The good news is, better and cheaper alternatives to Mailchimp exist. 

We compared 11 Mailchimp competitors based on functionality, use cases, user reviews, and of course, price. Which one is best for your needs? What are the best free alternatives to Mailchimp? Read on for all the answers.

What are the best Mailchimp alternatives?

At a glance, the best Mailchimp alternatives are:

1. Brevo — best Mailchimp alternative by CRM capabilities & price
2. HubSpot — for big teams with data expertise
3. ConvertKit — for content creators
4. Moosend — good option for beginners
5. MailerLite — a light solution 
6. Klaviyo — focused on Shopify sellers
7. Omnisend — for ecommerce businesses
8. AWeber — simple and robust solution
9. ActiveCampaign — for advanced automation users
10. Constant Contact — suitable for NGOs
11. Campaign Monitor — intuitive email tool for low-volume senders

Why switch to a Mailchimp alternative?

Mailchimp became the go-to email service because of its free and affordable entry-level plans. However, that’s no longer the case. 

Price hikes. Mailchimp raised prices by 16% in 2022 and 7-14.5% in November 2023 (depending on the plan, Essentials, Standard, or Premium). The most popular free plan now covers only 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly emails since March 10, 2023. 

Limited customer support. Support is only available for the first 30 days on the free plan (and is email only). After that, upgrade, or you’re on your own.

Expensive contact lists. What’s worse, once your email list starts to grow, Mailchimp pricing goes up fast. On Mailchimp, every single contact is a billable contact, even unsubscribers. You’re charged for contacts you can’t email. Plus, if a contact appears on two lists, it’s billed twice.

Last but not least, you can’t use email credits on the marketing platform to send transactional emails. This means you have to purchase transactional email credits or sign up for a monthly transactional email plan. 

These pain points, among others, bring Mailchimp’s score on Trustpilot to 1.4 out of 5.

Price comparison: find cheaper alternatives to Mailchimp

Here’s a price comparison of the top Mailchimp alternatives by contact list size. Note that all tools except Brevo charge per contact stored, and some have monthly email limits to boot. This inflates the price a lot.

We compared pricing for sending one email per month to a specific number of contacts.

Prices based on monthly plans (cheapest plan available per number of contacts). Updated May 13, 2024

Comparing ‘free forever’ plans: The best free alternatives to Mailchimp

Is Mailchimp free? It offers a free plan, but it’s very limited and the price goes up steeply from there.

Naturally, if you’re an email marketing beginner, a small business owner, or just starting out in ecommerce, you might find Mailchimp too expensive. 

Free plans are an ideal opportunity to test-drive an email tool before committing to a paid plan. Free plans are essentially free alternatives to Mailchimp. The best email marketing platforms usually offer them to get you started. 

Email marketing services that don’t have a free plan

• ActiveCampaign: 14-day free trial
• Constant Contact: 30-day free trial
• Moosend: 30-day free trial

Pricing updated: 01/16/24

The 11 best Mailchimp alternatives for 2024

1. Brevo: the best Mailchimp alternative

Trustpilot rating: 4.1

G2: 4.5

Capterra: 4.5

Brevo is an affordable, user-friendly email marketing software with all functionality to substitute Mailchimp. Users love Brevo’s ease of use, quick setup, flexible contact management, and responsive email templates.

What makes Brevo the best Mailchimp alternative?

Main advantages over Mailchimp:

• 99% email deliverability to land your emails in the inbox
• It’s a complete CRM suite offering omnichannel digital marketing tools that work together
• Pricing based on the number of emails. Mailchimp charges per contact stored. As one user describes Brevo: “No need to worry about growing your database and seeing your costs explode like with Mailchimp.”
• Transactional emails included in each plan: You can send order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, etc. as part of your monthly plan. With Mailchimp, transactional emails are a paid add-on and incur pretty hefty transactional fees.
• Brevo’s free plan is very generous compared to that of Mailchimp, letting you build your email strategy and grow your list in peace
• The platform is available in 6 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese

“After trying [Brevo], I realized I could use all the features I had before but [at] a fraction of the cost.” link to review

Brevo’s email marketing features

• Drag-and-drop email builder & HTML email editor
• Customizable email templates
• Advanced list segmentation
• Dynamic personalization
• A/B testing of email content and subject lines
• AI subject line generator on all plans
• Advanced analytics
• Email signup forms
• Native integrations with WordPress and other CMS
• Transactional emails

Automation tools

Ready automation recipes in Brevo

• Autoresponders
• Visual workflow builder
• Ready automation recipes to use
• If/then/else workflows
• Website event and user action triggers
• Multichannel automations easy to set up: email + SMS + WhatsApp + push

Ecommerce

• Transactional emails (included in monthly email plans)
• Abandoned cart emails
• Detailed ecommerce dashboard: products, revenues, customers, retention, and more
• Native plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop

Multichannel

But that’s not all. It’s also an all-in-one CRM suite, offering omnichannel features and tools.

• Sales Platform for deal pipeline management
• SMS marketing
• WhatsApp marketing
• Facebook ads
• Push notifications
• Landing page builder
• Live chat
• Integrated universal inbox: Instagram DMs & Facebook Business messages
• Chatbot
• Business phone
• Meetings scheduling and hosting
• Payment links

“The interface is SO user-friendly.” (link to review)

Check out our Brevo vs Mailchimp guide for a detailed comparison of pricing and features.

Or you can sign up for our free plan and see for yourself. You’ll get 300 emails a day. We also offer a free and easy migration from Mailchimp to get you started in no time.

2. HubSpot

Trustpilot rating: 3.3

G2: 4.4

Capterra: 4.5

If you’re looking for more than just an email marketing tool, HubSpot is a great Mailchimp alternative to consider. HubSpot’s email marketing service is backed with a full suite of marketing and automation tools, to help you create unique, personalized experiences for your audience.

How HubSpot compares to Mailchimp

Here’s why HubSpot is one of the best alternatives to Mailchimp:

• Marketing automation: HubSpot’s automation features go well beyond simple autoresponders. While Mailchimp offers automated kickback emails and drip campaigns, HubSpot lets you create automation workflows to manage your contact database, pass off prospects to other teams, and even automatically create support tickets. You can also add delays and conditional logic.
• Growth platform: With forms and popups, live chat and bots, ad management, landing pages, and more, HubSpot has everything you need to kick off your marketing strategy, as well as more advanced features that you can grow into. The HubSpot CRM also supports your sales and customer service teams for a seamless cross-functional customer experience.

HubSpot email marketing features

• Forms
• Popups
• Segmentation
• Email analytics and health insights
• Mobile optimization

Automation possibilities

• Autoresponders
• Automate drip campaigns
• Advanced sequences (conditional logic)
• Lead scoring

Multichannel

• CRM
• Live chat and conversational bots
• Plans to support sales and customer support teams
• Landing pages
• Ad retargeting & management
• Popular integrations include Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Airtable

Cons: The free plan has a generous feature set but HubSpot becomes expensive if you have more than 1,000 subscribers. For this reason it’s probably best suited to mid/large enterprises rather than small businesses on a budget. As well, the wealth of advanced functionalities makes Hubspot a better option for experienced pro marketers.

Take a look at HubSpot alternatives too

3. ConvertKit

Trustpilot rating: 2

Capterra: 4.7

ConvertKit promotes itself as the email marketing platform for creators. This includes bloggers, artists, musicians, YouTubers — basically anyone running a creative business.

Advantages of ConvertKit compared to Mailchimp

• ConvertKit doesn’t charge twice for same subscriber in different lists
• You can create multiple signup forms for different opt-in incentives and content assets. This makes it easy to grow a subscriber list with content upgrades.
• There’s a free concierge migration service if you have over 5,000 subscribers

ConvertKit email marketing features

• Email campaigns
• RSS to email
• Mobile responsive
• Form builder
• Analytics & engagement scoring
• A/B tests
• Option to run a paid newsletter (transaction fee applies)

Automation possibilities

• Visual automation builder
• Autoresponders
• Email marketing automation
• Link triggers

Ecommerce

• Ecommerce integrations
• API

Multichannel

• Landing pages (+ templates)
• Possibility to sell digital products
• Newsletter referral system
• Facebook custom audiences
• Integrations to apps such as Patreon and Zapier

Cons: ConvertKit’s email marketing tool is optimized with this audience in mind. If that’s not your business, check out ConvertKit alternatives.

4. Moosend

Trustpilot rating: 2.6

G2: 4.7

Capterra: 4.6

Moosend is another affordable email marketing solution and marketing automation platform you can use instead of Mailchimp. It has everything you need to create and send successful email campaigns. 

Why choose Moosend as a Mailchimp alternative

Moosend’s main advantage over Mailchimp is that it’s a lot cheaper and offers a generous free plan. Overall it’s a good choice for small businesses and infrequent senders.

Moosend email marketing features

• Unlimited emails
• List segmentation
• Newsletter templates
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Email subscription forms
• Real-time analytics

Automation possibilities

• Automation workflow editor
• Automation templates
• Lead scoring
• Conditional triggers

Ecommerce

• Abandoned cart emails
• Transactional emails
• SMTP server
• Popular integrations include Zapier and Piesync 

Multichannel

• Landing pages

Cons: Unfortunately not as many multichannel features. Also, compared to some other Mailchimp alternatives, it lacks certain native integrations and multichannel marketing features.

5. MailerLite

Trustpilot rating: 4.5

G2: 4.6

Capterra: 4.7

MailerLite is another cheaper alternative to Mailchimp and a solid choice if you’re just looking for a simple, intuitive email tool. Its simplicity makes it great for freelancers and micro-entrepreneurs.

What makes MailerLite better than Mailchimp

MailerLite has a built-in functionality for selling digital products. This makes it stand out from Mailchimp as a tool for freelancers and digital content creators. MailerLite also allows users to create quizzes in their campaigns.

MailerLite email marketing features

• Drag-and-drop editor
• Popup signup forms
• Simple reporting dashboard
• Segmentation
• Email templates
• Time zone scheduling
• Auto resend
• A/B testing
• Rich text & HTML editor

Automation possibilities

• Autoresponder
• Simple automation sequences

Multichannel

• Landing pages (+ custom domains for landing pages)
• Free website with up to 5 landing pages
• Popular integrations include WooCommerce and Canva

MailerLite is a lightweight solution that offers great value for money, given its ease of use. Ideal for small businesses freelancers, digital content creators, and micro-entrepreneurs. 

Cons: It’s probably not the tool for you if you’re looking for more advanced feature (automation, etc.) Another point to note is that MailerLite doesn’t offer any phone support, even on their paid plan.

6. Klaviyo

Trustpilot rating: 3.4

G2: 4.6

Capterra: 4.7

Klaviyo’s email marketing service is built for ecommerce and integrates easily with Shopify. Klaviyo is made primarily for businesses in the retail industry.

Klaviyo excels particularly in advanced analytics and insights. If you want to dig deep into customer data, Klaviyo is one of the best Mailchimp alternatives for this.

What makes Klaviyo better than Mailchimp

Main advantages over Mailchimp:

• Granular segmentation: Klaviyo provides a ton of behavioral and transactional data with which you can segment contacts. It also has predictive analytics to determine Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and the risk of churn. 
• Pre-built templates for automation workflows: Save time setting up automated workflows thanks to Klaviyo’s library of ready-made templates for your abandoned cart, welcome, and win-back flows.
• Measure email marketing ROI: Easily track all the sales coming directly from your email marketing efforts.

Klaviyo email marketing features

• Segmentation and personalization
• A/B testing
• 1-click integrations with many apps and services
• ROI-based reporting
• Signup forms and popups

Automation possibilities

• Workflow builder
• Automated workflow templates
• Pre-built autoresponders

Ecommerce

• Abandoned cart reminders
• Native integrations for Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce and more
• API
• Product recommendations
• Dynamic data block

Multichannel

• SMS
• Facebook & Instagram advertising
• Popular integrations include Meta and Typeform

Cons: It gets pricey fast. If you don’t sell online where emails have a good ROI, it might not be the tool for you. Consider Klaviyo alternatives instead.

7. Omnisend

Trustpilot rating: 4.7

G2: 4.5

Capterra: 4.7

Omnisend’s the last alternative to Mailchimp we explored. It offers an easy-to-use platform for ecommerce email marketing, SMS, and automation.

Omnisend positions itself for ecommerce businesses and boasts a variety of helpful tools for running an online shop. This makes Omnisend an option for businesses in home goods, beauty, and other retail sectors.

Omnisend email marketing features

• Email campaigns
• Drag-and-drop editor
• List segmentation
• Sign-up forms
• A/B testing
• Campaign reports and click maps
• Email templates
• Analytics

Automation possibilities

• Pre-built workflows
• Ecommerce-focused personalization

Ecommerce

• Ecommerce integrations
• Cart abandonment
• Order/shipping confirmation
• Product recommendations

Multichannel 

• Landing pages
• Web-push notifications
• SMS
• Social media integrations
• Popular integrations include Shoplazza and Opencart

Cons: While Omnisend’s functionality is top-notch, the pricing is steep, even more than Mailchimp’s for certain volumes.

8. AWeber

Trustpilot rating: 2.5

G2: 4.2

Capterra: 4.4

AWeber has been around since 1998 and is still a popular email marketing tool for small businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs. It offers a huge gallery of ready-made email templates and gives lots of options for email automation and personalization.

Here’s why AWeber is one of the best Mailchimp alternatives:

• An all-inclusive pricing model: With AWeber you get access to all features, no matter what plan you’re on.  With Mailchimp, a limited number of features are available on the cheaper plans. For example, A/B testing and advanced segmentation are only available as you move up the different pricing tiers.
• Customer support via phone, chat and email: AWeber customers have a number of options to contact its award-winning customer support 24/7. Mailchimp, on the other hand, has no direct contact support options for its free users, and phone support is a luxury that’s only available on the premium plan (starting at $299).

