Tag: email marketing

This post is a part of Made @ HubSpot, an internal thought leadership series through which we extract lessons from experiments conducted by our very own HubSpotters.

My role at HubSpot is the French Marketing Automation Manager — essentially, I’m in charge of the marketing automation for HubSpot leads and free users in our French market. This past January, we noticed that one of our key automation programs — our onboarding and nurturing email program for our free users — was dated and needed a revamp.

When our free users sign up, they receive a series of onboarding emails that helped them get set up and answered any potential questions. Here are some screenshots of the old onboarding emails:

 

As helpful as these emails were, we decided we could do better by our users and leads.

Our free HubSpot Academy course on lead nurturing can help you develop a lead nurturing strategy to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

As we started brainstorming and creating proposals for this program revamp, we came across a core challenge: We didn’t really understand our users’ needs, challenges and goals.

At HubSpot, we do a lot of user research, but much of this research is focused on English users. Also, as marketers, we don’t talk to our customers as much as our sales and customer service teams do. Yet, we can all agree on one thing: The better you know your audience, the better you can serve them and help them.

Phase One: Researching our Free Users

Before working on our email program revamp, we decided to get to know our audience better. We chose to conduct research on our French free users. We did this by releasing one survey and holding several interviews.

The survey was first sent to two audiences: active free users and inactive free users (those who haven’t used their portal for more than 30 days). We were curious if there were differences between the two audiences, but we didn’t discover many.

When analyzing the survey results, we identified contacts with various job titles and different expectations when they signed up. Users that I named “end users” represent about 80% of our free users and signed up only to use the free tools. The other 20% represent what I call “evaluators,” and they signed up to discover HubSpot while thinking of buying a paid version. They are here to evaluate the tool and use the sign up as a trial.

For the interviews, I wanted to get a mix of evaluators and end users and also people from different job fields and departments to better understand their needs. So, I interviewed a wide variety of our free users. Here are a few responses that stood out when I asked “Why HubSpot?”

“[To] find a database, more automated and fluid and adapted than Excel.” — Marketing Manager

“The objective was to bring together [my] various contacts from different bases. [I] then discovered the other features of HubSpot. ” — CEO

The results of the survey and interviews were incredibly insightful. We learned a number of important things about our free users. Here are a few main takeaways:

1. Most of our free users are part of small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and therefore, wear multiple hats and do multiple jobs. For example, some folks were CEO and made sales.
2. They mainly come to HubSpot for the free CRM. They want and need a CRM, and that’s why they signed up for HubSpot.
3. Our free users are not aware of everything that’s included in their free plan, so they are even less aware of what’s included in the paid plans. For example, some users didn’t know they had access to the Form Builder or Email Marketing tools and were using external tools for these functions. Additionally, some users didn’t realize the Landing Page Builder and Workflows features were available with the paid plan. When discussing this during the interviews, they confirmed that they are interested in knowing more about HubSpot paid plans.

What we discovered about our audience and free users changed our thinking quite a bit. For example, before conducting this research, we weren’t promoting our paid plans and features to our free users. That was about to change.

Phase Two: Email A/B Testing

With our new research in mind, we were ready to address our onboarding and nurturing email program.

Before rolling out a new nurturing email sequence to our free users, however, we first wanted to test their reactions to the new content. They’d told us during the market research that they’d be interested in learning more, but how would that translate to reality?

We decided to run an email A/B test to measure how our audience responded to this new approach.

First, we set a hypothesis: Our free users were not aware of the possibilities and features included in their free plan and even fewer of those included in paid plans. If we provided more visibility into what they could do with a paid HubSpot plan and made an effort to educate them about how to try those premium features, they would be pleasantly surprised and sign up for trials — and eventually purchase.

We believed this because our free users mentioned they weren’t fully aware of what was included in the paid plan and why they should subscribe.

So, we developed an experiment to test this new approach. For this our A/B test, I didn’t want to target all of our free users — only the ones who’d been actively using the HubSpot free tools in prior few months. I assumed this audience would be interested in learning more about what they could do and achieve with a paid version since they were already so active in the free version.

