Top email marketing software: 7 best tools in 2023

The importance of email marketing for staying in touch with your readers and clients is greater than ever.  But many digital entrepreneurs and small business owners miss out on this great growth opportunity because they think it is too complicated or too expensive. In fact, it is neither.

Email marketing platforms have made reaching out to your clients and subscribers extremely easy and cheap. In fact, the main advantage of online mailers, and email marketing in general, is that you can automate the entire process.

Research shows, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies. When implemented correctly email will help you follow up on your subscribers and get them coming back to your website again and again.

With technology so rapidly evolving, you might ask yourself: “Is email marketing still effective?” Or did users turn to other channels like social media? With video content and chatbots conquering the market, is there still room for email marketing in people’s calendars and hearts?

Let’s look at the numbers. The number of email users globally is still growing: from 3.9 billion in2019 it is estimated to grow to 4.48 bln in 2024. People are still actively using email: the number of sent and received emails per day worldwide is 293.6 bln in 2019 and it is estimated to grow to 361.6 bln in 2024. Email is crucial for the digital world. (Source: Statista) So email marketing isn’t going anywhere soon. In fact, it’s growing.

But the best thing is a highly cost-effective marketing channel. The ROI (return on investment) is 4200%. This means for every dollar, euro or pound you spend, you will get 42 back! What a massive return!

No wonder large businesses are willing to invest in email marketing as a top 2 tool to promote their content. According to the Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Profs, and Sitecore study, the companies that consider content marketing as their priority rely on email marketing as one of the top 2 technology to assist with content marketing. Email marketing is only second to analytics tool which came 1st.  However, email marketing still surpassed social media. 

This being said, email conversions don’t happen overnight. While you think your content is bright and unique, because you have put so much effort into it, your subscribers might receive loads of similar messages. So how do you stand out?

Keep your messages useful. Email marketing is not about bombing people with your content and special offers, it is about establishing relationships with them through human interaction. Using an excel sheet full of contacts and Outlook/Gmail will not do the trick. You need professional email campaign tools to achieve good results.

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1. GetResponse – the best email automation tool overall

Entry-level: $free
Up to 500 subscribers

GetResponse’ purpose is more ambitious than just email marketing. This is an all-in-one marketing tool that allows you to build effective landing pages, create automated conversion funnels, and send automated campaigns. This is a very advanced tool with a lot of features at a very low price. Even with the basic plan you get:

• A user-friendly visual editor to create stunning emails from 220 email templates, 
• A/B tests to see which email formats your audience loves most
• unlimited landing pages with the super-easy editor and custom domain
• Automated email campaigns that you can use to send welcome emails to your subscribers, wish them a happy birthday and remind them about your email that they forgot to open. 
• Drip email marketing. Create onboarding email sequences for your subscribers rather than just adding them to your regular newsletter, or create optional email mini-courses on top of a regular update to identify the most interested subscribers.

With professional plans you also get access to webinars, building sales funnels, and working with additional team members.

2. Moosend – the top email marketing platform for low budget

Entry-level: $9
Up to 500 subscribers
Unlimited emails

Probably the cheapest emailer you can find. Moosend offers affordable email marketing software with flexible pricing. Their free forever plan allows you to send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 people. You can:

• Build beautiful emails with pre-designed templates
• Grow your email list with all kinds of embeddable lead forms, 
• Create automated sequences (drip campaigns) from scratch or use pre-built automation templates
• Email tracking. See what happens to your emails after you send them. Who opened your emails and clicked your links, viewed your product, or made a purchase. 
• Integrate it with your website and other software you are using with 100+ integrations, including WordPress, Zapier, Facebook Lead Ads, and more 

If you are just starting with less than 1,000 subscribers, and are looking for free email marketing software, Moosend is a great choice. Once you upgrade to Pro, you can also

• Create your ultrafast-loading landing pages with fully customizable templates, that look good on any device.
• Host any Moosend page on your WordPress site with a simple plugin
• Send transactional emails, such as password reminders, purchase confirmations or personalized product notifications.

