- Mailchimp: Best for all-in-one marketing
- Zoho Campaigns: Best for fully integrated business suite
- Drip: Best for e-commerce
- MailerLite: Best for selling paid subscriptions
- Campaigner: Best for experienced marketers
- GetResponse: Best for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
- Moosend: Best for legacy companies
- Brevo: Best for unlimited contacts
- ActiveCampaign: Best for automated email marketing
- Constant Contact: Best for customer support options
Updated: Apr 6, 2024, 1:40pm
Email is alive and well in 2024. Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools for any company to reach engaged customers—as long as you do it well. That’s why we have no shortage of email marketing software to choose from. To help you sort through the noise, our team evaluated some of the most popular platforms to bring you this list of the 10 best email marketing services available.
The Best Email Marketing Software of 2024
Compare Top Email Marketing Software
Company | Forbes Advisor Rating | Starting price | Key email features | Additional features | LEARN MORE | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mailchimp | ![]() |
4.8 | ![]() |
Free; $13 per month (for up to 500 contacts) | Beginner-friendly email builder, segmentation, automation | Websites, landing pages, social ads, postcards | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |
Zoho Campaigns | ![]() |
4.7 | ![]() |
Free; $3 per month (for up to 500 contacts) | Unlimited emails, dynamic content, A/B testing | All-in-one business platform | View More | ||
Drip | ![]() |
4.7 | ![]() |
$39 per month (for up to 2,500 contacts) | Email and SMS marketing | Pre-built series for e-commerce behaviors and Facebook Custom Audiences integration | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |
MailerLite | ![]() |
4.7 | ![]() |
Free; $9 per month (for up to 1,000 contacts) | Email, website and landing page builders | Paid newsletter subscriptions, e-commerce integrations | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |
Campaigner | ![]() |
4.6 | ![]() |
$59 per month (for up to 5,000 contacts) | Email and SMS marketing, full code editor | Geolocation and other customization options | Learn More | On Campaigner's Website | |
GetResponse | ![]() |
4.6 | ![]() |
Free; $13.30 per month (for up to 1,000 contacts) | Email, SMS marketing, segmentation | Website and landing page builders | Learn More | On GetReponse's Website | |
Moosend | ![]() |
4.5 | ![]() |
$7 per month (for up to 500 contacts) | Email marketing, landing pages, advanced tracking | CRM, e-commerce AI product recommendation | View More | ||
Brevo | ![]() |
4.4 | ![]() |
Free, $25 per month (for up to unlimited contacts) | Email marketing, SMS, segmentation | Landing page builder, workflow editor, custom forms | Learn More | On Brevo's Website | |
ActiveCampaign | ![]() |
4.4 | ![]() |
$29 per month (for one user) | Email, SMS, landing pages, segmentation | Predictive sending, conditional content, e-commerce integrations | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review | |
Constant Contact | ![]() |
4.3 | ![]() |
$12 per month (for up to 500 contacts) | Email marketing, landing pages, surveys | AI-generated content, social media marketing, ad management | Learn More | On Constant Contact's Website |
What Is Email Marketing Software?
Email marketing software are platforms designed to enable you to easily create and send marketing emails to leads and customers. They provide features to help you manage your contacts, segment audiences and track interactions with your emails. They can also help you stay compliant with your email marketing efforts by ensuring you only send marketing emails to those who have subscribed and agreed to receive communications from you.
Many email marketing programs include tools, such as drag-and-drop email editors, landing page builders, custom forms for your sites for lead generation and workflow automation. All of these tools help you create digital marketing campaigns. Then run various reports to help you see what you need to tweak to better interact with your audiences, such as click-through rates and open rates.
How To Choose the Best Email Marketing Software
Choosing the best email marketing software comes down to what your team needs. The most basic email marketing tool will help you create, send and track emails. For more advanced features, consider an email marketing platform that offers more than email sends. Look for all-in-one solutions that let you create landing pages, set up web intake forms and include automation to make your job easier.
Consider these factors to choose the right tool for you:
- Send volume: Do the send limits and their corresponding price points make sense for your business plans for the near future?
- Migration: Can you easily migrate customer data from an existing platform into the new one?
- Integrations: If you need to, can you use your email list for retargeting ads on social media and around the web? Does the platform work with your existing CRM, online store and other systems?
- Design: Do the available templates and customization options fit your brand? Do the free themes and templates include features that serve your needs?
- Ease of use: How easily can you create and send an email or set up an automation? Will you need to hire an email specialist, designer or coder to build emails?
- Autonomy and customization: How much control do you have over the look and feel of your emails and newsletters? Does the platform have the functionality you need? Will your customers see the software’s logo on your emails?
Essential Features
As stated above, basic features of an email marketing platform should be present in all options. At the very least, you should expect email creation tools and contact management. You should be able to segment your audiences into two or more categories; for example, you can create a non-marketing contact list (vendors, business partners, etc.) that stands apart from your subscribers.