AWeber email marketing features 

• Newsletters
• RSS to email
• Email templates
• Drag and drop email editor
• Signup forms
• WordPress plugin
• Basic segmentation
• Analytics

Automation possibilities

• Autoresponder
• Behavioral automation

Ecommerce

• No transactional emails
• Sales tracking
• Purchase tagging

Multichannel

• Web push notifications
• Stock photos
• Landing pages 
• Popular integrations include WordPress and GoToWebinar

Cons: If you’re used to Mailchimp’s sleek interface and quirky branding, AWeber might seem a bit dated.

9. ActiveCampaign

Trustpilot rating: 3.1

G2: 4.5

Capterra: 4.6

ActiveCampaign’s email marketing tool is just one feature of its many marketing software capabilities.

ActiveCampaign makes it easy to personalize your emails using contact data. You can also split test up to five different email versions to work out which content performs best. 

Plus, there’s also a built-in spam tester to check if emails are likely to go to junk.

ActiveCampaign as a Mailchimp alternative

Main advantages over Mailchimp:

• Automation and workflow recipes to get you started
• Suits the more advanced marketer

ActiveCampaign email marketing features

• Newsletter
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Email templates
• Analytics

Automation possibilities

• Autoresponders
• Marketing automation
• Automation map
• Contact & lead scoring

Ecommerce

• Product blocks for email
• Ecommerce integrations
• Conversion tracking

Multichannel

• CRM
• Landing pages
• Site messages
• SMS marketing
• Social media tool integrations
• Popular integrations include WordPress, Zapier, and Unbounce

Cons: It’s one of the most expensive tools we looked at, even for its entry tier. If budget’s a concern, you’d better look at ActiveCampaign alternatives.

10. Constant Contact

Trustpilot rating: 3.5

G2: 4.0

Capterra: 4.3

Constant Contact helps small businesses create websites, online stores, branded email marketing campaigns, and more.

Why choose Constant Contact over Mailchimp

• Ease of use and intuitiveness, especially for organizing lists
• Accessible customer support on low priced plans
• Donations tool to support email marketing for nonprofits

No free plan but paid plans come with unlimited emails.

Constant Contact email marketing tools

• Email campaigns
• Email templates
• Resends to non-openers
• A/B split testing for subject lines

Automation possibilities

• Automated email series/nurturing workflows

Ecommerce

• Abandoned cart email reminds for Shopify
• Integrations with Shopify, Eventbrite and Mindbody

Multichannel

• Survey tool
• Donation collection
• Social media scheduling and ads
• Landing page builder
• Popular integrations include Vimeo and WooCommerce

Cons: No free plan. Not sure? Discover more Constant Contact alternatives.

11. Campaign Monitor

Trustpilot rating: 4.5

G2: 4.1

Capterra: 4.5

Campaign Monitor is another cost-effective Mailchimp alternative to consider, particularly for lower volume senders. Their platform offers beautiful email newsletter templates for everything from announcements to holiday campaigns to reengagement messages.

What makes Campaign Monitor better than Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor is a good Mailchimp alternative for a few reasons. First off, for most email sending volumes, they’re less expensive than the industry leader. Second, they’re visual journey builder is great for beginners looking to get started with more advanced automations. 

Overall, Campaign Monitor users find that their platform is far easier to use than Mailchimp’s. If you’re looking for an intuitive email marketing tool, this is one to consider. 

Campaign Monitor email marketing features

• Email campaigns
• Drag and drop email builder
• Over 100 customizable templates
• Free image gallery
• A/B testing
• Popups and forms
• Real time reporting analytics
• RSS-to-email

Automation possibilities

• Automation visualization
• Advanced link tracking

Ecommerce

• Transactional emails 
• Various plug-ins / integrations

Multichannel

• CRM plugin
• CMS plugin
• Landing pages
• Social media marketing alignment
• Popular integrations include Agile CRM and Facebook Ad Leads

Cons: The free plan is almost non-existent with 5 contacts and no support (even though emails are unlimited). If you want a free test before you commit, discover more Campaign Monitor alternatives.

Choosing an alternative to Mailchimp: FAQ

Comparing email marketing services is overwhelming, especially for email marketing beginners. Here’s a quick rundown of the top questions you’re probably asking yourself now. 

Who is Mailchimp’s biggest competitor?

Mailchimp doesn’t have a single biggest competitor. It all depends on what you’re looking for in an email marketing platform. For budget-friendly options, Brevo and MailerLite are strong contenders. For big teams and advanced features, you might want to opt for HubSpot.

What is the Google equivalent of Mailchimp?

Google isn’t a direct competitor of Mailchimp, but similar email marketing features are available through Google Workspace. Google Marketing Platform helps you buy online ads and analyze your campaigns. Although it’s possible to send mass email with Gmail, you’ll likely get better results with a dedicated email marketing solution.

Is Mailchimp HIPAA and GDPR compliant?

Mailchimp is not HIPAA compliant. They don’t have a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), which is needed for HIPAA compliance. Their terms state that Mailchimp users are responsible for making sure their email marketing complies with regulations like HIPAA.

Mailchimp offers GDPR compliant tools such as signup forms and double opt-in.

Is there something similar to Mailchimp?

There are many tools that offer similar email marketing features. Each software comes with advantages and disadvantages, depending on your budget and how you plan to use it.

For example, Brevo is a good Mailchimp alternative if you’re looking for an affordable email marketing service that’s part of an all-in-one CRM suite. SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, live chat, and marketing automation are just a few of Brevo’s other features.

Is there a cheaper option than Mailchimp?

There are several Mailchimp alternatives with cheaper pricing plans (look at our tables above). Many also offer free plans that include higher email and contact limits than Mailchimp.

Brevo stands out: you pay for the emails you send, starting at $9, cheaper than Mailchimp. Brevo’s free plan comes with 100,000 contacts and 9,000 emails to send a month. Mailchimp, on the other hand, can get pricey as your email list grows.

What is the best Mailchimp alternative?

There are many Mailchimp alternatives you can consider depending on your budget, needs, and skills. The best is the one that gives you more than Mailchimp at a better price. 

Brevo can be a great choice for both small and large businesses given their easy-to-use interface, wide range of features including multichannel, and much better pricing. Grow your list and business without being punished for it!

Try out some Mailchimp alternatives

Test, test, test. It’s the best way to find the ideal email service provider for your business.

Take advantage of free plans and free trials to get a feel for the software. You’ll quickly start to notice the differences and learn your own preferences.  

We hope this guide has helped you see where you can save the most money with Mailchimp alternatives.

The post 11 Best Mailchimp Alternatives Compared (2024): Make the Switch appeared first on Brevo.

As summer ends, the back-to-school season moves into full swing. This is an exciting time for students, families, and teachers alike — not to mention one of the most important retail periods of the year.

Back-to-school marketing is a huge sales driver, so if you’re planning on including it in your email marketing strategy get ready to take notes.  

We’ve curated a list of top-notch subject lines to help you run your email campaigns and get the most out of this back-to-school season.

• General Back to School Subject Lines
• Back to School Email Subject Lines for Sales and Promotions
• Back to School Email Subject Lines for Supplies and Tech
• Back to School Email Subject Lines for Fashion
• Back to School Email Subject Lines for College Students
• Back to School Email Subject Lines for Teachers
• Back to School Emoji Subject Lines

General back-to-school email subject lines 

No matter the campaign, these general email subject lines are sure to build excitement for the brand-new school year.

• School is just around the corner!
• It’s that time of year again
• Get ready for the Back to School season
• Are you in the Back to School spirit?
• Class is back in session
• Your one-stop Back to School shop
• Start the new school year right
• Raise your hand if you’re ready to go Back to School
• Summer’s over! Time to go Back to School
• Prepare to hit the books
• Your Back to School cheat sheet

Back-to-school email subject lines for sales and promotions 

Families prioritize school supplies and for many families, this means cutting back on spending elsewhere. Give families subject lines they’ll be delighted to see and spread the word about your back-to-school sales.

• Ready for school. Ready for savings.
• Get 25% off Back to School items
• Save big on Back to School deals
• Limited Time Only: Free shipping on Back to School orders
• One day only! Back to School flash sale
• Don’t miss out on these Back to School deals
• Back to School savings: Check out our A+ deals
• Back to School deals just for you
• Pre-fall Back to School sale
• Our Back to School sale starts now!
• Fall into savings with these Back to School deals
• Your First Assignment: Save money
• Don’t be late for class: Free overnight shipping
• 20% off Back to School gifts
• Last-minute Back to School deals
• Up to 30% off Store-wide: Our Back to School Spectacular
• Get exclusive Back to School discounts
• A special Back to School gift for you
• Back to School Must-Haves Now 20% off
• Back to School steals
• Best in Class: Our Back to School Offers

Back-to-school email subject lines for supplies and tech 

New school supplies and high-tech gadgets top many students’ shopping lists. Here are a few subject lines that shine the spotlight on these Back to School must-haves.

• Still short on school supplies?
• Sweet deals on Back to School supplies
• Stock up on Back to School essentials
• Your Back to School essentials: All in one place
• Back to School with the coolest tools
• Save up to $100 on Back to School tech
• Must-have Back to School gadgets
• Free shipping on Back to School supplies
• A+ Savings on School Supplies
• 25% off tablets for Back to School
• New! Pastel lunchboxes for Back to School
• Smart notebooks to start the new school year
• One-day shipping on all Back to School tech
• 2-for-1 deals on all fall sports gear
• Your first day of school survival kit

Back-to-school subject lines for fashion 

Ring in the start of the school year with fresh looks and fall fashion. These subject lines are guaranteed to get your subscribers excited about back-to-school clothes shopping.

• Head Back to School in style
• Fall favorites for Back to School
• Fresh looks for Back to School
• Rule the school with these Back to School looks
• Put your best foot forward this year
• New looks to rock the blacktop
• Find your favorite Back to School looks
• Prep for school: Our Back to School picks
• Back to campus looks
• Look cool for Back to School
• Back to School. Back in style.
• Back to School basics: Starting from $19.99
• New year, new me: Shop our Back to School styles
• Find your Back to School cool
• Up to 50% off Back to School shoes
• Check out our Back to School e-shop

Back-to-school email subject lines for college students 

For some, back to school means back to campus. If college students are your target audience, here are a few subject lines you can use to grab their attention.

• Make this semester yours
• Are you ready for move-in day?
• Back to campus favorites
• Free shipping on all dorm essentials
• Our College Survival Guide
• Get your campus essentials here
• Your college checklist
• 2-for-1 deals on dorm decor
• Don’t snooze on these dorm room deals
• Overnight shipping on textbooks
• What every college freshman needs
• Back to College Sales
• New semester must-haves

Back to school email subject lines for teachers 

Don’t forget: teachers are also busy getting their classrooms ready before the start of the new year. Target them in your back to school email campaigns with these eye-catching subject lines.

• Save big on classroom essentials
• Bulk discounts for Back to School
• Get your classroom ready with these school supplies
• 5 Back to School items every teacher needs
• Back to School gifts your teacher will love
• Get $10 off select teacher appreciation gifts
• What your classroom needs
• Don’t miss these exclusive teacher discounts

Back-to-school emoji subject lines

Emojis in email help boost open and click rates when they are relevant to your content and help make your message clear. Use them in your back-to-school subject lines to make your message stand out and grab your reader’s attention.

• Flash sale 30% off all Back to School items
• Free shipping for Back to School basics
• Fall in love with these Back to School styles
• Our Back to School sale ends tonight
• Unbeatable Back to School savings
• The best laptops for students
• Be the teacher’s pet | Our favorite teacher gifts
• Shop our Back to School collection
• Get up to 20% off sports gear
• Don’t Miss The Bus
• Last-minute deals on school supplies
• Get back into the school spirit
• Bargain-priced textbooks for all students
• Your Back to School Shopping List
• Strap on your backpack
• Ready to ace the new school year?
• It’s that time of year again

Back-to-school email examples

To put it all together, here are a couple of back-to-school email examples to show you how a subject line can lead up to your content. 

Grammarly

Back to school email subject line: Get 55% off Grammarly Premium for Back to School

Source

This email subject line says exactly what subscribers will get when they open this email by Grammarly. When in doubt, straightforwardness is always appreciated by recipients. 

Mojo

Back-to-school email subject line: Back-to-school burnout is no match for Mojo!

Source

Mojo’s subject line is confident and motivating. It also directly addresses a huge pain point for students: burnout! 

The email content backs up the subject line promise by saying how its product will help fight burnout. The customer testimonial expertly supported its claim, and is a great example of how content should fulfill the expectations set up by the subject line.

Make back-to-school email subject lines part of your email campaigns this season

Build emails with Brevo’s intuitive drag-and-drop email builder and send messages right to the inbox. with Brevo’s email marketing platform, you’ll be well-prepared to ace your back-to-school campaign

The post 100 Back-to-School Email Subject Lines That Boost Sales appeared first on Brevo.

Strap on your backpack because the back-to-school season is one of the most important times of the year for marketing campaigns. As schools prepare to reopen their doors to students, parents go on the hunt for new supplies and back-to-school bargains.

This article will cover everything you need to know about back-to-school marketing, including ideas, tips, and catchy phrases to inspire your campaigns this season.

• Back to school marketing 101
• How do you market back to school products?
• 7 Ideas to ace your back to school marketing campaigns
• 20 back to school marketing phrases to kickstart your campaigns

Back to school marketing 101

Back-to-school shopping is the second most important retail period, just behind the winter holidays. As summer comes to a close, customers start searching for brand-new products to get ready for the upcoming school year. This period, stretching from the middle of summer to early fall is an exciting time full of new beginnings and record sales. 

The 2024 back-to-school season is expected to generate $81 billion in sales. Many families will look for sales and Labor Day deals to make a purchase. Beyond offering back-to-school promotions, businesses can also emphasize the value of their products to let shoppers know their dollar is well spent.