Download our free guide on lead nurturing to learn how to use lead nurturing for smarter marketing.

We divided these active free users into two segments:

1. Our control group didn’t receive any nurturing emails, as this was the case before the experiment.
2. Our variant group received a series of two emails promoting key paid features, including Attribution Reporting, Workflows, and Sequences, and offering them a trial to test out those features.

Here are some screenshots of the text emails:

Our Email A/B Test Results

We ran our email experiment over the course of four weeks and sent about 3,000 emails.

At the conclusion of the test, we were pleased with the results as they were highly conclusive and confirmed our original hypothesis. When we compared the control and variant groups after one month, we found that the emails sent to the variant group:

• Generated 71% more qualified leads
• Created 125% more deals
• Generated 12% more trials
• Generated 15% more revenue

Wow!

Learnings and Takeaways

Both the research and experiment we conducted yielded valuable insights and takeaways. Here are my top four:

First, get to know your audience. As marketers, we don’t often have the opportunity to discuss with our audience.

If you can chat with your target market and customers, I highly recommend it! This can be a gamechanger for your marketing strategies and alert you to insights and trends you otherwise wouldn’t have known.

Second, align with Sales. Sales talks to hundreds of prospects and free users per week, so they know what features and components of your product or service are most important for certain leads.

You probably can’t promote your entire product in one email and have to select some features. For this reason, you should better align with Sales to better understand who your audience is and what their goals, needs, and pain points are.

Third, test your content formats and information to know what your audience prefers.

For example, we’ve seen in France that doing short videos or GIFs of HubSpot tools was highly appreciated. For each feature or functionality of the tool, our emails included a text description, and, next to it, a video or GIF of it. This helped our readers see what the tool looked like in action.

Finally, experiment as much as you can.

Even if your experiment is not conclusive or doesn’t yield the results you were looking for, it’s not a waste of time if you’ve learned something new and valuable about your audience, content, or product.

Bonne chance!

Originally published Sep 3, 2020 7:30:00 AM, updated September 03 2020

Nowadays, marketers put a lot of emphasis on chatbots, Instagram influencers, and other new opportunities to reach their customers.

But your contemporary communication methods shouldn’t distract you from one of the oldest and yet most effective messaging channels — email.

You might be wondering if email is still a worthwhile marketing strategy. Well, it is.

In fact, email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 3,800% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available.

If you’re still hesitant, keep reading — we’ve cultivated a list of email marketing statistics for 2020 to demonstrate just how powerful email can be.

General Email Marketing Statistics and Best Practices

• There are 3.9 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.3 billion by 2023. (Statista, 2020)
• Active email accounts surpassed 5.6 billion in 2019. (Statista, 2019)
• Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)
• 35% of marketers send their customers 3-5 emails per week. (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
• 78% of marketers have seen an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months (Not Another State of Marketing, 2020)
• 31% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are the best way to nurture leads. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• The U.S. spent over 350 million dollars on email advertising in 2019. (Statista, 2019)

B2B Email Marketing Statistics

• 81% of B2B marketers say their most used form of content marketing is email newsletters. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 16% of all emails never make it into the inbox. (Email Tool Tester, 2019)
• 87% of B2B marketers say email is one of their top free organic distribution channels. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• 90% of content marketers say email engagement is the top metric they track to measure content performance. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)
• The second-most common technology B2B organizations use to assist with content marketing is mail marketing software. Roughly 85% of marketers say they work with these tools. (Content Marketing Institute, 2020)

Mobile Email Marketing Statistics

• Mobile opens accounted for 46 percent of all email opens. (Litmus.com, 2018)
• 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device. (Convince & Convert, 2018)
• Apple iPhone is the most popular mobile client for reading emails with 29 percent of all opens occurring on this platform. Gmail is a close runner-up at 27 percent (Campaign Monitor, 2018)

B2C Email Marketing Statistics

• 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention. (Emarsys, 2018)
• 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions. (SaleCycle, 2018)
• The most opened emails relate to hobbies, with an open rate of 27.35 percent. (MailChimp, 2018)
• 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI. (Emma, 2018)

Test Your Email Knowledge

Many of the data points will be helpful in making the case for investing more time and money into your email marketing strategy. While you can refer back to this post at any time, you can also try to memorize a few for your next meeting. If you want to test your memory right now, take this knowledge check quiz to see how well you retained the information above. Remember, no peaking! 

Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in March 2019, but was updated in July 2020 for comprehensiveness and freshness.

Originally published Jul 22, 2020 9:00:00 PM, updated July 23 2020

Think email marketing is dead?

Think again.. Email marketing is actually thriving.

In HubSpot’s 2020 State of Marketing Report, roughly 80% of marketers said their brand’s email engagement had improved in the last year. Our researchers also discovered that brands make an average of $42 for every dollar spent on email advertising.

mail marketing is still widely used and continues to offer many benefits to marketers. It can boost brand awareness, increase web traffic, delight your audience, and ease subscribers through the customer funnel.

While email marketing isn’t a new strategy,, many marketers still struggle to grow and maintain the size of their subscriber lists.

But you shouldn’t throw in the towel if you’re struggling to build your list of contacts. Like any great marketing strategy, you’ll need to get in the mindset of your customers to determine why they’re likely to subscribe — or unsubscribe — from your email list.

To help you think like your subscribers, I polled 400 consumers to ask them about why they’ve joined or removed themselves from marketing email lists in the past. Here’s what they said.

Why Consumers Subscribe to Marketing Emails

The first question I asked consumers was, “Why do you most commonly subscribe to marketing emails or email newsletters?”

It’s apparent that consumers sign up for emails that provide direct value to them.

Data Source

Below is a quick breakdown of what each result means for marketers, as well as examples of effective emails that leveraged their audience interests.

1. Deals, Discount Promo Codes, and Coupons

Roughly 28% of consumers say they subscribe to branded emails because they “want to be notified about sales, promo codes, or coupons from a company.”

It’s not shocking that emails promoting deals and sales are the top preference of consumers. By now, many of us have either subscribed to an email like this for personal use, or skimmed our inbox looking for promo codes before a big shop.

Although these emails are primarily for announcing deals or ways that your prospect can save money, you can still also use them for other promotions. For example, while prioritizing a sale, deal, or coupon code at the top of the email, you can also share news about a new product or blog posts at the bottom. Just keep in mind that your subscribers signed up to get the best bang for their buck, then continue to come up with ways to delight them.

Here’s a great example. When you subscribe to Postmates, you can ask to receive emails with promotions and coupons. Once subscribed, Postmates will send you semi-regular coupon codes and news about restaurant-specific sales:

As a subscriber, I personally love the Postmates email because it stands by its mission to send me discount information. Whenever I consider ordering in, I search through my inbox to see if they sent any promo codes recently. When they do, I don’t hesitate to get my meal delivery from this app over other competitors.

2. Links to Valuable Content From the Brand

Not all audiences are looking to get the latest deals on products. Sometimes, people subscribe to emails just for the sake of learning new things. This explains why one-quarter of participants say they subscribe to emails because they want to regularly receive “a brand’s content (i.e. blogs, videos, graphics).”

Although creating an email for your blog posts or branded content might not seem like it will benefit purchases or ROI directly, these types of emails still offer a number of benefits that can impact the bottom line.

For example, those who subscribe will get to see content from you that demonstrates why your brand is a trusted voice in your industry. After seeing and consuming valuable content from you regularly, your company could be the first that comes to mind when a subscriber needs to purchase a product that you sell.

Additionally, although content-based emails might not focus on promotions, this doesn’t mean you can’t include one within the mix of links shared in an email. Aside from subtly including promotions in one of these emails, you could also link to blog or video content aimed at lead generation.

To give you an example of a content-based marketing email, take a look at HubSpot’s Service Blog email. Each day, the Service Blog sends the posts that were published the same day to subscribers. While the content is mostly informative, we occasionally mix in other promotions, such as the call-to-action to visit our new Website Blog.

