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The 10 Best Email Marketing Automation Tools Out There

Let me just start things off by saying marketing is tough! With so much going on- email campaigns, website traffic, customer outreach, dealing with clients, sharing on social media, partnering with influencers, and so on- marketers rarely breathe a sigh of relief.

With such heavy and a wide array of responsibilities on your shoulders, making sense of the chaos is crucial. Managing your time effectively can make your workday and can keep you on the right track. This is why smart marketers make use of automation software to keep things running smoothly without their 24*7 care.

According to Marketing Automation Insider, the marketing automation tools industry is now a $1.65 billion industry and has seen $5.5 billion in acquisitions by Salesforce, IBM, Adobe and Microsoft, and others. In fact, within six months of adopting marketing automation, 8 percent of companies see increased revenues. However, after one year of using automation, 32 percent report increased revenue!

A marketer sending out an email

The stats clearly prove the benefits marketers enjoy by adopting some sort of automation software in their day-to-day. Automation lets them do their redundant tasks with ease, freeing time for more pressing issues and communications. By freeing up your time with marketing automation software, you can then get strategic with your marketing tactics and focus on activities that bring the most returns. This is why over 50% of marketers plan on increasing their spending on technology.

While there are many types of marketing automation platforms out there, today we are going to focus on the one area which marketers dread the most- email.

Why Email Marketing Automation Tools are Important?

As the number of email users is expected to grow to 4.3 billion users by 2022, marketers cannot afford to ignore email marketing. Your email is the place where you reach out to prospects, communicate with clients, nurture leads, and close deals. However, email by design is very chaotic and un-productive with so many unsolicited emails distracting you from the task at hand.

Email is still widely acknowledged as the best channel for procuring new customers, providing extraordinary returns. In fact, for every dollar invested in email marketing, businesses can get a return of over $38. That’s an ROI of a whopping 3800%! This is why marketers are adopting email marketing automation tools to get the most out of their marketing efforts. These tools can save marketers hours of hard work and reduce redundancies from their day-to-day.

Take a look at some of the following statistics on email marketing automation:

  • 75% of marketers say they currently use at least one type of marketing automation tools.
  • Automated emails get click rates 119% higher than broadcast emails.
  • Automated birthday email offers can boost conversion rates 60% over non-timed emails with the same offer.
  • Email marketing services are used by more than 80% of companies.
  • Retailers who send a series of welcome emails see 13% more revenue than those who send just one. (Internet Retailer 500)
  • B2C marketers who connect with customers through automated emails see conversion rates as high as 50%.

As you can see, automation in email marketing has brought a revolution in the industry which was unimaginable even a decade ago. These automation tools are massive contributors to the 3800% ROI of email marketing.

This is why we decided to uncover some of the best email marketing automation tools out there to help you handle your email worries easily. Read on…

List of 10 Best Email Marketing Automation Tool:

1. elink 

 

elink middle image

Newsletter creation is a key part of every email marketer’s life. In fact, an astounding 83% of marketers and salespeople use email newsletters for their content marketing. Newsletters are great to stay top of the mind of customers and engage with your audience right in their inbox. However, creating amazing newsletters that people would like to read is a tough job. Apart from writing awesome content, you have to make sure whether they look stunning, are visible perfectly on every screen size, and are quick to publish.

One of the best tools to automate all your email newsletter efforts is elink. elink is an amazing all-in-one content curation & marketing tool that helps marketers and content creators publish curated email newsletters, web pages, and web content by just adding web links! You can convert collections to email newsletters and export to MailChimp, Gmail & all third-party email providers that allow HTML code (including Campaign Monitor, MadMimi, Active Campaign, etc.).

elink offers 30+ beautiful prebuilt responsive layouts, so you never have to worry about design and can just focus on your content. This time-saving tool will automate a ton of your email marketing ventures and simply transform the way you create and share content.

Key Features of elink:

  • The fastest way to create newsletters
  • Amazing drag-and-drop templates for all industries
  • Quick, fast, simple, and fun!

Pricing: 

  • Affordable paid plans: Pro Monthly ($15/month), Pro 1 Year ($12/month), Pro 2 year ($10/month).

Read more: RSS to Email: How to Create Automated Email Newsletters Using RSS!

 

2. Campaign Monitor

Campaign monitor: Email marketing automation tool

Next up is Campaign Monitor, a well-known email marketing automation platform. Used by over 2 million marketers and 250,000 businesses across the globe, Campaign Monitor is easy to use and is packed with a ton of amazing features. With an easy to use email builder and a plethora of templates, creating and tracking email campaigns was never this easy. All emails are highly customizable and are mobile optimized to give the best performance.