You should also expect basic reports, so you can see what your open rate is on an email campaign and click-through rate, so you know whether your CTAs are effective. Among other essential features of email marketing software are integrations and automation. Integrations help you share data to and from your email marketing platform and other tools you may use, such as CRM or project management software.
Automation and AI
On the more advanced spectrum of email marketing features are automation and AI. Some of the best email marketing platforms include workflow automation for campaigns. So, you should be able to set up a series of emails for a segmented audience and set a schedule for each email to send based on conditions (opened email, clicked a link, didn’t open email, etc.). This makes each campaign more effective and requires less hands-on effort for the marketing team.
As far as AI goes, you may find machine learning features, including predictive analytics, to help you gauge which leads are hotter than others and could benefit from an email or time-based predictions, such as optimizing the best time to send an email for higher open rates. There are also tools that will give you AI-generated content, including subject lines, images or body text.
Design and Templates
To find the best email marketing platform for your business, consider how each one handles design. Drag-and-drop editors make it much easier to create emails that look great without requiring much design experience or talent. You can also benefit from pre-made templates, so you don’t have to create a newsletter design from scratch. Some templates are even made for the best CTR possible.
Customization
Some free and low-priced plans for email marketing tools are great to use when you’re just getting started, but keep in mind that you’re likely to have little to no customization options. Part of the reason they may have such a low cost is because the companies may include their branding on your emails you send and forms you create and host on your website.
Consider choosing an email marketing platform that costs a little extra to give you more control over how your emails, landing pages, forms and surveys look. You’ll look more professional if you can add your own branding to your content and not give away what is essentially ad space to your email marketing service.
What Does Email Marketing Software Cost?
Email marketing software varies wildly in price, depending on the level of plan you choose. There are free plans that limit your sends per day or month and low-cost plans that could run you around $5 to $10 per month with similar limitations on sends or on the size of your contact list. The average cost of email marketing platforms for up to 500 contacts is around $20 per month (based on Forbes Advisor’s top 10 list).
Is Email Marketing Effective in 2024?
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing and digital marketing that is highly effective for several reasons. Whether you use email marketing as your main marketing tool or as a supplement to other forms of direct marketing, it remains a cost-effective strategy that can drive sales.
More than 4 billion people in the world use email, so it’s an ideal place to meet customers with sales, marketing and information. In fact, email marketing seems to be improving over the years. In 2022, nearly 67% of email marketers reported an increase in open rates. And email marketing is designed to open lines of communication between consumers and businesses, unlike traditional direct marketing strategies. Perhaps this is why unsubscribe rates are low: GetResponse’s 2023 email marketing benchmarks report shows an average unsubscribe rate of 0.09% for North America.
Email Marketing Return on Investment (ROI)
Whether you trust Omnisend’s 2022 data report that shows $40 ROI of $1 in email marketing spend or Litmus’ report of $36 average ROI for every dollar spent, it’s clear that email marketing works. It has one of the highest ROIs of most digital marketing methods for small businesses.
6 Tips To Improve Your Email Marketing Strategy
The key to running successful email marketing campaigns boils down to the methods you use. It starts with the tools you use, how you build and segment your email list and studying the results of your campaigns. Here are a handful of email marketing tips to help you improve your strategy:
1. Use Tools Made for Email Marketing
Standard email services, such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail aren’t meant to be used for email marketing. When you use email marketing software, you can easily manage a contact list, generate leads and send and track bulk and blast emails. Many of the tools made for email marketing include features or integrations with other types of software to help with marketing, such as CRM and landing page builders.
2. Build Your Email List Proactively
You may already collect email addresses from customers after an interaction with them, but there’s more you can do to build your email list. Whether you sell a physical product, digital item or a service, you should have some information that’s valuable to offer for free—or for an email address. Offer e-books, free trials, coupons or a webinar to leads and all they have to do is provide an email address.
These free offers you create can live on your website and you can promote them on social media or through digital advertising. As you grow your email list, you can then start segmenting, which helps you market to each group with better intent.
3. Segment Your List by User Intent
Segmentation is one of the key factors of effective email marketing. When you divide your audience into groups that separate user interests, you can create more personalized campaigns. At the very least, you can segment your audiences by purchase history (customers vs. leads), but you can go granular. Try segmenting by geographical location, types of purchases and website interactions.
You can even send surveys or set up sign-up forms to let your customers and leads tell you what they’re interested in, which makes it easier to segment them. Some of the best email marketing services include automated segmentation, which creates lists based on sales history or how a user has interacted with your site.
4. Engage Your Readers at Every Step
Crafting an effective marketing email is about more than just the body of your email. You can increase your open rates and CTR by tweaking many elements of your emails, starting with the from and subject lines.
- From: Try to avoid generic “from” names. Use your brand name or a name your users will recognize.
- Subject line: Several email marketing software help ensure you keep your subject line short so it’s eye-catching for the recipient. The preheader line is what shows up after or below the subject line, which can be a bit longer and include more enticing info to encourage a click. Use an emoji or two to make it fun.
- Body text: This is the meat of your message. You want to keep it short but informative and lead directly to the action you want your readers to take.