3. Company Announcements

A number of brands choose to use their emails to show audiences the inner-workings of their company. These emails might include press release-styled announcements, information about the staff, or posts from the company’s corporate blog.

While this content might not directly value audiences as much as coupons or educational content, it still helps brands to establish themselves as credible and successful to audiences who are interested in watching them grow. This might be why 16% of those I polled subscribe purely to get company-specific announcements in their inbox.

4. Mixes of Content, Promotion, and Company News

While 10% of participants selected “All of the above” as their primary email subscription reasoning, 14% chose “Other.” These results might hint that groups of email subscribers might enjoy different types of content in one email.

As you get to know your email audience, center your emails around the content you promised email recipients on their subscriber form. But, consider including one or two promotions that break your usual email norm to see if you can diversify your emails a bit more.

For example, if you have an audience subscribed to your company blog’s email, consider subtly including a coupon or discount at the bottom — after your blog content — to see if you can gain conversions.

5. Other Reasons

Interestingly, only 5% of consumers said they commonly sign up for emails to learn about new products from a brand. Additionally, although many companies will offer discounts when consumers sign up for their email newsletter, just 2% say they sign up for emails primarily for these tactics.

Although the minority of participants chose the options listed above, you might still want to consider experimenting with them in case they work for you, or your audience prefers a mix of content.

Why Consumers Unsubscribe to Marketing Emails

Once marketers build out their email list, the next challenge they’ll face is maintaining it.

And, sometimes, even if you have great email engagement or a winning formula for email success, you’ll see a random dip in subscribers. \

Why could this be? Have people gotten bored with your content? Have they found another competing brand with a better newsletter? Are they just over email altogether?

The truth is, a bump in your unsubscribe rate could be due to super simple — and easily fixable — logistical reasons.

When I asked consumers, “What’s the most common reason why you unsubscribe from marketing emails?” most participants sighted reasons other than the quality of email content.

In fact, 51% say they unsubscribe because “emails come too often.”

Data Source

Below, I’ll explain what frequency-related unsubscriptions mean for email marketers, as well as break down some of the other major subscription barriers.

1. Email Frequency

While 34% of those surveyed say they most commonly unsubscribe from email lists because “emails come too often. [More than once per day.],” 17% say, “Emails come too often. [More than once per week.]

Despite stats like those above, and the fear that too many emails will result in high unsubscribe rates, most marketers still send multiple weekly and daily emails. According to our State of Marketing Report, more than 50% of marketers send emails between three and eight times per week.

So, how do you stick to an effective email cadence without losing subscribers? Keep reading to learn about a few preventative measures.

Preventing Frequency-Related Unsubscription

If your audience begins to cite frequency as a reason for unsubscribing, or you suspect you might be sending too many emails based on the lower click or open rates throughout the week, consider dropping one to two of your regular emails, or combining two emails scheduled for the same day.

Once you consolidate your emails, see if your unsubscription or spam rates lower, while paying attention increases in engagement metrics like open rate or click-through rates. If you see your metrics fluctuate for the better, you might want to identify more ways to consolidate your brand’s email.

If you absolutely can’t consolidate your emails, make sure that you’re transparent about how many you’ll be sending subscribers on your subscribe form. This will ensure that all subscribers know what type of content and email frequency they’re signing up for upfront and might weed out audiences who will quickly unsubscribe.

2. Low-Value Content

Although content isn’t the biggest driver of unsubscriptions, it still can be a factor.

While 17% of participants commonly unsubscribe from emails that feel “spammy or over promotional,” 9% will unsubscribe if the content is “no longer valuable.”

The result above isn’t that surprising. When’s the last time you unsubscribed from an email that you used to love getting in your inbox?

Luckily, there are a number of tactics you can try to prevent your content from getting too stale or spammy.

How to Prevent Content-Related Unsubscribes

First, do a deep dive into your email metrics.

If you’re seeing low open rates, click-through rates, high skim-to-read-rate ratios, as well as unsubscribes or spam reports related to poor content, it might be time to audit the content you’re sharing in each email, test out new types of content, and avoid any sharing things that might disengage your audience.

