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The Best Email Marketing Software for Your Business (2023 Rankings)
The right email marketing software can make a big difference in the success or failure of your marketing campaigns. If you’re not using the best email marketing software, you may be missing out on some great opportunities to connect with your customers and prospects.
Email marketing is way more than a one-off sales pitch through email. Rather, it’s a continuous series of communication that interests, educates, entices, and onboards potential customers for long-term association and loyalty.
Needless to say, there’s a lot that goes into managing a successful email marketing program. It’s more than just sending out a few emails from time to time. You need to think about things like building a quality list of subscribers, segmenting your list, crafting great email content, and timing your emails for maximum impact.
And that’s where the right email marketing software comes in. The best email marketing tools will help you do all of the above so that you can stay focused on other parts of your business.
Of course, there are tons of email marketing tools out there, so how can you tell which one is right for your business?
Over the past several years, we’ve been testing and using different email marketing software to help us manage our own email marketing campaigns. We’ve also talked to a lot of small business owners and digital marketers to get their thoughts on their favorite email marketing software platforms.
In this article, we’ve reviewed and ranked the top email marketing software platforms based on our own experiences and key factors, including features, ease of use, affordability, and customer support.
We’ve also included a detailed overview of each platform to help you make an informed decision about which one is right for your business.
Table of Contents
The Best Email Marketing Software in 2023
Rather than provide you with a massive list of dozens of email marketing tools, we’ve tried to simplify things by focusing on only the best of the best options out there.
Our top email marketing tools are:
Let’s now take a detailed look into each of these tools to know why they made it to our list.
GetResponse is one of the top email marketing platforms available today, as it is comprehensive and comes with advanced automation features. Also, it has many modern and aesthetically-appealing design templates for different types of emails, and all that you have to do is fill your content, and send it to your customers. You can choose from more than 120+ templates.
Besides these templates, here’s a detailed look at what GetResponse can do for your organization.
Drag and Drop Editor
GetResponse’s drag-and-drop editor is an intuitive way to customize templates and even build emails from scratch. As the name suggests, you can simply drag and drop the different blocks to the canvas to create emails and newsletters just the way you want.
Funnel Builder
The funnel builder is another convenient feature in GetResponse and using it, you can create different funnels to meet your marketing and business needs.
Email Automation
One of the highlights of GetResponse is its advanced automation features. With this tool, you can create drip campaigns where emails are sent on prescheduled dates, trigger emails that are sent when specific events happen, and even auto-responses for some emails. GetResponse also offers a unique scoring system that helps to identify the hottest and the most interactive leads from your list. All these not only save time but also create many communication touchpoints with your potential customers.
A/B Testing
GetResponse comes with A/B and split testing wizards that help to identify the most optimized emails automatically. The advantage is your emails will have a higher conversion rate.
Integrations
GetResponse integrates with many leading platforms and tools. You can even create custom integrations through APIs. It integrates well with Zapier as well.
Overall, GetResponse is a comprehensive email marketing software that comes with all the features you need for executing a successful email campaign.
Pros
- Has a free plan.
- Offers sophisticated tools for automation.
- Its data segmentation makes it easy to manage large email lists.
- Has a webinar functionality.
- Its landing page templates and A/B testing are handy tools.
- Meets GDPR requirements.
Cons
- Drag and drop editor can be better.
- Split testing is available only for content and subject line.
- There are recording limits on webinars.
Pricing
GetResponse pricing options include four plans:
- Free – Only up to 500 contacts
- Email Marketing – $15.58/month for 1,000 contacts. Comes with autoresponders, basic segmentation, scheduling, and integrations.
- Marketing Automation – $48.38/month for 1,000 contacts. Supports marketing and event-based automation, webinars, and advanced segmentation.
- Ecommerce Marketing – $97.58/month for 1,000 contacts. Ideal for e-commerce apps.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and sales CRM tool that makes it easy to handle even the most complicated email marketing campaigns. It’s best-known for its pre-built automation that helps to personalize campaigns for different groups. Plus, here are a few other features that make it notable in this space.
Prebuilt Templates
ActiveCampaign comes with many templates for sending emails and newsletters. All that you have to do is customize them using its intuitive drag-and-drop builder. All these templates are professional looking and save time and effort for you. Alternatively, you can also use the editor to build templates from scratch.
Deals
Deals is a unique feature that enables a seamless flow of data to automate sales follow-up. With this CRM feature, you can take your customers through the complete funnel and end by easily closing deals and sales. Such automation increases the success rate of your campaigns.
On-site Chat
On-site chat is another salient feature using which you can quickly respond to your customer’s queries and doubts. It greatly enhances the end-user experience as well.
In all, ActiveCampaign is a good choice for creating personalized campaigns and following them with sales deals, without too much time and effort.
Pros
- Excellent automation that simplifies your work.
- Good customer support
- Data migration is included in all plans
- Integrates with more than 800 tools and platforms.
Cons
- Can take time to learn, especially for non-tech savvy users.
- Gets expensive as your contact list grows.
Pricing
ActiveCampaign offers four plans and the below costs are for 1,000 and 5,000 contacts respectively. Note that the costs add up rapidly in the lower plans as you increase your contact list, and this is why we’re showcasing the costs for two slabs.