While school supplies are traditionally bought in person, this back-to-school season, 45% of back-to-school shoppers plan on doing comparative shopping online, which means it’s time to get your online marketing strategy rolling!The Back to School season is great for sales. All kinds of businesses can take advantage of this unique marketing opportunity, so let’s dive in to get some marketing tips and ideas

Further reading: A How-to Guide for The Perfect Holiday Marketing Strategy

When should you start promoting back to school products?

The back to school season runs from mid-July to mid-September. This varies across the US, with the school year running on different schedules depending on the state.

Marketers should consider launching their back-to-school campaigns at the start of July, as many potential customers gear up to check a few items off their shopping lists several weeks (or even months) before the first day of school.

What are the most popular back to school products?

Electronics, clothing, shoes, and general school supplies top back-to-school shopping lists, according to the 2023 NRF survey. Tech plays a bigger role than ever in education today, joining backpacks and binders as a must-have school staple.

How do you market back to school products?

Here are a couple back to school marketing guidelines to help you plan your strategy. Follow these to get the most out of this retail season and make your campaigns stand out.

Keep your key target audiences in mind 

Back to School shoppers are a varied bunch, including:

• Parents and caregivers
• K-12 students
• College students
• Teachers

It’s always a good idea to tailor your back-to-school marketing campaigns to your target audience. You can even tag them in your CRM so you can easily reach out with targeted offers. The channels, campaigns, and promotions may change depending on your target audience’s needs and preferences.

For example, offering discounts or bundles on classroom supplies can be an effective way to market back to school products to teachers.

Take advantage of digital marketing channels 

Online marketing is key to running any successful back-to-school campaign. The biggest back-to-school retailers, including Walmart, Target, and Amazon, rely on digital advertising more and more to reach their customers before the school year starts.

Social media plays a growing role in the back-to-school shopping experience. Customers enjoy finding inspiration for their shopping lists online. In fact, over 25% of back-to-school shoppers plan their back-to-school lists on Pinterest.

Source

Many effective back-to-school campaigns are also multichannel, bridging both physical and digital spaces. This is because back-to-school shoppers, particularly parents, often browse in stores before purchasing back-to-school products online — and vice versa.

7 Ideas to ace your back to school marketing campaigns

Don’t know where to begin? Here are a few back to school marketing ideas to help you get started.

1. Start early (but remember the latecomers)

Don’t wait until September to launch your back to school marketing campaign. Early bird shoppers already start stocking up on supplies in July. 

Amazon’s Prime Day, which falls in mid-July, has also become an important shopping event for the back to school season.

Run your marketing campaigns early to attract more customers. But remember — the back to school season is long. This opportunity doesn’t have to end the moment summer break comes to a close.

Come fall, you can always find shoppers hoping to scoop up last-minute deals, or taking advantage of Labor Day sales. Be sure to keep the latecomers in mind as you plan your campaigns this back to school season.

2. Attract customers with back to school deals

Whether you’re marketing to parents or college students, back-to-school shoppers are budget-conscious. Attract them with back-to-school sales, coupons, and flash promotions. The promise of savings is key to many successful back-to-school marketing campaigns. Consider offering special discounts, such as student-only deals, to win over your target audience.

Source

3. Offer back to school bundles

With its long checklists, back-to-school shopping can be overwhelming. Make it easy for customers with bundled offers. These bundles might include everything from basic school supplies to snacks, high-tech devices, and sports gear.

Back to school bundles attract the busiest of customers. This is because they save shoppers money and cut down on the time it takes to find everything they need before the school year begins.

The weeks before the first day of school can be hectic. Product bundles free shoppers from the hassle of rushing through a long back-to-school shopping list. They’re a simple, impactful way to draw in customers and make your offerings stand out.

4. Send a back to school newsletter

Email marketing can play a huge role in your overall back-to-school marketing strategy. Consider sending a special newsletter with sneak peeks, product recommendations, back-to-school promo codes, and more.

Source

Back to School (or back to college) newsletters can help you bring value to potential customers and reactivate one-time shoppers. Use them to build lasting customer relationships this back-to-school season.

Enjoying these marketing tips? Check out our free, 2024 Holiday Marketing Calendar download for more important dates and ideas.

5. Incorporate content marketing into your back to school strategy

Offering your audience useful content helps make your back to school campaign more impactful. Ask yourself, “Apart from selling them something, how can I make shoppers’ lives easier?”

Here are a few back to school content ideas you can try:

• Blog posts
• Shopping guides
• Product reviews
• Downloadable checklists

Content is a great way to bring added value to back to school shoppers, cultivate trust in your business, and engage loyal customers.

Source

6. Use social media to connect with customers

Social media is one of the most important channels for back to school promotions. Run paid social media campaigns to advertise your products and services, or offer special discounts to your followers.

Social media is also a great way to interact with the back to school crowd. Consider using your online platforms to build buzz and engage with potential customers.

Here are just a few ways you can incorporate social media in your back to school marketing strategy:

• Post polls
• Share quizzes
• Run contests or giveaways
• Post user-generated content 

Source

7. Consider influencer marketing

Influencer marketing plays a growing role in back-to-school promotions, as many shoppers look to their favorite social media stars for product recommendations.

An endorsement on an influencer’s feed helps add a personalized touch to your back-to-school campaign. Influencer marketing can also boost your products’ credibility and raise brand awareness among your target audience.

This is because social media influencers, including family bloggers, have often built a deep, authentic connection with their followers. They can help you reach younger, social media-savvy audiences.

Source

20 back to school marketing phrases to kickstart your campaigns 

Need inspiration? Here’s a list of phrases, taglines, and slogans to fuel your back to school marketing efforts.

General back to school 

• Class is back in session
• Get ready. Get set. Get learning.
• Make your first day memorable
• Your one-stop back to school shop
• Summer’s over, but more fun’s just around the corner!

Back to school fashion 

• Your turn to rock the blacktop
• Ace your back to school looks
• Back to School and looking cool
• Start the new school year in style
• Put your best foot forward this back to school season

Back to school supplies 

• Back to School, back to basics
• Gear up for success with these back to school basics!
• Stock up on your favorite back to school essentials
• Your new semester essentials

Back to school savings 

• Save big this semester
• Go back to school with big savings
• Back to School with unbeatable savings
• Raise your hand if you’re ready for back to school bargains!
• Prep for success with these back to school deals!
• Don’t miss these back to school doorbusters

Conclusion: Back to school marketing in brief

For many businesses, back-to-school season presents a vital opportunity to connect with customers and increase sales. There are several techniques you can use to launch your marketing campaign before the school year starts.

Start marketing early to take advantage of the entire back to school season. Use digital channels and social media to connect with shoppers. Offer irresistible promotions to win over your target audience. With these tips in mind, you can ace back to school marketing campaigns for your business!

The post Back to School Marketing: Campaign Ideas, Slogans, and Tips appeared first on Brevo.

A great subject line will help your campaign stand out in a crowded inbox. This encourages subscribers to open your email and leads to greater conversions. 

It’s no secret that the subject line is one of the most important parts of any email marketing campaign. However, crafting the best email subject lines for your audience can be a challenge.

Email subject line testers make it easier to understand which subject lines lead to higher open rates and click-through rates.

Read on to discover the best subject line testers on the market.

1. Brevo
2. Subjectline.com
3. TestSubject by Zurb
4. Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule
5. Omnisend

What should you look for in an email subject line tester?

There’s a vast range of email subject line testers out there. Ultimately, you should choose the subject line tester tool that aligns best with your email marketing strategies.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a subject line tester.

• Basic subject line functionality: An email subject line grader should analyze your email subject lines. This is based on factors such as character count, capitalization, and readability. It might also flag spammy words to help you improve deliverability.
• Emotion and tone analysis: Email subject line testers can rate subject lines on tone or emotional impact. It can even offer suggestions to make your subject line more engaging or persuasive. This is important as emotional subject lines are 94% more effective.
• Pricing: There are many free email subject line testers available. However, you might opt for a paid tool if it better suits your business needs.
• Advanced features: Many email subject line testers offer advanced features. These include A/B testing, AI email generation, or integrations with other digital marketing tools.

5 Best email subject line testers

Want to learn more? Here are the top subject line testers to boost email open rates.

1. Brevo

For a comprehensive yet easy-to-use email subject line tester, Brevo is a good option. Brevo is an all-in-one email marketing platform with a range of basic and advanced functionalities.

When you create an email campaign in Brevo, you can test both subject lines and email content (e.g headlines, call-to-action buttons, images).

A/B testing is one of Brevo’s many email marketing features

Simply create two subject lines. Brevo will automatically create a sample audience and split it into two groups. Half will receive your Subject Line A and the other half will receive Subject Line B. The subject line that performs better will be sent to the remaining recipients.

Brevo also has a built-in AI email generator. With artificial intelligence, you’ll get instant subject line suggestions. Use it to create a sense of urgency or make your subject lines more engaging.

The AI assistant is available for regular and A/B test campaigns. You can also use it to generate email content.

Brevo’s AI assistant can help you generate engaging email subject lines

Brevo pricing

Brevo offers a generous free plan. It includes the AI assistant, the Drag & Drop email editor, 40+ email templates, 300 emails/day, and automations for up to 2,000 contacts. You can also preview how your email campaign will appear on different email clients.

A/B testing is an advanced feature. It’s available on the Business plan, starting at $18/month.

2. Subjectline.com

Subjectline.com is a free, no-nonsense email subject line tester. Simply enter your email subject line on the website. Subjectline.com will give it an overall score out of 100. This score is based on things like character count and urgency.

The tool also provides AI-based suggestions, thanks to Subjectline.com’s ChatGPT integration.

Subjectline.com pricing

Subjectine.com is available for free. However, it doesn’t offer more advanced features such as A/B testing.

3. TestSubject by Zurb

TestSubject by Zurb is a simple subject line tester. It allows you to see how your email campaign will appear on different email clients and mobile devices.

Provide the subject line, email preview text, and sender name. TestSubject lets you preview your campaign on iPhone, Android, and more. This will help you determine the format and ideal word count so new key information gets cut off.

TestSubject by Zurb pricing

TestSubject by Zurb is free. However, the number of email clients available for preview is limited.

4. Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule

Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule is a sophisticated email subject line tester. It rates your email subject line based on various factors such as reading level, word balance, and sentiment. It can also analyze blog headlines, social media captions, ad copy, and more.

The Headline AI tool provides AI-generated suggestions. You can ask the AI to make your subject lines more urgent and specific, or to highlight certain benefits. However, the number of ideas you can generate is limited on the free plan.

Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule pricing

Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule offers a free Basic plan, which is limited to 10 credits/month. You can buy additional credits and/or upgrade to access advanced features such as Headline AI. The Premium plan starts at $4/month.

5. Omnisend

Omnisend offers a free subject line tester, as well as other digital marketing tools. The tester gives your subject line a score out of 100%. It analyzes it based on factors such as word count, character count, word choice, and scannability.

Omnisend also offers a free AI subject line generator to help you save time and boost open rates.

Omnisend pricing

Omnisend’s subject line tester and AI subject line generator are available for free. You’ll need to sign up to access Omnisend’s other email marketing features.

The free plan includes 500 emails/month for up to 250 contacts. Paid plans start at $16/month.

Get started with Brevo’s email subject line tester

Great email subject lines are key to staying out of spam filters and boosting conversions. One of the easiest ways to write them effectively is with an email subject line tester.

Brevo goes beyond subject lines with built-in AI features, advanced A/B testing, and so much more. 

Try it today for free.

The post 5 Best Email Subject Line Testers for Better Open Rates appeared first on Brevo.

Ecommerce metrics give you vital information, from the click-through rate of your marketing campaigns to the average amount your customers spend for every order. Tracking ecommerce metrics will set your ecommerce business up for long-term success beyond the bottom line.

In this article, we’ll cover the most important ecommerce metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) you should monitor.

What are ecommerce metrics?

Ecommerce metrics are data and other quantifiable measurements that allow you to estimate the health of your ecommerce site. 

Sales conversion rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and customer lifetime value (CLV) are examples of ecommerce metrics.

There are many different types of ecommerce metrics. They come from a variety of sources, including your web pages, social media, and Google Analytics.

13 Top ecommerce metrics to track

Here are the most important metrics to better understand your online store’s performance and ecommerce sales.

1. Sales conversion rate

The sales conversion rate is probably the most important among all ecommerce metrics. This is how many website visitors convert into customers. Conversion rate is calculated by the this formula:

CR = (Total number of customers / Total unique visitors) * 100

The average sales conversion rate for the ecommerce industry is 3.4%. In general, a good conversion rate is around 2.5-3%.

Driving traffic to your site isn’t everything. Once people land there, they need a lot of persuading to place an order. The product and price, user experience, payment security, and return options should all feel right for the customer.

The process of improving this metric is called conversion rate optimization (CRO). Regularly check your sales funnel, visitor behavior on site, page views, and exit pages. The goal is to identify where the problem is and hopefully fix it.

Here are a few quick fixes that’ll help you improve your conversion rate:

• Attract more qualified traffic with Facebook ads to lookalike audiences based on your best customers.
• Test out every option in your checkout process yourself.
• Optimize mobile and tablet experience.
• Use remarketing (e.g. winback emails) to re-engage people who visited your site but left without buying.
• Do an SEO audit to see if you’re using the wrong wording on your product pages.

2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures how much it costs to acquire a new customer. It’s important to understand your CAC to plan your marketing budget.

The general formula to calculate CAC is as follows:

CAC = Total costs associated with acquisition (e.g. marketing and sales costs) / Total new customers

If you spent $5,000 on a marketing campaign that resulted in 1,000 new customers, your CAC would be $5. A general rule of thumb is to keep CAC under 30% of your customer lifetime value, or CLV (more on that later).

To optimize CAC, you want to minimize costs and maximize revenue. When you invest money in website traffic, not all of it leads to new customers and sales growth. Sometimes, less traffic with higher conversion rate is more profitable than huge traffic that barely converts.

