Best Email Marketing Providers for Small Businesses
Hands down, email is one of the most efficient marketing channels when done right. However, with dozens of email marketing providers available, it can be difficult to know which one to choose for your small business.
As career marketers, we’ve used various email marketing providers, from big-box ones built for large corporations to small ones built for small businesses, and everything in between. They all do similar things, but differ on capabilities and most importantly on price.
In this blog, we’ll cover the top three email marketing providers that we recommend for small businesses, including the most affordable, easiest to use, and most versatile.
Most Affordable Email Marketing Provider for Small Businesses
Price and budgeting are critical when starting your new small business, with the need to make every dollar count. If you’re just looking to get your email marketing program started at a low cost, yet still have capabilities to do the basics like build and manage emails with ease, design lead capture forms and landing pages, or target and segment subscribers automatically, then MailerLite is a great option.
While most email providers offer a free trial period, MailerLite offers free services ongoing if your subscriber count is under 1,000 and your marketing email send total is under 12,000/month. That’s a great option for a small business just getting started and also an ideal way to get a feel of the service itself.
MailerLite has an easy to use drag-and-drop email creator, as well as pre-set templates that anyone can learn to use easily. They also give you the ability to create landing pages or even a whole website, serving truly as a one-stop shop for a marketer.
A solid email marketing program wouldn’t be complete without the ability to build lead capture forms with automated campaigns that trigger from form completion. MailerLite offers that as well, with the ability to create pop-up or embedded lead capture forms for your website.
The Bottom Line
MailerLite is simple to use, with plenty of free training videos to learn how to master the tool, and most importantly one of the lowest-cost email providers on the market. If you’re price-conscious and just looking for the basics with some extra fire power, then go with MailerLite.
Easiest Email Marketing Provider for Small Businesses
One of the most recognizable names in the email marketing space is Mail Chimp and for good reason; they’re simple to use with a lot of great capabilities. Their software is very intuitive and easy to navigate, designed specifically for business owners who aren’t tech savvy with no coding experience needed.
Mail Chimp offers a large selection of email templates that provide a great starting point to build eye-catching emails. You don’t need to be a designer to build professional looking emails, and their drag-and-drop email builder tool is super simple to use.
Mail Chimp also offers a wide array of other marketing options, like making digital ads and social media posts, as well as sending postcards. They even give you the ability to make an entire web site, launch an online store and set up appointment scheduling.
Serving as an all-in-one CRM program, Mail Chimp offers great audience management, with easy-to-use segmentation tools, behavioral targeting and predicted demographics. Our favorite feature is their Customer Journey automated workflow tool, which again is super simple to use and an extremely powerful tool to build next level marketing campaigns.
The only negative aspect of Mail Chimp is the price, although it’s still at a fair price-point for all the platform provides. Their free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 2,000. As your email list grows and you explore more capabilities to use, that’s where it gets a bit pricey but again, still affordable.
The Bottom Line
We can’t say enough great things about Mail Chimp. A truly all-in-one marketing platform with easy to use email marketing and additional capabilities for you to add on as your company grows. While they’re not cheap, Mail Chimp is affordable and built for small businesses. Plus, because Mail Chimp is so widely used, there’s an entire community out there to provide guidance in using the platform.
Most Versatile Email Marketing Provider for Small Businesses
If you’re looking for more than just an email marketing provider, but a full blown CRM platform to manage all facets of your customer relationships inclusive of email, then HubSpot is the provider for you. We specialize in CRM or Customer Relationship Management, and one of the best CRM platforms out there for big and small businesses alike is HubSpot.
HubSpot provides an array of services within five key buckets: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub and Operations Hub. The Marketing Hub includes their email marketing program, which is easy to use with great templates and automation capabilities. It also includes website building, Social and SEO tools for your business.
As a complete CRM platform, HubSpot serves as your customer database, creating a sales pipeline with everything altogether. The main drawback is price, but if you’re looking to have a fully robust CRM platform, then it’s a no brainer to go with HubSpot, and really not that expensive in the grand scheme of things.
Just like Mail Chimp, HubSpot is widely used across an array of industries because of its awesome CRM capabilities and relatively low cost for all that you get. Their customer service is top notch, with a huge community to offer support from real, everyday users. HubSpot also integrates with a ton of different apps and sites, like Gmail, WordPress, Outlook and Jira.
The Bottom Line
If you’re just starting out and want something cheap, easy and basic, then don’t go with HubSpot. However, if you want a full CRM platform to house all of your marketing and sales activities together as your business expands, then go with a platform like HubSpot that you’ll never have to migrate away from.
In Summary
So there you have it; our recommendations for the best email marketing providers for small businesses based on your needs. From MailerLite with a low sticker price, to Mail Chimp for ease of use, to HubSpot for a versatile platform to combine all of your marketing activities. None of these will steer you wrong, but all with make your business stronger and more competitive with a robust email marketing program.
Check out blog How to Build an Effective Email Marketing Program to take your email marketing program to the next level.