Is email marketing a priority for your small business? Are you looking for the best email marketing platforms for small businesses? Choosing the right email marketing platform can have an important impact on the success of your marketing campaign. Here, we will review and compare the best email marketing platforms for small businesses.
Why Choosing the Best Email Marketing Software is Necessary?
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies for small businesses. As per the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300% return on investment (ROI) for businesses in the U.S.
This is so because email marketing is simple to manage, gives you total control, and lets you establish direct contact with your customers.
Not sure about email marketing? Here are a few reasons why building an email list is important for your business.
It is important to understand that a lot of your success with email marketing mainly depends on the email marketing platforms that you choose as they are responsible for ensuring that your emails get delivered.
If you are not sure about how to do email marketing, then you will end up paying a lot of money for fewer marketing features and horrible email deliverability rates.
How to choose the best email marketing software
To choose among the various email marketing software, research price, technical support, reliability, ease of use, template designs, integrations, automation, and any extra features you require. The best email marketing software should let you simply design emails, segment your list, personalize your messaging, and view analytics reports. And most importantly, they must hit users’ inboxes.
Ultimately, email marketing is all about sending the right message to the right user at the right point in time.
List of Best Email Marketing Platforms for Small Businesses
HubSpot- One-stop solution for inbound marketing managers. It is one of the best email marketing software as it offers a wide range of great tools including its robust email marketing platform. Their email marketing tools let you create, personalize, and optimize your emails without any help from designers or IT.
It must be noted that this email marketing software can stand alone or used in tandem with their other offerings like Marketing Hub along with their CRM. Your email marketing strategy becomes stronger when it is coupled with those products.
With the help of pre-made templates, you can make your unique emails with their drag-and-drop editor.
HubSpot is easy to use and lets you customize your layout, add calls-to-action, and alter your content and colors so that it matches your brand. Use their advanced personalization tools to personalize your emails to improve your open rates and clickthrough rates with comfort. You can use any info in an email subscriber’s contact records to serve the most important subject lines, attachments, content, call-to-action, and links.
Constant Contact- This is one of the best email marketing platforms for small businesses. It has been in the email marketing space since 1995. In 2015, this email marketing platform became a part of Endurance International Group, a powerhouse that other firms including HostGator, Domain.com, and Bluehost.
As mentioned on their site, the goal of the company is to help small businesses navigate the power, promise, and ability of the web. They feature over 100 mobile-optimized, modern templates to engage and convert customers, real-time analytics and reporting, and bonus features like polls, events, and coupons.
GetResponse- In this email marketing software, the entire process from start to finish feels smooth and easy, is user-friendly, and you have a lot of options along the way. However, the experience would be even better with a built-in image editor.
You can add your contacts with the help of quick-action buttons from the dashboard. You can upload your contacts individually or also import them from a file. Based on the size of your contact list, the importing may take a couple of seconds to a few hours.
Using this software, building email becomes a simple and straightforward process. You can choose a pre-designed template, start from a blank template, and insert your HTML code in the editor. Working with this template gives you access to drag and drop tools and the building blocks toolbar. We enjoyed the block’s name display while hovering over an inserted building block. You can also see a preview of your created emails in the mobile or desktop view ensuring the content looks great on all the devices.
GetResponse also offers you access to thousands of free stock photos and an Integrated Shutterstock gallery. However, the latter is not available for free, but you can buy the desired image after previewing it in the editor. Sadly, they lack an internal image editor, so whenever you upload your image, ensure that you have edited it.
Once you write an email, you will be directed to the summary page. Here, you can name your campaign, write the subject line, and add your recipients. Most of these options open a popup window and do not redirect you to a different page, except when you want to repeat the editing stage.
This email marketing software has a mobile application that you can use for accessing data, creating emails, and handle your contacts. However, the email editor in the app is not that good. The customization options are minimum, and you can only create different text-based messages.
Sendinblue- This offers fully automated email marketing software for a business of any size. What is the best part? They come with a free plan that provides you unlimited contacts and nearly 300 emails every day. That is a good deal- mainly if you are running a bootstrap startup or solo business.
Their email builder is intuitive with a drag and drops editor that lets you easily create the look and feel of your email.
They also provide great tools like SMS marketing, letting you speak to your customers, and an instant chat service which provides you the ability to answer any queries your customers might have. Other great features they provide include customized landing pages, Facebook ads, signup forms, and retargeting abilities.
Drip- This is a powerful enterprise email marketing platform for bloggers, eCommerce, and online marketers. They provide a wide variety of tools to make marketing automation, personalization, and sales funnels simple.
Their email software provides seamless integration for all the popular website builders including WooCommerce and WordPress. This lets you easily add pop-ups/sign up forms to your site and attract more leads.
What sets Drip apart from the competition like Campaign Monitor is its smart marketing automation tools, smart email segmenting, list groups, split testing features, and a visual workflow builder. These unique features let you reach targeted audiences in your email list to attract more sales. Support options at Drip include webinars, live chat support, detailed courses, automation training, excellent documentation, and free guides.
Many small businesses use Drip as it allows us to send bulk emails while connecting and engaging with every consumer on a personal level using their smart eCommerce marketing automation. Even though it is a bit expensive, Drip is the best email marketing software for eCommerce sites and business owners who want more advanced features to improve their marketing efforts.