Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software: 9 Email Marketing Services reviewed by a user By Julian Ratcliffe in Email Marketing The search for finding the best email marketing software for YOU is definitely not easy as there are a multitude of options for every budget and every feature set. Here’s a quick round up of e-mail marketing software in the market, after having gone through the process myself. A broad look at the kind of people who can benefit from the cloud based email marketing software: 1. Savvy Entrepreneurs who would like to build a profitable relationship with the existing base of customers, looking at leaving no opportunity to delight the consumers. 2. Marketers at medium and large companies trying to do the same, exploring more efficient options than hiring an agency and paying 5-15 times lesser. More savings is equal to more earnings. 3. Digital marketers and agencies looking at acquiring new leads/customers for themselves and their clients. I’ll be comparing ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Benchmark Email, Constant Contact, iContact, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, Madmimi and Vertical Response with a summary here These are the most actively used and successful players while there are a dozen more smaller players not worth mentioning here. For those wanting to get into the basics of email marketing may see this, or a good email design strategy for an email blast here. Now coming down to the best email marketing services review:
1. AWeber
Features AWeber has more than 150 templates to choose from. It integrates with WordPress, PayPal, Eventbrite and a few others. AWeber also allows you to quickly segment your lists by subscriber opens or clicks, location, and even what pages subscribers visited on your website. The Good Known to handle big volumes easily, good for professional digital marketers. This provider has an option for custom HTML and also allows you to add attachments to your email. The Bad No free trial (although $1 won’t hurt). No survey feature. No image hosting. No option to send the same email to multiple lists. No ability to forward a message to a friend. Not integrated with Google Analytics. Pricing
AWeber offers a variety of pricing options, but their monthly plans range from $19/month for up to 500 subscribers to $149/month for up to 25,000 subscribers. More than that, just ask for a custom quote.
One Line Verdict Best solution for individual digital marketers as well email marketing agencies handling multiple accounts. Try here
2. Active Campaign
Active Campaign
Active Campaign is the surprise guy in the market, it literally has everything that is needed and is probably providing best email marketing solutions in the market.
The Good Fantastic integration with CRM software?s like Salesforce.com and many others. Customer service and support is quick and useful. They can even custom design templates for your business at a nominal price. Reporting is comprehensive from the open rates, link opens, email client and the best part is geographical reporting of the campaign opens. They also have a feature Erja at an additional with which the entire database’s social media profiling and segmentation can be done for creating razor sharp targeted campaigns.
The Bad
Doesn?t offer a direct copying of the campaign from a zip file. But that’s hardly a deterrent.
One Line Verdict A must try for small business owners who would want to get into the depth of their customer’s digital behavior and try sharp segmented campaigns!
3. Benchmark Email
Striking resemblance to Pinstorm, Benchmark Email is a sweet little software good for managing newsletters. Good for bloggers and professionals like photographers, designers etc
The Good Benchmark Email’s easy-to-use interface might be a good fit for beginners.
The Bad
Conversion tracking is not available directly from Benchmark, but you can get the information from Google Analytics
One Line verdict Good for professionals who would want to communicate with a limited base of their clients not at very high frequency, but at a decent cost. Typical newsletter marketing, try here
4. Constant Contact Features Constant Contact provides more up to 425 customizable email templates. The easy possibility of changing the ‘From’ line is another important benefit. This is important if you want your emails to come from multiple people within your organization., especially useful with the new Gmail tabs. KPI’s and reporting data is very thorough, you can view bounces, complaints, opt-outs, CTA’s, forwards and social shares.
The Bad There is an additional monthly fee to send surveys to your contacts. There is no free version for small-scale email marketers. Google Analytics reports are also not available. Pricing Constant Contact pricing is monthly and is based on your number of email addresses ranging from $15/month for up to 500 addresses to $75/month for up to 10k. They also offer discounts for nonprofits.
One line verdict Not really bring anything different to the table for any particular segment, can be skipped.
5. iContact
The Good iContact’s wide range of templates offers you a head start on your email marketing campaigns.
The Bad Conversion information is only available through Salesforce, a separate application.
One line verdict Only useful if your company is already using salesforce.com. Otherwise, it can be given a miss.
6. InfusionSoft
Features InfusionSoft combines CRM, email and social marketing, and e-commerce solutions. It is most known for it’s easy ability to segment subscribers by activity to help you send very targeted emails.
They also provide detailed customer records so you can see what emails were sent to who and which actions your subscribers took.
The Good Total solution, not limited to email marketing only but a good way to automate the sales and marketing departments of SME’s and statups. Must try this before making the final decision.
The Bad Not as user-friendly as its competitors, expect a learning curve, but that’s there with everything great (like wordpress). But it will surely grow on you.
Pricing InfusionSoft has three tiers of pricing starting at $199/month for 5,000 contacts/500,000 emails. Their premier pricing is $499/month for 100,000 contacts/500,000 emails.
One line verdict If you are startup, and looking to scale up soon with a scalable marketing automation with full seriousness, this is the tool to go ahead with, at least a must try
7. MadMimi
Mad Mimi is a good piece of software, tastefully developed with a lot of personal effort by a really talented silicon valley couple. Useful for creating campaigns and loyal customers. Must Try the interface
The Good Mad Mimi is integrates with many other applications that will further propel your brand. Surprisingly affordable.
The Bad Complete creative control can be daunting and is not for everyone
Pricing Starts at$10 a month for up to 500 contacts.
One line verdict One of the best players around, slick interface, fantastic customer support, great price, my personal favorite. Must try now
8. MailChimp
Features MailChimp again has more than 500 templates to choose from. They recently implemented a drag and drop editor for quick, easy and aesthetically pleasing email layouts. Many of their templates are optimized to display on mobile devices. You also have the option of coding your email directly with HTML and inline CSS. MailChimp uses an advanced open API and encourages other applications to integrate with it. SurveyMonkey, PayPal, FreshBooks, Google Analytics, Shopify, Salesforce, and many more currently integrate with Mail Chimp. The provider has a summary of each email send which reports on the number of opens, clicks, unsubscribes and complaints. They also lend performance advice by comparing your open rate with your industry average and your lists average, which is a big plus.
The Bad MailChimp does not allow you to send one campaign to multiple subscriber lists. Also, a big drawback is the inability to send auto-responder campaigns.
Pricing They score very high if you are beginner looking for a free version, which offers up to 2k subscribers and 12 k mails. MailChimp has a number of monthly plans to choose from ranging from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers to $240/month for up to 50,000 subscribers. All paid plans have an unlimited number of sends.
One line verdict Nice clean interface, known brand, but may not be the best value for money as it is slightly expensive, the interface can get sucky at times due to forced sense of humour of the developers (it’s pretty good at times, but not always), auto responders missing in the system yet.
9. Vertical Response
VerticalResponse takes a very broad approach to modern marketing. You may not have an interest in mailing paper postcards anymore, but having the option can be nice. Combine traditional methods with newer options in the digital realm and you get a powerful campaign to promote your business.
The Good You can get a clear picture of how successful your campaigns are with VerticalResponse’s reporting tools.
The Bad The interface could be a little more straightforward. Not the
One line verdict Not in my top 5!. Go try amongst these basis your fitment ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Benchmark Email, Infusionsoft or Madmimi
In a Nutshell, to find the best email marketing software for you, I suggest choose 2 or items from the
list, register and try for it yourself right away. And then make a decision for yourself within a week.
Happy Decision making
, just remember that the faster you start the better, there are people out
there waiting to be your customers, and there are your customers out there waiting to be your loyal customers forever. So which email marketing platform is your favorite?