Last Reviewed: November 13th, 2024

Best Email Marketing Software Of 2024

What is Email Marketing Software?

Email Marketing Software (EMS) is a versatile tool that enables businesses to conduct targeted, scalable email campaigns. It addresses the challenge of personalization at scale and provides measurable metrics for campaign effectiveness. An efficient EMS supports audience segmentation, automating email scheduling, and detailed analytics. Lately, the use of AI in EMS for predictive analysis and personalized content creation is gaining ground. Industries such as retail, e-commerce, and hospitality find EMS particularly beneficial for driving customer engagement and loyalty. Despite its numerous advantages, EMS does have some shortcomings, which include potential technical hurdles during integration and ensuring compliance with different regions' data privacy laws. However, EMS's capacity to drive customer engagement while providing critical campaign insights makes it a gamechanger in any business's marketing strategy. It enables companies to communicate effectively with their clientele while aligning their marketing initiatives with measurable outcomes.

What Are The Key Benefits of Email Marketing Software?

  • Enables Targeted Campaigns
  • Improves Scale Personalization
  • Provides Measurable Metrics
  • Supports Audience Segmentation
  • Automates Email Scheduling
  • Detailed Analytics Reports
  • Fosters Customer Engagement
  • Fuels Customer Loyalty
  • Reduces Marketing Costs
  • Improves Communication Efficiency
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Overall

Based on the latest available data collected by SelectHub for 89 solutions, we determined the following solutions are the best Email Marketing Software overall:

Start Price
$800
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked HubSpot

With basic CRM alongside marketing, sales, service and content management, Hubspot offers a lot of functionalities, which users cite as a primary benefit. Its slick interface ensures an intuitive experience and extensive automation simplifies tasks, although some complicated functions make it time-consuming to learn. Users also appreciate how prompt customer support is, and that there’s a free version that’s ideal for small and mid-sized businesses.
However, certain email elements present issues and the paid versions are expensive for what they offer. Overall, businesses that are in need of a robust and scalable product suite, especially those with a focus on inbound marketing, might find this to be a good fit.

Pros & Cons

  • Ease of Use: Every user referencing navigation reports the platform is user-friendly.
  • Customer Support: The support team is reliable and offers quick responses to any need, according to 91% of reviewers referencing this aspect.
  • Automation: Automating email campaigns, lead scoring and workflows, managing sales funnel and social engagement, and creating email templates is easy, according to 95% of reviewers who talk about automation.
  • Feature-Rich: The range of features offered, such as creating landing pages, forms and email campaigns, is a benefit to 85% of users mentioning functionalities.
  • Marketing: Every user who refers to marketing feels it’s easy to market products.
  • Interface: A slick interface makes it easy to navigate, in the experience of 80% of reviewers referencing the UI.
  • Price: Premium products are expensive for the amount of functionality, especially for small and mid-sized companies, according to 86% of reviewers mentioning cost.
  • Training: In 85% of reviews referencing training, users say it’s difficult for average users to perform complicated tasks such as tracking leads and making different mailing lists, causing a learning curve.
  • Email Functionality: All reviews about this issue note that customizing the mobile version of an email affects the desktop version, inserting custom HTML such as a for promo timer isn’t possible and more.

Key Features

  • Pipeline Management:
    •  Reduces data entry through auto-populated data and grants control over pipelines to match how users work. 
    •  User-friendly edit tools alongside a drag-and-drop interface simplify the entire management process. 
    •  Quick access to key metrics is available with a sales dashboard. 
  • Lead Management: Perform CRM activities without the hassle of reconciling different data sets and gain full visibility into contacts by accessing data-rich profiles in one location. Capabilities include lead segmentation, contact activity history and tasks. 
  • Messaging: Facilitates better internal and external communication, promotes strong customer experiences, supports lead generation and enables more timely follow up. Offers Facebook Messenger, a customizable live chat widget, shared email and a chatbot builder. 
  • Conversations Inbox:
    •  Provides context, alignment and transparency for marketing, sales and service teams through a team-wide inbox. 
    •  Aids cross-functional collaboration via a central hub for communicating with prospects, leads and customers. Routing rules deliver emails to the most relevant team or member. 
    •  Offers a seamless experience to customers no matter what stage they’re in. 
  • Contact Activity: Gain deeper insights by leveraging analytics that show website interactions. Track form submissions, page visits and more. 
Start Price
$9
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign provides cloud-based marketing services to businesses of any size. It’s easy to use and offers a wide range of features, along with robust automation and campaigning capabilities. The system integrates with all major platforms. Most users also find the customer support team as well as the training materials to be helpful.
However, it takes time to learn the intricate features thoroughly. Reviews also state the system suffers from glitches and the interface could be more user-friendly. Businesses that need a system that caters to CRM as well as marketing needs, and that have the ability to leverage its complex functionality effectively, should consider this as a solid choice.

Pros & Cons

  • User-Friendly: Everyone referencing this aspect states the software is easy to use.
  • Automation: It helps run customer and lead campaigns, triggered automatically based on set specifications, note 98% of reviewers referring to this feature.
  • Customer Support: The support team is easy to reach and very responsive, according to 93% of reviewers talking about this aspect.
  • Functionalities: Every user mentioning features states the system offers robust capabilities including client onboarding, lead funnels, newsletters, contact tracking and more.
  • Email Campaigns: In the view of 85% of reviews about this feature, it’s easy to send weekly emails, replicate earlier emails and develop templates for other uses.
  • Integration: Connecting with Zapier and other platforms makes it easy to transfer leads, according to 88% of reviewers referencing integration.
  • Help Resource: Everyone mentioning training reports there are helpful tutorials and webinars.
  • Learning Curve: According to 77% of reviewers talking about training, it’s tough and time consuming to learn the platform.
  • Glitches: Every user mentioning this aspect notes it can be glitchy at times and quite slow to load during peak business hours.
  • Interface: The interface is slow and not very intuitive, according to 62% of reviewers referencing this aspect.

Key Features

  • Dynamic Content: Keep content fresh and personalized by automatically changing email content depending on where a lead is in the buyer’s journey. 
  • Email Marketing: A robust and fully-featured suite offers broadcasting, triggered and targeted emails, funnels, and robust integrations with popular social media and e-commerce platforms. Also offers: 
    • Drag-and-Drop Builder: Create and automate campaigns with ease. 
    • Scheduled Emails: Enables scheduling emails for specific dates and times. 
    • Email Autoresponders: Enables sending welcome emails, starting a welcome series or delivering lead magnets automatically. 
  • Segmentation: Target specific groups within the contacts list to be more personal in emails and engage people with the right information. 
  • CRM: Notify the sales team, update deals, create tasks and nurture leads automatically. Scores leads, passes off highly-qualified targets to sales and integrates with popular email providers. 
  • Advanced Reporting: Offers custom reporting features, including custom KPIs, sales reporting, tag counting and robust segmentation. Gives insights into email performance. Split testing can also be used to get email opens, clicks and buys. 
  • Fast Training: Schedule one-on-one appointments with the company’s customer service team to help teams get up to speed with training. A series of robust webinars and user docs are available. 
  • Migration Services: Receive assistance migrating from another marketing automation product. Services include contact list and tag import, form recreation, workflow recreation, and email template recreation. 
  • Powerful Integrations: Integrates with PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Facebook, Google Analytics and more than 250 other apps including payment processors, membership websites and e-commerce stores. 
  • Audience Segmentation: Allows personalized messages by adding tags to segments. Tags can be based on purchase history, geographic location, time since last purchased, personal interests and more. 
  • Geo-Tracking: Automatically capture a contact’s location for geo-targeted email marketing campaigns. 
  • Site Tracking: Pulls data in from other websites to assist in tracking the customer’s activity. 
  • Social Sharing: Gives insights into performance on social platforms and enables greater audience engagement. 
  • Split Testing: Try different email subject lines, body copy and more to increase and optimize campaign conversion rates. Add up to five variations for a single campaign. 
  • SMS Marketing: Automate SMS marketing to send notifications and campaigns such as appointment reminders, flash sale notifications and more. 
  • Conversation Features: Provides: 
    •  Live chat to facilitate capturing leads and creating contacts from the website. Includes customizable auto reply, custom branding, contact creation and triggered automations. 
    •  A unified inbox to connect conversations with customers. 
  • Predictive Sending: Automate emails using machine learning algorithms. It ranks the hours in a day based on a contact’s open time and uses these recommendations to schedule an optimal send time. 
  • Contact and Lead Scoring: Sends notifications when leads are getting hot, with automatically triggered email notifications and task assignments based on lead score changes. Helps follow up with deals that are most likely to close. 
  • Win Probabilities: Calculates the conversion chance for a specific lead, giving foresight into lead behavior. 
Start Price
$1,250
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
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Why We Picked Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is liked among users for the seamless integration it offers with Salesforce, leading to stronger marketing capabilities. It also offers various functionalities to make email marketing more powerful and is relied upon for lead generation. However, the cost of the product might be too much for smaller companies, especially given the lack of reporting options. The complexities of the platform also make it difficult to get used to according to the majority of reviews. Overall, the product is a good pick for larger enterprises seeking robust marketing automation, particularly those already using Salesforce that can leverage the tight integration for enhanced marketing.

