Did you know that every dollar you spend on email marketing can give you a return of over $40? In an age where capturing customers' attention is getting increasingly difficult, email marketing is a valuable channel that drives results.
But to get to that amazing return on investment, the average business has to do a lot of things right. First on the list is choosing the right email marketing software. With so many competitors offering similar features for your email campaigns, how do you choose the right one?
Today, we'll show you what you should be looking for in your next email marketing tool, as well as some of the top choices to consider in 2024.
How to choose your next email marketing software - what to look out for
If you want to create amazing email marketing campaigns that drive results, you need an email marketing service that covers your basic needs.
Ease of use
Nowadays, the very best email marketing services give their users a drag-and-drop interface, allowing anyone to create campaigns with just a few clicks. While email marketing and marketing automation were only reserved for top-of-the-line marketers a decade ago, things are much different in 2024.
Nowadays, anyone with a small website or an online store should be able to launch campaigns, do A/B testing and engage their existing customers. This is why the best email marketing software has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.
If you want to see how intuitive a platform is, get their free trial and try creating a list, segmenting it, and doing some basic personalized messaging - all of this will show you if the platform is suitable for your knowledge level.
A variety of email templates
Pre-made templates help you quickly create new email marketing campaigns. But they are valuable for more reasons than one - and almost all email marketing platforms let you check out the templates available before even getting a trial account.
First, they cut down the time it takes to create engaging emails. Email writing and email design are two different skill sets and to create even the basic design, you need some knowledge of HTML code. Having templates for your email campaigns lets you edit the text while having a modern design in the background.
Second and just as important, templates are optimized for mobile out of the box. This means that your email marketing efforts won't go to waste because an email doesn’t look right when the recipient opens it on their phone.
List management
Before creating email campaigns you need to curate a dedicated list of email addresses. Your email marketing tool should have features for managing that list, growing it, segmenting it, cleaning it, maintaining the data, accounting for subscriber preferences, and more.
Within the email marketing platform, you should have options for easily managing your entire list or some of its segments.
Marketing automation features
Email marketing tools can lift a lot of the heavy load from your everyday operations. Most of that is done through marketing automation - setting up an email marketing platform to send out emails after specific time frames, events, and user activities.
These are some of the many features to look out for in email marketing services:
- Drip campaigns - sequences of emails for lead nurturing, set to go out at certain times
- Autoresponders - so that email marketing software sends pre-made, canned responses to customer emails, e.g. to a customer support email address
- Triggered emails - the email marketing platform only sends out an email to an address after a certain event takes place, e.g. when someone's free trial expires
Detailed analytics
The only way to know if your email marketing software is delivering the right results is to check on progress. To do that, you need platform-based analytics. These tell you how different automated email campaigns, subject lines and types of content are working on your target audience.
Some of the email marketing metrics you should be tracking include:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- List growth rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Conversion rates
And many others, depending on the type of email campaigns you run for your business. Ideally, your email marketing platform should have a dashboard where you can break these analytics down for individual campaigns and lists.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is the percentage of emails that make it from your email marketing software to your recipients' inboxes. Your email deliverability is influenced by many factors, such as:
- The segmentation
- Level of personalization
- DKIM and DMARC setup
- The cleanliness of your email lists
- Previous spam complaints
- And more
But there are some things you cannot influence. Some email marketing platforms have great deliverability out of the box, while others leave you with a higher chance of hitting the spam folder.
The independent review website EmailToolTester says that ActiveCampaign has a deliverability rate of 94.2%. This means that even with the perfect setup, there is still a chance that 6% of your emails will never make it to their intended addresses.
Integrations with other business tools
Email marketing rarely works as a function of its own - it's commonly integrated with larger marketing campaigns. To make sure everything runs smoothly, your email marketing software should integrate with other key platforms you use day-to-day. For example:
- With your CRM, so you can easily manage lists and run marketing automation campaigns
- With your landing page builder, so that new emails are sent directly to your email marketing tool
- With e-commerce store platforms, new customers who purchase from you are added to your email marketing service
- With marketing analytics tools such as Looker Studio, so you can see your email marketing results in context with other marketing campaigns
If you have an existing tech stack that already works well for you, evaluating the main integrations of your email marketing software should be at the top of your research list.
Compliance with legal frameworks
Find out how your email marketing software meets legal requirements such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Ensure that they have the right tools and processes that prevent questionable emails from going out to the wrong audiences.
Ask around to see what they do to make sure customers stay compliant. A single GDPR mistake could set you back thousands of dollars so doing your research ahead of time is well worth it.
Security
Email marketing tools have access to some very sensitive data. Not just your own as a business, but also your customers' emails. If you were to get hacked (or something happened with the email marketing service), all of that data could be left in the open.
Aside from the loss of information and customer data, your reputation as a sender and a company is at stake. Ask to see how they protect your recipients and make sure that no one has access to those addresses except for yourself.
Customer support
If you get stuck using some of the more advanced features in the app or if something is broken in the email marketing software, you want to make sure you have great support available.
Ask about the operating hours of customer service, as you ideally want something that has round-the-clock coverage. You should have a variety of channels, such as call center, live chat, and email.
Cost and scalability
Say that you found the perfect email marketing software for your business, and it works for you now. But what about six months or two years from now? Ideally, your list will grow, and so will your marketing automation needs.
Before committing to a platform in the long run, check to see what your options are. How many contacts can you add and at what cost? Do they charge per email, per contact, per user in your team, or in some other way?
While you can't predict the future, you can inquire about your options for upgrading, downgrading, adding new contacts and team members, and more.
Top email marketing services for businesses in 2024
There are countless email marketing software options out there, each promising to upgrade your email marketing strategy and drive more revenue for your online store, grow your list, improve customer satisfaction, and much more.
