Communicating with current customers and potential ones is critical as a small business. Your target market must know who you are, what your company is about, and why they should buy from you.
One way to build a relationship with your customer base and increase sales is through email marketing. Sending emails regularly to your customer list will allow you to reach out to potential customers and existing ones, too.
As a small business, the advantages of email marketing are too numerous to ignore.
In this post, I'll go through the best email marketing software for small businesses and discuss the features that these types of programs offer.
Let's dive deep into this topic.
The Best Email Marketing Software For Small Businesses
The following are some of the best email marketing software for small businesses. These email marketing solutions are designed for small business owners who want to connect with their customers regularly.
GetResponse
Best For Converting Leads Into Customers
GetResponse is a powerful email marketing software that offers many options for small business owners. The platform allows you to reach out to your customers through email marketing campaigns, autoresponders, and landing pages, as well as creating surveys and polls.
GetResponse is good because it can automate marketing tasks, which is essential for small business owners who don't have time to email marketing campaigns as the need arises.
With inbound marketing solutions that help you connect with your target audience, GetResponse is one tool that can get you on your way to achieving your goals.
Get a suite of tools that will help you manage your email marketing campaigns, plus much more.
If you’re involved in eCommerce, GetResponse also helps you market your store with everything from newsletters to autoresponders and landing pages.
Segment your customer list based on specific criteria and send relevant emails to the appropriate audience in your list that matches your criteria.
Key Features
Pricing
With a free package available, these are the paid plans on offer. In this case, the pricing is based on a subscriber list of 1000 contacts.
Sendinblue
Best For Using SMS Marketing Along With Your Email Campaigns
Sendinblue gives you all the tools you need to plan, design, and send your email marketing campaigns.
With the ability to manage unlimited contacts through their service, this tool is ideal for small business owners who want to grow their customer base with regular emails.
With the ability to be everywhere your customers are, Sendinblue is great for small businesses that want to connect with their customers on different platforms.
They also offer SMS marketing so that you can send messages via SMS to your contacts as well as through email. If you are sending time-sensitive offers, SMS marketing is a great way to reach your customers, resulting in them taking the desired actions.
They also offer the possibility of adding live chat on your site to connect with your customers immediately after landing on your website.
Key Features
Pricing
Getting started with Sendinblue is free.
After that, these are the paid pricing plans:
Intercom
Best For Building Relationships Through Conversations
Intercom provides a conversational way to connect with your customers.
Connecting to your website, Intercom tracks every activity on your site and lets you know who is visiting.
With their visual messaging platform, you can send messages directly to the people already interacting with your brand.
Intercom's marketing tools let you create campaigns based on email, Facebook messenger, or even SMS messages.
This way, you can communicate with your customers on any of these platforms to get their attention and provide them with relevant offers.
You can also convert your site visitors into leads by sending them targeted messages based on their behavior.
With customizable bots on Intercom, you can implement various tools on your website to make it easy for site visitors to get in touch with you.
Key Features
Pricing
Their starter package starts from $67 per month, billed annually.
You can then have add-ons based on your specific needs, including:
Mailchimp
Best For Having A Simple Solution That Can Scale
Mailchimp is excellent for those looking for a very easy-to-use interface.
With different features to help you create email campaigns, Mailchimp lets you manage your content and create a suitable template for frequent use.
Mailchimp's powerful yet simple-to-use marketing platform can help you engage your consumers and grow your business.
Use your audience data to send them personalized emails based on their previous behavior.
As a marketer, you can also use the features provided by Mailchimp to help your email campaigns stand out from everyone else's.
You can create email campaigns and do A/B testing efficiently with various marketing channels available.
You can also use the reports provided by Mailchimp so that you know where your campaign is failing or succeeding.
Get your business online and start engaging with your audience by creating an email list using Mailchimp.
Key Features
Pricing
A free solution gives you all the multi-channel tools you need to build your business and grow your audience.
After that, Mailchimp includes the following paid plans:
HubSpot
Best For A Free Solution To Your Email Marketing Needs
HubSpot gives you a free email marketing tool that lets you send personalized messages to your subscribers.
Their powerful marketing platform lets you implement lead capture forms on your website, making it easier for visitors to sign up as leads.
Create, personalize, and send email campaigns to your subscribers without hassle.
With HubSpot's email marketing tools, you can send emails to your customers, prospects, partners, and vendors. You can also design and send beautiful email newsletters with their drag-and-drop editor.
With an email editor that allows you to add elements and work on your designs, the possibilities are endless.
Key Features
Hubspot offers its email marketing functionality for free when getting started.
You can then integrate with other HubSpot features if you need more robust marketing automation tools.
AWeber
Best For Tagging People On Your List Appropriately
AWeber helps you grow your business by making the process of creating and sending beautiful email campaigns easier than ever before.
Easily create marketing emails, surveys, event confirmations, and membership sites for your subscribers with AWeber's powerful marketing automation tools.
Grow, sell, and engage with your audience—all from a single platform.
Aweber helps you build landing pages that people can use to sign up for your newsletters and mailing lists.
Manage all of the people that have subscribed to your list by organizing them into separate groups (like "customers" and "prospects").
If you want to build loyalty in your customer base, AWeber's email marketing software can help you do that with their autoresponders.
You can also use custom tags to create promotions and coupons to send to your contacts.
With campaign automation, you can design and send targeted messages to your subscribers based on their different actions.
Key Features
Pricing
With a free option for up to 500 email subscribers, their Pro version starts at $16.15 per month.
Why Is Email Marketing Software Essential In Business?
Email is still the most trusted and widely used channel to engage a target audience.