Pros & Cons

  • Integration: More than 90% of users who mention integration noted the benefit of being able to connect Marketing Cloud Account Engagement with the wider Salesforce ecosystem.
  • Email Marketing: Users can seamlessly set up emails, create content, measure performance and report results, according to all reviews about email marketing.
  • Lead Generation: It offers robust tools for lead generation and nurturing, as reported by 85% of user feedback on these features.
  • Cost: The product costs more than the functionality it offers, according to all the users who mention this aspect.
  • Complexity: It’s difficult to understand and involves a lot of clicks, as observed by 95% of users mentioning this aspect.
  • Reporting: The lack of vigorous reporting tools is a matter of concern, according to 85% of user feedback on the topic.

Key Features

  • Campaign Visualizer: Tracks marketing and sales efforts as customers move through the sales funnel and provides a high-level overview of a campaign. 
  • Dynamic Content: Improve lead generation and customer experiences with dynamic and useful content specifically tailored to a target audience’s needs, wants and interests. 
  • Landing Page Builder: Standard, easy-to-use and customizable templates enable better customer service and increase lead counts. 
  • Smart Forms: Collect information at every interaction and enrich data pools with a simple drag-and-drop form builder. 
  • Organic and Paid Search Tools: Integrate with Google AdWords to determine ROI and then analyze keywords to improve performance. 
  • Social Posting: Track prospects and leads in social platforms. Schedule posts at optimal times for the greatest impact. 
  • Email Builder: The email builder is simple to use, yet powerful, and can be attached to any number of automated tools and tracking measures. 
  • Einstein: Gain insights on campaigns to optimize marketing assets and find new audiences using machine learning. 
  • Email Reporting: Track metrics like clicks, opens and more. Provides SPAM analysis and preview services to extend email reporting. 
  • Auto Segmentation: Deliver a personalized experience with dynamic content by leveraging automatic contact segmentation. 
  • Activity Tracking: Track prospect activities and maintain an activity history from a CRM, Gmail or smartphones. 

Pricing

License/Subscription Cost
  • Subscription-based model – per user per month
  • Starts at $1,000 per user per monthSetup fee of $1,000 is charged
  • Cost per extra user is $50 per month
  • Cost may vary based on the plan selected – Standard, Pro and Ultimate
Maintenance Cost
  • Cost is included in the subscription cost
  • Provides on-going customer support via Customer Hub which is an on-demand online resource center providing hundreds of articles, training and other resources to support users
  • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers ongoing technical support and services via in-app chat and email to users located across the globe with offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, Dublin, London, Sydney and Tokyo
  • Provides unlimited access to the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Knowledge Base to the end user
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • None
Customization Cost
  • Cost may vary depending on the type of functional requirements being added as an add-on or the type of plan being selected out of Standard, Ultimate, and Pro
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Cost may vary depending on the current software, amount of data to be migrated, complexity of the data fields, level of automation and data migration tools to be utilized for transfer of data from the old to the new software
Training Costs
  • Cost is over and above the subscription cost and will vary depending on the type of training course opted for
  • Provides Live, weekly and free training, including deep-dive webinars on specific features to the end user
  • Provides Training and Certification courses along with Webinars, eLearning modules, best practices documents for learning Marketing Cloud Account Engagement solution
  • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers free, virtual training webinars, live events, live onsite session and customized training programs based on user requirements
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • Cost is equivalent to the recurring monthly subscription fee to be paid on a yearly basis, customization cost, data migration cost plus training cost
Start Price
$159
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft by Keap is a comprehensive CRM platform that helps SMBs automate processes, connect with prospects and customers, and increase ROI. As many reviews noted, the price is on the high end for a small business, and it has some features that work best for enterprises. It also has a learning curve and limitations with storage and custom fields. However, it provides robust email marketing and campaign management tools, and its wide range of automations can save users a lot of time. There are mixed reviews about customer service, as some find it satisfactory while others believe it’s inadequate. Overall, the product can be a good choice for companies with a large enough budget.

Pros & Cons

  • Process Automation: Every user who mentions this feature notes the system has vast automation scope including automating customer acquisition and marketing processes.
  • Campaign Builder: It offers a robust, flexible and feature-rich campaign builder with excellent controls, as observed by 85% of reviewers who reference campaign management.
  • Email Marketing: According to almost 90% of reviewers who mention email marketing, Infusionsoft by Keap has a responsive, user-friendly interface that aids segmentation, sends mass emails and offers templates.
  • Contact Management: 85% of users who reference managing client databases feel it’s possible to manage databases efficiently with the ability to create, organize and configure contact lists.
  • Learning Curve: The system is confusing to learn, requires a lot of training and has some features that are hard to find, as noted by more than 80% of customers who refer to training.
  • Price: The cost of the software is on the higher side, according to 90% of reviewers who mention pricing.
  • Custom Fields: It’s difficult to search fields and the platform doesn’t support more than 100 fields, according to every user who mentions custom fields and tools.
  • Document Storage: It doesn’t store documents or client information internally or in the cloud, as indicated by each customer who mentions storage.

Key Features

  • Customer Relationship Management: Infusionsoft’s CRM platform acts as the central hub for sales and marketing efforts. From it, you can segment lists, automate lead data entry, sync client emails from your other accounts to the correct contact record and identify the best opportunities with lead scoring tools. 
  • Marketing Automation: Build efficient processes using a variety of marketing automation settings. Campaign sequences are easy to create using the drag-and-drop interface, and you can set up workflows by defining triggers based on user actions. A/B testing is also supported. 
  • Sales Pipeline: The software allows sales reps and managers to nurture leads through the pipeline. The Infusionsoft by Keap app facilitates the creation and management of custom quotes, which customers can accept with a single click. 
  • Online Sales: Using this feature, you can generate unique landing pages. The interface is drag-and-drop, and templates make the process quick and easy. Add elements like text and images, as well as define which products to include. The system is also equipped to process online payments and will send automatic follow-ups to customers based on the sequence you choose. 
  • Integrations: Infusionsoft plugs into a host of third-party apps that extend your capability. E-Commerce integrations include Magento, WooCommerce and Shopify. You can also connect the platform to Zendesk, QuickBooks, Xero, Zapier, Vimeo, WordPress and a host of other tools. 
  • Payment Collection: Simplify the process of collecting payments on time. The system allows you to set up automated reminders and shows which customers have paid and which have outstanding balances. The connected platform removes the need to juggle multiple tools. Infusionsoft offers a flat rate for every transaction. 
  • Analytics: Take the pulse of your business with the analytics dashboard. It tracks a number of KPIs such as email conversions, quarterly sales and number of contacts. This provides insight into every aspect of your marketing and sales efforts, along with informing decisions. 