Analyze all your acquisition channels (social media, ads, review sites, referrals, etc) to evaluate which ones have the greatest impact. Make sure you know the maximum CAC you can afford. Otherwise, you might lose money in the effort to bring in new customers.

3. Average order value (AOV)

Average order value (AOV) is what it sounds like: the average amount a customer spends on each order from your store.

AOV is one of the most important ecommerce KPIs. You can easily increase your total revenue by increasing the average order value, even with no new traffic.

Higher average order value means more profit. Some ways to increase AOV include:

• Offering bundles/ mix & match/ 3-month supply of products
• Selling add-ons or services
• Implementing loyalty programs
• Giving free shipping for orders above the AOV
• Checking which marketing channels bring you higher AOV and double-down on them

4. Average profit margin

The average profit margin is what you earn from each product after deducting what you paid for supplying it. It’s calculated as a percentage of the retail price and shows what portion of it your profit is.

Profit margin = [(Selling price – Cost of goods) / Selling price] * 100

The profit margin increases when the price goes up and the cost of goods sold goes down. 

Here are a few ways to maximize your average profit margin:

• Create product bundles of one popular product and another that has a very good margin.
• Highlight your most profitable products in all campaigns, visuals, etc.
• When adding new products, go for high-margin ones.
• Do more referral campaigns instead of discounts so people don’t get used to reduced prices.
• Increase the price but include add-ons, accessories, maintenance, etc. 

5. Shopping cart abandonment rate

Shopping cart abandonment is when customers add a product to their online shopping cart but don’t complete their purchase. You can calculate your shopping cart abandonment rate with the following formula:

Shopping cart abandonment rage = [Total number of completed purchases / Total number of shopping carts created] * 100

On average, 70% of people abandon their shopping cart online. This is a common problem for ecommerce businesses. Website visitors abandon their online carts for a number of reasons. It may be due to unexpected shipping costs. Or, perhaps they were simply browsing.

6. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one the most important ecommerce metrics. It measures how much any given customer spends with your online business throughout their customer lifecycle. 

Here’s one way to calculate customer lifetime value.

CLV = Average order value x Number of orders (per year) x Average customer lifespan (in years) 

Customer lifetime value is important because it shows customer loyalty. Driving CLV can save your marketing budget and make your ecommerce store more financially stable in the long run.

A global report on ecommerce brands found an average CLV of $168. However, it’s hard to set a CLV benchmark as it varies greatly across categories, currencies, and markets. 

To increase CLV, you need to increase the average order value, increase repeat purchases, or increase the customer lifecycle. Or, better yet, do all three.

Identify your high-value customers and examine their customer journey. Then, try to replicate it for other potential customers.

Prioritize your highest-CLV customers. First, because you want to keep them. And second, because they can be brand ambassadors and bring you more loyal clients. 

7. Customer retention rate (CRR)

Customer retention rate is the share of repeat customers (with more than one order) out of all your shoppers. A simple formula for calculating it is:

CRR = (Number of customers with more than 1 order / Total Customers ) * 100

Returning customers are far more profitable than acquiring new ones. The acquisition isn’t cheap. However, returning customers will pay off their acquisition cost several times over.

There are many ways to improve your CRR. For example, you can send post-purchase emails or reactivation emails to one-time shoppers. Consider offering discounts on their next order. Or, improve the overall customer experience.

8. Refund and return rate

The refund or return rate is the percentage of orders refunded or returned compared to the total number of orders.

Sometimes problems happen and products need to be returned. Not surprisingly, the return rate is highest in fashion ecommerce. 

While accepting returns is a must, a high return rate means problems with product quality, customer satisfaction, or lead quality.

There are a few things you can do to lower your return rate. Make sure customers see what they’re buying in advance. Or, change shipping carriers if you find they deliver your products in poor condition.

9. Click-through rate (CTR)

The click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of visitors who click on your email marketing campaign, social media ad, or link.

You can calculate your click-through rate with the following formula:

CTR = (Total number of clicks / Total number of impressions) x 100

According to an email marketing benchmark, a good CTR for email campaigns is around 3.98%.

10. Bounce rate

For ecommerce websites, the bounce rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who leave after visiting a single page. That means they didn’t browse other product pages, fill out a form, or take any other action.

The average bounce rate for ecommerce websites is 38.7%. A lower bounce rate usually means your website is performing well.

To reduce the bounce rate, create a seamless customer experience. Make content easy to read, with clear headlines and well-formatted text. And be sure to optimize your ecommerce website for different devices, including mobile.

11. Net promoter score (NPS)

The net promoter score (NPS) measures how likely your customers are to recommend your ecommerce business to other people. 

Simply ask customers: On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or colleague?

Customers will fall into one of three categories:

• Promoters: Customers who responded 9-10.
• Passives: Customers who responded 7-8.
• Detractors: Customers who responded 0-6.

To calculate NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. 

NPS = Percentage of promoters – Percentage of detractors

The NPS can range from -100 to 100. For ecommerce businesses, the average NPS is 62.

12. Churn rate

The churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop buying from your ecommerce store within a given time period. You can calculate churn with the following formula:

Churn rate = (Lost customers / Total number of customers at the start of the time period) * 100

Churn rates vary widely across the industry. For subscription-based services, a successful churn rate is around 5%. For other types of ecommerce businesses, a churn rate of 10% is a good metric.

13. Best performing products

It’s also important to track your best performing products in terms of revenue and quantity sold. See which products drive repeat purchases, have the best reviews, or are often ordered together. Look for opportunities to optimize your inventory.

For instance, some products sell more per view, but maybe they aren’t visible on your homepage. This means they don’t get enough exposure and sales as a result.

Brevo’s ecommerce solution, featuring revenue data and most popular products

How often should you monitor your ecommerce metrics?

Now you know the most important ecommerce metrics. But how often should you track them? This will depend on a number of factors. 

Here are a few general guidelines to know what to track and how often.

• Weekly: Keep close tabs on things like website traffic, sales conversion rates, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Identify smaller trends and adjust your budget accordingly.
• Monthly: Look at customer lifetime value (CLV), best performing products, and return rates. This will help you see how your ecommerce is performing over a longer time period.
• Quarterly: Take a look at your numbers on a macro-level. Analyze how your ecommerce business is doing with regard to competitors and the larger ecommerce trends.

Why should you track ecommerce metrics?

Tracking ecommerce metrics is crucial for any business that wants to achieve sustainable growth. Here are a few reasons you should track your ecommerce metrics.

Better understand your ecommerce sales

Ecommerce metrics allow you to understand how your business is performing at a deeper level. This means looking at more than looking at your revenue. 

You should also know where the sales are coming from. That includes understanding customer buying trends and most effective acquisition strategies.

Analyzing revenue in Brevo’s ecommerce dashboard

Data-driven decisions

Ecommerce metrics help you make data-based decisions. This will allow you to better plan your inventory as well as budget your marketing efforts. Understanding ecommerce KPIs can also lead to more accurate sales forecasting. 

Improved customer experience

Having a good grasp on your ecommerce metrics can help you create a seamless customer experience. You can test different landing pages, product descriptions, and website navigation to see what works best for your customers.

Grow your ecommerce business with Brevo

Searching for the right solution for your ecommerce business? Brevo gives you the tools you need to expand your reach and build lasting customer relationships.

Automate marketing campaigns across email, SMS, and more. Send personalized product recommendations to convert more customers. 

Streamline data from POS and ecommerce platforms for easy-to-understand insights. Brevo integrates seamlessly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware, and Prestashop.

Brevo’s ecommerce solution is available for Enterprise customers. If you’re just getting started, sign up and get core marketing features for free.

The post 13 Top Ecommerce Metrics to Track For Your Online Store appeared first on Brevo.

Say you’re a consultant starting a new business. Suddenly, you’re not just a consultant. You’re also the marketer drumming up business and the salesperson closing the deal, all while juggling the actual work you’re getting paid for.

From social media to CRM for consulting, there are many ways to grow your new consulting business. To help you out, we’ve put together a list of the best digital marketing strategies for consultants. 

Read on to learn how to market a consulting business, backed by real-life examples.

11 Best practices to market a consulting business

Here are the best strategies to use when learning how to market a consulting business.

1. Research your audience

Surely, you have a good idea of who your target audience is. But do you really know them inside and out? If you haven’t yet talked to a number of people who fit your target market, it’s time to start. 

One way is to secure a few introductory meetings by tapping into your existing network. When you frame these interactions as research calls, emphasize that you’re not trying to sell anything. People are often more than willing to lend a helping hand and share their insights.

As an alternative, consider offering a few complimentary consultations. This way, you’ll engage directly with potential customers, showcase your expertise, and gain valuable data to refine your services and marketing approach.

What answers should you seek from these interactions?

• Uncover the specific problems your target audience faces in their personal or professional lives. What are their biggest frustrations?
• Understand what your audience wants to achieve. What are their dreams and ambitions? What do they strive for in the long run?
• Determine what truly matters to them. What principles guide their decisions? What do they consider essential in their lives? 
• Learn about their past experience. Have they worked with consultants in the past? If so, what were your experiences like?
• Discover where your audience seeks information. What websites, publications, or social media platforms do they trust?

Document the findings in a spreadsheet, and try to spot recurring patterns. Use these shared characteristics to create detailed customer personas. Each customer persona should capture a different slice of your target audience, including their demographics, personality, pain points, goals, etc.

Creating your own customer persona (Source)

2. Focus on one social platform 

To put yourself in front of your prospective clients, you need to pinpoint the platform where they actively seek and engage with brands like yours.

When it comes to social media marketing, it’s tempting to build a presence across every major social media channel. But you shouldn’t. Tailor your marketing efforts instead to the specific format and preferences of users on a single platform.

Currently, there are two major platforms where individual consultants build strong brands: LinkedIn and Instagram.

While LinkedIn remains a go-to platform for B2B networking and professional development, Instagram has become extremely popular among B2C consultants. Many experts in the B2C niche find a more receptive audience on Instagram, as their ideal clients are often underrepresented on LinkedIn.

3. Speak to your customer personas

It’s relatively easy to grow your following by appealing to a wide audience. It’s more difficult to do so when you talk to a very specific group. And however enticing it is to cast a wide net, you need to always keep your ideal customers in mind.

One common mistake that professionals make on social media is talking to their peers instead of their potential customers. Take, for example, a business development consultant who shares a funny joke that fellow biz dev pros love. While it might get a ton of likes, if their target audience is small business owners, it won’t do much to attract new clients.

It’s worth taking this path once in a while to boost your engagement metrics. However, your long-term strategy should be laser-focused on your customer personas.

4. Claim your expert status

Demonstrating your expertise is the key objective of building an online presence. Don’t be afraid to give away some of your valuable knowledge for free.

Remember, what may seem obvious to you as an expert might be valuable knowledge to your audience. Start with the basics and spice up “boring” topics to make them more engaging. Get creative with different formats, from short videos to eye-catching carousel posts. Share interesting statistics from your work, delve into case studies, or offer tips and tricks.

Next comes networking events. Attend conferences, participate in local meetups, and appear on podcasts. This will not only broaden your reach but will also gain you recognition in the industry.

Kevin M. Yates is a learning and development (L&D) consultant with over 11,000 followers on LinkedIn. He regularly participates in conferences and interviews, establishing himself as a thought leader in L&D. 

Kevin M. Yates is a frequent guest at business conferences

5. Build a personal brand

The truth is, there’s tons of thought leadership content on the web. While it’s a valuable component of your marketing strategy, you need something else to stand out in the crowd. You need a personal brand.

A personal brand is the unique combination of your expertise, personality, and values that set you apart from other consulting firms. 

So, how do you build one?

Start by adding your personality to your content. The level of personal detail you share will depend on your specific niche and the platform you’re using to establish your presence. For instance, Instagram encourages more personal content than LinkedIn.

Julie Solomon is a brand strategy coach with over 150,000 followers on Instagram. She mainly posts helpful tips for businesses, stories of success, and inspiring messages. But she also occasionally throws in pictures of her family and makes videos in daily life settings. This helps people feel like they know her, not just her business.

Julie greeted her followers with a photo of her daughter

Of course, you don’t need to turn your professional account into a family album. But adding a touch of your personality can make a world of difference.

What else makes you stand out? Develop a personal style that sets your content apart. This could be through regular “talking head” videos, a unique design for your carousel posts, or even incorporating a quirky personal detail into your content.

6. Connect with other experts

Substantial follower count won’t come overnight. It will take a long time of posting consistently before you get a substantial follower count. While you’re working on growing your audience organically, consider partnering with other industry experts to accelerate your reach. 

Note: You don’t have to partner with your direct competitors, although networking with them isn’t off the table either. In fact, some competitors might even refer clients to you.

Focus on connecting with professionals in related fields who cater to the same target audience. For instance, if you’re a marketing consultant, you might partner with an in-house CMO for a joint webinar or podcast.

A joint webinar of a writing coach and a freelance writer

7. Create a simple marketing funnel

Valuable content and a strong personal brand are great for attracting attention. But how do you turn that attention into paying clients?

You need to map out a path your target audience will take from discovering you to actually booking your services.  

This path is called a marketing funnel, and it offers a visual representation of the interactions between you and your prospects that lead to conversion, just like the one below.

A marketing funnel for a consultancy business

The three stages of the funnel align with three types of content:

• Top-of-the-Funnel (ToFu) content aligns with the awareness stage, where your goal is to attract an audience and introduce them to your brand and expertise.
• Middle-of-the-Funnel (MoFu) content corresponds with the consideration stage, where potential clients are evaluating their options. MoFu content delves deeper into your services and showcases your unique value proposition.
• Bottom-of-the-Funnel (BoFu) content aligns with the conversion stage, where potential clients are ready to make a decision. BoFu content is more sales-oriented and focused on persuasive calls to action.

While we’ve talked about ToFu content at length in previous sections, it’s time to work on your MoFu and BoFu strategies.

