Best email marketing services and software reviews

MailChimp vs SendinBlue vs Constant Contact

Congratulations! So you’ve started your business and now you are thinking of landing your first contact. You heard money is in the list and you are now thinking of creating a list of prospective clients for future marketing purposes. Or perhaps you haven’t created your first contact but you intend to start a list.

In the world of social media, one of the excellent ways to get connected and engaged with your clients is using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. However, marketers claiming that email marketing no longer remains effective and relevant because of the success of social media couldn’t be more wrong!

Email is still the third most influential source of information for B2B audiences, behind only colleague recommendations and industry-specific thought leaders. 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes. (Source: Hubspot)

To get started with email marketing, you need to look at email marketing services and software that are designed to ease your marketing process and designing your campaigns. Here are some questions you need to ask before choosing your email marketing service or company-

1. Is the email marketing service a good fit for my company’s structure

Some services work best for startups on small budgets, while some work best for enterprises. The requirements are different and vary from business to business.

2. Does the email marketing service or software integrate well with different marketing platforms and channels?

Depending on where you want to derive your traffic from, eg. Facebook, Google, Youtube, some marketing services might suit you better than others.

3. Is your business in a “boring” or “creative” niche?

Depending on your audience, and the kinds of messages you want to convey to them, you might need features like custom “email templates”, email header designs, email drag and drop builders and so on.

4. Level of automation desired

Some email marketing software and apps are built for scale, and highest level of set-and-forget “automated” lead generation. While some are designed with CRM process in mind.

5. Number of subscribers you expect to build and number of emails you desire to send

Are you going to be a big nation-wide or world-wide brand, generating millions of leads and subscribers? Or you are a local business happy with few thousands. Some email marketing services have their prices structured on number of “subscribers” or “emails sent”.

For higher volume emails sent, certain services would suit you more. For lower volumes, there are other options.

6. Do you have an e-commerce business?

In this case, there are some services that specifically tailor to this area.

Top 7 Best Email marketing services

1. HubSpot — Best one-stop-shop for inbound marketing managers

Inbound marketing does wonders when it comes to strengthening your professional relationships and building new connections — only with the right tools used and a one-stop-shop that is ideal for you, with its own advanced services and golden rules. HubSpot’s excellent marketing tools allow you to quickly optimize and personalize your emails, at the same time creating valuable content and experiences tailored to your customers in ways that are easy to understand and quick to get a hold of.

With their high-quality pre-made templates, robust email marketing platform and a wide range of advanced personalization tools that boost your open rates and clickthrough rates, you have much more space left for creativity, and are therefore able to create unique content that both elevates your professionalism and speaks to your customers.

HubSpot enables you to create your own drag-and-drop editor, customize your layouts, modify your content with original images, designs and colors chosen to match your brand and redefine its identity, as well as to add calls-to-action in order to get your audience to connect with you.

You will absolutely adore HubSpot’s email marketing features such as email automation tools, list segmentation, email tracking, as well as extensive analytics that will enable you to automatically serve up your content, links, calls-to-action and most relevant subject lines and dive deep into the analytics to understand how your emails are performing. HubSpot’s golden rule — it brings you closer to your audience, providing features that are irresistible and free to use for up to 2000 email send per month and advanced upgrade solutions starting at $50 a month.

2. Constant Contact

Whether you’ve already mastered the email marketing game, or are just starting out, this powerful service will take your goal to a whole new level. Constant Contact comes with numerous benefits and useful tools, and is, understandably so, one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services.

Even the basic management tools are something you shouldn’t miss out on, as, besides the easily accessible and manageable lists, calendars, and templates, you are given the opportunity to explore so much more, and transform your email marketing game entirely. Having unlimited image library, list segmentation, ads integration, built-in social media sharing tools — those are only a sneak peek of what’s to come with Constant Contact.

Make sure to try the Email Plus account for some extraordinarily strategic features. Maximize your open rate with targeted emails, automation, online donations, coupons, campaigns, surveys and polls, and many more benefits that are just as powerful. Don’t miss out on the monthly free trial, and do stick around even afterwards, for as low as $20 a month.

Constant Contact is, in addition to all of that, always on your side, with their unlimited customer support through any platform you could name, their helpful resources, and game-changing in person live seminars offered in order to help you elevate your professionalism and nurture your small business with proper strategy and deserved growth.

3. SendinBlue

If you are looking to explore a marketing service that combines the power of both email and SMS campaigns into one unique platform, SendinBlue is ideal to start with, being one of the fastest growing email marketing platforms in Europe. SendinBlue’s easy-to-use platform, advanced features, and excellent tools are a golden standard when it comes to email marketing, along with a generous free plan based on the number of sent emails.

Their platform is quite easy to understand, with their simple drag and drop email editor and some of the most excellent tools that enable you to create original, well-designed, highly engaging emails that speak to your audience and bring them closer to you. SendinBlue selects the best time to send bulk emails using their AI algorithms to ensure the best email deliverability, offering many other beginner-friendly features, as well.

SendinBlue, luckily, also has a forms tool that allows you to capture leads, do marketing research, learn about industry trends, get some customer feedback and collect data — which can be segmented into specific lists and entered into email nurturing campaigns. If you are still unsure how to absolutely kick off your email nurturing campaigns, SendinBlue creates workflows for automatic follow-up and transactional emails and an access to a plethora of pre-made, quality automation campaigns tailored to your own personal vision.

Do not miss out on SendinBlue’s excellent, completely free email marketing plan that lets you send up to 300 emails a day. If you are looking to include SMS to your account, landing page builder, live chat, CRM, Facebook ads integration and much more in your improved version of a premium plan, the pricing varies, starting from $25 a month. Another extraordinary feature for larger websites that SendinBlue offers is a separate SMTP bulk email marketing service ideal for powering automated or transactional emails from your WordPress site. All these features sound more than promising — and definitely worth trying out.