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Email marketing has long been one of the most cost-effective advertising campaigns a business can use. A well-designed email drip campaign can convert potential customers into paying clients and also generate new purchases from existing customers.
By far the easiest way to take advantage of this form of marketing is to hire a reputable email marketing service. There are now dozens of companies offering assistance with email marketing, so it can be difficult to figure out which one is your best option.
We took a deep dive into the finer details of all the top options. We spent countless hours digging into the pros and cons of each company, and we’re happy to share our results with you to help you choose the right company for your needs.
While social media marketing gets all the headlines these days, don’t overlook the potential power of email marketing for developing and growing your company’s customer base. Many businesses also get significant value from social media marketing, email is still more commonly used in the business world.
Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers directly, especially compared to social media marketing. Email allows you to send much longer and in-depth messages, and it’s also far more likely to reach its intended audience. It’s also far easier to set up branching campaigns with email, building off each previous messages to drive customers to your platform.
Email marketing also has a crazy-high return on investment. You can actually make roughly 4,000% ROI with email marketing, as each dollar businesses spend on email marketing returns around $40. Finally, people simply prefer to receive marketing messages via email compared to other channels, as it’s viewed as less intrusive than many other options.
Before we get started, we’ll mention that these companies often have many different options for monthly email volume and number of contacts. With this in mind, the pricing details you’ll see in this guide are for each company’s baseline package.
Constant Contact is one of the biggest names in this industry, and for good reason. Constant Contact has a strong pricing model that mixes affordability with great features to provide a comprehensive email marketing service for small businesses.
We love how easy it is to get started with Constant Contact, and its email marketing tools are a breeze to operate. Constant Contact includes a full suite of marketing automation tools, and it fully integrates with popular applications like Facebook and Shopify.
Constant Contact is a customer-friendly company, as evidenced by its great customer support and strong customer reviews. This company offers highly responsive and knowledgeable support, and its customer satisfaction reputation is fantastic. We found more than 7,000 customer reviews for Constant Contact and a very high percentage of them were positive.
Constant Contact makes it easy to learn its platform, even going so far as to offer live in-person seminars and a 60-day free trial. However, it’s worth noting that with Constant Contact’s pricing model, your costs can get pretty high if you rack up too many contacts.
Still, Constant Contact gets so much right that it’s our top pick for small business service. It’s a tremendously well-rounded email marketing service with many advantages and very few disadvantages.
SendinBlue is our top pick for the best free email marketing service, as its free plan allows you to send up to 300 emails per day! Sure, they’ll have a little “this email sent by SendinBlue” disclaimer at the bottom, but it’s not that obtrusive.
SendinBlue offers a host of valuable lead-generating features, including landing pages, sign-up forms, Facebook ads, retargeted ads, and more. It also offers integrations with Facebook, Shopify, and WooCommerce, giving it some serious punch for eCommerce.
SendinBlue also has far more templates than most competitors. With more than 1,000 to choose from, we would be shocked if you can’t find several options that you like. SendinBlue offers a user-friendly interface as well, minimizing the learning curve.
We also like how SendinBlue integrates so seamlessly with other email marketing services, meaning that it’s easy to switch to SendinBlue from a competing company. The only real downside of SendinBlue is that its paid plans are all a bit expensive compared to some competing companies. For example, Constant Contact probably has more affordable rates for many small businesses.
Overall, SendinBlue is an impressive company with our favorite free email marketing service. If you like what you see, it’s easy to upgrade to a paid plan.
Mailchimp is one of the best-known email marketing services, and it has a couple of key advantages over its competitors. First off, Mailchimp offers a highly reasonable pricing model that even small businesses can afford. At just $9.99 per month, Mailchimp offers a surprisingly complete email marketing service.
We love how Mailchimp integrates with so many other programs, including WordPress, Shopify, Magento, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and Excel. It’s also super-easy to get started, as there’s essentially zero learning curve with Mailchimp’s convenient tools.
We appreciate Mailchimp’s eCommerce features, which cost nothing upfront and only charge a 2% fee per transaction. It also has the best customer reviews of any company in this guide, with more than 27,000 reviews and excellent average scores.
However, there are a couple of negatives that keep Mailchimp from threatening our top two picks. We’re not huge fans of Mailchimp’s advanced marketing features, as they feel tacked on rather than fully integrated into the service. Furthermore, Mailchimp doesn’t have the most responsive customer support, as it can take a while to hear back from them.
By far the most expensive option we’ll discuss in this guide, HubSpot nonetheless has some advantages over the other companies we’ve mentioned. If you’re looking for complete marketing services that include comprehensive email marketing, HubSpot could be a great fit.
HubSpot has a truly impressive array of automated tools to help you create the ideal email campaign, paired with superpowered marketing features. HubSpot is also scalable and has the capacity for enterprise-level solutions, while some competitors are much better suited for small businesses only.
Throw in HubSpot’s positive customer feedback — with more than 7,000 reviews available online — and you’re looking at a company with quite a few advantages. That said, the disadvantages are rather glaring.
HubSpot’s pricing is obviously very high, especially compared to the other options we’ve discussed. In addition, its tools are rather complex and can take some time to get comfortable with. Still, HubSpot can easily grow with your business, and its scalability and advanced marketing services will be worth the money for some companies.
We appreciate what all of these companies have to offer, and we would honestly recommend any of them for your email marketing needs. While these are our top four companies in this industry, we also focused on finding companies that each fill a specific niche to help you choose the best one for you.
With services like email marketing, there really is no one-size-fits-all solution that’s the perfect fit for every entrepreneur’s unique needs. Whether you need an email marketing service for a small business, you’re on a tight budget, you want a complete suite of advanced features, or you just want to use a free version, we hope this guide helped you find what you’re looking for!
Recommended: Allow Your Email Marketing Efforts To Soar By Working With Klaviyo Partners
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
Written by Team ZenBusiness
ZenBusiness has helped people start, run, and grow over 700,000 dream companies. The editorial team at ZenBusiness has over 20 years of collective small business publishing experience and is composed of business formation experts who are dedicated to empowering and educating entrepreneurs about owning a company.
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