Email marketing is one of the most effective tactics for driving sales.  And with eMarketer’s prediction that 2015 will be the year for “smart use of data”, it’s more vital than ever to ensure your marketing data is being collected and analyzed, and your marketing tools are personalizing and automating your email communications.  Studies are repeatedly showing us that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach (and retain) your customers, so it’s essential that you are using the right solutions to get the job done.

To help you launch a successful email marketing strategy and even more successful email marketing campaigns, here is a list of our favourite email marketing tools that you can use to create, send and track emails and newsletters, and find out what your subscribers are doing with your messages.

Mailchimp

“Send Better Email” is their tagline, and it’s working for 8 million people using the Mailchimp software.  Offering over 400 mobile-optimized templates to choose from, with drag and drop functionality, Mailchimp is an easy and effective way to delve into the email marketing world.

They offer a free subscription for basic functionalities, and if you have less than 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month.  However, their paid plans start at around $10/month, and include unlimited emails, as well as tools to track subscriber profiles, the ability to highly segment your email lists, as well as a slew of reporting options to track activity, open and click rates, trends, growth, subscriber demographics and more.

Mailchimp also offers enhancement tools that will allow you to target smarter, optimize the best times to send emails, and reach out to Twitter subscribers who can more easily share your content.

AWeber

Started in 1998, AWeber is an old pro in the email and newsletter marketing world.  AWeber is a paid tool, starting at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers, and offers over 700 HTML templates to choose from, with mobile-responsive sign up forms.  They also offer seamless integrations with a number of other applications, including WordPress, Facebook, Salesforce and Shopify, and the ability to set up autoresponder emails, which automate the follow-up email process on your schedule, in sequential order.  They also offer a cool tool which will automatically create newsletters from your blog posts, allowing you to send weekly digests.

You can collect, manage and import subscribers with a click of a button, and their analytics reporting helps you understand your data to send better emails to the right audience.

Vertical Response

Vertical Response is a social media and email marketing tool that offers a simple pay-as-you-go option for smaller businesses who only send monthly or quarterly communications.  This option includes unlimited everything: professionally designed, mobile-responsive and social-friendly templates, customized sign-up forms, contacts, posts, and more.  Easy to read analytics charts report on your key performance indicators and show what your subscribers were clicking on as they read your email.  The tool also allows you to quickly draw up a list of subscribers who did not open your email, or clicked on a certain link, to make follow-up campaigns super easy.

The pay-as-you-go option starts at $7.50 for 300 emails, and the price per email improves with volume.  They also offer a really cool perk for registered not-for-profit organizations, giving them 10,000 credits per month for free, or a 15% discount off a regular monthly subscription.

CakeMail

CakeMail is free to send up to 12,000 emails a month to up to 2,000 contacts, although the CakeMail logo will appear on the communications.  To send unlimited emails without the CakeMail logo requires an $8/month investment.  It is a simple and user-friendly too, and an easy way for you to build campaigns using the ready-made templates, or create your own from scratch (and have no fear – no coding experience is required)!

GetResponse

1 billion subscribers read emails off of the GetResponse platform each month, and they boast to offer the “World’s Easiest Email Marketing”.  You can import your contact list within seconds, use 500+ customizable templates and over 1,000 stock images from iStock, and A/B test up to 5 versions of your mailings to learn which one works the best for your audience.

GetResponse offers a very useful Learning Centre with hundreds of videos and tutorials and downloadable guides, so if you are new to email marketing, you have a wealth of knowledge easily accessible.  The most affordable plan begins at $15/month for up to 1,000 subscribers with unlimited emailing.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a small business solution that you can test for free for 60 days.  The Constant Contact toolkit offers customizable drag-and-drop templates for both newsletters and emails, and helps you with social media promotions, event management and designing landing pages that will integrate with your email marketing campaigns.  Other features include image and file storage, contact management for easy list segmentation, and list-building tools.

Start sending your beautifully tailored emails with their basic email package, $20/month for up to 500 contacts, with unlimited sends.  Their full toolkit package, which includes detailed analytics tracking, and the ability to connect via events, surveys, promotions and on Facebook, starts at $45/month.

Whether you start with a free option or a paid one, you should be managing your email and newsletter marketing campaigns on an email marketing tool.  Not only do they provide you with professionally designed template options to customize for your own use, but they give you the ability to manage your contacts, user profiles, list segmentation, and automation with ease.  And we can’t forget the invaluable tracking data that each tool offers, giving you insight into your audience’s response to your messages and how you can improve on them even more in the future.

Make sure you check out our YouTube channel this month for a video tutorial on email marketing, and common mistakes to avoid in your email marketing campaigns.

Are there any email marketing tools that you think we’ve missed on our list?  If there is a tool that you think beats them all, please let us know in the comments below!