Pricing

License/Subscription Cost
  • Recurring subscription-based model: per user, per month, plus maintenance, implementation and backup support
  • All plans are billed monthly according to the annual contract
  • All plans come with a mandatory one-time setup fee called Kickstart package for new customers
  • Costs vary depending on the plan selected, based on the level of consulting and implementation help businesses require
Maintenance Cost
  • Included in the subscription cost
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • Included in the subscription cost
Customization Cost
  • Varies depending on the functional requirements added in the product module, such as sales force automation, marketing automation and eCommerce capabilities. This is based on the organization’s business requirements
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Cost varies depending on the amount and type of data to be migrated from the legacy system, availability of migration tools, data profiling, data cleansing and audit trail of the migration process
Training Cost
  • Cost is over and above the subscription cost and varies depending on the type of plan chosen
  • Provides an initial training program for first-time users. Users need to enroll and pay for the training course
  • Provides embedded links, including walkthrough features and video tutorials, after initial training is completed
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • Cost is included in the subscription fee, based on the number of users, additional add-ons and the plan purchased
Start Price
$48
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked Eloqua

With a vigorous set of features and tools, Eloqua assists many marketing automation activities. The ease of use and convenient navigation of the product proves to be a strong benefit among users. Users also appreciate the seamless integration opportunities it allows with third-party APIs, which helps strengthen campaigns.
However, user feedback suggests that it’s on the expensive end, especially considering delayed updates and an out-of-date visual interface. Users also report that unresponsive customer support is a drawback. Overall, it’s most useful for larger companies that want strong functionality and integrations, and that have resources to handle some glitchy behavior and system complexities.

Pros & Cons

  • Functionality: The product offers robust personalization, segmentation and automation, according to 86% of user feedback on features.
  • User-Friendly: Almost 80% of users who mention user interface and navigation note that the product is easy to use.
  • Integration: More than 85% of user feedback about integrations suggests that connecting with third-party APIs enhances the software’s usability.
  • Cost: It’s not cost-effective for the functionality offered, according to 86% of user feedback about this aspect.
  • Support: Over 75% of users referencing support report that customer service isn’t up to the mark and often responds based on issue severity.
  • Updates: Infrequent feature updates and an outdated interface are a cause for concern, according to all the users who mention this aspect.

Key Features

  • Online and Offline Data Aggregation: Access a multitude of different data sources while enabling the ability to parse, process and enrich multiple data silos. Also feeds into the system’s customer targeting features. 
  • Campaign Management: Create robust campaigns and view campaign information and customer journeys in an easy-to-understand visual interface without any technical resources. 
  • Interest-based Messaging: Utilize customer data to deliver personalized messaging campaigns. Pause or adjust campaigns on the fly for a delightful customer experience. 
  • Intuitive Digital Whiteboard: Envision campaign goals and processes with an easy-to-use digital whiteboard. 
  • Partner Ecosystem: Integrate seamlessly with hundreds of partners and their products with minimal technical work and knowledge. 
  • Native CRM Integrations: Enrich data pools and segmentation with CRM integrations that are easy to set up. 
  • Customizable Dashboards and Interactive reports: Customize dashboards to suit business needs and access interactive reports for stronger insights into marketing strategies. 
  • Lead Management: Improve sales readiness with an automated lead scoring system, which scales automatically and offers updates for various campaigns and business lines in real time. 
  • Asset Management: Create dynamic content like responsive emails, landing pages and interactive forms to engage customers. Reuse brand-compliant content for campaign assets. Also, access historical email open data to assess a campaign for insights. 
  • Segmentation:  Assemble data from multiple sources to segment and connect to the right audience based on geography, interests and more for data-driven targeting. 

Pricing

License/Subscription Cost
  • Subscription-based pricing model: price charged per month, in addition to extra fees for premium training and support services
  • Offers three-tier pricing models: Basic, Standard and Enterprise
  • Cost varies based on the number of contacts, number of marketing users and number of sales users
  • A signed contract for an annual subscription is required
Maintenance Cost
  • Included in the subscription cost
  • Provides regular upgrades and software updates, plus 24/7 ongoing support services via online, documentation, whitepapers and webinars
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • Cloud-based/SaaS: Included in the subscription cost
  • Cost is over and above the subscription cost
  • Offers Oracle Marketing Cloud Onboarding services
  • Provides Oracle Marketing Cloud Implementation Services
  • Cost varies based on the scope of implementation, business requirements and pricing tier
Customization Cost
  • Cost varies depending on the type of functional requirements added on, based on business requirements such as Oracle Eloqua Insight Analyzer, Custom Security Administration, Oracle Cloud Priority
  • Service, Multi-Lead Scoring & Advanced Routing, Event Management Module, Advanced Data Cleansing and Digital Advertising
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Cost varies depending on the amount and type of data to be migrated from the legacy system, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system
Training Cost
  • Cost is over and above the subscription fee
  • Cost varies depending on the type of training program chosen
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • Cost is equivalent to the recurring subscription fee, plus customization costs and training costs
Start Price
$895
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked Marketo

As a part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo Engage supports both demand and account-based marketing strategies that work in sync with marketing and sales. It offers a range of features that help businesses operations. Notable features that users call out include custom reports, automation tools and lead management. It’s highly customizable and can integrate with a wide range of business systems. Users also appreciate the robust customer service.
Some limitations include an inconvenient mobile app, outdated user interface for campaign dashboards and cumbersome functionality. Overall, businesses looking to automate their sales and marketing efforts will find the system has a lot to offer.

Pros & Cons

  • Lead Management: The ability to route and categorize leads based on requirements is helpful for staying on top of customers inputs, in the view of 60% of users talking about lead management.
  • Customizable: All reviews on this aspect agree that the system is highly customizable and offers email templates that can be created as per requirements.
  • Automation: Marketing and sales automation make it easy to use and eliminate manual entry, according to 83% of users who reviewed this feature.
  • Reporting: Provides custom reports that fit the user requirement and are insightful, say 75% of users referencing reporting.
  • Integrations: Integrations for websites, event platforms, survey platforms, mobile apps and more, along with two-way integration with CRM systems, aid functionality, according to 75% of users mentioning integrations.
  • Customer Support: The training is great and customer support is responsive, according to 66% of reviews on this topic.
  • Not User-Friendly: The functionality is cumbersome and pages take time to load, in the experience of 60% of users who reviewed the usability.
  • Dashboard: Campaign dashboards are outdated and the design needs an upgrade, according to 75% of users specifying this feature.

Key Features

  • Search Engine Optimization: Compares keyword rankings of competitors, provides recommendations for new keywords for higher ranking web pages, and discovers inbound link opportunities based on targeted keywords and competitors’ links. 
  • CRM Integration: Offers native integrations for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 applications to provide a bi-directional data sync that auto-updates every five minutes. Also facilitates custom-configured integrations for various CRM platforms such as NetSuite, Oracle, SAP Sales Cloud and SugarCRM. 
  • Lead Scoring: Rank customers by assigning positive and negative scores based on demographics or their likelihood to exhibit certain behaviors, such as making a new purchase, being open to cross-sell offers and more. 
  • Email Marketing: Supports both batch and real-time triggered emails. Helps: 
    • Create personalized campaigns for mobile, web, ads and more using a visual editor and responsive templates.
    • Personalize content based on inferred information from website visitors, such as company, country, zip code and city, helping segment and localize content.
    • Use browsing behavior to identify product interest for target accounts.
  • Mobile Marketing: 
    • Helps connect with customers on the go, track inputs from different marketing channels and respond via mobile apps.
    • Sends push notifications and in-app messages, and incorporates beacon and geo-fencing technology to send location-relevant messages to customers.
    • Visual dashboards measure overall performance by opens, installs and session duration across multiple apps.
  • Social Media Marketing: Facilitates running social polls, sweepstakes and referral campaigns with built-in social share buttons and shareable videos. Integrates social metrics into marketing reports to help measure the impact of social activity on conversions and revenue. 
  • Digital Ad Campaigns: Connects with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other advertising platforms, and targets customers with relevant ad campaigns. 
  • Analytics and Reporting: Automatically connect data from different sources into a unified platform. Enables: 
    • Mapping and measuring a customer journey at every stage through shareable, prebuilt dashboards and ad-hoc reporting tools.
    • Designing custom models with the help of AI.
    • Leveraging a suite of attribution models.
Start Price
$449
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked SharpSpring

SharpSpring combines CRM and marketing automation functionalities to provide robust, user-friendly features and performance. Users particularly appreciate its lead tracking and regular software updates that improve and add features. Comprehensive customer support is another prominent benefit. Some product limitations include a lack of display functionality in the form and landing page builders and a mobile app that isn’t user-friendly and lacks responsiveness. Custom stylesheets are also time-consuming to work with. Despite some drawbacks, it can be a solid option for businesses looking for a budget-friendly and intuitive sales and marketing solution.

