, Outlook, and other email platforms have algorithms that detect spammy behavior. One of them is the sender’s email address.

As a business, it is important that you use a professional business email address (such as yourname@yourcompany.com) and not a generic Hotmail or Gmail address.

This will help ensure that your email delivery rate is higher than the industry average.

2. Send Targeted Emails based on Interests

Send targeted emails based on interests

It is very important that you personalize your emails based on user segments. Email marketing software like Constant Contact allows you to easily group your subscribers into segments like highly active, inactive, interested in specific topics, custom segments, etc.

This will help your email marketing campaigns have a higher open rate and click through rate which is a big factor in future email delivery.

For more tips, see this ultimate step-by-step email marketing guide with examples to help you create a successful email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing Software FAQs

After helping thousands of users choose the best email marketing software, we’ve answered a lot of questions. Below are some answers to frequently asked questions about email marketing platforms.

Can I do great email marketing from my Gmail or Outlook?

In theory, yes. But it will quickly suspend your email accounts. G Suite and Outlook are not designed for bulk email sending. They are the best solution professional business emails.

What is the best free email marketing service?

A lot of email marketing services offer free tiers for limited use. The best free email marketing service is Sendinblue because their free plan has no limit on the number of subscribers. Mailerlite and Mailchimp also offer free email marketing service plans.

How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?

Your email marketing cost depends entirely on the number of subscribers you have, the total number of emails you send per month, and the email platform you use. The average small business email marketing spend on email marketing is $20 – $300 per month, as they manage their own campaigns. If you use an email marketing agency, your costs could be $500 or more per month.

Are there other email marketing platforms not listed here?

Yes, there are literally hundreds of email marketing services, but we haven’t listed them all here. We believe that creating a full list of email platforms would cause too much confusion and choice paralysis for non-technical readers.

We’ve tried many of the top email marketing services not on our email platform lists above: MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Ontraport, MailJet, Campaign Monitor, InfusionSoft (now Keep), Clavio, Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot Salesforce, SendLoop, iContact, Moosend, Emma , from TotalSend, SharpSpring, MailPoet and more.

The top email marketing services we’ve chosen to include in our list offer the best features at the best prices.

What are the best email marketing services in your opinion?

Our top 3 picks for the best email marketing services:

1.Constant Contact – Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business.

2. SendinBlue – Best Email and SMS Marketing Platform.

3. Drip – Best Email Marketing Platform for eCommerce.