Further reading: What is a Sales Funnel: Stages, Examples & How to Build One

8. Offer freebies

Ideally, somewhere between the awareness and consideration stages, you should be able to capture your audience’s contact information. This way, you’ll stay connected with them beyond the one social media platform and gauge their interest in your expertise.

So, how do you get them to willingly hand over their contact details? Freebies, or lead magnets, are the answer.

A freebie is a valuable resource or service offered to potential clients at no cost or in exchange for something other than money, e.g. their email address. It can be a webinar, checklist, template, newsletter, mini-course, or any other asset that your audience may find valuable. 

Once you’ve made up your mind, you need a form to collect users’ contact information and simple automation to unlock access to a gated resource once the form is submitted.

In Brevo’s marketing platform, you can design beautiful forms and landing pages to promote your freebie. Just navigate to the drag-and-drop editor and craft one in a few clicks.

Designing a lead generation signup form in Brevo

You can easily share the link or a QR code that Brevo automatically creates for you, or you can embed the form directly onto a landing page.

When someone fills out your form, their contact info goes straight into your email list and is stored in Brevo’s CRM system. All you need is to set up an automatic email that delivers your freebie right after someone submits the form.

A lead management automation in Brevo

Now you can create more email outreach sequences to nurture your leads (remember to get their permission for marketing emails on your form) and move them down the funnel. 

Further reading: Marketing Automation for Agencies: The Top 10 Tools

9. Collect social proof

Your words are only as good as the proof behind them. To win the trust of potential clients, you should back your MoFu content with testimonials, positive outcomes, and case studies from your existing client base.

If you’ve helped a client achieve significant results, ask them if they’d be willing to share their success story. Document every piece of positive feedback and don’t hesitate to brag about your achievements once in a while.

But social proof isn’t just about testimonials and case studies. If you’ve won awards, been featured in publications, or spoken at industry events, share these accomplishments.

And don’t wait for recognition to come to you. Chase opportunities to collect social proof, either by reaching out to your clients or applying for speaking engagements.

10. Set clear fees

Consulting services can vary widely, making it tricky to nail down your pricing and packages. That’s why it’s important to establish a clear framework for your pricing structure.

While you can certainly tailor your packages to meet individual client needs, having a baseline pricing structure makes your services more transparent and easier to price when clients come knocking.

Plus, it might be helpful to share a general idea of your fees publicly. This can help filter out potential clients who aren’t a good fit.

11. Simplify the booking process

Don’t make people jump through hoops to book your services when they reach the bottom of the funnel. Set up a simple but user-friendly online booking system that allows them to easily select their preferred date and time and make a payment (if applicable).

For example, instead of making potential clients fill out long forms and wait for a response for up to 48 hours, try using a simple booking landing page. This lets them easily pick a date and time that works for them. You could even offer to take payment right then and there or just offer a quick chat to iron out the details.

Revnx Financial uses Brevo Meetings  to implement seamless meeting scheduling functionality

With Brevo, you can create a sleek scheduling page that integrates seamlessly into your existing workflow. Allow clients to book appointments at their convenience, even outside of your regular business hours.

You can always send a follow-up email later, but you won’t be losing clients due to long wait times.

Market your consulting business with Brevo’s free tools

Now you know how to market a consulting business. Ready to get started?

Brevo will set your marketing strategy up for success. Set up email marketing campaigns, collect leads, and move them down the pipeline with Brevo’s free sales and marketing tools.

The post How to Market Your Consulting Business: 11 Best Practices appeared first on Brevo.

Like in many other industries, email marketing is a great way for SaaS companies to grow their customer base. However, there are many factors that set SaaS email marketing apart from other types of marketing campaigns.

But don’t worry: we’ve put together this guide to help you create a successful SaaS email marketing strategy that will get you off on the right foot.

What is SaaS email marketing?

SaaS email marketing is a way for SaaS companies to grow their business using email. These emails can target both existing and potential customers.

SaaS companies can use email marketing to convert leads, promote new features, or re-engage inactive users. The purpose of the campaign varies depending on where the customer is in their journey.

Examples of SaaS email marketing campaigns include onboarding emails, upgrade-to-paid emails, and product updates.

Why should you get started with SaaS email marketing?

Not everyone needs to start email marketing as soon as they launch a SaaS company. To make it work, you need to have a basic understanding of how SaaS email marketing works.

Here are a few scenarios when you’d better hold off launching a SaaS email marketing strategy.

• You have a very small user base or no audience yet. It’s better to concentrate on acquiring customers and building an initial following first.
• You lack the resources to dedicate to email marketing. The strategy requires consistent effort to plan, create, execute, and analyze campaigns. If you don’t have the time or resources, it’s wiser to focus on areas where you’ll have greater impact.
• You want to acquire customers using a scraped email list. What you need is cold email outreach, which requires different techniques and expertise. 

But if any of the following statements are true, it might be time for you to start with SaaS email marketing.

• You have a steady stream of high-quality leads. Whether it’s through organic website traffic, paid advertising, or other channels, you’re consistently generating leads who have expressed interest in your offer.
• You’ve launched your product and have a growing user base. You’re ready to use email to onboard new users, share product updates, and gather feedback.
• You have a clear customer journey map. If you understand your customer’s path from awareness to purchase to advocacy, email marketing can be used to guide them through each stage. 
• You want to increase customer retention and reduce churn. You can use email to share educational content, offer exclusive discounts, and gather feedback to improve your product.
• You want to upsell or cross-sell existing customers. If you have multiple products or pricing tiers, email marketing can help you promote upgrades or additional features to existing customers. 
• You want to build a community around your brand. Email marketing will help you create a sense of community among your users. 

These are just a few examples of when SaaS email marketing is worth your time and investment. Remember, the key is to start when you have the resources at hand and the end goal in mind.

15 SaaS email marketing examples

Weekly email newsletters might be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of email marketing. But it’s way more than that. 

Here are a few great SaaS email marketing campaign examples for every purpose. 

Marketing emails

Marketing emails are a common way to promote your SaaS product or service. You’ll use them to announce promotions, share new content, or invite users to upcoming events.

Discount offer

Squarespace’s promotional email highlights a 20% discount for new subscriptions. The message is focused and concise — it clearly indicates the sale’s end date and guides users toward action with a prominent call-to-action (CTA) button. 

However, adding a countdown timer would help to emphasize the sense of urgency and potentially drive more conversions.

Discount email by Squarespace

Newsletter

Ahrefs’ newsletter always opens with a “meme of the week,” grabbing readers’ attention and making them eager to open the email. Beyond the laughs, subscribers discover a valuable digest of informative content.

Newsletter by Ahrefs

Event promo

SurveyMonkey frequently uses email to promote their upcoming events. Their webinar invitation emails feature a clear and concise format, much like Squarespace’s promotional emails.  The large headline, key event details (time, location), a prominent call-to-action button, and a list of notable speakers provide all the essential information without overwhelming the reader.

Virtual event invitation email by SurveyMonkey

Lifecycle emails

This is perhaps the most impactful category of email marketing. It includes all emails you send to users starting from the moment they sign up, whether for a free trial or a paid subscription.

Lifecycle emails, a.k.a. drip marketing campaigns, are usually incredibly personalized. You can set precise triggers to send emails at the exact moment they’ll resonate most with the recipient, such as after they open a specific email or interact with a feature in your app.

Welcome email

This is where the user journey usually begins. Hemingway’s welcome email sets the stage by outlining what free trial users can expect in the next two weeks and inviting them to dive in and explore the product.

While some brands also use a welcome email to initiate onboarding and educate new customers, it’s not uncommon to break this down into a separate sequence.

Welcome email by Hemingway

Onboarding email

Onboarding emails can take many different forms. You can embed a video, share helpful links, or drive users to an interactive tour of your product. You can also use data on how users interact with your product to see what they’ve accomplished and offer guidance for the next steps.

Softr, for example, splits the onboarding sequence into several steps. First, they send a welcome email with helpful links. When users create their first app, they follow up with an automated email guiding users through their next steps.

Onboarding email by Softr

Progress update

Grammarly’s weekly writing updates are a great way to keep users engaged. Presented as a fun infographic, these emails help to foster a positive perception of the brand and add the gamification element to their experience.

Progress email by Grammarly

Upgrade-to-paid email

A major goal of lifecycle emails in SaaS is turning free trial and freemium users into paying customers. Brevo’s email is a good example of this. After the initial onboarding sequence, freemium users get an email inviting them to upgrade from the freemium plan.

Pro tip: Another smart move is to set up an automated email that triggers when users try to use features that are only for paid plans, or when they’re about to hit their usage limits.

Upgrade-to-paid email by Brevo

Subscription renewal

This is a must-have email type for every SaaS company. If you collect credit card information upfront, these emails prevent you from charging users who don’t intend to continue and avoid unnecessary refunds. If you don’t require payment details upfront, these emails remind users to add their information so their account remains active.

The campaign below illustrates a well-timed reminder to renew a subscription, sent three days before expiration. If payment were to be withdrawn automatically, Visa regulations would require the company to send this reminder email seven days prior to renewal.

Subscription renewal email by Serpstat

Winback email

It’s often easier to reactivate a lost subscriber than convert a brand-new lead. That’s why winback emails are such an important tool in your email marketing strategy.

Winback emails are especially helpful in reducing churn (aim to keep the annual churn rate around 5-7%).

Pipeline demonstrates this with their post-cancellation campaign. They ask for feedback and, as a final effort, provide a link for users to easily log back in if they change their mind. The email combines a customer exit survey with a winback attempt that doesn’t look disruptive.

Post-cancellation email by Pipeline

Product emails

Product emails are focused solely on your SaaS product. You’ll send them to inform users about updates, bug fixes, scheduled maintenance, and any other important product-related information.

Product updates

Scribe uses regular product emails to introduce new features and outline their benefits. The clever use of user feedback below the main message adds social proof and piques the interest among potential users. 

In addition to spotlighting individual features, Scribe sends monthly product update digests, listing all recent developments in a single email.

Feature announcement email by Scribe

Important notes

The following example illustrates how emails can be used to maintain a seamless user experience.

ClickUp communicated the shutdown of its older version through a series of emails titled “Important Note.” They’ve also included a link to a help article to guide users through the change.

Important note by ClickUp

Technical issues

As a SaaS brand, you can’t avoid occasional technical issues. But how you communicate these difficulties can significantly impact how people see your brand. 

Zapier sets a good example by proactively communicating upcoming issues and setting clear expectations with their users. Once the issue is resolved, they send a follow-up email to keep everyone informed.

Technical problem communication by Zapier

Transactional emails

Transactional emails are automated messages triggered by user actions within your product. Contrary to lifecycle emails, these include essential operational messages like account activations, password resets, receipts, etc.

A unique sending process distinguishes transactional emails from other types of emails. They don’t need explicit consent from the recipient and are often sent using a special protocol (SMTP) for faster delivery. 

Action required

Transactional emails are important for tasks that require collaboration. For example, they’re often used in platforms like Deel, where contracts involve lots of back-and-forth communication. Deel uses these emails to let people know when it’s their turn to sign a contract.

Transactional email by Deel

Password reset

As a SaaS business, you’ll often use transactional emails to confirm actions taken within the product. These emails usually include a CTA button that allows users to easily verify their actions, like this example from Pinterest.

Password reset email by Pinterest

7 Best practices for SaaS email marketing

What you just saw is the tip of the iceberg called email marketing. There’s much more to every email example than meets the eye. 

How did they segment their contacts? What steps did the automation workflow involve? What happens after a user opens an email?

You might not know the specifics behind each of these email examples, but you can follow the best practices that guided their creation.

1. Choose email marketing software that will fit your needs

There are tons of Saas email marketing tools out there. Not all of them will meet your needs. 

Here are a few features to keep in mind when choosing an email marketing software for your Saas company.

• Transactional and marketing emails. The software should handle both types of emails — the ones related to your product (e.g. account confirmations) and the ones you use for marketing (e.g. newsletters and promotions).
• CRM integration or built-in CRM. The platform should work seamlessly with your sales CRM, or even better, have its own built-in CRM. 
• Behavior-based marketing automation workflows. While most email marketing platforms offer basic marketing automation tools, you need more. For highly personalized emails, look for a solution that lets you automate emails based on how users interact with your website or product.
• Scalable pricing. Choose software that doesn’t charge you more just because your contact list grows. 
• Robust email API. As your workflows get more complex, you’ll need a strong email API to easily integrate email marketing into your other systems and processes.

Brevo ticks all the boxes. The all-in-one suite supports both marketing and transactional emails and offers multichannel marketing, customer support tools, and robust CRM and sales features. 

Brevo’s SMTP relay and email API empower you to build a powerful email sending engine with exceptional deliverability. All of this comes with budget-friendly pricing for growing companies.

2. Prepare your account to comply with email policies

The real challenge of email marketing isn’t crafting eye-catching emails, but ensuring they actually reach your subscribers’ inboxes. 

Here are some basic tips to improve email deliverability:

• For optimal email deliverability, consider obtaining a dedicated IP address from your email service provider.
• Choose an email platform with a good reputation, especially if you don’t plan to purchase a dedicated IP address. Low-cost services may be frequented by spammers, impacting your sender reputation.
• Collect explicit consent from people before adding them to your email list.
• Gradually increase your email sending volume to warm up your address and establish a positive sending reputation before launching large-scale campaigns.
• Keep your mailing list clean and regularly remove inactive users.

While these tips still apply, new spam regulations from Gmail and Yahoo have raised the bar. In addition to the above practices, these regulations require you as a sender to:

• Keep your spam complaint rate below 0.3%.
• Include a one-click unsubscribe option in all emails.
• Authenticate your domain(s) with DKIM or SPF if you send over 5,000 emails per day.

3. Set up a lead generation engine

The truth is, many recommended lead generation tactics work only for companies that already have a reputation. For example, if you’re just starting out, you’ll have a hard time trying to collect subscribers to your newsletter — people might not even know it exists. 