Let's look at some of the best email marketing platforms today.
Transpond.io
Transactional emails are often taken for granted but they are one of the most common ways that brands communicate with their customers. These are emails that are sent out after a certain activity happens, such as changing a password for an account, signing up for an account, placing an order, and many others.
Transpond is the easiest transactional email service provider you've ever encountered. All it takes is grabbing a line of code and pasting it to your codebase. You can then set up your own rules and the transactional emails will go out automatically, every time.
You don't have to get a paid plan - there is an entirely free plan to test Transpond out, with one email tracking inbox. You can sign up and get started today.
MailChimp
For many people, MailChimp is synonymous with email marketing, and for a good reason. MailChimp has been around for a long time, establishing itself as a user-friendly, affordable email marketing platform.
Over the years, MailChimp has expanded and they now offer a variety of digital marketing tools, such as a website builder, audience management, social media marketing, AI marketing tools, and many others.
Some of the things that make MailChimp a great choice are the 300+ integrations with other platforms, powerful email automation, exceptional deliverability out of the box, superb analytics with visual dashboards, and more. There is also an AI engine that takes a look at your existing campaigns to give you suggestions on what you can improve for better results.
MailChimp pricing starts at $10 per month and there is a free plan available for up to 500 contacts.
Brevo (formerly known as SendinBlue)
Brevo ‘goes even further than email marketing automation and offers a range of products for marketing and sales. On top of email, you can get their CRM, making this a powerful email marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.
In the marketing suite, you get the email builder and SMS marketing, as well as WhatsApp campaigns. For emails, they have a strong focus on deliverability and promise rates of up to 99%. They also have dedicated IPs for high volume senders and they automatically exclude hard bounces.
The free plan is valid for up to 300 recipients per month, while paid plans start at $9 per month.
Omnisend
Looking for email marketing software with a strong online store integration? Omnisend specializes in email marketing for e-commerce stores. The drag-and-drop editor allows you to create beautiful, optimized emails and harness all the email marketing features without spending hours on learning this platform.
Omnisend's builder comes with dynamic blocks you can reuse and add products from your e-commerce store, allowing you to easily craft shoppable emails. You can tap into customers' shopping history and create audience segmentation rules for better email marketing results.
There is a free plan with up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month, while paid plans start at $16 per month.
Constant Contact
Similarly to MailChimp, Constant Contact started as an email marketing software but then added more advanced features to become a marketing powerhouse.
Constant Contact has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that anyone can use, even if they've never managed a campaign before. There are hundreds of templates available, each optimized for mobile.
Constant Contact has a mobile app, allowing you to track your email marketing efforts on the go. Another interesting feature is their AI-powered email writer that gives you suggestions on what type of content to write, which subject lines to use, and more.
There is no free plan in Constant Contact, but you can get a free trial for 14 days. Plans start at $12 per month.
MailerLite
Mailerlite has a unique selling proposition - as well as the ability to create great emails, websites, and email signup forms, they also offer 24/7 phone support. Users can relax know that if their email marketing automation breaks, the Mailerlite team is there to help out.
You get all the bells and whistles that come with most email marketing platforms including reusable templates, list management capabilities, detailed analytics and dashboards, automated workflows, e-commerce integrations with platforms like Shopify, Stripe, Woocommerce, and many others.
Mailerlite pricing depends on the number of contacts you want to reach out to every month. There is a free plan that covers up to 1,000 contacts. The trial period is 30 days and gives you all the advanced features for free.
GetResponse
Like a lot of other successful email marketing softwares, GetResponse started out with emails and slowly started adding more marketing automation features to their offer. It covers a wide range of email types and different scenarios, including newsletters, autoresponders, transactional emails, RSS emails, and many others.
The AI assistant can help you create email content, and suggest the best email subject lines for better open and click-through rates. The drag-and-drop creator comes with many beautiful designs out of the box and you can enrich them with a library of over two million stock images.
It also promises a 99% deliverability rate, helping ensure that every email marketing campaign remains a profitable channel for your business.
The minimum list size you can start with in GetResponse is 1,000 contacts and the free trial is valid for 30 days. After that, paid plans start at $13 per month.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo can help you communicate with customers throughout the customer journey through SMS, push notification, and your website.
If you have an e-commerce store, then Klaviyo may be the right choice for you. With features such as product recommendations in emails, easy A/B testing, predicted customer attributes, easy reporting, and benchmarks, Klaviyo is built for beginners and advanced users.
Other notable features include dynamic blocks as reusable sections, segmentation rules that show and hide different email elements, and optimizing send times and email volumes.
The free plan covers up to 600 monthly emails, while paid plans start at $60 per month for 1,250 available credits.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is great for beginners starting out on their email journey. The drag-and-drop builder is easy to use, and there are hundreds of useful templates to get you going, each optimized for mobile.
Similar to other tools on this list, Campaign Monitor comes with an AI writer to help you create better subject lines and email copy. Plus its SMS marketing feature helps you get even more out of your campaigns.
While you can't use it for building websites, Campaign Monitor helps you build signup forms to capture new emails on your website.
Pricing depends on the number of contacts and there is a free trial available. Paid plans begin at $39 per month.
Wrapping up
Choosing the right email marketing platform is incredibly difficult. The market is saturated and all the email marketing tools offer similar features and pricing. However, the key to making the right choice is evaluating your needs first, starting with existing knowledge and future needs for your business.
At Transpond, we give you all the tools you need to grow with transactional emails. From password resets to new accounts, receipts, and invoices, you can keep your customers in the loop and drive more engagement and loyalty.
Sign up for your free account today and get started!
