NOTE: This article is written purely based on my knowledge and experience with different platforms. It contains affiliate links but it doesn’t increase your cost to sign up for any of the platform. These affiliate links help to generate some revenue to maintain this website and add new coding tips and unbiased opinions for different platforms.
CRM and Email marketing is the easiest way of reaching out to potential customers. Now there are more people looking for the details on the websites than ever.
So it’s important to stay connected with all the users 24×7. You can’t manually respond to every query. So it’s best to use marketing automation tools and autoresponders.
It’s not an easy method to do it with your own email as you can’t manage all the contacts.
In most effective marketing tools for small businesses most of the owners use this email marketing because it is easy to use, easy to manage and gives you full control and allows you to establish a direct contact with your customers.
It’s important to understand that a lot of your success with email marketing depends entirely on the email marketing software you choose because they are responsible for making sure that your emails actually get delivered.
I have personally worked with all these different CRMs in the last 5 years and this review is based on the ease of use, pricing, flexibility and complex automations to automate my business in the long run.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other:
- ActiveCampaign
- Keap (Infusionsoft)
- Klaviyo
- Constant Contact
- SendinBlue
- Drip
- ConvertKit
- AWeber
- GetREsponse
- Mailchimp
Quick links in the article
I am lucky enough to work with different CRMs before I started my own email marketing endeavor.
Active Campaign is one of the best email marketing tools available in the market with great features and user interface.
I have been using it for my business from last 3 years and I am extremely satisfied with what it offers in this pricing.
I have also recommended it to my clients who have a list of more than 150k contacts and we’re using it to it’s maximum capacity.
We have automated the business upto 70%, so it’s all automatically working when new leads are coming in and they’re moving from one automation to another like a Follow up funnel.
Recently I have seen big players in the marketing automation platform like Infusionsoft and Mailchimp have changed their interface to match with ActiveCampaign because they know it’s working for people and they’re liking it.
It’s interface is so easy to use and you can understand the platform in just 15 mins.
ActiveCampaign has introduced a lot of features after getting good response from the users in the last couple of years and continuously adding new features and that is what I like about them.
AC is a bigger player in the marketing and has best email marketing options available.
Why ActiveCampaign is a great choice for your email marketing and CRM needs:
This is my personal favorite that I would look in any platform.
ActiveCampaign allows to segment contacts to one level further than any other marketing automation tool.
We can create a list to segment our contacts in most of the automation tools.
But in ActiveCampaign we can also use tags to further segment the list and then use this segmentation to send the manual campaigns or broadcast emails.
Let’s assume I have a list called “Animals”. I can do a survey and based on the users behavior, we can further segment the list to know who like “Dogs”, who likes “Cats” and so on.
It makes my life so much easier as I can now use only one list to send emails about “Animals” and if my email is about “Dogs” only then I will know who to send that email to.
Also, it makes it easier for users to unsubscribe from one of your list only instead of multiple lists.
Do you know what this means? You can use your same ActiveCampaign account for different businesses you may be running.
Believe me it’s not easy to move from one tool to another and it could cost of you hundreds or may be thousands of dollars, so it’s important to make a good choice before getting started with email marketing.
You may have seen other tools with tags and lists, but they don’t give you an overall picture of a contact like this
Setup complex automations with inbuilt logic and elements available. So your emails can be sent based on your contact behavior and the options they choose.
Let’s assume you trigger an automation to send an email based on someone subscribing to one of your list.
You share a survey with them and you would like to know if they like Cars or Motorbikes so you could send them specific emails as per their interests.
You have added two different links one is to click if they like “Cars” and other one if they like “motorbike”.
Now you can set it up the email in a way that a tag is applied when any of the link is clicked.
For example: If someone clicks “Cars”, they can be tagged as “Interest: Cars” and for the motorbikes it can be “Interest: Motorbikes”.
Now this allows you to segment your list based on your users interest so you could send them emails of their interest and not same email to everyone.
If I am interested in “Cars”, I won’t like to keep receiving email about “Bikes”.
You get the point!!
It’s to keep your users engaged with your content and feel special about the information they receive because it’s of their interest.
They don’t feel like they’re just part of a list which is really important in email marketing.
Recently in 2022, ActiveCampaign have added Landing page builder to design landing pages and link them with ActiveCampaign.
So if you need simple landing pages, you don’t have to buy another landing page platform and pay for their subscription. Instead you can use the landing page builder offer within your account with hundreds of templates to work with.
