Email marketing services are platforms set up to make email marketing more manageable for businesses and individuals. With these platforms, users can build, organize, and fully operate their email lists with ease. The importance of email marketing in any online marketing campaign cannot be overemphasized. Study has it that for every dollar ($1) spent on email marketing, an average ROI of forty dollars ($40) is attained according to this article (go to external site). This stands in a huge contrast against the two dollar ROI gotten from banner ads, which Play Starburst XXXtreme were happy to verify with us was their experience also.
Return on Investment for every dollar spent
Resource: CITC – Managed IT support and services
- Email: $40
- Catalogs: $7.30
- SEO: $22.24
- Internet Display: $19.72
- Mobile: $10.51
- Keyword Ads: $17
- Banner Ads: $2
With these figures in mind, it is obvious email marketing is not a channel one can afford to neglect. When one finally decides to dive in and utilize email marketing, it doesn’t end there. It is necessary to be well informed before choosing an email marketing service provider. Your marketing goals will go a long way in determining the type of platform best for you. Your budget, size of recipient list and the type of emails to be sent determines to a large factor as well. We took out time to analyze the available email marketing services in the market, and we came up with these. They are wonderful options for consideration.
1. HubSpot
With over fifty-two thousand customers (according to HubSpot.com) using their service, HubSpot is great service to use. HubSpot is arguably the apex service provider in terms of digital marketing. They even run digital marketing courses. Their free plan offers you access to
- Forms for easy data collection on your landing pages.
- Tools needed for contact management.
- A wealth of analyzed and relevant contact insights and activity.
- Facebook and Instagram lead ads.
- Live Chat with the customer support for any problem you might be encountering.
- Essential traffic and conversion analytics.
All these for just $0 per month.
Starting at $800 a month, their paid plan gives you
- Premium versions of the materials and tools in the free plan, plus a lot more.
- An automation feature that can excellently automate your digital and email marketing process.
- A comprehensive email marketing platform and support
- Landing pages for your website visitors and leads
- Valuable social media tools for effective social media marketing
- Tools for content creation and blogging
- A dashboard for the comprehensive view of your analytics and over 30 additional features.
HubSpot seems perfect for small businesses and websites. Their free plan will go a long way in fulfilling their email marketing needs. The paid plan, albeit at a heavy price tag, has a lot to offer medium and big businesses/websites on email marketing. They have good deliverability, nice templates that supports drag-and-drop.
2. Constant Contact
With over 20+ years in the Industry, over 200 million emails sent daily (2017) and 180 countries served, Constant Contact prides itself as an authority in the email marketing industry. Study has it that just 80% of sent emails are delivered industry-wide but Constant Contact achieves a delivery rate of up to 97%.
Constant Contact allows you to build your contact list with relevant tools and sends automatic welcome email to new subscribers. They also offer a smooth drag and drop email template setup. Customers can also measure the success of their campaign by using the tracking tools provided by Constant Contact. Their basic plan starts at $20 for a fair amount of features like unlimited outgoing emails, working from the mobile app, list segmentation, Facebook lead Ads, marketing calendar, email scheduling, and live support. With additions like event marketing, online donations, coupons, surveys and polls, their secondary plan starts at $45 per month.
You get one month free when you try any of the plans.
3. Drip
In their own words, Drip is the first Customer-Relationship management platform built by and for E-Commerce specifically (E-CRM). The service was launched in 2013. It has a visual email builder for people with zero knowledge of coding who want to build appealing and attractive emails. Drip users get to enjoy integration, tracking, marketing automation, personalization, analytics and reporting all in one place.
The basic plan starts at just $49 a month for a list of about two thousand five hundred (2,500) subscribers and allows one to send unlimited emails. The Pro plan starts at $99 a month for a list of about five thousand subscribers (5,000) and also allows one to send unlimited emails.
Marketers with lists having more than five thousand subscribers have to use the Enterprise plan which varies. You have to state your need to enable them to calculate the whole setup and know the exact cost of the plan you are on. You also get to send unlimited emails on this one. You will need to contact the sales department for that purpose.
