Email has been around for a long time and email marketing is still, to this day, one of the most effective ways to market your business to your target audience. In fact, research has shown that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can anticipate an average return of $42!
Getting started with email marketing begins by choosing an email marketing service provider.
But with the amount of different email marketing services out there, picking the right one for your business can be a little tough!
In this article, we’ll give you 7 great email marketing service providers and help you with picking the best one for you and your business.
What makes a great email marketing service provider?
Before we give you our list of the best email marketing services, we need to lay down some groundwork and discuss what you should be looking for in a provider.
All good email marketing service providers have most of these features or do a few really, really well. These features include:
Different types of campaigns
Any good email marketing tool will have a range of different campaign types for you to use including regular newsletters, autoresponders and one-time emails.
Easy-to-use editor
An intuitive email editor is the backbone of many good email services. These editors should not require extensive coding and have templates for you to use.
Automations
Your chosen service needs to be able to create automations so you’re not manually sending out emails every hour of the day. Whether it’s a simple autoresponder or a whole abandoned cart system, they’re imperative to your email marketing efforts.
Integrations
A good email marketing campaign will work with other parts of your business such as your blog, online store or CRM tools. Your email marketing service should be able to do this.
Deliverability
A good software will have good deliverability rates that ensure your emails get through the spam filters of email services.
Forms
To build your contact list, you’ll need to be able to create sign-up forms that capture the data you need to email your customers. They should be easy to build and place wherever you need them (like homepages).
Customer Support
Make sure your email marketing service provider has the support you need to learn how to effectively use it – such as a blog page or live support.
In-depth Reports
Evaluating your campaigns is important as it’ll show you what has worked and what hasn’t. Your email software should be able to provide you with all the necessary data you need to measure and track your email marketing efforts.
7 Awesome Email Marketing Service Providers
Now you know what to look out for, it’s time to find the best email marketing platform for you! Here’s 7 of our favourites to help you get started.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers currently on the market and for good reason! Mailchimp’s platform is easy to use, with a wide range of features including forms, automations and reporting tools. The star of their show is their editor which is clean and simple yet powerful.
Their pricing is also very affordable with most of their features available on their free plan. More tools, contacts and email sends are available in their paid plans which go from $9.99AU to $299AU.
Mailchimp is ideal for users looking for an easy to use, all-in-one solution with a focus on inbound campaigns and CRM.
Drip
Drip is an email marketing service that primarily focuses on eCommerce. It has fantastic CRM such as comprehensive segmentation and personalisation. It also has great automation tools with plenty of behaviour-based triggers to help users create campaigns that are more targeted to specific audiences.
The platform also features automatic tagging which tags users based on certain actions (like visiting a particular page).
If you own an eCommerce store and want a software that helps you effectively manage and attract your customers, Drip is the software for you!
Active Campaign
Active Campaign holds the title of ‘King of Automations’ and it’s easy to see why with its incredibly detailed automation builder. You’ll be able to send automated emails based on your audience’s behaviour no matter how complex they may be.
Active Campaign also has a great CRM system. This allows you to tag customers and manage sales and promotions all within the platform. Not to mention, it also has a great, easy-to-use editor.
While Active Campaign does have a steep learning curve, it’s versatility and comprehensiveness is well worth it!
Sendinblue
While most email marketing service providers start off free, they usually dramatically increase their prices in return for more tools, features, contacts and emails.
Sendinblue is one provider that doesn’t do that.
With their affordable pricing plans, you won’t be breaking the budget by signing up. Their cheap prices don’t come at the cost of features either – they have quality automation, contact list management and reporting.
If you’re looking for a good budget solution with decent features, Sendinblue is for you.
MailerLite
Sometimes simplicity works best, and MailerLite is an email marketing service that focuses on simple, minimal and modern designs. This doesn’t mean it’s features are non-existent either.
MailerLite features a good editor, multiple email templates, sign-up forms, autoresponders and detailed reports. All their paid plans also feature unlimited email sends, while their free plan gives you 12,000 emails per month!
While their tools may not be as comprehensive as the other marketing services on this list, MailerLite is perfect for small businesses or freelancers looking for an affordable way to do email marketing.
Omnisend
Omnisend is an email marketing service that puts a lot of emphasis on eCommerce automation. They offer pre-built automation workflows which help your online store such as abandoned cart recovery, cross-selling and loyalty programs.
They also have many unique advanced features built especially for eCommerce stores. These include interactive gift boxes, automatic product recommendations and ‘wheel of fortune’ incentives for sign-up forms.
Omnisend focuses on converting and keeping your customers. This makes it a perfect choice for online store owners or for those who have Shopify or WooCommerce websites.
GetResponse
Versatility is the name of the game for popular email marketing service GetResponse. GetResponse does a little bit of everything – and does it surprisingly well! They have excellent automations, good landing pages, an intuitive editor and flexible templates.
In addition to the standard email marketing service provider features, they also have other unique features. These include the ability to create webinars, and a conversion funnel software designed to turn traffic and leads into full-fledged customers.
While you might need to fork out a bit more to subscribe to their paid plans, GetResponse is a complete package with everything you need to well… get a response from your contacts!
Make your choice and get started with email marketing today!
And there you have it! Hopefully you’ll be able to pick the email marketing service providers that will make a difference in your email marketing strategy. For more articles that will power up your business’ email marketing (or your marketing in general) head over to the ZipZipe blog!