Along with looking at hard metrics, you should also consider the content you’re creating for your audience before you hit send. Ask yourself questions like, “Is this email valuable to my audience?”, “Does it over-promote my products?”, “Does the content in this email align with how I marketed this email subscription in the first place?”, and “Is this content on brand?”

If you have a large audience with a number of different interests. You might also worry that some audiences will love the links you’re sharing in your email while others might be interested in other topics. If that’s the case, you can also consider email segmentation.

With email segmentation, you can break your list of contacts into separate lists to ensure that people with vastly different interests are only getting sent content that will interest them.

For example, since HubSpot Blog readers are primarily interested in marketing, sales, service, or website development, we have daily and weekly email lists for each of our blog properties. This way, if you’re a marketer interested in web development, you can subscribe to our Marketing Blog and Website Blog emails without seeing Sales or Service content that relates less to your field.

3. Unexpected Promotions or Content

Along with content that isn’t valuable, 10% of participants primarily unsubscribe from emails that don’t provide content they expected to receive.

Roughly 5% of participants say they most commonly unsubscribe from emails that they “didn’t sign up for” in the first place, while another 5% says they primarily unsubscribe from emails that “don’t offer content, promotions, or coupons” that the brand described when marketing the subscription.

Avoiding Unsolicited Email Content

As an email marketer, it’s your job to understand your audience and send content they’ll engage with. Meanwhile, consumers that sign up for your email will expect you to send them the valuable content they asked for when signing up. When you blast them with emails they won’t like or didn’t ask for, they might trust your brand a little bit less.

For example, if you market a daily newsletter that promises expert tips from thought leaders, blog posts, or coupons, and instead send semi-daily newsletters that promote only products with no discounts, your audiences might not be too happy.

As you manage your email strategy, remember what you promised your subscribers when they signed up. Focus on promoting links that are valuable and align with their interests, as well as your brand.

Because consumers don’t appreciate or trust unsolicited email in their inboxes, we don’t condone purchasing contacts from another company. Not only is this against GDPR mandates, but it could also annoy contacts, cause unsubscriptions, and hurt your IP reputation.

As an alternative, consider co-branded emails. With this strategy, you can market one brand’s email subscription and content in your email while they market your email and content to their subscription list. This way, the brand’s audience can choose whether or not they want to subscribe and might be less likely to remove themselves from your list after signing up.

Here’s a great example of a co-branded email campaign from HubSpot and Unbounce. Although this doesn’t directly market HubSpot or Unbounce email subscription options, it highlights great points about both companies and a project they’re jointly working on which could indirectly result in both brands gaining email subscribers:

Tips for Winning (and Keeping) Email Subscribers

Email marketing best practices aren’t always the same for every brand. That means that it will take experimentation and practice to grow and maintain your email subscriber list.

Because building a list can be challenging in the beginning, it’s important to not give up when one or two tactics don’t work. Although you’ll want to personalize your tactics to your audience, here are a few overarching tips to keep in mind as you aim to grow your list.

1. Create email tactics and content that audiences will value.

First, and most importantly, you’ll want to develop and execute on an email strategy that prioritizes valuable content and avoids over-promotion.

For example, you could create an email with a mix of sales, coupons, and promo codes, or focus on promoting your most engaging blog posts. Or, if you have a giant audience with a few key interests, you could segment them by creating separate marketing emails and subscriber lists.

2. Market the most valuable aspects of your brand’s email.

To get people to actually see your valuable email content, you’ll need to market it in order to get subscribers. When you share your email subscription form on your site or social media, point out what your emails will provide to your audience. Will they include blog content, expert tips related to your industry, or special deals? If so, clearly state this in your messaging.

Here’s a look at how we promote the HubSpot Blog’s emails:

3. Don’t just focus on just your products.

Yes. You are a marketer and shouldn’t avoid talking about great product offerings when you have them. However, too many product details in an email can feel spammy or over promotional.

When you promote your products in an email, try to include other content, such as links to blogs or videos to balance the email out. This will be even more important if you promoted valuable content rather than just product news when marketing your email subscription form.