To get more knowledge about Content Management Systems and to determine which CMS is right for you, take a look at our CMS blog post
4. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an email marketing service ideal for bloggers. They pride in increasing conversions of their customers’ campaigns using automated emails that feel very personal. They have customizable and easy-to-understand opt-in forms that help bloggers (and other types of businesses) turn readers (visitors) to paying clients. With the homepage dashboard, a ConvertKit user can easily track growth and campaign progress. They also bring in marketing automation that adds a personal feel to the campaign. These automations do the tedious work of sending timely and targeted content to your contacts. With zero knowledge of coding, their drag and drop feature helps users create personalized and automated emails with beautiful templates to boost the ROI of the campaign. It makes provision for audience segmentation as well. High deliverability, text-based emails, slack community, concierge migration, reliable support, and broadcast features are some of the other sweet offerings ConvertKit has for its users.
Pricing starts at $29 per month for a list with 0 to 1,000 subscribers, $49 per month for a list with 1,000 to 3,000 subscribers, $79 per month for lists with 3,000 to 5,000 subscribers. For more significant lists with more than 5,000 subscribers, there is a calculation service to determine the cost on the pricing page of ConvertKit’s website. For each plan, you get a 14 days free trial period.
5. AWeber
As they, themselves, call it; Simple, personalized Email marketing and Automation. They have been around since 1998; 20 years of operation.
AWeber offers live support by phone, chat, and email. They also provide customer problem solutions by hosting a live coaching session and weekly webinars, all to help their users step up their marketing game. You can integrate your old lists into your new AWeber account, and it would just start working fine. You can also create a web form using AWeber and put up on your landing page.
With a mobile app and a website account dashboard to track your campaigns on the go, checking out the metrics that matter most in your campaign is no longer a problem. You also get to access individual subscriber statistics.
Advanced targeting and segmentation is another special feature AWeber bring to the table. Depending on the actions subscribers take, you can send specially targeted emails to them (not just auto-responders) and even add them to individual segments on your list. Indeed the future of email. Their email automation also helps users save time on the whole campaign process.
Their pricing starts at $19 per month for lists of 0 to 500 subscribers, $29 per month for lists with 501 to 2,500 subscribers, $49 per month for lists with 2,501 to 5,000 subscribers, $69 per month for lists with 5,001 to 10,000 subscribers, $149 per month for lists with 10,001 to 25,000 subscribers and custom quotes for lists with 25,000+ subscribers. All plans access the same features, albeit efficiency might differ, the only difference is the size of the list allowed.
6. GetResponse
GetResponse is another 800-pound gorilla in the room. With over three hundred and fifty thousand customers signed up on their platform, they are obviously the user’s choice. They offer beautiful email templates with the drag-and-drop feature enabled to increase sales and optimize engagement. They provide web forms for data collection and email subscription, autoresponders for special actions and retargeting, advanced analytics on your dashboard to inform your marketing decisions, A/B testing and lots more. Their landing pages with so many mobile friendly template designs bring about high conversions.
They also provide a webinar marketing solution; features that allow you send invites, reminders, and follow-up emails with great automation. Social media integrations are not absent. All these enhance sales for your business.
Everything can get automated on the GetResponse platform; cart abandonment follow-up, segmentation, web event tracking and lots more.
Their plans start at $15 per month for email marketing beginners to $1,199 per month for enterprise solutions. They also offer a one-month free trial, no credit card involved.
7. MailChimp
MailChimp is arguably the most popular email marketing service on the internet today. Incorporated in the year 2001, they have been playing the game for 17 years now.
MailChimp gives you the ability to have an overview of your entire email marketing campaign. It also gives you essential tools to help you create awesome emails with easily customizable templates and also connects your campaign to all the needed platforms: social media, website, etc. You also have the option to automate the processes in your campaign using things like auto-responders, segmented list targeting, retargeting, marketing and remarketing. At the forefront, it helps you quickly optimize the whole process every step of the way.
