You’ve invested a lot of time and energy into your Facebook advertising campaign. But lately, it seems like your content isn’t attracting as many click-throughs. You may have also experienced a drop in your search rankings every now and then. It could be a change to the Google algorithm – or perhaps Facebook has made some updates on their end. Either way, if you don’t control the channels your business uses to communicate with its clients, then it’s vulnerable to change. This is when the effectiveness and reliability of email marketing shine through.
You may have been using bcc to send emails to customers on Gmail, but you know you need a better solution—one that was designed with businesses in mind.
Email marketing isn’t always free—at least, not if you want to do it right. You’ll need to pay for some software to get your messages to stand out in a crowded inbox. Fortunately, an array of free programs offer all the tools you need to start building your list and communicating with your subscribers on an ongoing basis.
Finding the top free email marketing tools for a range of use cases and business kinds required extensive research and testing. In this roundup, we’ll save you the hassle and list the best free email marketing apps to help you and your business.
How Important Is Selecting The Right Email Marketing Tool?
Marketing via email is one of the most cost-efficient methods, especially for startups and small businesses. The Direct Marketing Association reports that companies in the United States typically receive an ROI of 4300 percent from email marketing.
This is due to the fact that email marketing requires less effort on the part of the business owner, provides complete freedom, and facilitates quick, personal interaction with the target audience.
The delivery rates of your emails are the responsibility of the email marketing software you use. Therefore, you should evaluate the various options before deciding which one is best for you.
If you decide to go with paid email marketing services instead, inadequate planning can lead to overspending on fewer email marketing services and lower-than-average email deliverability rates—which can lead to even more losses.
What to Look out for in a Free Email Marketing Service?
Free and fully functional email marketing apps don’t have to be necessarily exclusive. Numerous free choices are available, and they all provide the scalability in terms of both subscriber base and message volume that small enterprises require. There are many options available for those who are just starting with marketing and would like to test out a few different platforms for free before investing in a paid plan.
When assessing free email marketing services, look for the following features:
- The quantity of subscribers and free sends included. While some “free” email marketing platforms allow you to send thousands of emails for free every month, others have extremely low monthly send limits, effectively making their “free” status temporary. While testing, be mindful of this.
- Email personalization and templates. It shouldn’t be necessary for you to launch your email marketing campaign from scratch. For a smooth launch of your no-cost email marketing campaign, the best services will provide you with at least a few expertly created templates to work from.
- Audience segmentation. Delivering the appropriate emails to the correct recipients at the right times is crucial to email marketing success. Any free email marketing software worth using for a developing firm must include robust tools for targeting specific demographics.
- Automation. As your business expands, you’ll need the ability to automate your email marketing activities, including transactional emails, triggered campaigns, and more.
- Scalability. Not that you can’t eventually outgrow free email marketing, but it’s good to know that it’s an option. The top free email marketing tools have the flexibility to scale with your organization, moving from basic to advanced features and storage capacities as your needs change.
- Complete email marketing functionalities. While there are many excellent applications out there that are tailored to a particular form of email (newsletters, for example), you have to concentrate on comprehensive tools that can be utilized for your entire email marketing strategy.
Top Free Email Marketing Tools for Small Businesses
Get set to discover the best free email marketing tool for your company. Here is a summary of the top free email marketing platforms currently available for small business users.
1. MailChimp
Mailchimp, one of the most widely used email marketing programs due to its user-friendly branding, is a fantastic starting point for an email marketing campaign that you intend to grow rapidly. The platform’s free version has everything you need to get started: a landing page creator, customer journey mapping, marketing automation, list segmentation, retargeting ads, and A/B testing.
Mailchimp is a user-friendly platform for both novice and expert email marketers, due to the program’s helpful editor that provides tips and best practices as you work. For instance, when creating a subject line, a sidebar informs you about the ideal character count, the appropriate usage of emojis in your subject line, and other details.
Mailchimp provides three different subscription tiers, making expansion possible whenever you’re ready to move beyond the free plan’s limitations. In addition, MailChimp can manage massive email campaigns, so if your budget allows it, you won’t ever have to change email marketing platforms again.