- Lite – $29/month for 1,000 contacts and $79/month for 5,000 contacts.
- Plus – $49/month for 1,000 contacts and $149/month for 5,000 contacts.
- Professional – $149/month for 1,000 contacts and $209/month for 5,000 contacts.
- Enterprise – Custom quote.
HubSpot is an integrated CRM platform that combines sales, marketing, and operations to help grow your business. It boosts your ROI, enables sales, and brings in qualified leads for email marketing. All the features you need are on the cloud, so anyone from your team can access it from anywhere. It also supports website hosting and blogging. Plus, HubSpot is known for its informative guides and videos that can help anyone get started in digital marketing.
Here’s a look into a few of its salient features.
Integrated CRM
HubSpot’s biggest advantage is its integrated CRM that tracks behavior across different systems, so you can create appropriate email strategies that would appeal to your potential customers. Also, you can keep your companies, contacts, information about your campaigns, and even tickets in a single place, and gain insights from them.
Landing Page Templates
HubSpot comes with landing page templates that you can leverage to quickly build the web pages you need. No designers and developers are needed to create these pages. All that you need is a good idea of how you want your design pages to look. The drag-and-drop editor is intuitive and makes it easy to customize the templates or create one from scratch, if that works better for you.
Segmentation
With HubSpot, you can segment your lists based on any criteria. You can even use metrics like page views, interaction levels, last activity, and more to segment your contacts into meaningful groups. Accordingly, you can create email marketing campaigns to interact with them.
Reporting
Email automation and reporting are also top-notch in HubSpot. Some things you can do include adding personalization in bulk emails, including images and links within email templates, and more. Also, it creates advanced reports that show your open and bounce rates, number of unsubscribes, and more, all of which can help you better understand the success of your campaigns.
In all, HubSpot is an advanced email marketing and CRM tool that can provide good returns for your business.
Pros
- Comes with a built-in CRM that integrates with everything you do.
- Advanced reporting.
- Easy payment tiers, where you pay only for the contacts to whom you market.
- Offers free information through blogs and videos.
- Simple, yet effective automation capabilities.
Cons
- No free plan.
- Higher plans can get expensive.
- Not a good choice for organizations looking for pure email marketing tools.
- Not easy to integrate third-party CRM
Pricing
HubSpot offers three pricing plans:
- Starter – $45/month for 1,000 contacts.
- Professional – $800/month for 2,000 contacts
- Enterprise – $3,600/month for 10,000 contacts
MailChimp is an automation, marketing, and email software that help businesses quickly scale and grow. In particular, it’s well-known for its newsletter templates and is available for every user list. It even integrates well with thousands of apps including Zapier and WordPress to help create seamless data flows.
Below are some of the important features of MailChimp.
Email Automation
MailChimp’s simple and practical email automation is one of the reasons for its popularity. With this tool, you can create personalized marketing emails and workflows for any of your customers, and can even choose the appropriate time to send out emails. Moreover, you can create triggers for sending out emails using the interface or programmatically through APIs.
Content Optimizer
Content Optimizer is another cool feature that helps you to create the best email content. The underlying AI algorithms compare your content with some of the best practices in email marketing and accordingly, provide suggestions to improve the quality of your copy and layouts. Your emails can be more attractive with the content optimizer.
Advanced Segmentation
MailChimp’s audience segmentation tools help you to know more about your contacts and group them into convenient buckets. The advantage of such segmentation is that you can create content, emails, and marketing campaigns that are geared to improve your interactions, that in turn, could lead to more conversions and improved ROI. Also, your contacts won’t feel overwhelmed with your emails, and there’s a higher chance to read through them.
Reports and Testing
With MailChimp, you can do comprehensive A/B testing to understand how to better optimize your emails to increase the open and click rates. Along with this, MailChimp generates advanced reports that show the open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and other pertinent information, using which you can improve the direction of your email marketing campaigns.
Overall, MailChimp has many convenient features that can help any business to create and execute successful email marketing campaigns.
Pros
- Offers a free plan for a maximum of 2,000 contacts.
- Simple automation.
- Clear and concise reporting.
- Integrates with hundreds of tools.
- Easy to use.
Cons
- Can be expensive for large contact lists.
- Customer support is highly limited.
- Can’t scale well for very large teams.
Pricing
MailChimp offers four plans, and the prices shown below are for 500 contacts only. You’ll be charged extra if you send emails to more than 500 contacts during a billing period.
- Free – You can’t send to more than 500 contacts.
- Essentials – Starts at $9.57/month
- Standard – Starts at $14.30/month
- Premium – Starts at $285.98/month
Final Thoughts on the Best Email Marketing Software
To conclude, email marketing is an essential part of every organization’s digital marketing strategy because it’s proven to offer the results you’re looking to drive through it. However, you need the right email marketing software that’s best suited for your needs. Ideally, you’d want to pick a tool that offers the best value for your money.
We hope the above four email marketing tools come in handy for you to make the most of your marketing campaigns.
Have any questions about our guide to the best email marketing software? Let us know by commenting below.