Here are a few lead generation techniques that work:

• Invest in paid social media advertising to reach a wider audience and drive traffic to your landing pages. Offer valuable gated content, such as playbooks, templates, or checklists, to capture leads.
• Produce an industry report. Even if you don’t have a high-traffic website, you can use social media to distribute your report. Over time, this can grow your lead generation by as much as 400%.
• Collaborate on webinars and podcasts. Partner with other businesses or influencers in your industry to tap into their audience.
• Use a free tool as a lead magnet. A simple calculator or a free limited version of your software will do. For example, Moz, an SEO tool, offers a library of free tools in exchange for user information.

Moz offers access to free tools in exchange for customer data

When you’ve decided on a tactic, gate your lead magnet with a short and sweet sign-up form. Include a checkbox for users to explicitly consent to receive marketing communications. Then sync it to a dedicated email list. 

4. Segment all incoming leads and customers

Whether a potential customer signed up for your free trial or downloaded a report, your messaging should be different. So, if you run several lead magnets, you need to create separate contact lists based on how users first found you.

But what if you’re targeting very different groups of people with one lead magnet? 

In that case, add a few qualifying questions to your lead generation form. For example, if your product is for both in-house employees and freelancers, and your message is different for each, add a field asking them to choose. Then you can use an “if/else” automation to put those leads into different lists based on their answers. 

Here’s how a customer segmentation automation might look in Brevo:

Customer segmentation automation in Brevo

To maintain accurate and relevant lists, you need to continuously qualify leads as they interact (or don’t) with your campaigns. In Brevo, you can set up additional automations to score and segment your contacts based on email engagement, conversions, and actions on your website.

Lead scoring workflow with Brevo automation

5. Build an email marketing funnel

As you start planning your email campaigns, imagine your leads’ path to conversion as a funnel. Leads enter the top of it when they join your email list and go through multiple touchpoints. As they interact with your emails and learn more about your brand, they move down the funnel, eventually becoming loyal customers.

This funnel can be roughly divided into four key stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty. While there might be additional steps between each stage depending on your specific customer journey, the core concept remains the same. Each stage in the funnel requires different types of content to move users through the funnel. 

In the awareness stage, newsletters and webinar promotions can help you qualify new subscribers. Those who engage with these initial emails can then be nurtured with promotional campaigns and case studies. Once they convert, upselling sequences and NPS surveys can help foster loyalty and encourage repeat business.

Further reading: What is a Sales Funnel: Stages, Examples & How to Build One

6. Create drip campaigns

You’ve already seen drip email campaigns examples above. These are email sequences automatically sent based on specific user actions. Most commonly, they’re used for lifecycle emails (e.g., onboarding, milestone achievements, re-engagement) and marketing promotions.

To create one, simply set up an automated workflow within your email marketing platform. Every good system should offer this functionality. Brevo makes it easy to create all kinds of email automations, from basic time-based emails to sophisticated workflows triggered by user activity. 

Here’s how to automate a drip campaign in Brevo.

• Create all the emails, contact lists, and any custom contact attributes you’ll use in your drip campaign.
• Go to Automations > Create an automation > Start from scratch (or use a template).
• Name and describe the automation.
• Define a trigger (e.g., signing up, clicking a link).
• Add each step and condition (e.g. “if they clicked this”) and actions (e.g.”send this email”).

How drip campaign automations work

7. A/B test your email campaigns and automation workflows

Finally, let’s talk about your email content. Your email marketing tool offers endless email templates, but how do you choose the best approach? 

Instead of agonizing over the perfect template, let your audience guide you. A/B test different versions of your emails to see which images, structure, calls to action (CTAs), and subject lines resonate most with them. 

For each marketing email, create two versions. These versions should only differ in one element that you think could significantly impact open rates or click-through rates, such as the subject line, a call-to-action button, or even image placement.

Setting up an A/B test in Brevo

An email marketing platform like Brevo will handle the test for you — all you need is to design the two versions of your email. The platform will send them to two equal groups, together representing a portion of your total target audience. When the test is over, the winning version will be automatically sent to the remaining recipients.

This is how A/B testing works for individual email campaigns. But most of your emails will be sent through automation — and ideally, you should be able to test those too. Brevo makes this possible, allowing you to A/B test different components of your workflows.

• Email templates: see which template generates more engagement or conversion rates.
• Workflow setup: test different combinations or order of steps to find what performs best.
• Message frequency: determine the optimal frequency for sending emails or text messages.

By running these tests within your workflows, you can confidently determine the most effective approach for each step of your customer journey.

Make changes to your emails and automations as you see room for optimization — just remember to document campaign metrics so you can measure the impact of those changes.

Set your SaaS email marketing campaigns up for success

An effective email marketing strategy starts with software that doesn’t restrict your actions. Brevo offers a complete email marketing toolkit to support all your initiatives. As you grow, expand into Brevo’s sales and CRM tools.

The post 15 SaaS Email Marketing Examples & Best Practices appeared first on Brevo.

Looking to bring in more clients to your local business? You’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we’ve compiled 12 actionable home services marketing tips drawn from the successful strategies of businesses just like yours.

What is home services marketing?

Home services marketing is a combination of promotional tactics to attract potential clients to your service business. 

A home services marketing strategy may include a diverse range of tactics, including paid advertising, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing campaigns, and more. 

How to market a home service company

Here are proven steps to market your home service business successfully. You may not need to follow all of them — take one step at a time, and add more strategies as you see fit.

Read on for the top home services marketing tips.

1. Define your target audience

When it comes to home services marketing, you don’t need to appeal to everyone at once.

While some home service professionals, like plumbers or electricians, cater to a wide range of homeowners, others have a more specific group of customers. It’s really important to clearly define who your target audience is early in your digital marketing journey.

For example, home cleaning services mostly appeal to busy working professionals, people who manage rental properties, or those who need help with deep cleaning after renovation. By narrowing down your audience pool to specific categories, you can create a way more targeted marketing plan that speaks directly to your ideal customers.

So how do you define your target audience? Ideally, you should be able to have a look at your past customers and highlight the repeating patterns. If you’re only starting out, you can conduct market research or look at your competitors to see who they are primarily targeting. 

It’s also a good idea to create 3–4 distinct customer personas to better visualize your target audience characteristics. A customer persona is a fictional character that represents the key features of your ideal customers.

Customer persona example

2. Know where your clients find you (or your competitors)

After identifying your target audience, the next step is to pinpoint where they go to find home services. Are they active on popular social media platforms? Do they seek referrals on forums or online groups? Are they online at all?

There are two ways to find the answers: ask your existing customers directly and/or explore the channels where you expect your target customers to be present.

Check online directories, social media platforms, local forums, and community groups. See if your competitors are active on these channels and how much engagement they’re getting. 

For home services marketing, It’s best to enter a channel where moderate competition already exists. This suggests your target audience is actively using it.

These are some home services marketing channels you could use to build your online reputation:

• Email marketing
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Forums
• Messengers like Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.
• Google search
• Online local directories like Google My Business and Foursquare

Instagram presence of a landscaping company

3. Build your presence both online and offline

We’ve touched on online marketing strategies — and we’ll get back to it again — but we shouldn’t forget that the home services industry often thrives on offline promotion.

In fact, offline marketing can be a powerful tool for building brand awareness and your initial customer base. While it might not be enough to scale your business rapidly, it’s a solid foundation to start with.

You know those vans driving around town with company logos and phone numbers plastered on them? That’s a great example of offline marketing in action.

But it’s not just about vans. There are plenty of other offline tactics you can use to promote your local home service business: anything from networking with local businesses and attending community events to even good old-fashioned print advertising.

No matter which offline tactic you choose, back it up with an online presence. Think of it as a funnel: many prospective customers who discover your services offline have only just entered the top of it. They may need multiple touchpoints before they decide to hire you. Those touchpoints are supported by your digital marketing strategies.

Visualization of a potential marketing funnel for a home services business

4. Use QR codes

QR codes are a smart marketing tactic that bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds. 

Imagine you have a well-designed landing page that showcases your services and customer testimonials. You might link to it in a few offline places, but most people won’t be patient enough to manually type in a lengthy URL.

Instead, you can place a prominent QR code on your business card or company van. When someone sees it and wants to learn more, they can simply scan the code with their smartphone camera and instantly access your landing page, social media account, or messenger app.

WhatsApp QR code

Pro tip: If you’re using WhatsApp for business, you can even drive potential customers directly to your WhatsApp Business account instead of a traditional website. Easily generate a QR code that links to your WhatsApp Business account using a free QR code generator. Or access it within your WhatsApp settings. 

To manage customer interactions through a convenient interface, consider using a dedicated WhatsApp marketing software.

5. Set up a simple home services website

For home services marketing, it’s important to have a credible website. Luckily, you don’t need to hire a professional to craft a complex website design. A simple one-page website can do the trick.

You can create one with any drag-and-drop builder. Brevo offers a landing page creation feature as part of its comprehensive toolkit (which will be handy as you expand your marketing efforts).

Building a user-friendly landing page in Brevo

In Brevo, you can get started with one of the many pre-built templates or easily assemble a page by dragging and dropping the various building blocks. Just include the essentials: a clear description of your services, customer testimonials, and your contact information. 

6. Get featured in local business listings

This is a must-do step for any home service company. It’s completely free and can significantly boost your online visibility.

Local business directories are online platforms where potential customers can easily search for businesses in their service area, including home service providers like yours.

Some of the most popular international directories include Google Business Profile, Foursquare, and Yelp. However, you’ll likely find directories specific to home services in your country or city as well. 

7. Boost your local search rankings

While getting featured in Google’s directory is a great start, it doesn’t guarantee top visibility among the many other businesses in your area. Your listing might appear below the initial search engine results, and only three businesses typically get featured prominently on the main screen. If you’re new and don’t have many reviews yet, reaching those top spots will take time.

Meanwhile, you can improve your online visibility by boosting your site’s search rankings. If you’re in a competitive niche, it’s best to hire a local SEO expert to achieve positive results as fast as possible. If you are not, you can try improving your rankings on your own.

How do you gauge the competitiveness of your niche in terms of SEO?

A simple way to do this is by using a free SEO tool like Semrush. Enter the main search query that your local customers might use to find your services and check the search volume and keyword difficulty score. 

If the difficulty score is below 50, it indicates a less competitive niche, and it’s quite possible to achieve positive results without much expertise (assuming you have a basic understanding of marketing principles).

Initial keyword research to assess niche competitiveness

If your niche is low-competition, include these steps in your SEO strategy:

• Research more relevant keywords that potential customers might use to search for your services in your area (e.g., “cleaning services in [your city],” “affordable house cleaning,” “best deep cleaning service”). Incorporate these keywords naturally into your website’s content, titles, meta descriptions, and header tags.
• Add more content to your website. Publish a few informative articles on relevant topics (e.g., “What to Know Before Hiring a Cleaning Service,” “Top 10 Cleaning Hacks for Busy Professionals”). Or add a FAQ section to address common questions and concerns. This will provide more context for search engines and allow you to naturally include your target keywords without overstuffing your landing page.
• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly. Optimize images to reduce file sizes and avoid slow loading times. A responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes will improve user experience and contribute to higher search rankings.

8. Invest in paid ads

While the processes you’ve set in motion (like SEO and directory listings) are working their magic, it can take weeks or even months to see the results. In the meantime, you can give your home service business a little extra boost with PPC ads, or pay-per-click advertising.

Paid ads provide instant visibility to your target audience, allowing you to drive conversions and start seeing a return on your marketing investment right away.

Can’t you only run paid ads then, without wasting your time on other techniques? You can, but this method isn’t sustainable for long-term growth. Building a strong organic presence both online and offline creates a self-sustaining marketing engine that doesn’t require constant financial investment. Paid ads, on the other hand, demand continuous attention, optimization, and a consistent budget to maintain their effectiveness.

Typically, small businesses choose between advertising on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. The best platform for you will depend on your target audience and their online habits. 

For home service companies, Facebook is usually the most popular option. It allows you to showcase your services with high-quality visuals and generally costs less than Google Ads. 

As a bonus, if you’re already using Brevo for your marketing, you can conveniently manage your Facebook ads directly through the platform.

Managing Facebook Ads in Brevo

9. Make it easy to book your services

As part of your home services marketing strategy, you should make it as easy to communicate with customers as possible. Did you know that a third of customers expect businesses to respond to emails within an hour? And that’s just for emails.

When it comes to phone calls or messages, people expect even faster replies. If you’re tied up with other clients when a potential customer reaches out, you risk losing them to a competitor who responds more promptly.

To prevent this, set up an online booking system. You’ll need simple automation that syncs with your calendar and shows potential customers your available slots in real-time. While you should still confirm each booking, having an online system allows you to capture leads even when you’re busy with other clients.

You can easily create a booking page with Brevo’s free Meetings tool. Just sync your calendar, specify the event type, and share your booking link wherever you want. You can also add a payment method and set no-show, cancellation, and late policies.

Appointment scheduling in Brevo

Pro tip: Add a chat to your website to quickly answer FAQs. If visitors want to inquire about your pricing, policies, or work hours, a chatbot can assist them immediately. For more complex inquiries, let clients leave their requests and get back to them when you’re available.

Home services chatbot

10. Collect reviews

Always ask your clients to leave online reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, or wherever you’re present. 

First off, it’s a way to assess your customer experience and identify areas for improvement. And of course, positive reviews will act as a powerful magnet for new customers. 

Even happy customers often forget to share their positive experiences. You can fix that by offering incentives like a small discount on their next service as a thank-you for their feedback.

Make leaving a review as effortless as possible for your customers. Send them a direct link (ideally with a big, eye-catching button) to the platform where you’re collecting testimonials. For those short on time, provide an option to simply rate your services without writing a lengthy text.

