Any business with a digital presence should consider using these tools to improve their advertising online.

Small business email marketing is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to reach large numbers of people, and is a baseline for any marketing campaign.

While it’s possible to manage your emails in-house, it’s usually inefficient and unnecessary.

Sending out tens of thousands of emails takes time and effort you could spend elsewhere, and it’s hard to get good analytics without specialised tools.

While most small business email marketing systems aren’t free, they usually offer trial periods so you can make sure you’re using one that’s right for you.

In addition, the returns they generate in conversions and click-throughs more than make up for their asking price.

No. The companies that make small business email marketing software target them towards marketers and business-owners, not coders and engineers.

Most are simple to use and require no technical skills.

It’s often possible to set up complicated systems of automated sending through a visual interface, where you can drag-and-drop elements, just like with most website building tools. 

Because these tools are so powerful, it can take a little time to figure out how to use them properly.

But the companies that make them usually put out detailed tutorials to help people get started—Sendinblue has a page on making your first campaign, for example.

It’s always tempting to go with the cheapest offer, but there are other things you should consider when choosing email marketing software for your business.

• Does it contain lots of features that don’t sound useful for your business?
• Does it integrate with the best CRM systems?
• Will your teams be able to start using it right away, or does it require training?
• Do the price tiers match up to how many emails you want to send out monthly?
• Does it comply with anti-spam laws in areas like the EU and the USA?

Compare email marketing platforms below to find what’s best for your business. For automated marketing platforms, check out Campaigner. 

Email marketing software is usually priced based on the number of emails you send or the number of contacts you have.

If you only have a few hundred contacts, you might not have to pay at all. Check out HubSpot or Mailchimp, for example, offers a free plan for up to 2000 addresses.

This is a useful way to try out a product before committing to a purchase, or a way for small businesses to build up their base.

But generally, the more contacts you have, the more you’ll be paying. Actual prices vary between products, but there are three common price points.

$20/month

For this price you’ll usually only get the basic features of your software.

This can still include things like visual email builders and scheduled sending, though, so you might not need anything more.

Naturally, this is often the best choice for small businesses.

$100/month

Plans in this range, like those offered by Infusionsoft, generally go one step beyond and add more powerful CRM features like enhanced automation and analytics.

Another common bonus is access to on-call support teams, which can be very useful for businesses new to email marketing.

$1000+/month

Tools in this range, like Salesforce Pardot, are meant for massive B2B operations.

They focus heavily on advanced features, like predictive sending and hardcore analytics.

While undeniably powerful, these plans may not be suitable for small or medium-sized businesses.

Once you’ve decided on a service, you’ll usually have to sign up for an account on their website. Depending on the features you want, you might have to pay right away, or after a free trial. Some services, like Mailchimp, are web applications.

That means you can run them entirely in your browser and don’t need to download anything. Others are software that you have to download and install on your computer. After that, you need to set up your contacts.

If you already have a list of addresses, you’ll be able to import them directly, either from an Excel spreadsheet, a database or what’s called a CSV (comma separated values) file.

But if you’re just starting out, the service will likely have a piece of code for a signup form that you can put on your website.

When customers use that form, you’ll automatically save their details to build up your database of contacts. From there, you can start to create message templates and plan out your campaigns.

Each piece of software does these things differently, though, so at this point it’s a good idea to look around on their website for tutorials.

Contact management

Small business email marketing is only as good as your audience. People regularly change their addresses, meaning that over time, your contacts list will grow stale and less useful. That’s why most small business email marketing tools have features for managing your contacts.

This means things like organising them into groups—maybe you only want to contact people who’ve recently made a purchase, for example—or pruning inactive contacts, so you don’t waste time and money sending them any more messages. Some, like Sendinblue, even use analytics to determine unengaged contacts that might not be worth your time and automatically prune them.

Analytics

Email metrics like click-through rates, unsubscription numbers and A/B headline tests are one of the deepest sources of analytics available to a company, so it’s natural for email marketing software to support tracking them out of the box. Tools like GetReponse, for example, offer integrated analytics that presents its data in easy-to-read graphs that clearly show the impact your campaigns are having.

A related feature you might not expect includes being able to target contacts based on actions they’ve taken. Want to send a follow-up message to someone who opened your last email but didn’t click the link? That’s not only possible—it’s easy.