Apart from email automation, Campaign Monitor also wants to automate your e-commerce activities with their “CM Commerce” features. Drive more sales by sending out automated abandoned cart messages, create newsletters to engage with audiences, cross-sell new products, make use of product reviews to spread positive word of mouth.

There’s smart analytics to get detailed data on your email campaigns. You can also segment your email lists to send tailored messages for higher ROI (return on investment).

Key Features:

  • Create sign up forms and lead capture pages
  • E-commerce automation available
  • Timely emails to drive revenue

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans for email suite start at Basic ($9/month), Unlimited ($29/month), Premier ($149/month).
  • Paid plans for eCommerce marketing starts at: Starter ($9/month), Growth ($29/month), Professional ($49/month).

Read more: How to Send a Newsletter with Campaign Monitor in 5 minutes?

3. Mailjet

Mailjet: Email marketing automation tool

Want to collaborate on the email creation process? Check out Mailjet, an email marketing automation software with built-in collaboration features.

Marketers and developers use Mailjet to work together, create awesome newsletters without the back and forth calls and emails, and gather real-time feedback and suggestions.

With built-in comments and approval system, teams can work together and save time and effort. It’s one of the few tools out there that allows email collaboration between marketers, designers, and developers. Mailjet allows you to organize and segment your email lists and group people with similar interests and behavior. This helps you create and share highly relevant content with your audience, allowing you to improve your open-rates and email engagement.

In terms of automation, Mailjet allows you to create predefined scenarios and create email workflows for maximum ROI. With advanced statistics, users can get detailed reports on delivery status, unsubscribe data, open and click rates.

Key Features of Mailjet

  • Collaborate with team members and departments
  • Setup SMTP servers in minutes
  • Use their API for your own setup

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at Basic ($8.69/month), Premium ($18.86/month), Enterprise (customized offer)

4. Hubspot

Hubspot: Email marketing automation tool

If you work in marketing, we are sure you have heard of Hubspot. Hubspot is a great business software for your marketing, sales, and service teams. With close to 70,000 customers worldwide, Hubspot has become one of the leading email marketing automation software for businesses.

HubSpot allows users to create beautiful emails without touching code and then automate those emails with dozens of triggers, conditions, and actions for maximum impact. The visual editor makes it easy to create complex workflows and understand the customer journey. With advanced segmentation logic, you can group various email subscribers and send the right message to the right recipient.

Moreover, you can also trigger internal notifications for your team when contact takes action, and add tasks to HubSpot CRM or Salesforce to alert your sales team. All in all, Hubspot is a well-rounded email marketing automation software you must try out.

Key Features of Hubspot

  • All in one marketing automation
  • Automation beyond emails with real-time alerts and auto database update
  • Detailed analytics

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: Starter ($35/month), Professional ($560/month), Enterprise ($2240/month)

5. SendInBlue

Sendinblue: Email marketing automation tool

Next up on our list of email marketing automation tools is SendInBlue. Combining email marketing, SMS, and chatbots, SendInBlue has got all bases covered when it comes to reaching out to customers. With an easy drag and drop email builder, anyone can create beautiful email campaigns and automate them with SendInBlue. Track the effectiveness of your campaigns with detailed analytics.

Like other email software on our list, SendInBlue also has workflow automation features based triggers. You can set up a workflow to automatically send a welcome email for new signups or send a customer automatic birthday wishes for the wow factor. Segmentation is also fairly easy to use, while the Send Time Optimization feature that lets you send an email at optimal times for maximum open rates is a great add-on.

Key Features of Sendinblue:

  • Send time optimization
  • SMS, chatbots, landing pages
  • All-in-one CRM platform

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: Lite ($25/month), Essential ($39/month), Premium ($66/month)

Read more: Top 11 Gmail Extensions for Email Marketing!

6. Drip

Drip: Email marketing automation tool

Leading an “eCommerce rebellion”, Drip wants to automate eCommerce email marketing and allow individual stores to compete with eCommerce giants like Amazon. By equipping small stores with the same software prowess of the “big guys”, Drip wants to take your marketing strategy to the next level. According to Drip, over 90% of consumers buy from brands that recognize, remember, and tailor to them. This is why Drip provides a ton of segmentation and targeting features to stay on customer top of mind.

Drip gives you all the essential data to see what customers are clicking or viewing on your store, allowing you to create targeted messages to convert browsers into customers. Segment customers by pages they’ve clicked, stuff they’ve bought, emails they’ve opened, etc. and create highly personalized campaigns that convert.

Drip’s cross-channel marketing automation enables companies to reach their customer’s anywhere-from emails to Instagram. Drip integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.

