Email Marketing Solutions – A Comparison

Email marketing might seem a little bit old school in the age of social media. However, email marketing still has the best ROI (About $42 for every $1 spent). Despite crowded inboxes, people still pay attention to emails as long as it’s done right. It’s a great way to save time, develop relationships, and discover audiences to help you target other marketing methods.

One of the reasons email marketing is so great is because it can be automated. There are a number of services out there that can take part of the task of maintaining your mailing lists and sending out your emails. You don’t need to store a list, you don’t need to manually remove people from it, and you can send a message to thousands of people with a single click.

This does mean that you face a challenge… the challenge of choosing which of these services you should use. There’s no obvious answer, especially as it depends in part on the growth and development of your business.

There are a number of good options out there, which have distinct pros and cons. Here are some to consider:

HubSpot

Email marketing is only one service offered by this digital marketing platform, and is not their core offering. This has its advantages if you are looking for a much more broad-based marketing system, but a disadvantage if all you need is email.

Pros:

1. Offers an array of marketing services and resources.
2. Has a knowledge base and series of courses that can help dramatically improve your marketing skills, some of which are free.
3. Provides great website integration, landing pages, and list segmentation.

Cons:

1. Does not have an email-only plan (which is the primary target for this comparison); however the cheapest plan is $40, which allows for 1,000 contacts.

HubSpot is really useful if you are utilizing their successful Inbound Marketing framework and adopt more of their services. If you are already using HubSpot and can stay within their contact limits, then the email marketing section is useful.

Iterable

Next up is Iterable offering a variety of marketing services, ranging from mobile marketing to direct mail marketing. Their packages include an email marketing system that includes a sophisticated email builder and integrates with their other offerings.

Pros:

1. Excellent UI and editor.
2. Good A/B testing.
3. Dynamic email templates (not well supported by other solutions).
4. Easy audience segmentation.
5. Full WYSIWYG email editor.

Cons:

1. Potentially the most expensive of the group.
2. Complex email customization can make it hard to duplicate campaigns.

Iterable is best for companies that have complex marketing needs and for marketing agencies working with a number of customers. It’s highly advanced features and higher price can make it less suitable for new companies, but once you are at that level it scales well.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the more popular entry level services out there for managing your mailing list. In addition to email, it includes customizable templates, importing your contact list. They also offer a variety of other marketing services including accepting online payments, managing Facebook and Instagram ads, etc.

Pros:

1. Integration with Facebook and Google ads even with the cheapest level of account.
2. Good analysis review.
3. A variety of easy-to-customize templates to make sending out emails easier.
4. Integrated A/B testing (but only with the more expensive plan)

Cons:

1. The UI can be a little tricky.
2. Price goes up as your mailing list grows in size, and the increases are not particularly transparent. This may force you to do some manual list management to stay within your tier.
3. The free trial is limited to 60 days.

Best used by small to medium-sized businesses. Because of its popularity, there is a lot of information out there on how best to use it and how to get the most out of it. It is focused on email marketing without any bells and whistles, and the price reflects that.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is very popular with micro businesses and sole proprietors for one simple reason: The basic tier is free. The pricing is also lower than Constant-Contact for the higher tiers. It is relatively easy to use, but is focused entirely on sending email, without a lot of the extra features that other services have; although they do offer a website service and some marketing stuff.

Pros:

1. Basic tier is free, meaning you don’t have to pay until your list hits 2,000 members.
2. More transparent pricing, so you know what you are paying at each level.
3. Easy UI.

Cons:

1. Highly limited templates at the free tier; you have to upgrade to get to the most useful ones.
2. Limited number of “audiences,” that is to say mailing list.
3. Highest priced tier, which includes phone support and improved segmentation still lacks more advanced features.

A great service for businesses starting out, but many people upgrade away from it once they hit the 2,000 limit. If all you need is an email sending service, however, the low price is attractive and the service is reliable.

The right email sending software for your company depends in part on your company’s needs, size, and maturity. It’s worth paying a little more for extra features, however, and as your marketing needs become more complex you may find the simpler solutions listed here no longer meet your needs.

If you are a company or a marketing agency looking for the kind of technical support needed to grow your business, including help finding the right email sending solution, contact Ndevr today. We have the experience and knowledge needed to help you get the technical side of things right and concentrate on what you do best.