The Best Email Marketing Software
The Best Email Marketing Software
Every business—even if it only has one employee—needs to grow, and email marketing is one of the tried-and-true methods to do that. Thanks to the wealth of options and services available, getting started with email marketing is not as complicated or daunting as it may have previously seemed. The first step is to figure out the types of messages you want to send, and then select the email marketing software that fits your requirements. As you can see from the above table, email marketing software solutions are all different, with different support options, contact management features, email builders, and of course, prices.
You can go out and get a full-blown marketing automation platform, but many businesses will find that the sweet spot is one of the many pure-play email marketing software solutions out there. This list focuses on email marketing, so we didn't look at CRM and other automation features. Small businesses will see that these pure-play software solutions can be used to craft an extensive marketing strategy. Some solutions have third-party integration with shopping cart tools, CRM, and other applications, which means there is even more room for growth.
Growth means building a larger and larger email list, and there are a host of ways to do it. Email marketing software solutions all offer incentives and tools to grow your lists, whether by cleverly embedding subscription hooks in the layout of an email or a landing page, by measuring various metrics about a visit to better target a lead, or by augmenting existing content with blogs, multimedia, or giveaways, all to funnel users back to email list subscription.
Each email marketing software solution offers a different combination of ways to discover, engage, and convert subscribers. The trick is finding the one with the focus, pricing, and support that's right for your business.
What to Look For
Before you can decide which email marketing software solution meets your needs and which package to buy, you need to figure out how many contacts you have, and how much you anticipate growing. Most software is good about growing with you, and moving you up and down the tiers as necessary. Some software solutions push you into large-volume pricing sooner than others—iContact and Constant Contact move you into custom pricing at just 15,000 and 10,000 subscribers, for example.
Before you can decide which email marketing software solution meets your needs and which package to buy, you need to figure out how many contacts you have, and how much you anticipate growing. Most software is good about growing with you, and moving you up and down the tiers as necessary. Some software solutions push you into large-volume pricing sooner than others—iContact and Constant Contact move you into custom pricing at just 15,000 and 10,000 subscribers, for example.
Some software solutions offer free plans, others have limited free trials. Pricing is generally based on number of subscribers, and sometimes, on how many messages you plan to send in a month. Read the small type to make sure the plan you are selecting offers what you need. Some software solutions give you plenty of room to grow even within the tier, and others require you to upgrade to a more expensive plan. Consider how much you expect to grow your contacts database and how soon that will happen. Most software solutions offer month-to-month plans, but consider how quickly you may outgrow your tier before committing to a quarterly or yearly plan.
What's the Focus?
One thing we learned in reviewing the email marketing software solutions listed here (and many more!) is that, even though the packages are very similar, they are not identical. Some are more about visual design and others focus on contact management.
One thing we learned in reviewing the email marketing software solutions listed here (and many more!) is that, even though the packages are very similar, they are not identical. Some are more about visual design and others focus on contact management.
You will see in the table above that we flagged some of the software solutions as not offering auto-responders. The problem is, nearly every single company on this table has the ability to automatically send an email to a contact when they are added to a list, but not all of them let you create event-based auto-responders. Do you want to send contacts happy birthday messages or coupons to thank them for their loyalty? That's the distinction this table makes, so keep that in mind when evaluating these software solutions.
SupportDecide if you need 24/7 phone support: it was surprising that wasn't widely offered by the software solutions we tested. If chat is more your speed, make sure chat options are available. Forums, knowledge bases, and help tickets are all well and good, but sometimes you just need that human on the other end of the support call. If you are using Google Analytics, you want to make sure the software solution you choose integrates with it so that you can see unified statistics.
If you're ready to select a great email marketing software solution, click the links below to read our in-depth reviews of the biggest and best names in the space.
For more advice, read How to Choose an Email Marketing Service for Your Small Business.
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