MailChimp has a free plan for basic users. Your list enjoys a limit of 2,000 subscribers; you are allowed to send 12,000 emails every month; multi-user accounts are enabled, you get access to guides and tutorials, and also Email and Chat Support (First 30 days is email only). However, this plan will not allow you to remove the MailChimp footer in emails, and you cannot access premium support. They also have the Grow version starting at $10 monthly and the Pro version starting at $199. The exact cost of these paid plans is subject to different factors like the size of your list and the number of emails you wish to send monthly. The Grow version allows you to remove the MailChimp footer in your emails as it is with the Pro version. But only the Pro version gives you access to premium support on the platform.
8. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign claims to play host to over fifty thousand (50,000) businesses on their email marketing platform. ActiveCampaign lets you send targeted and personal emails to contacts with segmentation features to ease retargeting and remarketing. They also offer valuable automation features that let you save time on your campaigns and follow-ups. With smart customer-relationship management and lead scoring that allows for easy sales automation, ActiveCampaign helps you organize your customer data. There is also site messaging, SMS, segmentation and engagement tracking to help you message your clients when it matters most. ActiveCampaign has over 150+ integrations with sites like Facebook, Shopify, WordPress, etc. to make the whole experience as easy and smooth as possible
Some other awesome features like advanced reporting, integrated forms, site tracking, training, support, migration services, Gmail extension (allows you work out of your Gmail account), advanced email segmentation, automation goals, and an IOS CRM app to help you manage your campaigns on the go.
They have a nice pricing plan; starting at $9, and get as high as $229 depending on individual needs. They also have a 30 days free trial period.
9. Infusionsoft
With over 30,000 small business owners on their platform, Infusionsoft is one of the best email marketing services out there. Infusionsoft offers wonderful Customer-Relationship management for businesses to increase relationship with clients, increase sales and personalize the sales process. Their marketing automation enables you to save time on your campaign and focus on some other tasks. The whole process can be automated at any point of the way, from opt-in to the Thank-you-for-buying-from-us email. Users who choose Infusionsoft to get to enjoy an appointment system, a dashboard of analytics, essential integrations, payment solutions, online sales, and some other pro features. Their pricing starts at $99 and can get up to $497.They also offer free trials for new customers with no credit card needed.
10. SendinBlue
SendinBlue serves 140 countries, sends 40 million emails daily, sends 5 million SMS monthly and has 50,000 users. They are fully GDPR compliant. They have an easy to use service, with email and phone support, a rock solid platform, wonderful API, Plugins and Integrations. Their features include
- HTML editor
- Personalized Emails
- Responsive templates gallery
- Email testing
- Custom contact fields
- Segmentation contacts
- Custom forms
- Deliverability test
- Dedicated IP
- Send time optimization
- Real-time statistics
- Open & Click-through reports
- Heat Map
- Transactional email template
- SMTP for transactional emails
- Scenarios builder
- Lead scoring
- Lead generation
- Transactional SMS
- Plugins and API
Their pricing starts from the free version with 300 emails daily limit and an unlimited contacts list to the Enterprise plan that requires special calculation to get the cost with an unlimited contact list and so many other premium features.
11. VerticalResponse
With the option of a free trial for 60 days, VerticalResponse offers a range of nice email marketing plans that you would like. With easily customizable email templates, you are in line to create beautiful emails, which convert highly, in minutes. Their automation feature allows you the liberty to choose the perfect time when your emails get sent. With their easy-to-edit template for landing pages, you don’t need to have knowledge in coding to be able to set up landing pages for your sales processes.
With the help of an account dashboard, you can easily access and monitor the progress of your campaign. You can also design and distribute surveys to get more info about your customers and know what they care about; actionable insights for your campaign.
Asides their free plan that allows you to send up to 4,000 emails to a maximum of 300 contacts during the 60-day period, their pricing starts at $11 per month and can get up to $196 per month, and they are all based on the size of your email list.
It is worthy to note that businesses that make use of Google Suite in their operations tend to make more sales and hit more growth metric points.