This means that having a centralized destination to organize your contacts and send them targeted messages is crucial.
Whether you need to create a branded email newsletter or share a new product update, you want to ensure that every message that goes out looks great and gets opened.
An email marketing software can help streamline this process by making it easier for marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners to get their message across.
The Features Of A Great Email Marketing Software
Knowing which email marketing software is worth your time and money can be challenging with so many options available.
Here are some of the key features you should look out for in a good email marketing platform:
A/B Testing Features
Sometimes you don't know what type of subject line or offer will work best with your audience. Compare your theories and use A/B testing to find out if more people open or click on specific messages, continuously improving the results of your campaigns.
This means that you should look for a tool that lets you quickly set up A/B tests so that you can see what works best, get accurate results and optimize your campaigns over time.
Lead Nurturing
While it's great if people subscribe to your email lists, the only way to grow a healthy business is to nurture leads into customers who buy from you.
As a marketer or business owner, you want an email marketing platform that makes this process easy for both parties. This means having easy-to-use follow-up messages and automation rules in place so that leads are adequately nurtured when they sign up for your list.
Depending on the size of your company and how much money you make from each sale, you should look for email marketing software that lets you do advanced lead management.
This would include options such as automation rules, workflows, assigning tasks, and setting reminders for individual contacts.
Targeting Options
Depending on your industry requirements, targeting options can include email marketing segmentation to divide subscribers into groups.
If someone hasn't bought from you in a while but still opens all of your emails, maybe it's time to send them a relevant coupon code so that they take action. On the other hand, if customers are continually opening your messages but not clicking through to buy anything, maybe it's time to follow up the sequence with helpful tips or products.
Drag And Drop
Email marketing platforms with drag and drop features make it easier for marketers to create professional-looking emails with custom graphics and in-line images without HTML or CSS.
This means that you can customize your messages and forms to match the branding of your business while also making sure they look great when opened.
Viral Sharing Tools
When customers love what you're sending out, they might want to share it with their friends on social media. That's why viral sharing tools are essential in an email marketing platform; they allow customers to quickly spread the word about your brand without even lifting a finger.
Instead of putting all of the pressure on them, you should be able to set up viral incentives designed around your offers. For example, if someone refers a friend who buys product X, they can get a special discount on their next purchase.
Advanced Forms
Email marketing without the ability to manage subscribers is pointless. That's why advanced forms are essential when looking for an email marketing platform so that you have total control over the information that your leads provide you with.
If you want to integrate with other programs, this data will also help ensure that the process is easy and seamless instead of making things more complicated.
Landing Page Builder
Many email marketing services include landing page software to mobile-friendly pages with customized form fields, header images, and body copy.
While some additional features within a builder are nice to have, you should make sure the email marketing platform you choose includes at least basic page build capabilities before making any decision.
Email marketing platforms come in many shapes and sizes for landing page builders, and understanding what features you need is very important.
Sending Unlimited Emails
The right email marketing service should be capable of sending hundreds (or thousands) of high-quality emails to subscribers without worrying about spam filters, server limits, or having your deliverability affected.
While you should look for an email marketing platform with unlimited email sends, make sure there are no size restrictions on campaigns while also including the ability to use patented technology for more effective deliverability.
This means that if need be, you can get started with an unlimited number of accounts and contacts without having to worry about bumping up against quotas or coming across as spam.
In-Built Analytics
One can define the best email marketing service as those capable of measuring results and making it easy for marketers to see what's working, what isn't, and how they can improve their campaigns.
In-built analytics are a must-have as they provide detailed insights into subscriber behavior, open rates, click-through rates, and more. This enables you to better target potential customers with personalized offers relevant to their needs.
If you want to see what's working and what isn't, the email marketing platform you choose should include detailed reports that are easy to understand.
This means that rather than relying on third-party tools that may or may not be fully compatible, the proper service will come with everything you need to see what's going on with your campaigns.
Pre-Built Templates
Email marketing platforms should come with a selection of pre-built templates that one can customize and apply to their brand as needed.
That's why it's essential to look for an email marketing service with a wide range of built-in templates, allowing you to have just the email marketing design that you want. This can all be done without learning complex coding languages yourself.
This would make it easy to rebrand emails sent frequently or even those belonging to one-off campaigns.
Advanced Features
While email marketing service providers try to keep things simple for beginners, the software you choose should include some advanced features.
This could include features such as the ability to see your top openers from multiple campaigns so that you can adjust your subject lines accordingly. It would help if you also had the option of setting up time-based triggers for when messages are sent out with a built-in scheduler and email automation options.
The best email marketing services offer advanced features to help you fine-tune your results and improve overall performance.
Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective ways for businesses to grow their brand without having to spend money on expensive advertising campaigns.
This makes it essential to ensure any email marketing platform you choose has these key components.
Integrations With Other Channels
Finally, when building your business, you want to make sure email marketing platforms come with integrations to other channels such as social media and SMS services.
We live in a multi-channel world, and depending on what market you cater to, the right email service should help you seamlessly integrate emails with your other tools.
Suppose you run a business that focuses heavily on direct response and getting leads through your digital content. In that case, you want an email marketing service that can connect with social media networks so that you can engage potential customers while they are browsing their favorite sites.
Conclusion
The use of an email marketing service has been shown to increase the lifetime value of customers more than other channels, making it that much harder for businesses to ignore.
Email marketing services make it easier for marketers to engage with their audience and increase brand awareness, so they are the (not so) secret weapon that every business needs.
Suppose you're trying to find out how email marketing can help your small business. In that case, all you need to do is identify the most important features and compare email service providers accordingly before making a final decision.