Key Features of Drip:

  • Facebook and Instagram integrations
  • Perfect for e-commerce businesses
  • API available

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at $49/month for up to 2500 people.

7. Marketo

Marketo: Email marketing automation tool

Looking for something beyond email, Marketo by Adobe is a great place to start. One of the most feature-rich tools on this list, Marketo allows you to manage everything from email marketing, lead generation, lead nurturing, segmentation, customer lifecycle marketing, cross-selling, and revenue attribution. Gartner has named Marketo as the leader in CRM lead management for 8 consecutive years and it shows why.

With their central marketing database, marketers can have a 360-degree view of each customer across web, email, social, and mobile channels and get a better understanding of their customers. Marketo also provides in-depth analytics, lead, and CRM management, pipeline management, keyword analysis, A/B testing, and much more, making it a truly feature-rich marketing automation platform.

Key Features of Marketo:

  • Market impact analysis
  • Advanced customer journey analytics
  • Cross-channel engagement and A/B testing

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at Starting at $895/month

8. Mixmax

Mixmax: Email marketing automation tool

Next up is a nifty Chrome extension called Mixmax. Mixmax works in your Gmail and turns it into a productivity powerhouse with a host of email marketing and automation features. Mixmax works in your Gmail and allows you to schedule, track, and manage emails in one place. With easy email templates, users can cut down redundant tasks and automate the email creation process.

Mixmax can trigger automated follow-up sequences, collect contacts from Gmail and with the ability to sync to Salesforce, Mixmax automates your data entry process. With “beast mode”, Mixmax allows marketers to dial their contacts directly from their inbox, wasting no time or additional effort. With its Drip campaigns, users can nurture or onboard leads easily and quickly.

Key Features of Mixmax:

  • Works in Gmail
  • Syncs with Salesforce
  • Email templates, scheduling, tracking.

Pricing: 

  • Free plan with limited features.
  • Paid plans start at Starter ($9 per user/month), Small Business ($24 per user/month), Growth ($49 per user/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing).

Read more: Quick & Easy Way to Send Responsive Newsletters Using Mixmax!

9. Constant Contact

Constant contact: Email marketing automation tool

Constant Contact has been around for a while and is a well-known player in the email marketing space. The majority of its features directed at small business owners, making it an awesome beginner-friendly software. With over 20 years of industry experience, Constant Contact has built a robust platform for email marketing and automation.

Automatically send a targeted welcome email when someone joins your network, nurture those leads with drip campaigns, automatically resend to non-openers, and increase your email list with sign up forms and Facebook ad targeting. If you have an e-commerce website, you can set up Constant Contact to send abandoned cart messages and improve your sales cycle. You can also import contacts from Excel, Gmail, and even social media and keep all your customers in one place for fast and easy segmentation and targeting.

Key Features

  • Trigger emails based on where contacts click on your website
  • Email marketing solution for e-commerce stores
  • Email tracking, autoresponders, and scheduling

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at Constant Contact Email subscription for $20 per month and the Email Plus plan costs $45 per month.

Read more: How To Create a Constant Contact Newsletter in Half the Time?

10. ActiveCampaign

Active campaign: Email marketing automation tool

The last tool on our list of amazing email marketing automation tools is Active Campaign. A top 50 marketing product on G2Crowd, ActiveCampaign helps you automate your marketing efforts in no time. With email automation, users can quickly set up welcome series emails, find out the most engaged contacts, integrate with other databases, and build automated workflows in minutes- no coding required!

With goal tracking, see who’s moving down the funnel, how much time people take to convert, and where do the majority of the people dropoff. Identify bottlenecks and improve your marketing with ActiveCampaign. With conversion data, you can see and target past customers with upselling or cross-selling and improve your sales pipeline.

Key Features of ActiveCampaign

  • Site tracking to see what products customers are interested in
  • Goal automation to see who converts and who doesn’t
  • Automation maps to see all of the automation and their status in one place.

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: Lite ($9/month), Plus ($49/month), Professional ($129/month), Enterprise ($229/month)

Read more: How to Send An Active Campaign Newsletter in Half the Time?

Over to You!

Marketers are expected to be present everywhere, at all times, trying to capture and nurture new leads and spread the brand message. With such a hectic schedule, automating redundant tasks can be a life-saver.

All of the above-mentioned email marketing automation tools are amazing at what they do, reducing your workload and saving up time for more important work. Depending upon what part of your work you are looking to automate, you can choose between the above software and pick out the best one.

If we missed your favorite email marketing automation tool, do let us know by tweeting us @bit_docs. Good luck automating!

Further reads:

Ellink.io: Create more content in less time