Email marketing service - blog banner

Top 10 Email marketing service for SMBs

Did you know that more than 86% of businesses surveyed indicate that they plan to increase their upcoming email marketing budgets? Email is still thriving and continues to be the primary method of customer acquisition, engagement, and retention by most businesses worldwide. 

Email marketing plays a crucial role in any company’s marketing mix and generates an enormous return on investment. In fact, data suggests that email generates $38 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 3,800% ROI! 

A girl writing an email

Moreover, there were 3.9 billion global email users in 2019, a number which is expected to reach 4.3 billion in 2022. As email, and subsequently, email marketing, continues to rise, we decided to find out some of the best email marketing services for SMBs in 2020.

But before we dive into our list of tools, let us first briefly understand what do we mean by SMBs! 

What is an SMB?

An SMB or small and medium-sized business is a company with its number of employees, revenues, or assets are below a certain threshold. SMBs, also known as SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) outnumber large organizations by a broad margin and also employ more personnel. For example, according to Wikipedia, Australian SMEs form 98% of all Australian businesses, producing one-third of the total GDP, and employ 4.7 million people! 

Although there’s no set definition of what classifies a company as an SMB in the United States, The European Union (EU) defines a small business as a business with fewer than 50 employees and a medium-sized business as one with less than 250 employees. 

Since SMBs have fewer people, money, and other resources, most rely on software technologies to get work done more efficiently and compete with large organizations in the market, head-on. 

If your business is an SMB, read on as we discover some of the best email marketing services specially catered towards small and medium-sized enterprises. 

List of Top 10 Email Marketing Service for SMBs

A staggering 81% of SMBs still rely on email as their primary customer acquisition channel. With email marketing playing such a huge role in helping out SMBs gain customers, we decided to search on the interwebs and curate only the best email marketing services you should be using in 2020. So without further ado, let’s dive straight in…

1. elink.io

Elink.io: Email marketing service software

First up on our list of some of the best email marketing software for SMBs is elink – the fastest, and dare we say, the coolest way to send out email newsletters! An awesome content curation & marketing tool, elink helps marketers and content creators publish email newsletters in minutes by just adding web links and exporting the html to any newsletter service! 

The service works by letting users choose a newsletter template and simply add the URLs (links) to the content (articles, videos, cloud files, etc.) they want to share as a newsletter! elink automatically converts those web links into visual blocks with a picture, title, and a short description. It’s that easy!

elink middle image

The platform offers 30+ beautiful pre-built responsive layouts, so you never have to worry about design and can just focus on your content. This time-saving platform will automate a ton of your marketing activities and is a great email marketing service for small and medium-sized businesses.

If sending out beautiful and responsive html email newsletters is your main email marketing goal, elink is the tool for you. The best part is you can send your emails through any 3rd-party email service (Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Aweber, etc) you’d like with a couple of clicks, cutting down email newsletter creation from hours to minutes!

Key Features of elink

  • Amazing plug-and-play templates to automate marketing
  • Works seamlessly with all the major email services out there
  • Create and embed website and social media content

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • 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. Constant Contact

Constant contact: Email marketing software

One of the oldest email marketing services in the market, Constant Contact has been in the business for over 25 years! Constant Contact was acquired for $1.1 billion by Endurance International back in 2015. 

The majority of its features are directed at small business owners, making it a great email marketing service for people on a budget. 

Constant Contact free email builder allows you to craft the perfect message for your readers. With hundreds of mobile-optimized templates, creating and sending emails was never this easy. With marketing automation tools, send automated welcome emails, triggered email series, resend emails to non-openers, segment lists, and more. 

For eCommerce businesses, Constant Contact ramps up email marketing with autoresponders, timely abandoned cart emails, and more. get those cart customers. It also has website builder tools for you to quickly build landing pages and capture emails. With real-time email tracking tools, users can see who’s opening, clicking, and sharing your emails.

Key Features of Constant Contact

  • Email automation and real-time tracking
  • Ecommerce integrations
  • Create Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. 

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

3. MailerLite 

Mailerlite: Email Newsletter Creation software and mailchimp alternative

Next up is, MailerLite, an extremely simple to use email marketing service for SMBs. Mailerlite has everything you need to make your business a success on the internet- email marketing, automation, and landing page builder. 