Pros & Cons

  • User-Friendly: The platform is easy to use, and the kanban boards, the marketing automation and drip campaigns are easy to adapt to, in the experience of 69% of users referring to this aspect.
  • Robust Lead Tracking: Over 60% of reviews about this feature appreciate the end-to-end tracking functionality for marketing and sales data, with the ability to generate, track, filter and score leads.
  • Customer Service: All reviews on support say it’s professional and highly responsive.
  • Updates: The system constantly keeps updating with new features and offers updated dashboards for use, a benefit according to 75% of users mentioning updates.
  • Mobile App: Every user referencing the mobile app suggests it’s inoperable, not relevant and lacks basic functionalities.
  • Limited Design Flexibility: The landing page builder lacks the ability to add custom code, restricting users' ability to fully customize their pages and potentially hindering brand consistency or advanced functionality.
  • Email Deliverability Issues: Some users report challenges with emails landing in spam folders, which can impact campaign performance and lead to missed opportunities. It's important to note that email deliverability can be influenced by various factors, so it's recommended to investigate and address potential causes to improve deliverability rates.
  • Reporting Limitations: Users mention that the reporting features could be more robust, particularly in terms of attribution and providing deeper insights into campaign performance. This might make it difficult to accurately measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts and identify areas for improvement.

Key Features

  • Email Builder: Offers drag-and-drop email editor and HTML customization. Dynamic features and smart tags automate the process of customizing email messages. Designs can also be saved as templates for later use. 
  • Email Campaign Testing: Native integration with Litmus facilitates testing and previewing emails on dozens of applications, email providers and devices. 
  • Behavioral-Based Email Tracking: Gives complete information on visitor activity, including page visits, form fills, webinar sign-ups and white paper downloads from email campaigns. 
  • Web Form Builder: Provides: 
    • A drag-and-drop tool with auto-completion capabilities to design and customize web forms and CTA buttons.
    • The option to view and test forms before making them live.
    • CSS to customize forms.
    • Data sharing with other applications and databases by adding a Postback URL to sync information automatically.
  • Customer Segmentation: Offers lists that automatically update as contacts meet the list’s criteria such as location, visited pricing pages, product interest and more. Map a field in web forms to preset buyer personas, setting up questions accordingly. Responses aid list segmentation, allowing follow up with personalized information. 
  • Workflow Builder: Supports automation tasks and leverages branching logic, task combination and action groups to devise a path buyers should take. Responses use custom triggers and filters to personalize lead journeys. 
  • Lead Scoring: Scores leads based on engagement. Custom metrics allow increasing or decreasing scores, including page visits, filled out forms, content downloads and specific demographic characteristics. Assigning a decay rate on leads automatically decreases scores over time. 
  • Real-Time Alerts: Automated workflows can trigger notifications via email and SMS whenever a sale is made, a high-quality lead is created or a prospect moves along their buyer’s journey. 
  • Pipeline View: Create and customize custom deal stages to track the progress of an opportunity. Provides a drag-and-drop interface to move opportunities across deal stages to get an overview of each prospect’s progress through the sales cycle. 
  • VisitorID: Tracks anonymous visitor IP addresses with reverse IP lookup to identify companies that visit the business’ website. Records page visits, recognizes visitors’ views on an important page, determines where they came from and identifies which search terms led them to the website. 
  • Customer Timeline: Offers a timeline view of individual buyers’ journeys to track significant events associated with each contact. 
  • Landing Page Builder: Provides a WYSIWYG interface with HTML for customization. Pages can automatically adapt based on visitor preferences and behaviors. Supports optimizing for mobile and creating a series of linked pages to design a funnel for visitors and prospects. 
  • Content Calendar: Offers an interactive application with daily, weekly or monthly list views of all the planned content such as social activity, scheduled emails and blog posts. Share social media content immediately or at a later date. 
  • Site Tracking: Embeds a custom tracking code snippet in landing pages, websites, microsites or blogs to track every visit. Add media center links to track visits to external resources. 
  • Blog Builder: Provides a WYSIWYG blog and website editor that’s customizable with HTML views. Includes dynamic content that can automatically adapt to resonate with different audiences based on who they are, what interests them and how they behave on the blog and website. Also has an embeddable social sharing widget. 
  • Google Ads Integration: Tracks the ROI of paid search engine marketing campaigns and derives keyword data. 
  • Campaign Analytics Tracking: Automatically tracks website visitors conversions from the moment they first visit till the final sale. Detailed campaign analytics track campaign ROI goals and work offline without the need to set up conversion funnels. 
  • Social Listening: Find and filter social conversations on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by hashtag, keyword and more. Spots customer queries, captures interactions to identify prospects that are ready to buy and offers affiliate programs to promote current customers to help close the next deal. 
  • Custom Reports: Customizable across campaigns, email, social media and CRM to include business-specific metrics. Measures and predicts present and future performance, turning data into insights. 
  • Open API: Developers have access to a platform-agnostic, open API that supports programming languages such as Java, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and more for building custom integrations with third-party software. 
  • Third-Party Integration: An app marketplace provides access to prebuilt extensions and integrations across categories such as CRM, accounting, analytics, forms and more, extending capabilities. 
Start Price
$600
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Key Features

  • Campaign Management: Quickly build out automated email marketing campaigns, simple or multistep campaigns and more using a drag-and-drop builder. Launch, report and test campaigns and check results with in-line campaign statistics. 
  • Prospect Management: Categorize and identify which prospects to include, and build target personas, segments and account-based lists. Dynamic lists are automatically updated as new prospects are added. 
  • Reports: Measure, analyze and report on the effectiveness of campaigns. Track results to make necessary changes, get an overview of progress in detailed dashboards and schedule automatic reports via email. 
  • Landing Pages: Create, edit and publish pages quickly using a WYSIWYG editor. Schedule live sessions, expiry and redirection. Access pages without IT support. 
  • Form Builder: Build forms easily using a drag-and-drop interface, drop forms on landing pages using the WYSIWYG editor and customize them as needed. 
  • Email Builder: Create mobile-friendly, automated email campaigns quickly and effectively with a drag-and-drop tool. Offers professional templates, built-in image editing and an image library. 
  • Sophisticated Customer Tracking: Customer tracking can be extended from inbound to outbound efforts, allowing marketers to tweak campaign models based on recovered data. 
  • Real-time Lead Alerts: Allows timely follow-up and includes campaign stats and the times at which leads accessed certain content. 