In our 2020 State of Marketing Report, EMEA marketing manager Henni Roini emphasized why product promotion isn’t everything.

“Only the companies and brands that create human connection are going to succeed. This is extremely true with email. You might get short term benefits from very promotional content, but honest, human, and personalized content creates a following for the long term,” Roini said.

Want to learn more about email marketing? Here’s a guide on how to use email marketing to guide your prospect through the buyer’s journey. More interested in diving into email data? Check out this list of helpful email marketing stats.

Originally published Jul 6, 2020 7:00:00 AM, updated July 06 2020

Email marketing is a key component of any successful marketing strategy — in fact, email marketing provides companies with a potential ROI of $44 for every $1 spent.

In particular, email newsletters are an essential way for your business to keep your subscribers up-to-date with relevant information, and ultimately drive more leads. Newsletters give marketers the ability to capture email sign-ups through form submissions, and nurture leads.

If you have a blog, you’ve probably sent newsletters to notify subscribers about new blog posts. Alternatively, perhaps you’ve used newsletters to send business-related information to your subscribers.

Anyway you slice it, newsletters help you keep your contacts engaged with your business.

An email newsletter tool is essential, since it allows you to beautifully design a newsletter email, deliver the email to your subscribers with features such as A/B testing and smart content, and monitor and analyze how the newsletter performed.

However, not all email newsletter tools are created equal. With differences in features, pricing, and availability, choosing an email newsletter can be hard — especially with the number of options available. Additionally, newsletter tools differ in how much of the customer journey they can cover.

Ultimately, when choosing your email newsletter tool, you’ll want to ensure the tool matches your business’s goals — which is why we wanted to take out the guesswork, and highlight the top email newsletters out there for your business.

Best Newsletter Software

1. HubSpot’s Email Newsletter Tool

Designing, sending, and analyzing email newsletters has never been easier with the HubSpot Email tool. HubSpot offers a drag-and-drop email editor so you can easily create a polished email newsletter that you can personalize to fit your brand’s design without needing a designer or IT professional.

Additionally, you can experiment with smart content rules, personalization, A/B testing, and advanced reporting — ensuring your email newsletters are optimized for your business. You can also see who’s engaging with each newsletter email and when, what device they’re using, the most popular links and documents, and more. You can use these insights to design tests that will take conversion rates to new heights for your business.

Ultimately, what makes HubSpot’s Email tool so exceptional is its ability to pair with HubSpot’s free forms tool to easily collect email leads, as well as HubSpot’s free CRM to give you insight into how your marketing emails are performing.

For example, you can use an email subscriber’s lifecycle stage, list membership, or any information in their contact records to automatically serve up the most relevant subject lines, content, links, attachments, and calls-to-action.

HubSpot’s email tool starts free.

2. Benchmark

Benchmark offers the ability to easily create email newsletters via drag-and-drop functionality, giving non-technical marketers the power to create beautiful newsletters. There’s also a good selection of newsletter templates that you can choose from in the Benchmark template library.

Some of Benchmark’s most valuable features include detailed analytics on how each email campaign performs, A/B split testing to ensure you’re sending the best emails, spam testing tools that ensure your emails get to inboxes, responsive designs and templates, list segmentation tools, and auto-responders.

Benchmark is free for up to 2,000 subscribers, and lets you send up to 14,000 emails per month.

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3. GetResponse

GetResponse offers features that become available as you need them, from a range of starter features all the way to enterprise features such as webinars and landing pages. Hosting landing pages in GetResponse will further enable you to capture email subscribers for your newsletter.

GetResponse also allows you to create well-designed email newsletters with their drag-and-drop email editor, segment contacts tool, campaigns creator, and A/B testing tool. With a ton of templates to choose from, you can create an email to match your brand, and send emails more efficiently.

GetResponse does not offer a free tier, but they have a 30-day trial, and pricing starts at $15 per month.

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4. SendInBlue

With SendInBlue, you don’t need technical skills to create well-designed email newsletters. The drag-and-drop functionality, HTML editor, and expansive template gallery gives you the tools you need to create stunning emails.