For creating email campaigns, MailerLite provides a drag and drop editor along with blocks for adding content videos, images, etc. With features like subscribers management, users can add, delete, or manage contacts easily and send segmented emails for maximum outreach and engagement. 

Email automation helps you send welcome emails to new subscribers, carry out surveys, and helps in user onboarding. With built-in email tracking, Mailerlite provides reports on who opened your email, when, and where. Apart from email marketing, Mailerlite also has a website builder, allowing users to create quick landing pages, pop-ups, embedded forms, and more. 

Key Features of Mailerlite

  • A/B testing, deliver by time-zone, auto-resend
  • Create campaign reports and track email opens
  • Website builder and landing page creator

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: $10/month if you have more than 1000 subscribers and go up to $50 if you have more than 5000. 

4. Campaign Monitor

Campaign monitor: Email marketing software

Campaign Monitor has over 2 million marketers at 250,000 businesses around the world using their email marketing services. With so many happy customers, Campaign Monitor surely deserves a spot on our list of awesome email marketing tools. The tool, like most on the list, has easy email builders, a plethora of templates, and amazing support. 

With a visual journey builder tool, users can automate the entire customer journey and send trigger-based emails and set rules based on pre-defined customer behavior. You can build your email list by using custom sign-up forms and use data to create hyper-segmented ists. 

For e-commerce businesses, Campaign Monitor as a ton of features under the “CM Commerce” umbrella. Features like automated abandoned cart messages, reminder newsletters, cross-sell new products, and product reviews in emails, all provide the best eCommerce experience to both businesses and customers. 

Key Features of Campaign Monitor

  • Ecommerce features to boost sales
  • Build signup forms and email lists
  • Deep analytical insights into campaigns

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: Basic ($9/month), Unlimited ($29/month), Premier ($149/month).

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

5. GetResponse

Get response: Email Automation software

Need email marketing services? Need a landing page builder? Need marketing automation software? GetResponse is the tool that does it all. With GetResponse, you can create automated workflows, landing pages, email newsletters, triggered messages, and more. 

Just like many email marketing services on this list, GetResponse also has a drag-and-drop builder to create email campaigns and design the entire customer journey. Marketing automation allows users to get rid of redundant work and reach customers at every step of the journey. Email tracking, list management, auto-responders, and transactional email creation are some other notable features. 

A key feature that separates GetRespnponse from other tools on this list is the built-in webinars software. Host an unlimited number of webinars, get a room for 1000+ attendees and build sustaining relations easily. 

Key Features of GetResponse

  • One-click integration with Facebook pixel
  • Ecommerce tools to promote products
  • Pop up form builder

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: Basic ($15/month), Plus ($49/month), Professional ($99/month), Enterprise ($1199/month)

6. Mixmax

Mixamx: Email marketing software

Need something light-weight? Try Mixmax, a Chrome Extension that extends the functionality of Gmail. Mixmax works inside your Gmail account and brings email marketing services to you. 

With built-in email tracking, get insights on when gives you data about when your email was opened and which links were clicked. Email scheduling allows you to schedules messages to be sent at a later date and time, set meetings, and create reminders. There are a lot of email templates to cut down on repetitive tasks and allow you to send emails as quickly as you can. 

With “Beast Mode”, call leads and customers right from your Gmail, helping out your sales reps immensely. All call data is saved to Salesforce as tasks and you can also call a contact right from your Salesforce dashboard. Apart from Salesforce, Mixmax integrates with Google Calendar, Typeform, Pipedrive, Dropbox, and more.

Key Features:

  • Automate sales with task automation and sending data to Salesforce or Slack
  • Set reminders when sending or reading emails.
  • Schedule meetings, messages, calls, etc

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). 

7. Moosend

Moosend: Email marketing service

Moosend is one of the most intuitive lead generation and email marketing services available to SMB businesses today. The easy to use drag-and-drop editor makes creating beautiful newsletters extremely easy. 

You can also design captivating landing pages for your lead capture with Moosend. Marketers can also make use of their marketing automation tools to set up workflows for specific events like user onboarding and abandoned carts. You may also personalize your newsletters based on the recipient’s purchase history or past engagement. 