Landing pages are available in the “Plus” plan.
Still it’s worthy to upgrade to “Plus” plan because the cost is still less than the other competitors offering the subscriptions on the same number of contacts and features.
You can create forms that you can embed in your website and you can create custom fields to organize additional details that you may have to gather from your leads and customers.
Take a look at the screenshot above to see how the custom fields look in your contact.
I am sure you haven’t seen a picture like this in the marketing automation tools you’re using.
Either you use the direct integration available within other apps or you use Zapier to get your work done.
But ActiveCampaign has made it easier for you to integrate with over 500+ applications that you’ll probably use for your business.
Be it Stripe, Google Sheets, Calendly, Unbounce, Clickfunnels or WhatsApp etc.
It offers, all the steps you will have to follow in order to use these apps and you don’t need to have a technical knowledge to get it done.
ActiveCampaign has Integration with eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify which is called Deep Data Integration.
It allows you to use your ActiveCampaign triggers based on the actions taken in your Shopify or BigCommerce.
For instance, if someone purchase a product on your website. You can trigger an automation and send an email with order details or send a follow up sequence to offer similar products.
Not only this, you can also transfer the details like Amount, Order status and other details to that contact without having to use any other third party platform.
Doesn’t it make it a full fledge solution to automate your business in one go!!
It could look something like this in your automation.
There may be a situation where you don’t get the kind of automation you need and you don’t wish to spend extra $20/month on a different platform.
And if you have some technical knowledge on how to use Webhooks, then ActiveCampaign allows you to send or receive information with the help of Webhooks.
You don’t have to write any code to make these Webhooks, these are usually given by the platforms to perform a certain operation in the platform from where you’ll get the Webhook.
You can just paste the Webhook in your automation and you’re done.
Webhook is just like a URL with some parameters only.
Here is a detailed article on how you can use Webhooks in your ActiveCampaign account.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact’s founders envisioned an online marketing tool that would help small business, nonprofits, and individuals reach a wider audience without breaking their marketing budget.
They provide all inclusive online marketing platform that will allow you to do more and grow more than ever before. they also have hundreds of marketing advisors-reallive or online, you can ask any question to them.
- Drag. Drop. Editing made easy.
- Drive more sales in less time. Automatically.
- Greet new subscribers with a timely welcome email.
- Segment contacts to send the right message every time.
- Automatically resend emails to non-openers.
- Expand your reach with powerful list-building tools
- Open the door to eCommerce email marketing
- Contact management, with less of the “management”.
- Track your email marketing results in real time. Improve them in no time.
Sendinblue offers a cloud-based marketing communication software with Email Marketing Transactional, Email Markerting Automation, Customer-Relationship Management, Landing Pages, Facebook Ads, SMS Marketing and more.
The sendinblue software suite includes modules dedicated to relationship marketing: Marketing Campaigns, Transactional, Automation, CRM.
- Email Marketing.
- SMS Marketing.
- Chat.
- CRM.
- Marketing Automation.
- Transaction Email.
- Segmentation.
- Convert.
- Landing Pages.
- Signup Forms.
- Facebook Ads.
- Retargeting.
Sendinblue offers a cloud-based marketing communication software with Email Marketing Transactional, Email Marketing Automation, Customer-Relationship Management, Landing Pages, Facebook Ads, SMS Marketing and more.
The sendinblue software suite includes modules dedicated to relationship marketing: Marketing Campaigns, Transactional, Automation, CRM.
- The support for domain campaign, no support to avoid spam and lower bounce rate. Poor marketing automation support.
Compared to their competitors, there are many tools missing, and tutorials missing, solutions for partners and agencies are limited and expensive.
We do get it’s totally right approach to avoid the spam databases, but we were totally mislead and basically were late to send out the campaign due to that.
4. Drip
Often called drip campaigns but known by many other names—drip marketing, automated email campaign, lifecycle emails, autoresponders and marketing automation—the concept is the same: they’re a set of marketing emails that will be sent out automatically on a schedule.
Perhaps one email will go out as soon as someone signs up, another will go out 3 days later, with one more going out the next weekend. Or, the emails can be varied based on triggers, or actions the person has performed like signing up for your service or making a purchase, which is why they’re also sometimes called behavioral emails.
Drip campaigns aren’t limited to email—the term also applies to direct mail and phone-based marketing.