Pricing for Mailchimp: Free for 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails sent monthly.
2. HubSpot
HubSpot provides a one-stop shop for all of your business needs. You can send up to 2,000 emails per month, create 100 different lists, and view detailed statistics—all at no cost. When you’re ready to expand, HubSpot’s scalable platform allows you to tack on more features for customer relationship management, marketing automation, customer support, sales, and more.
As soon as you finish signing up, the email tool launches the editor, allowing you to get started right away. If you’re just getting started with HubSpot or email marketing in general, the next obvious step is to read through the user guide, which explains in-depth how to create attractive and efficient campaigns with HubSpot.
You have 105 lists total, 100 of which are static and 5 of which are “active,” giving you accessible alternatives for separating out recipients like “hard-bouncers” and “openers but not clickers.”
Pricing for HubSpot: 100 static contact lists, 2,000 emails per month, and 5 “active” directory listings are all free.
3. MailerLite’s
MailerLite‘s free newsletter service lacks pre-built templates, but they more than make up for it with the service’s dynamic, pre-designed content blocks. MailerLite facilitates the rapid creation of new campaigns and unique templates for expert email marketers by providing a variety of blocks for emphasizing numerous articles, videos, RSS lists, services, apps, events, and much more.
You’re not limited to merely sending text and pictures in your emails. A dynamic countdown timer displays the time left before an event, such as the release of a product or the end of a sale. You can include a description of your product, a video demonstration, and your most recent blog entries in a dynamic RSS block. It’s an excellent method for sending digital messages with a bit more interactivity.
MailerLite’s free plan contains advanced tools for automating tasks and targeting specific demographics in addition to the standard email content. The creation of automation workflows is made simple by an intuitive builder. You can create recurring or one-time segments, and you can also check statistics compiled by segment.
Pricing for MailerLite: Free up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails each month
4. Moosend
Although Moosend isn’t the most efficient email marketing program evaluated in this comparison, it does have huge allowances on the free plan and strong segmentation features for eCommerce businesses.
Typical features, such as a rich text editor and drag-and-drop support for incorporating new elements, are present in the email builder as well. Once your eCommerce platform has been linked, you can obtain an overview of how your email promotional strategies have translated into sales by visiting the Revenue Dashboard tab.
It requires a few more clicks to create a new segment than to other apps examined. But even free users can divide lists by important eCommerce criteria like the average order value, subscribers who add a certain product to their cart, overall expenditure, and more. Moosend’s free plan provides access to its automation tools, which include over a handful automated “recipes” for things like abandoned cart, upsell, and customer loyalty.
Pricing for Moosend: Free for 1,000 subscribers, with unlimited emails
5. Sendinblue
You’ll eventually have to resort to automation if you want to get the most out of your email marketing tool. Sendinblue stands out among the limited number of free marketing automation tools since it provides a number of pre-built automation flows that you can customize to meet your specific needs. You can customize your workflow to boost engagement, drive more visitors, boost sales, or foster connections.
The entire process, from creating an account to customizing an email, can be completed with a few mouse clicks, even with all of the automation features available. There, you’ll find a plethora of ready-made email templates and a simple drag-and-drop editor to use in creating your own. Finally, distribute them to your audience using email newsletters or automated processes provided by Sendinblue.
You may not be able to send as many emails simultaneously as with the competing free email marketing platforms mentioned above. However, with Sendinblue, purchasing pre-paid credits enables you to send more daily emails than your daily cap.
Pricing for Sendinblue: Free for up to 300 emails daily and unlimited contacts
Finally…
You’ll get the same primary and powerful features from most of these free email marketing platforms for small businesses, like list-building, A/B testing, clever automation, segmenting, and a variety of templates. Regarding feature sets, some will be superior to others.
Things will come up that need correcting in your email marketing platform, and that’s okay. But don’t let the abundance of email marketing tools overwhelm you. If you want to make connections, make sales, and expand, email marketing is a must. If you put in the time and effort, you’ll discover what works best for your needs.
Learn more about other marketing strategies by reading here.