Pricing

License/Subscription Cost
  • Subscription-based pricing model: per user, per month
  • Cost varies based on the prospect database size
Maintenance Cost
  • Cost is included in the subscription fee
  • Provides ongoing support via best practices documents, standard phone/email support, a dedicated customer success manager, webinars and eBooks
  • Charges $3,000/year (optional) for a dedicated IP address
  • ETrigue offers a Partner Plus Program starting at $1,000/month, which includes:
  • Full-feature package per instance
  • Partner Plus support
  • Includes all the features and functionalities of eTrigue DemandCenter
Installation/Implementation Cost
  • Included in the subscription fee
  • Provides Quick Start and Onboarding services, included in the subscription fee
  • Provides implementation from the beginning through the first email campaign with 5 days training, all included in the subscription fee
Customization Cost
  • Cost varies depending on the new functional requirements and modules added on, based on business requirements
Data Migration/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost
  • Cost varies depending on the current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system, amount of
    data cleansing, data consolidation and data validation required
Training Cost
  • Provides online training for users, included in the subscription fee
Recurring/Renewal Costs
  • Cost is equivalent to the recurring subscription fee and the customization cost
Company Size
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Cloud On-Premise
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Why We Picked Oracle CX Marketing

User reviews of Oracle CX Marketing paint a contrasting picture. Many praise its comprehensive feature set, particularly its advanced journey mapping and integration capabilities with other Oracle products. Users appreciate its ability to handle large databases and complex campaigns, highlighting its scalability and performance as major strengths. For example, one reviewer noted, "The ability to map out the entire customer journey and deliver personalized experiences across multiple channels has been a game-changer for our business." However, some highlight its steep learning curve and high cost as major drawbacks, suggesting it may be overkill for small businesses or those with simpler marketing needs. Additionally, some users criticize its limited reporting capabilities and slow customer support, finding them less user-friendly compared to similar products like HubSpot and Marketo. One user commented, "The platform can be quite complex to navigate, and the initial learning curve was significant. We also felt the reporting tools could be more customizable and user-friendly." Despite these shortcomings, many users believe Oracle CX Marketing outperforms its competitors in terms of its comprehensive feature set, scalability, and ability to handle complex campaigns. However, its high cost and steep learning curve make it a better fit for large businesses with the resources and expertise to leverage its full potential. Ultimately, the decision boils down to individual needs and priorities, with users needing to weigh the strengths and weaknesses against their specific requirements and budget.

Pros & Cons

  • Comprehensive Feature Set: Offers a wide range of tools for campaign management, lead generation, automation, content management, and social media marketing.
  • Advanced Journey Mapping: Enables personalized customer experiences across multiple touchpoints.
  • Scalability and Performance: Handles large customer databases and complex marketing campaigns efficiently.
  • Integrations with Oracle Products: Provides seamless integration with other Oracle solutions for a unified business ecosystem.
  • Strong Lead Generation Tools: Helps identify and nurture high-potential leads effectively.
  • High Cost: Can be expensive compared to other marketing automation platforms, especially for small businesses.
  • Steep Learning Curve: The platform can be complex to learn and use, requiring significant training and resources.
  • Limited Reporting Capabilities: While reporting features are available, they may not be as comprehensive or user-friendly as those offered by other platforms.
  • Overkill for Small Businesses: The extensive features and complexity may be unnecessary for small businesses with simpler marketing needs.
  • Slow Customer Support: Some users have reported experiencing slow or unresponsive customer support.

Key Features

  • Eloqua: Offers B2B tools to plan and implement automated marketing campaigns that can adapt in real time based on buyer activity. Generate, prioritize and segment leads using lead scoring and data from different sources. Also includes real-time data flow controls, account-based marketing and asset management. 
  • Responsys: Manages B2C campaigns to build experiences and personalize interactions across different channels by aggregating consumer data signals. Leverages email marketing, A/B and multivariate testing, cross-channel marketing, analytics, and segmentation. 
  • Maxymiser: Create optimized customer journeys across websites and mobile apps through testing, personalization, recommendations and insights. Provides a decision engine and action tracking for developers. Also enables testing on non-browser devices and for new pricing algorithms. 
  • Infinity: Collect and manage data in real time to track, measure and optimize performance and visitor behavior. Includes analytics for data reporting, streams for data collection, an action center for data activation and a data connector for data management. 
  • CX Audience: Combines behavioral and profile data from different sources, including online, offline and third-party. This allows creating segments and targets as well as analyzing audiences based on past campaigns. 
  • CrowdTwist: Manage personalized customer loyalty and reward programs using omnichannel engagement and loyalty solutions. Design programs using widget-based, automated tools. Key capabilities include collection of customer engagement data, self-service reporting tools and automatic data export. 
  • CX Content: Manage content, documents and digital assets, and streamline content creation and distribution with internal as well as external collaboration and workflow management. Also provides content recommendations, an asset repository, smart tagging and integrations with tools like Dropbox, Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud. 
  • CX Unity: Optimizes business processes by accessing online, offline and third-party customer data sources. Integrates with DMP and ID Graph solutions to bring together marketing and advertising data. Also includes native machine learning functionality, profile enrichment and behavior-based segmentation. 
  • Bluekai Data Management Platform: Offers key target audiences using specific buyer interests and actionable information to create personalized online, offline and mobile marketing campaigns. 
  • DataFox: Drives personalized marketing campaigns and sales programs by leveraging company data and real-time signals. Stay up to date regarding customers’ needs with continually updated, AI-sourced data that’s automatically permeated throughout workflows. 
Start Price
$25
Monthly
Company Size
Small Medium Large
Deployment
Cloud On-Premise
Platform
Mac Windows Linux Chromebook Android

Why We Picked Sendinblue

Sendinblue provides a cloud-based suite of communication tools available through a simple interface, ensuring ease of use. It offers a wide range of marketing automation tools and helps manage contacts efficiently, as many users note. The support team is prompt and thoroughly helpful. Users also find the free plan to be beneficial, as it offers good features with up to 300 emails per day. However, the system suffers from certain functional limitations and the design tool needs improvement. Overall, it’s an efficient, user-friendly option for businesses of any size looking to support all aspects of email marketing.

Pros & Cons

  • Ease of Use: More than 90% of reviewers referencing this feature mention it’s easy and simple to use the platform.
  • Email Marketing Tool: It’s easy to create, customize and deliver emails using a complete range of email automation tools, note more than 90% of reviewers who talk about this feature.
  • Support: The customer service team is helpful and responds in a timely manner, according to 82% of users mentioning it.
  • Interface: In the view of 91% of users referencing the interface, it’s efficient and pleasant to use.
  • Contact Management: It’s easy to import and categorize contacts, and communicating with customers is also straightforward, in the experience of 75% of reviewers mentioning contact management.
  • Limitations: Every user talking about this aspect mentions limitations such as difficulty adding a new folder and finding bounce email issues.
  • Design Tool: As every user observes, the design tool is basic and doesn’t offer many functions.

Key Features

  • Email Templates: Simplifies GDPR compliance with email templates built to follow regulations. Enables user-friendly editing via drag-and-drop functionality. 
  • Email Personalization: Helps increase email open rates. Dynamic personalization helps use subscriber-provided information from newsletters to achieve a more relevant experience. Personalization attributes include last name, first name, gender preferences, date of birth and more. 
  • Retargeting: Create a retargeting audience for ads by retargeting visitors based on specific page visits or actions (visiting a checkout page, abandoning a cart). Upload different styles of ad creatives, define budgets and monitor performance on key metrics. 
  • Sign-Up Forms: A drag-and-drop tool makes it easy to build sign-up forms and helps collect information from different fields. Additionally, give contacts a chance to opt in to receive different types of emails according to GDPR regulations. 
  • Real-Time Statistics: Access a global overview of email performance. Enables tracking events, deliveries, opens, clicks and bounces in real time, providing live monitoring of any campaign. 
  • Landing Pages: Create custom landing pages without any coding skills using the drag-and-drop landing page builder. Add the URL of landing pages in emails, advertisements, social posts and more. 
  • API: Developers have access to the entire range of the platform’s capabilities. APIs are available in several coding languages including PHP, Python, Node.js, Ruby and C Sharp. 
  • Integrations: Extend the platform’s functionality and keep using familiar apps. Supports integrations for CRM, e-commerce, forms, CMS, analytics and more, including Magento, PayPal, WordPress and Google Analytics. 
  • Chat: Developers can install a chat window on the company website so users can talk to customers and leads in real time. 

