When the first email was sent in the year 1971 by its inventor Ray Tomlinson, little did anyone know how huge a marketing channel it would become over the course of years. Although many types of marketing methods come and go, e-mail has been a mainstay and is likely to be so for many years to come.

Emails are quite flexible and there are a number of ways through which marketers create an impact through it. The method is equally useful for B2B and B2C customers, and can be used to market any type of products/services, regardless of the utility and price of products and services being sold through it.

In this post, we will take a look at the best email marketing software that you can use for your business either completely free or through a very affordable monthly/yearly subscription plans. But before we head on the list, let us first understand the significance of email marketing.

Why is E/mail Marketing Important?

Stats suggest that presently 4 billion people use email across the globe. If there are so many users, just imagine the number of mails that are exchanged every day. There are a number of reasons why email marketing holds relevance, even to this day:

1) Email Marketing increases rate of conversion

Converting potential customers to paying customers is the goal of every marketer and despite appearing as an underdog, this marketing channel is way effective in terms of average click-through-rate (CTR) than a tweet. Figures suggest that the average CTR for an email campaign is 3% while the same from a tweet is a mere 0.5%. This implies that a business is 6 times more likely to benefit from emails than simple tweets.

According to a survey conducted by Monetate, 4.24% of visitors that arrive through emails buy something as compared to 2.49% of visitors from search engines and just 0.59% from social media.

2) It has a wider reach

There is a big piece of misinformation spreading out these days that social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter have a wider reach as compared to emails. Figures, however, suggest that the number of email users is way higher and thus a marketer shouldn’t ignore this medium of communication.

3) Better way to communicate

The organic reach of posts on social media is too low to make an effective communication to your customers and fans. If, for instance, you have 10,000 fans on Facebook, your post may reach the news feed of only 2%-5% of followers. But, if you send out emails to 10,000 people, it is highly probable that at least 8,500-9,000 people will get it in their inbox. Therefore, your message, which can be in the form of new offers, launched products, discounts and cashback, is more likely to reach your audience.

4) High Return on Investment

An email is free of cost! Even if you use a paid email tool to reach your customers and leads, the cost is really low. Stats show that for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average ROI is as high as $38.

But what is the reason behind such high ROI with emails?

Well, simply because emails are capable of delivering highly personalized messages and offers which a social media post can’t do even with paid boosts!

5) Open Platform

Social media portals like Twitter and Facebook update their algorithms regularly. With these updations, one thing that has become evident is the fact that posts published by brands are visible only to a very small percentage of followers. For this reason, marketers have to buy paid ad spots.

Unlike social media, however, emails are not subject to such biased and revenue-oriented tactics by third parties. Hence this “open” nature of emails is what sets it apart and will continue to do so for years to come.

7 Best Email Marketing Software

Now, since we have understood how emails have proven to be a game-changer even in today’s time of incessant social media marketing, let’s take a look at the 7 best email marketing software one-by-one:

#1 Sender

Sender should be your go-to choice for email marketing if you do not have any knowledge about HTML. The tool will allow you to create jaw-dropping newsletters through customizable templates where you just need to add your text, photos and videos.

Furthermore, you can personalize it easily for each recipient to make your customers feel special. Sender’s analytics is highly comprehensive and you can track everything ranging from if and when the emails were opened to if the user clicked on the link to come to your website.

Plans and Pricing

For just $59, you get up to 25,000 subscribers, which is indeed a steal deal. You can opt for smaller and larger packages as well, depending on your requirement.

Pros and Cons

+ Amazing dashboard
+ Convenient Drag and Drop

– More templates needed

#2 Sendinblue

We’d rate Sendinblue’s email design tool 5-out-of-5 stars, courtesy of a compact editor and a set of amazing functionalities. With Sendinblue, you get three options to create your email, namely:

• Drag and drop
• Rich Text Editor
• Custom HTML Code

Once you are done creating the email, you can preview it with mobile, desktop and tablet views. Please note that Sendinblue doesn’t have a dedicated mobile app, but the editor works completely fine in the mobile browser.