11. Stay in touch with your customers

Keeping existing customers coming back is more cost-effective than constantly acquiring new ones. It’s in your best interest to build lasting relationships with your clients.

That’s why it’s important to collect and store your customers’ information in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Think of it as a central hub for all your customer data. When someone fills out your contact form or books your services online, that information automatically flows into your CRM. 

From there, you can reach these contacts with regular emails or SMS texts with customer surveys, newsletters, and seasonal offers.

Brevo offers a free and easy-to-use tool for creating forms, storing customer data, and designing eye-catching emails and text messages.

Designing email marketing campaigns in Brevo

Important: Before sending promotional messages, you need to give something back. After completing a service, don’t just disappear. Be available to answer questions, address concerns, and resolve any issues that might arise.

12. Offer a referral program

Another effective way to get new leads without breaking the bank is word-of-mouth. That’s when your happy customers tell their friends and family about you, basically giving you free advertising.

But to make it work at scale, you need to give your customers a reason to spread the word. This is what you need a referral program for. 

It’s a simple idea: you offer your existing customers a lead magnet — a discount, a gift card, or even a cash bonus — every time they send a new customer your way. 

Further reading: Small Business Email Marketing Strategy & Tips for 2024

Get started with home services marketing

Home service business owners don’t need to empty their wallets or plaster billboards across town to attract new customers. 

Start with a few key strategies, and stick with them for a few months to gather enough data to assess their effectiveness. Focus on measuring metrics like conversion rates and new leads to determine what’s working best for your business.

Ready to get started? Brevo offers a range of tools to streamline your home services marketing strategy.

The post 12 Top Home Services Marketing Tips & Examples to Grow Your Business appeared first on Brevo.

MailerLite is a reliable and budget-friendly email marketing service that’s often a top choice for small businesses looking to connect with their potential and existing customers by email. 

However, if you’re ready to expand your marketing campaigns, integrate other channels like SMS or WhatsApp, or involve your sales team, you might hit MailerLite’s limits.

If you aren’t into creating a complex ecosystem of tools and want to get the best value for the best price in one system, you’d better look at MailerLite alternatives.

We’ve explored 10 popular MailerLite alternatives — some simply more affordable, others with expanded capabilities — so you’re sure to find the perfect fit for your needs.

Why consider MailerLite alternatives?

MailerLite pricing plan comparison

• All MailerLite plans have subscriber limits, which means costs will rapidly increase as your email list grows.
• MailerLite doesn’t offer integrated campaigns across channels like WhatsApp, SMS, or live chat.
• MailerLite doesn’t offer built-in customer relationship management (CRM) or sales features.
• Marketers who need advanced behavior-based automation triggers may find MailerLite’s options too limited.
• MailerLite lacks phone call and meeting scheduling features, which are essential for bottom-of-the-funnel marketing and sales activities.

If you’re looking for any of the following, the MailerLite alternatives listed below will be a better fit.

The top 10 MailerLite alternatives

Here are the top ten MailerLite competitors to consider.

1. Brevo
2. Moosend
3. GetResponse
4. Mailchimp
5. ConvertKit
6. SendPulse
7. AWeber
8. Constant Contact
9. ActiveCampaign
10. SendGrid

1. Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is one of the best MailerLite alternatives for it fills most of the gaps in its capabilities. It offers a comprehensive marketing and CRM platform that centralizes customer interactions in one place. 

If you’re seeking the power of an all-in-one system without sacrificing the ease of use, Brevo is an excellent choice. 

One of Brevo’s greatest strengths is its flexibility: you only pay for the features you actually need. But as your business evolves, you can easily access and add more advanced features, all within the familiar Brevo interface.

Features

• Email marketing campaigns
• Email autoresponders
• Marketing automation
• Landing pages
• Signup forms
• A/B testing
• Transactional email
• Abandoned cart emails
• Conversion tracking and reporting
• Heat maps & click stats
• CRM
• Customer segmentation
• Sales pipelines
• Phone
• Meetings
• Live chat & chatbot
• Web and mobile push
• SMS marketing 
• WhatsApp campaigns
• AI email writing
• Facebook ads

Pricing

Brevo offers a generous forever-free plan that includes up to 300 emails per day, along with essential features like transactional emails, automated workflows, and segmentation. To remove the daily sending limit and send 5,000 emails per month, you can upgrade to the Starter plan for just $9/month. 

For more advanced features like AI-powered predictive sending, a landing page builder, Facebook ads, and A/B testing, the Business plan is available at $18/month.

You can easily increase your sending limits within any plan or purchase add-ons without needing to upgrade to a higher tier.

Why choose Brevo over MailerLite

• Brevo‘s generous contact limits, even on the free plan (up to 100,000 contacts), make it a scalable choice for businesses of all sizes.
• Brevo offers a unified platform for email, SMS, and WhatsApp marketing, enabling you to reach customers through multiple channels.
• Brevo‘s automation capabilities surpass MailerLite’s — you can create automated workflows based on user behavior on your website.
• Brevo is particularly strong in transactional email support, making it a great choice for businesses that rely on automated order confirmations, password resets, and similar communications.
• Brevo offers a CRM and deal management functionality so you don’t need to switch to a third-party tool to move your marketing leads down the pipeline. 
• Built-in live chat, phone calls, and chatbot features allow you to streamline all customer communications and keep the customer service team connected to marketing and sales operations.

2. Moosend

Moosend’s email marketing software can also be a solid alternative to MailerLite if you need features like transactional emails or a built-in CRM.

Moosend is a particularly strong choice for solopreneurs and startups seeking a quick and easy entry into email marketing, due to its user-friendly interface. It also offers basic ecommerce features like personalized product recommendations and shoppable emails, making it a great option for retailers.

On the downside, users frequently report glitches and minor technical problems, but they don’t seem to massively affect the user experience.

Features

• Email marketing
• Landing pages & forms
• Transactional emails
• Marketing automation
• Performance reporting
• CRM
• Customer segmentation
• AI writing assistant
• Ecommerce personalization

Pricing 

Similar to MailerLite, Moosend’s pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have. Plans start at $7/month for up to 500 subscribers, with costs scaling as your list grows.

Moosend doesn’t offer a forever-free plan, but you can try it out with a 30-day free trial.

Why choose Moosend over MailerLite

• Moosend provides outstanding reporting capabilities when compared to many options within the same price range.
• Moosend allows you to send transactional emails over its SMTP server.
• It’s possible to buy email credits in Moosend instead of signing up for a monthly subscription.

3. GetResponse

GetResponse is an email marketing and automation platform offering a robust suite of promotional tools. Beyond just sending emails, GetResponse empowers you to engage your audience through various channels, including paid advertising, web push notifications, and even interactive webinars.

The platform’s standout feature is a unique ability to build custom conversion funnels tailored for businesses of all types. You can create a funnel and connect all of your marketing assets, from Facebook Ads and landing pages to signup forms and abandoned cart emails. Transparent reporting will give you a detailed breakdown of each stage, identifying where users drop off or convert.

Features 

• Email marketing
• Marketing automation
• Customer segmentation
• Transactional emails
• Landing pages
• Pop-ups & forms
• Conversion funnels
• Live chat
• SMS marketing
• AI email writing
• Paid ads
• Webinars
• Ecommerce integrations

Pricing 

GetResponse’s free plan is limited to 2,500 marketing emails per month and doesn’t include any additional features. Their paid plans start at $15.6/month for email marketing with up to 1,000 subscribers.  

To access automation, advanced segmentation, contact scoring, and sales funnels, you’ll need to upgrade to their $48.4/month plan. Ecommerce-specific features like platform integrations and transactional emails require the highest tier plan at $97.6/month.

Why choose GetResponse over MailerLite

• GetResponse provides significantly more flexibility for A/B testing than MailerLite. It allows you to A/B test not only emails but also landing pages, and you can test multiple variables simultaneously.
• Striving to help businesses build a complete conversion funnel within a single platform, GetResponse offers features that go beyond email marketing. These include webinar hosting and tools for creating and managing paid advertising campaigns.
• GetResponse supports more advanced automated sequences based on such events as product purchases, abandoned carts, and webinar attendance.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a well-known email marketing platform that gained popularity when it was a more budget-friendly option.

Mailchimp is a popular choice across various industries, but more specifically among ecommerce businesses. Its robust ecommerce integrations, SMS messaging add-on, and in-depth ecommerce analytics make it particularly well-suited for online retailers. 

It’s worth noting that Mailchimp can have a steeper learning curve compared to MailerLite, so some prior marketing experience is a plus.

Features

• Email marketing
• Marketing automation
• Contact segmentation
• Email templates
• A/B testing
• Forms & landing pages
• AI assistance
• Transactional emails
• SMS marketing
• Powerful analytics & custom reports
• Ecommerce integrations

Pricing

Mailchimp offers a free plan that covers up to 1,000 emails per month and 500 subscribers, but it has limited features. Paid plans begin at $13/month, providing you with 5,000 monthly email sends, access to the SMS add-on, A/B testing capabilities, and basic performance metrics.

For more advanced features like comprehensive scoring and segmentation, along with an increased sending limit of 6,000 emails per month, the Standard plan is available at $20 per month.

Why choose Mailchimp over MailerLite

• Mailchimp has a significantly bigger and more professionally designed collection of email templates compared to MailerLite’s library.
• While Mailchimp may not be the absolute leader in email marketing innovation, it is a robust all-in-one platform. Features like advanced contact segmentation and more sophisticated automation sequences give it a clear advantage over MailerLite.
• Mailchimp’s AI-powered designer can create entire emails tailored to your brand’s style. MailerLite’s AI capabilities are primarily focused on assisting with subject lines and copywriting.

Want to learn more? Discover the best Mailchimp alternatives.

5. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a specialized email marketing solution tailored mainly to the needs of solo creators. It offers a comprehensive toolkit that helps bloggers and solopreneurs grow their audience, build relationships with them, and monetize their expertise.

A unique feature you won’t find in most general email marketing tools is ConvertKit’s Creator Network. This exclusive platform allows ConvertKit users to connect with other creators to find opportunities for cross-promotion.

Mind that ConvertKit doesn’t have a traditional drag-and-drop editor, which you might expect from a modern email marketing platform. However, it’s still easy to create good-looking emails through its visual email editor or by using HTML.

Features

• Email marketing features
• Automated workflows
• Landing pages & forms
• Conversion reporting
• Creator Network
• Digital content monetization tools

Pricing 

ConvertKit offers a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers that includes unlimited email sending, basic monetization tools, and customer segmentation. Paid plans start at $9/month for up to 300 subscribers, unlocking advanced monetization features, automated email sequences, and third-party integrations.

For $25 per month, you can access the newsletter referral system, subscriber scoring, and deliverability insights. All plans offer the flexibility to increase your subscriber limit for an additional fee.

Why choose CovertKit over MailerLite

• ConvertKit‘s laser focus on creators’ needs enables it to deliver precisely the features that matter most, without overwhelming users with unnecessary complexity.
• With features like paid newsletter subscriptions, tip jars, and one-time purchases, the platform simplifies the monetization of digital products. Although basic monetization features are available in MailerLite as well, they don’t compare to the depth and flexibility of ConvertKit’s options.
• ConvertKit doesn’t restrict the number of monthly emails you can send. However, similar to MailerLite, its pricing plans do have specific limits on the number of subscribers you can have.

6. SendPulse

SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform that strikes a balance between fair pricing and comprehensive functionality. If you’re seeking a well-rounded marketing platform that includes built-in CRM, sales tools, and omnichannel marketing capabilities, SendPulse is an excellent option. 

What sets SendPulse apart is chatbot capabilities for all major messaging platforms, including Instagram, Meta (Facebook Messenger), WhatsApp, and Telegram.

Although SendPulse provides an extensive toolkit for all sorts of marketing tasks, it may fall short if you’re looking for highly advanced contact segmentation or detailed reporting.

Features

• Email campaigns
• Marketing automation
• CRM
• Transactional emails
• A/B testing
• SMS marketing
• Web push notifications
• Live chat
• Chatbots
• Landing pages & forms
• Pop-ups
• Online course builder

Pricing

A free plan is available for up to 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month. SendPulse’s paid pricing starts at $6.40/month for up to 500 subscribers.

Why choose SendPulse over MailerLite

• SendPulse allows businesses to engage and automate customer interactions across multiple messaging platforms with its chatbots.
• SendPulse users can create and deliver online courses directly within the platform.
• The platform includes a built-in CRM system and pipeline management capabilities to help streamline the marketing and sales processes.

7. AWeber

AWeber is an email marketing platform known for its intuitive interface and email deliverability. 

If you’re looking for a MailerLite alternative that combines email marketing, landing pages, web push notifications, and ecommerce capabilities, AWeber, might be for you. No bells and whistles — it simply gets the job done.

Features

• Email marketing
• AI writing assistance
• Automated workflows
• Subscriber segmentation
• Landing pages & forms
• Web push notifications
• Reporting & analytics

Pricing

AWeber offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers, allowing for one automated workflow. Their paid plans begin at $12.50/month, which provides access to 3 email automations, 3 landing pages, and advanced analytics. The next tier, priced at $20 per month, unlocks features like sales tracking and advanced landing page options.

All plans initially cap the subscriber limit at 500, but you can increase this limit for an additional fee. For businesses with large email lists, AWeber offers an unlimited plan for $899 per month.

Why choose AWeber over MailerLite

• AWeber integrates Canva so you can create beautiful custom designs right within your email builder.
• AWeber supports web push notifications, allowing you to send targeted messages to your audience’s browsers.
• AWeber provides stronger functionality for accepting online payments and setting up recurring payments compared to MailerLite.

8. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is another well-established email marketing platform known for its extensive list-building tools and wide range of integrations. Although it’s not the most budget-friendly option on the list, it does have its advantages.

In addition to email marketing, Constant Contact emphasizes social media marketing and ad management. If you use social media for list-building, these features will save you a lot of back and forth.