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Buyer's Guide

Email Marketing Software Is All About Delivering the Right Message at the Right Time

Email Marketing Software BG Intro

While newer marketing channels and trends emerge yearly, email marketing is always reliable, with an impressive return on investment of $36 for each dollar spent.

Is your company struggling to maintain customer engagement levels and looking for a reliable way to boost sales and improve customer retention? Email marketing software might be the perfect solution for you. In this buyer’s guide, we’ll explore the features and benefits of these systems to help you pick an ideal solution.

Executive Summary

  • Email marketing software, a branch of marketing automation software, is used by businesses.
  • Templates, customization, automation and testing are key features of email marketing automation software.
  • Using artificial intelligence and user-generated content are emerging trends in the email marketing industry.
  • Some purchasing considerations include company and data size, number of emails sent, data security and customer support.
  • Ask potential vendors some critical questions to guide your purchasing decision.
What This Guide Covers:

What Is Email Marketing Software?

Email marketing software is a set of tools that plans, creates, schedules and sends custom emails. It also tracks the performance of sent emails through several metrics.

Like a Swiss army knife, these tools come with features like pre-built templates, segmentation, personalization, analysis and automation to create and manage effective email marketing campaigns.

Deployment Methods

Numerous marketing software vendors are leaning towards cloud-based deployments. On-premise email distribution software never really picked up pace as they require constant IT support and are costlier due to server requirements.

On the other hand, cloud-based deployment offers affordability, accessibility, flexibility and scalability, among other benefits.

Benefits

While the benefits of email marketing software are many, some primary advantages include:

Benefits of Email Marketing Software

Ensure Regulatory Compliance

Adhering to email regulatory compliances is critical, and email marketing software makes it manageable. With automated opt-in and unsubscribe processes, legal standards and processes like the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR and CASL are easy to follow.

Compliance management lays the groundwork for maintaining brand integrity, demonstrating customer respect and building positive, long-term relationships.

Build and Manage Subscriber Lists

Properly segmented subscriber lists can enhance the effectiveness of email messaging. With tools for segmentation and targeted communication, email marketing automation software simplifies these processes.

Well-segregated lists enable successful campaigns and produce a responsive and engaged audience.

Improve Customer Engagement

Increasing customer engagement is elemental to email marketing software. With dynamic, responsive templates and personalized and custom messaging, email distribution software builds audience engagement.

Customer engagement isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. With custom and consistent communication, these tools promote brand loyalty and turn casual buyers into loyal brand ambassadors.

Automate Workflows

Automation isn’t just about convenience. It ensures accuracy and shifts focus to more strategic tasks. Automation in email marketing can be set up right from subscriber segmentation to crafting drip campaigns.

It ensures that emails reach the right audience at the right time and improves campaign reach and effectiveness.

Track Performance Metrics

For measuring campaign effectiveness, you need analytics that tracks performance metrics. These metrics and associated insights guide data-driven decisions and agile strategies.

With real-time reporting, email marketing software allows run-time optimizations and performance improvements.

Implementation Goals

Goal 1

Maximize Deliverability

Ensure emails reach the target audience's inbox, not the spam folder. Follow spam protection guidelines to prevent spam triggers and improve deliverability.

Goal 2

Improve Security Measures

Adhere to security protocols like encryption, access controls, and regular audits to protect sensitive customer data and follow legal requirements. Use security authentication measurements like SPF, DMARC and DKIM to ensure email legitimacy.

Goal 3

Access Scalability and Flexibility

As your business grows, so does the number of subscribers, campaigns and user accounts. Ideal email marketing distribution software offers flexibility in design, features, pricing models and integrations to match the needs of a scaling business.

Goal 4

Increase User Engagement

Engage your audience with targeted and personalized content, visually appealing designs and compelling calls to action. Together, these components improve audience interaction, open, click-through and conversion rates.

Goal 5

Enhance Customer Support

Email marketing automation software often integrates with CRM solutions to enhance customer support capabilities with features like personalization, auto-responders, templates, workflows and automation.

Basic Features & Functionality

Now that you know your implementation goals and understand what email marketing automation software does, consider the following features:

Features of Email Marketing Software

Data Management

In the digital era, where data is king, its efficient management is critical. Data management forms the backbone of effective email marketing. The software must facilitate the quick and efficient collection, storage and processing of vast amounts of customer data.

This data includes contact information, engagement history, transaction history, preferences and more. Efficient data management ensures compliance with privacy regulations. Secure storage and tiered access to data maintain confidentiality and integrity.

Subscriber Segmentation and Targeting

Segmentation and targeting are vital for sending relevant content to subscribers. Email marketing software allows businesses to segment their audience into distinct groups based on behavior, interests, demographics and more. Marketers can create targeted campaigns that resonate with specific audiences by identifying these segments.

It leads to higher engagement rates, better customer satisfaction and increased ROI. Refined and narrow cross-section targeting empowers marketers to speak directly to different segments, making every email more relevant and resonant with recipients.

Templates

Templates make it easier for marketers to create professional-looking emails without design expertise. Email marketing software often includes multiple options of pre-designed, drag-and-drop, widget-based, flexible templates for various purposes, such as newsletters, promotions or announcements.

These templates save time and ensure consistency across communications. They can be customized to align with brand guidelines, supporting creativity without losing professionalism.

Customization

Customization ensures that your emails stand out in a crowded inbox. With email marketing software, marketers can add elements like images, fonts, colors and layouts to match the brand's identity. These customizations make each email unique to the business.

However, customization goes beyond aesthetics. It tailors content for individual recipients or segments. This level of optimization transforms generic messages into personalized conversations, improving engagement.

Automation

Automation isn’t just about efficiency; it's about sophistication, consistency, and personalization at scale. It sends emails automatically at pre-determined times or based on specific triggers. Email marketing tools can schedule regular newsletters, send promotional offers, or follow-up emails after a purchase.

It also enables more sophisticated marketing strategies like drip campaigns. Marketers can nurture leads and guide them through the sales funnel by automating emails based on behavior or engagement.

Drag-and-Drop Editor

A drag-and-drop editor simplifies the email creation process. Its user-friendly approach makes it accessible to all team members, allowing them to add, remove and edit elements by simply dragging them to desired place.

It allows experimentation and creativity to test different variations of a single email. With design elements being taken care of, marketers can focus more on content and messaging than technicalities.

Reporting and Analytics

Reporting and analytics provide insights into email campaign performance. They turn raw data into actionable insights, fueling continuous improvement and smarter decision-making.

These tools track open rates, click-through rates, conversions and more. These quantitative measures show what works and doesn't, guiding future strategies.

Testing

A/B testing compares two versions of an email to determine the best-performing elements. Multi-variate testing takes this a step further, testing multiple variables simultaneously. These methods transform email marketing from a guessing game into a data-driven science.

QA and spam testing are complementary to the above, focusing on email quality and deliverability. These features ensure that emails reach the recipients' inboxes and meet quality standards. Combining these four testing elements can contribute to up to 28% higher ROI.

Advanced Features & Functionality

Outside of the basics, some solutions go above and beyond to offer these advanced features:

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is essential in today's digital age, where most emails are accessed via smartphones. It ensures emails render correctly and look attractive on small screens. Elements such as fonts, images and buttons are resized and repositioned to facilitate easy reading and interaction.

Beyond aesthetics, it also enhances the user experience by making it easier to tap links, fill forms and load content quickly. In fact, this feature is essential for successful email marketing campaigns.

Integrations

Integrations augment the functionality of email distribution software with data synchronization, automated actions, multi-channel campaigns and centralized visibility.

Integration with CRM systems, eCommerce platforms and social media channels enables streamlined marketing processes.