3. Automizi – the best email software to increase open rate

Entry-level: from $9/mo
For up to 200 contacts

Automisy stands out with an ambitious client promise to increase your open rate by 34%! They achieve this tremendous result through AI-powered recommendations and predictions based on the experience from over 1,000 email campaigns. The cheapest plan starts from $9/mo and you can send unlimited emails to 200 contacts with all the features included: 

• drag & drop email editor, 
• mobile-friendly signup forms 
• visual email automation builder and much more. 

As you grow your email list you will need to upgrade the plan: the price only depends on the number of recipients, while features remain the same. For 10,000 people you will pay $119/mo and if your email list grows further you will need to get a custom plan. The good news is you only pay for active subscribers that you send emails to. You never pay for unsubscribed, banned or bound contacts.

4. Gist – the  best email marketing software when combined with customer support

Entry-level: free
Up to 200 subscribers

Gist is a marketing and customer management tool that offers you a variety of features and services. With the free version, you only get very basic email marketing services like broadcast email and email personalization. It comes with drag & drop lead forms that you can embed anywhere.

To get access to more email templates, autoresponders, and drip campaigns you need to upgrade to a professional plan for $19/mo for 1,000 subscribers. But if you want to use advanced analytics, e-commerce integrations, and social media advertising you need to purchase a premium plan for $30/mo for 1000 contacts.

This is not the cheapest platform on this list if you only need email marketing. But if you offer customer support, you can combine customer support and marketing on the same platform with their free forever, professional, or premium plan and offer your team and clients live chat, push notifications, public knowledge base and more

5. Pubbly – one of the best email automation tools to grow your business

Entry-level: $24/mo
Up to 5000 subscribers

Pabbly is an all-in-one business software with a dedicated email marketing tool used by 2500+ companies. Its main advantages are:

• High deliverability rate of 98%
• Extensive integrations list of 300+ applications including other emailers and landing page builders
• Easy drag & drop email builder 
• Easy subscription forms that you can add to your site
• Advanced email marketing automation tools like autoresponders, follow-ups, and pre-scheduled sequences

The greatest thing about Pabbly is that it is designed for your business growth in all aspects. In addition to email marketing, which you can find on many platforms, you can get services in a bundle:

• Form builder – collect online payments and leads, conduct surveys, and more
• Subscription billing – send recurring bills and easily manage subscriptions
• Email verification – clean out invalid email addresses and increase your effectiveness
• Connect – create automated tasks and flows connected between your applications

And all of these you get for the price of just an emailer. The price depends on the number of your subscribers, customers, and other metrics conveniently organized in tiers. For example for tier 2 (second cheapest offer) you get:

• Email marketing to 5,500 subscribers powered with automation and analytics
• Subscription billing to 100 customers
• Form building support for 4 forms with unlimited submissions and payment accounts
• Email verification for 15,000 credits
• Unlimited workflows and premium apps for 60,000 tasks.

All of these for just $25/mo if billed annually. When it comes to bundles, Pabbly offers a great deal!

6. Active Campaign – the best email marketing platform for a personalized approach

Entry-level: $9/mo
Up to 500 subscribers.
Unlimited emails

Active campaign specialises in customer experience automation. This means they create a unique experience for every customer based on their preferences and behavior. By making your emails so personal and tailored to your subscribers’ needs you can achieve very high conversion rates. 

This is particularly good for sales, where you can follow up with the potential customer exactly when they expressed interest in your product, or for instance check if they liked it and upsell more. You can even automatically send emails at a unique time for each contact when they’re most likely to engage.