Drip campaigns, as mentioned above, are automated sets of emails that go out based on specific timelines or user actions. They enable you to stay in touch with groups of people based on events like when a user signs up for an account or how often that user visits your site.
Each time a drip email is sent out, it comes from a queue of already-written emails—there’s no need to manually write and send each one. They can even be personalized with your contacts’ name, company info, and more.
- Learn more about all your customers.
- Give everyone a unique experience.
- Make seamless multichannel touchpoints.
- See how and where it’s all paying off.
The biggest disadvantage to a drip campaign is the time commitment it requires for success. If ads show up too close together, target audiences may become overwhelmed with information overload or simply reject the advertising as spam.
Finally, think about your own willingness to learn something new. More than just trial and error, creating a drip campaign for the first time means you need learn new concepts and strategies for advertising to the same target audience.
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.
ConvertKit’s unique feature is that allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails from their emailing service.
With ConvertKit, you can easily segment subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This helps you increase conversions with automated emails that feel more personal. In marketing terms, this is called targeted email marketing.
ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material. A lot of ConvertKit features are specifically designed for creators and professional bloggers that’s why we rate them the best email marketing service for professional bloggers.
ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, and their pricing starts from $29/month.
They also offer a 30-day refund policy. A/B testing is an effective way to identify which strategies improve your performance and which methods produce the best results for your campaigns.
Unfortunately, ConvertKit has very limited functions for this, where you can only split test two variations of subject lines.
ConvertKit recognizes the need for different types of forms and allows you to build entire landing pages. They offer simple designs that aren’t much on graphics and images — a plus for people who want the benefits of email marketing but aren’t big on the design aspect.
ConvertKit automatically tags cold subscribers as those who haven’t opened or clicked your email in the past 90 days and have been subscribed for at least 30 days.
However, at the same time, this is another one of the drawbacks of ConvertKit. There’s very little reporting available for sequences and autoresponders.
6. AWeber
AWeber has over 20 years of proven success helping more than one million customers around the world reliably connect with their prospects and customers through powerfully-simple email marketing software.
Along with its award-winning 24/7 US-based customer support, AWeber delivers the ability to quickly build responsive landing pages, load and manage contacts, send amazing emails, and analyze results.
AWeber Email Marketing pricing starts at $19.00 per month. They do not have a free version. AWeber Email Marketing offers a free trial.
- Time-saving autoresponders.
- Faster email list growth.
- Easy importing.
- Industry-leading deliverability.
- Live expert customer solutions
- Seamless integrations
The worst part is that even unsubscribed email addresses count towards your monthly quota! They lack a lot of advanced features, such as sophisticated automations and spam and design testing.
Sign up for Aweber here.
GetResponse have all the email marketing services have simplified tools like email editors, automated workflows and contact list management.
GetResponse is best known for business email marketing services and a handful of which includes: Highly Integrated CRM, Smart Email Auto Responder, Responsive Email Design.
- Referral Program.
- Marketing Toolkit.
- Digital Marketing Certification.
- Marketplace.
- Help Center
- 24/7 Support
- GetResponse University
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world primarily because they offer a forever free email marketing service plan. Mailchimp comes with an easy email builder, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking for analytics.
It also allows you to setup delivery times based on user’s timezones, and you can setup segmenting based on geolocation. You can easily integrate MailChimp with WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and many other platforms.
If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using Mailchimp and WordPress for detailed instructions. When it comes to marketing automation features, Mailchimp platform is quite limited when compared to other providers in our list such as Drip or ConvertKit.
In the recent years, Mailchimp has attempted to add many of the “advanced” features, but having tested many of these, they’re not truly advanced.
Mailchimp support is offered by email, live chat, and a large tutorials knowledge-base. However their support is often slow and no match to the quality of service that you get from Constant Contact.
Mailchimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for up to 2,000 subscribers. This plan is fairly limited because you don’t get features like send-time optimization, advanced segmentation, multi-variate testing, etc. You are also required to display their branding in your email.
Last but not least, support is restricted to email only which is fine if you’re a hobbyist but as a serious business, you need reliable support that you can count on.
Their paid plans start from $10/month for up to 500 subscribers, and the pricing increases in the increment of 500 subscribers.
The integration that MailChimp has with WordPress and PayPal is not always the best. If you’re getting too many unsubscribe notifications or receiving spam complaints about your emails, MailChimp reserves the right to either suspend or cancel your account without prior notification.