Plans and Pricing

Besides the free one, Sendinblue offers 3 more plans to customers:

• Lite: Starts at INR 1510/month for 10,000 emails
• Premium: Starts at INR 3895.5/month for 20,000 emails
• Enterprise: Customized pricing according to the needs of your organization

Pros and Cons

+ Layout of the editor doesn’t utilize many popups
+ Offers webhooks for events

– Customer support needs to be a lot better

#3 Constant Contact

Another quality email marketing software that deserves some spotlight is Constant Contact. Their email design tool works on simple drag-and-drop functionality. Feel free to choose from a variety of templates or create your own design right from the scratch.

Plans and Pricing

• Email: INR 1289/month (Suitable for small businesses just starting out)
• Email Plus: INR 2900/month (For medium-sized enterprises looking to create a bigger impact)

Pros and Cons

+ Great customer support, available through both phone and live chat
+ Schedule when to send out emails
+ Very user-friendly

– More stock artwork needed
– Some advanced features available only in upper-tier plans

#4 Hubspot Email Marketing

Hubspot has only recently launched its own free email marketing tool for small-scale businesses. It is indeed one of the easiest tools to use if you wish to send thank you emails after successful purchase or promoting your existing campaigns. Furthermore, it offers seamless integration with other hubspot tools.

Pros and Cons

+ Simple drag-and-drop
+ No technical knowledge required

– Suitable only for small businesses

#5 Send Pulse

With Send Pulse, you can send personalized emails using professionally designed templates from a vast library. However, one feature that sets Send Pulse poles apart from other email marketing software is its “Subscriber Rating”. This rating will help you analyze the ‘read’, ‘unread’, ‘open’ and ‘click’ rates of each subscriber allowing you to identify your most valuable/loyal customers easily.

Plans and Pricing

Apart from the free one, the company offers 3 more plans that vary in size and features. For a mailing list of 4000-5000 members, the prices for the three plans are as follows:

• Standard: $28/month
• Pro:$33.6/month
• Enterprise: $47.04/month

Pros and Cons

+ Schedule “sending out” time in advance
+ A good user interface

– Support is good but quite slow

#6 Mailchimp

If we look at an email marketing tool that has been enjoying decent success across many countries, then there’s only one name- Mailchimp.

Its smart recommendation feature provides users with great audience insights which are a good value addition to the marketing campaigns. It supports automation at all important steps of the sales funnel, such as welcome mails, “items left in cart” reminders, order confirmations, etc.

Plans and Pricing

Besides the free plan, the company offers 3 more plans for its existing and potential customers

• Essentials: INR 770/month (up to 50,ooo contacts)
• Standard: INR 1150/month (up to 1,00,000 contacts)
• Premium: INR 23,000/month (2,00,000+ contacts)

Pros and Cons

+ Comprehensive Analytics
+ Diverse Templates

– Phone support needed as some clients find it hard to chat
– The pages may sometimes look over-crowded

#7 AWeber

With AWeber, you can create emails just like you did with Sendinblue, that is, through any of the three methods- drag and drop, rich text editor and custom HTML Code.

The company offers two mobile applications namely AWeber Stats and AWeber Atom. However, none of the apps can be used to draft and edit emails. The former is used to view the stats, while the latter is used to add subscribers to your list.

Plans and Pricing 

The company offers custom pricing depending on the number of features you want to use. Head over to the official website here to understand their pricing better.

Pros and Cons

+ Decent pricing

– Not ideal for beginners

The Bottom Line

We hope that through this post you have got a fair idea as to how important Email Marketing has been for years, and that the trend isn’t apparently going to change for years to come.

The flexibility and customization that emails offer are hard to even think of with other communication channels like social media. This is why it is important that companies — regardless of their size and niche — continue investing funds in appealing email marketing campaigns.