Dedicated IP

A dedicated IP assigns a unique internet address to a company's email traffic. It offers better control and responsibility to manage the sender's reputation to businesses, enabling high deliverability. It's an asset for businesses that send large email volumes and prioritize deliverability.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring assigns a value or score to leads based on their engagement and behavior. By tracking interactions such as email opens, link clicks and website visits, email marketing automation software can determine how likely a lead is to convert. This feature helps businesses prioritize their efforts and nurture “hot leads” more effectively. It optimizes the sales funnel and impacts revenue directly.

Advanced Segmentation

Advanced segmentation takes basic subscriber segmentation a step further. It allows businesses to create highly specific segments based on several behaviors and attributes, including past interactions, purchase history and website activity.

By grouping subscribers more accurately, businesses can tailor their communication more precisely. They can create and implement hyper-personalized email marketing campaigns, making every message count.

Email Marketing Software Trends

The global email marketing industry was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. It’s safe to say that its growth as one of the leading marketing channels isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Email marketing has come a long way from the first email blast in 1978. With emerging technologies and regulations, the industry has molded itself to engage audiences in a more compliant and successful way.

Email Marketing Software Trends

Open Rate Is No Longer an Email Marketing KPI

Open rates aren’t regarded as a crucial KPI in email marketing anymore. The release of Apple's iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8 radically changed how email open rates are tracked. With the introduction of Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), invisible pixels used by marketers to gather user data are now obstructed. 

Apple's MPP disrupts traditional open rate calculations by preloading all email content, including tracking pixels. As a result, emails appear as “opened” whether or not the user views them. The new MPP feature presents a challenge by masking when, where and on what device users open emails, along with any related activity on the device used.

Marketers need to adapt to this change in tracking open rates. In fact, other activities like audience segmentation based on the last open date, automated flows relying on email openings, A/B testing of subject lines, send time optimizations, and countdown timers for drip and multi-channel campaigns are all affected.

Going forward, marketers need to explore alternative KPIs for tracking engagement, focus on different metrics for Apple users, or accept a larger margin of error in tracking open rates if alternative KPIs don’t work out.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leads the Way

AI benefits email marketing, just as it’s advancing other business functions. AI tools enable marketers to personalize email content. By analyzing user behavior, preferences and past interactions, AI helps send tailored emails. These emails match the interests and needs of the recipient, enhancing engagement.

Machine learning, a subset of AI, supports predictive analytics. It can anticipate user behavior, giving insight into optimal timing, content and subject lines. This increased accuracy improves conversions.

Automation powered by AI also saves time and resources. It allows seamless segmentation and targeting, all managed by intelligent algorithms. Gone are the days of manually sorting through lists. AI makes email marketing more efficient, effective and tailored to each recipient's unique profile.

User-Generated Content Is Vital for Validation

User-Generated Content (UGC) has emerged as a robust marketing strategy. UGC in emails isn’t just a trend; it’s a way to create a more authentic, engaged and loyal customer base. It involves encouraging customers to share their experiences. By using photos, reviews or comments, brands can create more relatable content. This strategy strengthens the community feeling and makes emails more engaging.

It builds trust. Seeing real customers enjoying a product or service is more convincing than any advertising copy. Including this content in emails makes the promotional message more credible. It connects on a personal level and enhances the brand's reputation.

Leveraging UGC also encourages more interaction with the audience. By asking for reviews or sharing experiences, brands engage their audience actively. This two-way communication builds a stronger relationship.

Software Comparison Strategy

Consider the following factors as the first steps toward choosing email software:

  • Company Size: Identify the scale and size of the organization. Businesses with global reach need a feature-rich and scalable solution to handle large data and email volumes.
  • Ease of Use: Ease of use is the most important factor in an email marketing tool. A tool that is hard to use will make your marketing efforts more difficult and time-consuming.
  • Scalability: An email marketing platform should grow with the business to avoid switching from one tool to another. A scalable solution will help marketers enable business growth.
  • Customer Support: Most enterprise tools come with a tech support helpline. The support team should be promptly responsive and resourceful so that email marketing efforts don’t stall when the marketing team hits a roadblock.
  • Security: Since email lists are all about customer data, it’s important to look for a tool that stores data with standard encryption and security measures. Businesses also need to maintain backups of their data to avoid data loss.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

Email marketing solutions are cloud-based, which means they store data on a server in another location. They also offer monthly or annual subscription formats.

Factors that influence the price tag are the number of subscribers, capabilities required, such as automation and A/B testing, phone support and company size. Vendors also charge for services such as:

  • Training
  • Customization
  • Implementation
  • Data Migration

How much does email marketing software cost?

Email marketing software costs depend on the number of subscribers and monthly email volumes. The lowest-priced subscription can be anywhere from free to $50 per month, while the costliest tool can cost a few thousand. Most tools offer a two-week to a month trial. They also offer discounts for annual plans.

The Most Popular Email Marketing Software

No email distribution software comparison guide is complete without introducing you to the leading providers. Here’s a brief list of the top five solutions.

Note: These are the most popular marketing automation solutions with email campaign management capabilities, not explicitly the most popular email marketing software overall.

Email Marketing Leaderboard

HubSpot

What It Does

HubSpot is a marketing automation solution that focuses on inbound methodology and leads by example in customer-centric practices and offerings. Its array of features includes an email marketing module that allows businesses to reach their target audience efficiently with the help of templates, automation and tracking.

Built for businesses of all sizes, the software scales and customizes its features to resonate with unique client requirements. Its flexibility and diverse functionality allow businesses to collate all marketing efforts and grow their customer base with a centralized platform.

HubSpot

Designing Multi-Channel Marketing Workflows in HubSpot.

Product Overview
User Sentiment Score 87%
Analyst Rating 95
Company Size S | M | L
What It's Best For
Capability SelectHub Analyst Score
Campaign Management 100
Dashboard and Reporting 100
Email Campaign Management 100
Lead Management 100
Lead Generation 100
Pros and Cons From User Reviews
Pros Cons
The support team is reliable and offers quick responses to any need, according to 91% of reviewers referencing this aspect. Premium products are expensive for the amount of functionality, especially for small and mid-sized companies, according to 86% of reviewers.
Automating email campaigns, lead scoring and workflows, managing sales funnels and social engagement, and creating email templates is easy, according to 95% of reviewers who talk about automation. In 85% of reviews referencing training, users say it’s difficult for average users to perform complicated tasks such as tracking leads and making different mailing lists, causing a learning curve.
Features like creating landing pages, forms and email campaigns are benefits to 85% of users mentioning functionalities. All reviews about this issue note that customizing the mobile version of an email affects the desktop version; inserting custom HTML, for promo timers, as an example, isn’t possible.

ActiveCampaign

What It Does

ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based marketing automation solution with an advanced email marketing module that streamlines customer communication. Its email marketing module offers features for segmentation, A/B testing, campaign tracking, automated follow-ups and automation.

It’s recognized for its flexibility and scalability and offers several modules for unique marketing requirements. It also provides integrations to unify all business functions and data at a centralized platform.

ActiveCampaign

Dashboard of ActiveCampaign.

Product Overview
User Sentiment Score 92%
Analyst Rating 86
Company Size S | M | L
What It's Best For
Capability SelectHub Analyst Score
Campaign Management 100
Lead Management 99
Platform Capabilities 96
Campaign Management 96
Text Campaign Management 90
Pros and Cons From User Reviews
Pros Cons
It helps run customer and lead campaigns, triggered automatically based on set specifications; note 98% of reviewers that referred to this feature. According to 77% of reviewers talking about training, learning the platform is tough and time-consuming.
The support team is easy to reach and very responsive, according to 93% of reviewers talking about this aspect. Every user mentioning this aspect notes it can be glitchy and slow to load during peak business hours.
Connecting with Zapier and other platforms makes it easy to transfer leads, according to 88% of reviewers referencing integration. The interface is slow and not very intuitive, according to 62% of reviewers referencing this aspect.