Unlike many other email platforms, which only allow one user at the starting point, Active Campaign allows you to have 3 users even for the basic plan – this is great if you are working with a small team. If you upgrade your plan to the Plus plan, you get 25 users with flexible user permissions. With this plan, you also get access to landing pages, integrations, and SMS marketing

7. Mailchimp – the oldest email tool on the market

Entry-level: free
Up to 2,000 contacts

Mailchimp is one of the oldest and most popular email marketing software which is now acting as an all-in-one marketing tool. Mailchimp is often praised for a large number of contacts that you can email for free. However, the free plan only has 1 audience, meaning you cannot do any segmentation.  The first paid plan “Essentials” is priced according to the number of contacts. While it starts for $9.99 for 500 contacts, which is not much, it will quickly grow to $20.99 as soon as you reach 501. This Essentials plan only offers basic features and has only 3 audiences, which does not give you much room for manure when trying to personalize your messages.

The days of impersonal emails are gone. What worked just fine several years ago, today is simply not enough. Today’s subscribers are more sophisticated and spoiled with incoming quality information. To establish relationships with them you need a personalized approach based on careful segmentation and automated sequences.

When you send emails to your subscribers, think of a customer journey that you take your clients on. After all, it takes time and effort to get your leads, now that you have their email address in your CRM you want to give the best customer experience possible!

Use these professional tools to create successful email marketing campaigns.

How to choose the right email marketing software

There are so many email software companies that offer exceptional service, great support, and excellent value for money ratio. What should you look at when choosing email marketing software?

Templates and designs

Your audience gets a lot of emails. To make sure they read years, make your messages attractive. It may take time and effort to create a beautiful email, and even more to get a converting one. Wouldn’t it be nice to outsource the design and focus on the content? Guess what? This has already been done! When using email marketing tools, you can take advantage of nicely designed, tried and tested templates built to convert. So when choosing an email tool, make sure you have several templates to choose from and that you are happy with a design. 

Software integrations

Make sure there is a way to integrate a lead form (a form that your site visitor fills out in order to receive your emails) into your website. Once you have collected the data of your subscribers you need to store it and use it effectively – this is where you need a CRM (Client Management System) integration. Maybe if you are just starting, you see no problem in adding every new contact (prospect) manually, but as your audience grows you will need a lot more time. Integrations are very important for choosing any marketing software. 

Audience segmentation

Group your audience by interests or behavior. If you are a fitness club owner, you can send one email to a group interested in yoga and dancing, and a different one to those interested in muscle-building classes like Body Pump. You can adjust how many emails you send to users, based on how often they actually open your emails. Adapting your email strategy to your subscribers’ needs will save you money on excessive emails and build trusted relationships with your audience.

Email automation

Program automatic emails for your subscribers so that you don’t have to send each email manually and embark them on a perfectly crafted customer journey. For example, you can set an automatic welcome message, so that your readers know what kind of content they can expect from you in the future. Taking it one step further, create an onboarding email sequence that will help build trust with your new subscribers. For example, before selling your online course, offer your readers a small free email course. Automation works best together with segmentation: create automatic tasks based on your readers’ interests and you will see a lot more engagement on their side.

Scalability

As your business grows, your email list will too. When choosing an email marketing platform make sure it is capable of meeting your growing needs. Migrating from one email marketing software to another is technically possible, but it is a lot of work. Choose an email platform that you can stick to in the long run.

Email tracking and analytics

There is much more to email marketing than just a bunch of emails sent in a bulk. The email marketing statistics can really help you to see how engaged your audience is, how interested they are in your content. Remember, at the beginning of this post I was quoting Content Marketing Institute, Marketing Profs, and Sitecore study, where analytics was the only technology that beat email marketing in terms of content distribution. Email marketing without analytics is like playing darts with your eyes shut. 

Landing pages (optional)

If you don’t have a website it will be a great asset. You can use an easy drag-and-drop editor to create a landing page in minutes and start growing your email list. If you already have a website, you will likely collect your leads there rather than create a new page. But you may still like using them for A/B testing and specific campaigns.

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