You can personalize the design of your newsletters with easy builders, choose the form fields for your subscription form, and design many ways for your visitors to opt-in. SendInBlue has a robust automation pipeline, allowing you to send different emails based on specific actions taken by your contacts. However, SendInBlue does not have a CRM, so it’s not the best option for scaling teams.

SendInBlue lets you send 300 emails per day (6,000 emails per month) for free, and pricing starts at $25 per month for 40,000 emails.

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5. Mailjet

Mailjet offers email solutions for fast moving teams, especially in Europe, and great scaling opportunities for larger companies. The service is keen on being developer-friendly with a powerful API solution for engineers to build on their email platform. One appealing feature of Mailjet is the ability to create dynamic content that is personalized for each recipient based on data such as name and location.

If your team demands email newsletters be built together and reviewed often before sending, Mailjet’s collaborative tools make it easy for teams to work together on emails. For example, you can create a draft of your newsletter in Mailjet, and your teammates can suggest edits before it’s sent — all within the app.

Mailjet gives 200 emails per day (6,000 emails per month) for free, and pricing starting at $8.69 per month for 30,000 emails.

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6. MailChimp

MailChimp offers a free email marketing service with a large selection of templates to choose from for newsletters. MailChimp is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses looking to get their feet wet in email marketing, but is not suited for scaling teams since it lacks powerful automation and segmenting features.

MailChimp is a valuable tool nonetheless, especially since its free plan generously offers up to 12,000 free email sends per month. You’ll also like the variety of newsletter templates that MailChimp offers, and the drag-and-drop builder that lets you rework the designs.

MailChimp offers 12,000 email sends per month to a list size up to 2,000 for free. Pricing starts at $10 per month for 500 subscribers.

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7. Constant Contact

Constant Contact provides a reliable email newsletter solution for small to large businesses. Constant Contact provides a helpful user on-boarding for anyone looking to get started quickly, and offers easy-to-use features. If you think you’ll be running into complexity with the email marketing tool, you’ll be happy to know that Constant Contact’s multi-channel support system can help walk you through most issues.

In Constant Contact, you can use their email builder to create newsletters that match your brand, select from a variety of templates, and edit to ensure it looks exactly how you want it — although I’m not a big fan of the templates, since most of the templates look outdated. Additionally, if you need sophisticated automation features and workflows, I would advise staying away from Constant Contact because it lacks a strong automation system.

Constant contact does not offer a free tier. You can try out the service for 60 days before paying, then prices start at $20 per month for a list size up to 500 contacts.

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8. MailUp

MailUp offers plenty of the same functionality from what you’d expect from an email marketing service, including a drag-and-drop email builder, beautifully designed templates, and an HTML editor.

However, it’s critical to note — you get more value from MailUp if you choose to send out emails at a slower pace, since the price varies depending on delivery speed. So, if your business has a specific number of contacts and doesn’t mind sending newsletters slower, you could save money by using MailUp. If you use WordPress, MailUp also offers a WordPress plugin that you can use to capture newsletter subscribers on your website.

Like Constant Contact, MailUp does not offer a free tier option. You can try out the service for 30 days, and prices start at $49 per month.

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9. Zoho Campaigns

Zoho offers a great email solution for marketers looking to utilize automation features, including auto-responders and workflows. If you’re already a Zoho CRM customer, it might be worth checking out Zoho Campaigns for an email newsletter tool, since they work better together.

Zoho includes many modern and well-designed templates to choose from. If you’re worried about how your newsletter will look on different mobile devices or browsers, Zoho gives you the ability to check to see how your newsletters look on various devices to ensure your newsletter is optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Zoho offers 12,000 emails per month for free for up to 2,000 subscribers. Then there’s pricing based on plans, or pay-as-you-go credits.

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10. AWeber

AWeber delivers a well-established email marketing newsletter tool with an array of features for your business, including email designs, list segmentation, automation tools, and detailed reporting. To make design easier, AWeber has more than 6,000 royalty-free stock photos to include in your emails. Of course, you can also upload your own images and gifs.