Mailchimp

What It Does

Mailchimp is a cloud-based, device-agnostic marketing automation platform with a robust email marketing module. It offers several features like templates, A/B testing, multi-channel drip campaigns, advanced segmentation and more to create, manage and track engaging email campaigns with utmost precision.

It’s built for businesses of all sizes across industries and automates lead generation, lead nurturing, social media campaign management and more.

Mailchimp

Campaign Tracking Capabilities of Mailchimp.

Product Overview
User Sentiment Score 88%
Analyst Rating 97
Company Size S | M | L
Free Trial Info Free trials are available.
Starting Price $0
What It's Best For
Capability SelectHub Analyst Score
Platform Capabilities 100
Email Campaign Management 97
Campaign Management 93
Mobile Capabilities 86
Social Media Campaign Management 79
Pros and Cons From User Reviews
Pros Cons
The platform has a simple interface and can easily be understood by anyone with basic knowledge of email marketing, observe 95% of reviewers referencing this feature. More than 85% of users mentioning this aspect observe that the free version doesn’t include all features and the premium version is expensive compared to other email marketing services.
It’s easy to create and understand emails using templates, send professional email flyers and run campaigns automatically, according to 83% of users who mention this feature. Every user talking about this feature mentions that sometimes clients' e-blasts end up in the spam folder for recipients.
Almost 80% of reviewers who talk about this feature feel the built-in templates are easily customizable, and editing them doesn’t require graphic design experience. There are glitches such as difficulty signing in when logged in from another device, frozen modules, slow editing process, poor compatibility with Outlook and more, as every review on this feature mentions.

Pardot

What It Does

Pardot by Salesforce is a comprehensive marketing automation tool that helps businesses streamline marketing activities, track multi-channel campaign performance and adapt marketing strategies accordingly.

Its email marketing module enables marketers to create targeted campaigns, test and optimize content, and automate email responses. Offering seamless integrations within Salesforce ecosystems creates seamless customer experiences to boost revenue and profit margins.

Pardot

Customer Re-Engagement Journey Mapping in Pardot.

Product Overview
User Sentiment Score 79%
Analyst Rating 83
Company Size M | L
Free Trial Info Free trials are available.
Starting Price $1250
What It's Best For
Capability SelectHub Analyst Score
Campaign Management 100
Dashboard and Reporting 100
Email Campaign Management 96
Lead Management 92
Lead Generation 90
Pros and Cons From User Reviews
Pros Cons
More than 90% of users who mentioned integration noted the benefit of connecting Pardot with the wider Salesforce ecosystem. The product costs more than its functionality, according to all users who mention this aspect.
Users can seamlessly set up emails, create content, measure performance and report results, according to all reviews about email marketing. It’s difficult to understand and involves a lot of clicks, as observed by 95% of users mentioning this aspect.
It offers robust tools for lead generation and nurturing, as reported by 85% of user feedback on these features. The lack of vigorous reporting tools is a matter of concern, according to 85% of user feedback on the topic.

AWeber

What It Does

AWeber is a cloud-based marketing automation software known for its sophisticated and user-friendly email marketing module. It offers functionalities like drag-and-drop email editors, advanced automation, A/B testing, form integrations and in-depth analytics.

It’s built for businesses of all sizes, has a built-in CRM and offers integrations with other critical business applications to centralize processes and propel audience engagement and business growth.

AWeber

Create Emails with Drag-and-Drop Builder in AWeber.

Product Overview
User Sentiment Score 85%
Analyst Rating 95
Company Size S | M | L
Free Trial Info Free trials are available.
Starting Price $0
What It's Best For
Capability SelectHub Analyst Score
Email Campaign Management 95
Platform Capabilities 77
Campaign Management 74
LLead Generation 71
Dashboard and Reporting 64
Pros and Cons From User Reviews
Pros Cons
Setup and implementation are fast and easy. The system has a low learning curve. There are occasional issues with deliverability.
Customer service is exemplary — always goes above and beyond to address clients’ issues. User interface and navigation are outdated and clunky.
It’s easy to import customer data and segment and create subscriber lists. Pre-built email templates are difficult to work with.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Use these questions as a starting point for internal conversations:

  • What type of emails do you send?
  • How many emails do you send in a month?
  • Which functionalities need automation?
  • Will email marketing automation add value and drive revenue?
  • Which long and short-term goals do you hope to achieve with email marketing software?
  • At what rate is your organization growing? Can this software grow with you?
  • Who will be responsible for your email marketing efforts?
  • What are the metrics for success?
  • What type of reports and analytics do you need? Do you need customizable reports?
  • Does it integrate with your CRM tools?

Email Marketing Software Key Questions To Ask

 

 

 

Questions To Ask Vendors

Use these questions as a starting point for conversations with vendors:

About the Software

  • Does it integrate with other apps and plugins, such as CRM?
  • How customizable is the tool? Do you need a developer to customize it?
  • How many users and subscribers are included at various pricing points?
  • Is the interface user-friendly?
  • Does it have templates?
  • Does it support mobile capabilities?
  • Is it possible to add extra features after implementation?
  • How much does implementation cost?

About the Vendor

  • What are the types of support they offer — phone, email or forum? What is the query turnaround time?
  • How much time does implementation take? What resources are required?
  • Does the cost include data migration?
  • Does the cost include employee training?
  • Does it support free or paid integrations?

Next Steps

Email marketing software is designed to automate and simplify targeted communication with potential customers or subscribers. Their primary purpose is to send personalized, timely emails that enhance engagement and conversion rates.

These tools can improve the quality and speed of everyday marketing campaigns and customer outreach. Still feeling overwhelmed in your product search? Get started today with our free requirements template to review and create a list of critical features.

Product Comparisons

Additional Resources

About The Contributors

The following expert team members are responsible for creating, reviewing, and fact checking the accuracy of this content.

Technical Content Writer
Shweta Joshi is a Market Analyst at SelectHub. She writes content for Warehouse Management, Distribution and CRM. In her free time, she pursues her myriad interests in reading, writing, sketching, traveling, learning about new languages, cultures and cuisines, and occasionally playing the uke completely out of tune.
Technical Research By Joan Akash
Senior Analyst
Joan Akash, a Senior Research Analyst at SelectHub, holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management with a specialization in Marketing. Her expertise as a researcher and reviewer spans diverse software categories, including Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Live Chat, and Help Desk. Beyond her professional pursuits, Joan is spiritually driven, with a passion for teaching children and a penchant for reading biblical blogs and crafting poetry.
Technical Review By Manan Roy
Principal Analyst
Manan is a native of Tezpur, Assam (India), who currently lives in Kolkata, West Bengal (India). At SelectHub, he works on categories like CRM, HR, PPM, BI, and EHR. He has a Bachelor of Technology in CSE from The Gandhi Institute of Engineering and Technology, a Master of Technology from The Institute of Engineering and Management IT, and an MBA in Finance from St. Xavier's College. He's published two research papers, one in a conference and the other in a journal, during his Master of Technology.
Edited By Hunter Lowe
Content Editor
Hunter Lowe is a Content Editor, Writer and Market Analyst at SelectHub. His team covers categories that range from ERP and business intelligence to transportation and supply chain management. Hunter is an avid reader and Dungeons and Dragons addict who studied English and Creative Writing through college. In his free time, you'll likely find him devising new dungeons for his players to explore, checking out the latest video games, writing his next horror story or running around with his daughter.
Edited By Joe Evans
Content Editor
Joe Evans is an Editor and Senior Market Analyst at SelectHub. A seasoned professional wordsmith, he has a bachelor's degree in journalism and electronic media and a decade of professional expertise in crafting top-tier digital content for niche online brands. He leads his small yet formidable team in producing helpful, compelling content in vital categories like HR, payroll, talent management, performance management, marketing automation home health, MES. When not editing and writing, he enjoys sports, quality time with family and dogs, and remains constantly in pursuit of something new and interesting to read or listen to.