- Call to action (CTA): These are buttons or links that drive the email recipients to click through to your website, a form or a product page.
Also, make sure to optimize the send time. The best time to send an email varies, but the consensus is that 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays is the optimal window. To hedge your bet even more, send on a Monday; data from HubSpot shows that 22% of marketers say Monday is the best day for high open rates.
5. Measure Your Email Marketing Campaign Results
One of the best ways to find out if your email marketing campaigns are working is to check the reports. Most email marketing software include at least the basic reports, such as open rate, bounce rate and CTR.
If you’re using split testing, or A/B testing, for subject lines, body text and CTAs, you’ll be able to see what worked best and what didn’t. Use the data you gather to hone your email marketing strategy so you can increase your open rate and CTR.
6. Scrub, Rinse and Repeat
You’re going to have bounced emails. It’s only a cause for concern if it happens too often or you don’t scrub the bad emails. A high bounce rate can affect where your email ends up for your readers; that is, your emails could end up in spam folders and not the inbox as you want.
Just ensure you scrub those email addresses that weren’t delivered for whatever reason (fake email address or blocked email, for example). You should be able to easily remove the bounced email addresses and carry on with your campaigns (with a bit of fine-tuning for better results the next round).
Methodology
We evaluated some of the most popular email marketing services according to the pricing and features they offer for small and medium businesses (SMBs). We also factor in third-party ratings and reviews from G2, Trustpilot and Capterra to include expert and customer feedback in our rankings. We then scored these contenders across four categories of features with 14 different metrics that were weighted to favor features that small business owners find valuable in a provider.
Here is an expanded look at some of the factors that we used for our rankings.
Pricing
For pricing, we considered the starting price for software and the highest price that a provider charges for its plan, then ranked them as far as what we considered to be cheap, moderate and expensive options. Those providers that offered lower starting prices or plans at higher tiers that offered more beneficial features for the price fared the best in our rankings. Pricing accounted for 15% of our weighted scoring.
Features
We wanted to know how a software’s available features compared with its competitors. Some of the features we compared included email send volume, image libraries, social media integrations, marketing automations and A/B testing. We weighted features at 40% of our total score.
Third-party Reviews
We turned to reviews from real users to gauge their opinion of each software. To gain the fullest picture of reality and reduce bias, we gave higher ratings to providers who had received positive reviews―scoring at least 3.5 out of 5 on each third-party website. These reviews accounted for 10% of the total score.
Expert Analysis
Our team of experts also ranked additional criteria from customer reviews that included standout features as well as value for the money, popularity and ease of use. For value for the money, we wanted to know if a provider’s paid plan pricing aligned well with the additional features it offered. For popularity, we looked at how widely it was being used. For ease of use, we considered how much of a learning curve the platform required to get customers operational. Altogether, these criteria make up 35% of the total score.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best email marketing platform?
Which email marketing platform is best for your business depends on your goals and needs. Most platforms offer basic features including newsletters, landing pages, automations, audience segmentation and reporting. To find one that stands out for you, look for differences in pricing, integrations and additional features, such as website builders and social media ads.
Why should I use email marketing software?
Email marketing software makes it easy for you to create email campaigns and journeys and then automate the sending process. It’s an affordable way to create customer loyalty and thereby customer retention, and you get measurable results of your marketing efforts.
What is the most cost-effective email marketing tool?
Mailchimp is one of the most popular free email marketing services. You can use the service for free with up to 500 contacts, and automations and segmentation are available on the free plan. Its price isn’t competitive once you have more than 2,000 subscribers, however, so you may need to migrate to a new service as you grow.
What is the best email marketing platform for small businesses?
Mailchimp is our highest-rated email marketing platform for small businesses. Its free plan is robust, which makes it a great place to start when your audience is small. Depending on the type of business you run, you might want to consider Drip for e-commerce campaigns or MailerLite for selling paid subscriptions.
What are the different types of email marketing?
There are several types of email marketing strategies that go beyond promotional emails and newsletters. You can send surveys to collect your own data, welcome emails, lead nurturing emails, milestone emails, reengagement emails and transactional emails. One of the most common marketing emails is the abandoned cart recovery email, which helps you win back sales.
How does email marketing make money?
The most obvious way you can make money using email marketing is by sending transactional emails to sell specific products. You can also use historical purchase data to send timely reminder emails for customers to stock up on a product they bought before. Promotional emails can encourage customers to save money with a promo code. You can even use your emails or newsletters to promote other businesses’ products or services, use the space for upselling or include sponsored content.
Can I run email marketing for free?
Some of the best free email marketing platforms make it possible for you to run an email marketing campaign at no cost to you. You may have to make concessions for the free account, such as having the email marketing service’s branding on your own emails and forms. There are likely to be limits to your daily or monthly sends, as well.
Is email marketing preferable to social media marketing?
Both email and social media marketing strategies can be highly effective for small businesses, but usually, email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI). With that said, the two marketing methods can be used simultaneously for different purposes. Social media marketing is better for building brand recognition and attracting new customers, while email marketing is better for building and maintaining relationships with current customers.