AWeber is a great solution if your business uses WordPress, since AWeber easily integrates with WordPress. However, it’s important to note you can’t specify multiple segments at once when sending an email newsletter — plus, AWeber lacks some powerful automation features.

AWeber does not have a free version. However, you can try it out for 30 days. If you want to upgrade, prices start at $19 per month for 500 subscribers and unlimited email sends.

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11. Campaigner

Campaigner is a good option if you work for a growing team, since the tool offers robust automation and workflow features available at the enterprise tier. You can set up systems that send email newsletters when contacts fill out specific forms, make a purchase, or engage with a previous email.

As with most of the email newsletter tools in this list, Campaigner offers easy-to-use email builders and a large selection of templates to get you started. If you run into trouble, their support is noted as being helpful at solving technical challenges.

Campaigner offers a 30-day free trial but you’ll need to put in your credit card information. Prices starting at 19.95 per month for up to 5,000 contacts.

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12. Drip

Drip is ideal for more experienced email marketers, since it’s not as intuitive and easy-to-use as some of the others in the list. For example, there’s a limited email template library, so you’ll have to spend time designing your email newsletter. With that said, Drip comes packed with automation features that could be beneficial for your business, particularly if you work in e-commerce.

With Drip’s “ECRM”, you can run personalized email newsletter campaigns that work with information gathered from contact purchases and checkout information, like abandoned cart details. One thing to note — Drip does not offer phone support, so you won’t have that added peace of mind.

Drip offers a 14-day free trial, with prices starting at $49 for up to 2,500 subscribers and unlimited email sends.

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13. Postcards

Used by major brands like Nike, Disney, and T Mobile, Postcards is a drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to create impressive email newsletters. The tool features a “modular system”, meaning you can stack and re-arrange pre-made designs to create a custom newsletter that fits your brand. Customizable modules include a header and footer, CTA, and menu options. 

Additionally, the tool enables you to collaborate with teammates to ensure the newsletter is up to everyone’s standards, and gives you a 30-day version history if you decide to revert to an older format. Plus, you’ll get unlimited exports.

Price: Free for one user, $15 per month for businesses, and $25 per month for agencies 

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14. Campaign Monitor 

Campaign Monitor’s email marketing tool enables you to create an engaging and high-quality email newsletter with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, the tool includes sign-up forms you can embed on your blog pages to encourage new readers to sign-up for daily content delivered to their inboxes.

Along with unique and customizable templates, Campaign Monitor provides a full analytics suite to help you track performance of your newsletters over time. You can measure engagement to improve the content you include in your newsletters for the long-haul. 

Price: $9/month for basic, $29/month for unlimited, and $149/month for premier. 

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15. BEE Pro

If you’re a freelance designer or work at an email agency, this tool could be a good fit for you. BEE Pro lets you create mobile-ready emails quickly with smart design tools — plus, you can save custom templates, and even assign projects to specific clients’ to ensure an easy workflow if you’re using this one email tool for multiple brands. Additionally, the tool enables you to invite clients’ or colleagues’ to review and make comments on email newsletter drafts to get approval faster.  

Price: Starting at $15/month for BEE Pro Freelance, Starting at $25/month for BEE Pro Team, and Starting at $45/month for BEE Pro Agency

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That’s it! These are the best email newsletter tools that I recommend. You can’t go wrong with any of these tools since they all offer similar features, but there will be one that’s best suited for your business. The great thing about HubSpot is that we offer a free solution to get you started — and then, once your business grows, we have plenty of advanced features you’ll need in order to deliver a successful newsletter marketing strategy down the road.

Once you’ve selected your email newsletter tool, you can begin creating your newsletter marketing strategy, which, in the most simplified version, looks like:

1. Capture subscribers on your website via form submissions.
2. Create email content in a newsletter design.
3. Send the newsletter consistently, like once a week or bi-weekly.

If you want to learn more about how to create an email newsletter, please check out our guide.

Originally published Jun 16, 2020 6:00:00 PM, updated June 17 2020

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