Pricing:

  • Moosend is extremely affordable on the wallet and is free for up to 1000 subscribers. Paid plans start at $8 per month

8. ActiveCampaign

Activecampaign: Email marketing software

ActiveCampaign not only automates your emails but the entire customer journey. You can use their targeting to find the right prospect and show them the right messaging to improve the chances of conversion. With automation maps, you can see all your automation accounts in one place and link connections to see the bigger picture. If you need to make any changes, you can quickly do that on the fly without any programming knowledge. 

ActiveCampaign shows dynamic content to your audience, allowing you to serve different messaging to different people and change your email call to action accordingly. With smart insights, see your most engaged customers and pull information from other platforms like Salesforce to fully automate your marketing. 

Apart from emails, ActiveCampaign also supports text and SMS marketing to reach people on the go. Add appointment reminders, SMS meeting attendees, send coupon codes, or other notifications easily. 

Key Features of ActiveCampaign

  • Predictive content to improve sale conversion
  • Text and SMS marketing 
  • Sales, CRM, marketing automation

Pricing: 

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

9. SendInBlue

Sendinblue: Email marketing software

From email marketing to website chatbots, Sendinblue has it all. You can create an email newsletter from scratch or use Sendinblue’s pre-built templates to create on quickly. Automated workflows ensure that you are targeting the right customer at the right time with the right content. 

With more urgent offers or messages, Sendinlblue also provides SMS marketing functionality. You can personalize SMS messages based on segmentation and keep contacts up to date. You can also monitor the efforts of your SMS marketing using real-time deliverability reporting and engagement statistics.

Sendinblue also provides CRM capabilities and helps keep all your contacts synced in one place. With its “send time optimization” feature, Sendinblue automatically determines the right time to send your message to a prospect or customer and increase open rates. Users can also install a chatbot to their website quickly and use them to capture leads and answer customer queries faster than an email ever could. 

Key Features of Sendinblue

  • CRM to keep track of all your contacts
  • SMS marketing, chatbots, transactional emails
  • Start Facebook ads and retarget your contacts

Pricing: 

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

10. Aweber

Aweber: Email Newsletter Creation software

The last tool on our list of amazing email marketing services for SMBs is Aweber. An industry veteran, Aweber has been in the email game for over 2 decades, allowing it to tweak its software multiple times to get it “just right”. An amazing drag-and-drop builder means that you can create beautiful emails with Aweber with no added effort. 

The “smart designer” automatically creates branded email templates for you to use. Just enter your company’s URL and Aweber will create a customized email template just for you! A great feature is the campaign marketplace that allows you to import high performing pre-built campaigns into your account to take your automation to the next level. 

With Aweber’s team hub, team members can collaborate using a single account and launch campaigns fast. Get a holistic view of your campaign performance through email tracking and try out different methods using split testing. Subscriber management helps you manage, track, and segment your contacts list and send optimized emails. 

Key Features of Aweber

  • Integrates with Paypal, Shopify, WordPress, and more. 
  • Mobile apps to build newsletters on the go
  • Pre-built reports

Pricing: 

  • Free with limited functionality
  • Paid plans start at: 0-500 subscribers ($19/month), 500-2500 subscribers ($29/month), 2500-5000 subscribers ($49/month), 5000-10000 subscribers ($69/month), 10000-250000 subscribers ($149/month).

Over to you!

There you have it, some of the best tools to take charge of your email marketing. Since SMBs are often tight with budget, we made sure to include only those services that offer a free account for you to try before putting in your credit card! You cannot really go wrong with any of the above-mentioned email marketing services, you just have to find the one that suits your company needs. Did we miss out on your email marketing service for SMBs? Do let us know which email marketing service you use by tweeting us @elink_io. 

Further reads:

The 10 Best Email Marketing Automation Tools Out There

Top 11 Gmail Extensions for Email Marketing!

Marketing Collateral: What, Why, Types and Tools!

The 10 Best Email Newsletter Services

4 Ways Automation Changes Everything In An Email Outreach Sequence

The 11 Best Email Tracking Tools & Software!

Email marketing service - pinterest

Ellink.io: Create more content in less time