Features

• Email marketing
• Automation features
• CRM
• A/B testing
• Polls & surveys
• AI assistance
• Event marketing
• Social media marketing
• Social media ads management
• Integrations with ecommerce platforms

Pricing

As we’ve already mentioned, Constant Contact isn’t the cheapest MailerLite alternative. Like Mailchimp, Constant Contact gets expensive fast as your subscriber count increases.

There’s no free plan available, and paid plans start at $12/month for up to 500 subscribers. The Lite plan includes a sending limit of 10 times your contact list size, along with features like event management, SMS add-on, and social media management.

However, if you need A/B testing, advanced reporting, or access to the social media ads manager, you’ll need to upgrade to the Standard plan at $35/month. Access to heat maps, dynamic content, and custom automation paths is granted within the Premium plan at $80/month.

Why choose Constant Contact over MailerLite

• Constant Contact offers dedicated functionality to promote events, enable tickets and promo codes, and collect payments using Stripe or PayPal.
• Users can send SMS campaigns for an additional fee. Mind that this feature is available only to US customers.
• Constant Contact allows you to schedule and manage social media posts directly within the platform.

9. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a whole different ballgame compared to MailerLite. It’s your go-to if you’re looking for powerful marketing automation software.

The platform offers stronger automation capabilities, advanced performance reporting, and native ecommerce integrations that appeal to small businesses and enterprises alike. 

The advanced functionality of ActiveCampaign doesn’t necessarily make it a better fit than MailerLite for everyone. Consider it primarily if your business requires the depth it provides.

Features

• Email marketing
• Marketing automation
• Lead scoring
• CRM
• Facebook Lead Ads
• Pipelines & deal management
• Sentiment analysis
• Pop-ups and modal forms
• Personalized content
• Predictive sending
• SMS
• Advanced analytics & reporting
• Ecommerce integrations

Pricing

ActiveCampaign does not offer a free plan, but it does provide various packages tailored to marketing, sales, or a combination of both.

Marketing plans start at $29/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, including automation tools. The $49/month plan adds ecommerce integrations, lead scoring, and personalized content. 

Higher tiers (starting at $149/month) cater to up to 2,500 subscribers and unlock advanced features like A/B testing within automations, marketing attribution, and conversion insights.

Bundle plans start at $93/month, combining ActiveCampaign’s marketing and sales tools.

Why choose ActiveCampaign over MailerLite

• ActiveCampaign features a powerful integrated CRM system, replacing dedicated sales software for sales teams.
• When it comes to marketing insights, ActiveCampaign shines. It provides detailed reports on marketing revenue, conversion attribution, sales pipeline activity, and email list growth trends that you won’t find in a simple email marketing platform.
• ActiveCampaign offers significantly more ecommerce integrations and is way more flexible when it comes to building automated ecommerce workflows.

10. SendGrid

SendGrid is a cloud-based email delivery platform primarily focused on ensuring reliable and efficient delivery of transactional emails, such as order confirmations, password resets, and shipping notifications. 

While SendGrid may not offer the same breadth of out-of-the-box features as Brevo or ActiveCampaign, its strength lies in its ability to handle high-volume email sending with exceptional deliverability.

Features

• Email API and SMTP service
• Email campaigns
• Sign-up forms
• Automation
• List management

Pricing

SendGrid has separate offerings for developers and non-tech-savvy marketers. 

For developers, plans include access to APIs and SMTP Relay for fast transactional emails, starting with a free option for up to 100 emails daily. Paid plans begin at $19.95/month for up to 50,000 emails. 

Marketers can also start with a free tier for up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails monthly. The lowest pricing tier starts at $15/month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails, making SendGrid significantly more budget-friendly than MailerLite.

Why choose SendGrid over MailerLite

• SendGrid specializes in transactional emails, offering features and tools tailored to optimize their deliverability and performance. Mind that it also means you need to be tech-savvy to enjoy all the benefits of the platform.
• SendGrid’s primary focus is ensuring your emails land in your recipients’ inboxes, not their spam folders. If you rely on timely and accurate email delivery, SendGrid is a suitable option.
• The platform is built to handle large volumes of emails, allowing you to spend less while sending more.

Discover the 5 best SendGrid alternatives for transactional email.

Choose the best MailerLite alternative for your business

Whether you need advanced automation, multi-channel marketing, integrated CRM, or specialized features for creators or ecommerce, there’s a solution out there to meet your needs.

Ready to get started with one of the best MailerLite alternatives? Brevo stands out as an all-around top pick for its comprehensive features, flexibility, and affordability. Give it a try now, it’s free.

The post 10 MailerLite Alternatives for All Business Needs appeared first on Brevo.

Getting WordPress website users to sign up for your emails allows you to take the relationship further, from newsletters that keep your brand top of mind to campaigns promoting your latest offering.

This guide will walk you through how to create email subscription forms in WordPress so that you can turn your casual visitors into loyal fans.

Why you should add WordPress email subscription to your website

WordPress email subscription allows you to stay in touch with your website visitors. If you’re not asking your WordPress visitors to sign up to your email list, you’re missing a trick. Whatever your business, email marketing can help you build an engaged audience and loyal customer base. 

Growing an email list aids lead generation as it allows you to build on people’s initial interest through targeted campaigns. Setting up a WordPress newsletter is also a way of keeping in touch with your existing audience. For example, bloggers might let readers know about their latest content, while companies can share new products and promotions.

However you plan to use your WordPress email list, the channel offers some serious benefits: 

• People have actively opted in to hear from you

Email subscribers are more than casual site visitors — they were interested enough to want to stay in touch. So, with the right communication strategy, there’s a good chance they’ll bring value for your business. 

• You’re reaching each contact directly

Unlike other channels such as social media, email offers a direct line of communication with the individuals making up your audience. This means they’re not only more likely to see your message but it will also feel more personal. 

• You can be more targeted with your campaigns

When you build an email list, you’re in control of the data. You’ll know how someone signed up, giving an idea of what first attracted them. And you can gather more insights based on how they interact with your emails going forward. This helps you tailor content to your audience and be selective about what you send to which contacts. 

Luckily, launching email marketing for your WordPress site isn’t as complicated as you might think. There are lots of free plugins that make it easy to add email subscription to your website — read on for all the information you’ll need!

Further reading: How to Build an Email List: 10 Tactics That Work

Choosing a WordPress email subscription plugin

To collect email newsletter signups on your website you first need to find a plugin for creating your opt-in forms and capturing subscriber details. 

The best WordPress email subscription plugin for your site will depend on the functionality you’re looking for. Some focus solely on list building, meaning you’ll still need an email marketing platform for sending your campaigns and managing subscribers. 

Need help finding the right email service provider for your needs? Brevo offers an all-in-one solution for your WordPress email marketing. 

Our WordPress plugin includes a tool for creating subscription forms that you can then easily add to your site. It also has useful features like:

• Captcha protection for forms
• Multi-list subscription so contacts can choose what emails they want to receive
• Customizable success and error messages on forms
• Automated confirmation and double opt-in emails for subscribers

The plugin is free to use and lets you create unlimited forms and store as many subscribers as you need at no extra cost. 

On top of this, you’ll have access to Brevo’s email marketing software, including tools for:

• Email design: Design beautiful emails with the drag-and-drop editor or use one of our 40+ templates. The intuitive interface is suitable for beginners.
• Email list segmentation: Target the right people with your campaigns by dividing up your lists based on subscriber details.
• Email automation: Set up emails triggered by specific conditions, including welcome emails and email notifications when you publish a new post.
• Campaign analytics: Track performance including open and click rates to understand how subscribers interact with your emails. 

All this is available with the free version, which allows you to send up to 300 emails per day.

Once you’ve set up your Brevo account, the steps below will show you how to use the plugin to create an email subscription form in WordPress and start growing your list.

Further reading: 9 Best Email List-Building Tools with Pricing

How to add email subscription to WordPress using the Brevo plugin

With Brevo’s WordPress newsletter plugin, you can set up WordPress email subscribe forms in five simple steps:

1. Install Brevo’s plugin on your WordPress site.
2. Create your contact list.
3. Design your form.
4. Complete the form setup, including confirmation messages for subscriptions.
5. Add your form to different areas of your website.

1. Set up the Brevo WordPress plugin

Your first task is to install Brevo’s free WordPress email subscription plugin on your website. This will allow you to create signup forms directly from your dashboard and integrate them into your site content.   

To install the plugin:

• Log into your WordPress dashboard as an administrator.
• Go to “Plugins” in the sidebar menu, then “Add New”.  
• Search “Brevo” to find the plugin “Newsletter, SMTP, Email marketing and Subscribe forms by Brevo”.
• Click “Install Now”, then “Activate”.

To finish the setup, click on the Brevo plugin tab that will now have appeared in the sidebar menu of your WordPress dashboard. 

Here you can click the button to create a free account with. Or, if you already have one, go straight to the second step — “Activate your account with your API key v3”. Follow these instructions to find your API key, then enter the key and click “Login”.

Now you’ve connected the plugin to your Brevo account, subscriber details collected via your forms will sync with your chosen Brevo contact lists.

2. Create your contact list in Brevo

Before you can start collecting email subscriptions on your WordPress site, you need to create the list you want to add contacts to.

To do this, go to the “Contacts” tab in your Brevo account, select “Lists” from the sidebar and click the “Add a new list” button.

Next, give your list a name and click the button to create your list.

Your lists will automatically have columns, called contact attributes, for data like the contact name and email. If you plan to collect other information from subscribers when they sign up, you can add more attributes of your choice. For example, you might add an attribute for “Country” if you want to know a subscriber’s location. 

Any attributes you set up will then be available to use as fields in your WordPress email signup forms. 

3. Create your email subscription form in WordPress

Now for the most important step — creating an effective form that will convert your website visitors into subscribers.

Brevo’s plugin offers an easy-to-use tool for building your own custom forms directly from your WordPress dashboard. To get started, go to “Forms” and click “Add New Form”.

This will take you to the form builder where you can give your form a name before editing the setup and design. 

The builder includes a HTML editor for customizing your form. But, if you’re not familiar with code, you can easily add elements using the options below the HTML editor. The preview box then lets you see any edits in real time.

For the look of your form you have two options — either use the default styling that depends on your WordPress theme or use custom CSS. Select your preferred method in the “Form Style” section.

Adding fields to your form

When creating your form content, you need to decide what fields you want to use for collecting subscriber details.

By default your form will include fields for name and email but you might want to add more depending on your needs. For example, collecting data like gender or location can help you personalize your email campaigns for subscribers. 

However, your priority should be to keep your form as simple as possible. Avoid asking for too much from the outset, otherwise you risk putting people off signing up at all. It’s also a good idea to only make essential information like email address mandatory. 

To add a field to your form, select the relevant contact attribute from the dropdown in the “Add a new field” section. Options will then appear for editing the field text, as well as choosing if a field should be required. Once you’ve completed the field information, click the “Add to form” button. 

Other customization options

Aside from the form fields, you’ll also find sections for adding other elements including:

• Multi-list subscription

This lets subscribers select their interests or preferences and be added to a corresponding email list.

• Captcha

This will add captcha protection to your form to prevent spambot signups. For more detail, see our tutorial on setting up captcha for your forms. 

• Compliance note and term acceptance

This lets you include details of your privacy policy and a checkbox for subscribers to agree to your terms.

4. Complete the form setup

Once you’re happy with the form design, you need to decide what happens after a signup occurs. 

First, select one or more lists you want to add subscriber details to. You can choose from your available lists in the “Linked lists” section under “Signup process”.

Next, you have the option to customize what happens on the user side after subscription. 

Setting up the post-signup journey 

Creating a smooth experience for new subscribers will help make a good first impression. And Brevo’s WordPress forms tool offers ways to improve the process. 

The options available are under “Signup process” and include:

• Send a confirmation email

This will trigger an email to each subscriber letting them know they’re signed up to your list. Brevo provides a default template for this message, or you can create your own in the “Templates” section of your Brevo account. By customizing your confirmation email, you can introduce subscribers to your brand before they start receiving your regular emails.

• Double opt-in

This adds an extra step to the newsletter subscription where subscribers must click a link in your confirmation email to complete their subscription.

Double opt-in gives contacts the chance to confirm they wanted to sign up, while also preventing invalid addresses. As with the standard confirmation email, Brevo offers a default template or you can use your own. For more detail, check out our guide to double opt-in emails. 

• Redirect to URL

As well as sending a confirmation email, you can also take subscribers to a webpage after they fill out your form. To set this up, simply paste the URL of your chosen page, such as a dedicated success or thank you page you’ve created.

You can also edit the text for success and error messages on the form itself in the “Confirmation message” settings.

5. Add your email subscription form to your WordPress site

After putting time into creating your form you’ll want to make sure as many of your website visitors as possible see it. Here are some effective places for maximum visibility:

• Your Homepage
• Your site’s header or footer
• Blog posts, either within articles or as a sidebar 
• The Contact and About pages
• A dedicated landing page
• A website popup

With Brevo’s WordPress email subscription plugin, it’s quick and easy to add your form in different places across your website. Below you’ll find instructions for the two possible methods. 

Add your form using a shortcode

If you want to add your form to individual pages or posts on your site, you can use its shortcode.

To find the shortcode for your form, go to the “Forms” tab of the Brevo plugin. There you’ll see a list of all your created forms along with their shortcodes. Copy the relevant code then paste it into the WordPress editor for your chosen post or page where you want the form to appear.

Add your form as a widget

To place your form in areas like your site’s sidebar, footer, or header, add it as a widget. 

To do this, go to “Appearance” then “Widgets” in the WordPress menu. There you’ll see the “Brevo Widget” in the list of available widgets. To activate it, either drag it to your desired location on the right-hand side or click on the widget to select a location then click “Add widget”.

Once added, give the widget a title and select the form you want to appear. Then, click “Save” to confirm the widget settings.

Tips to get more email signups from your WordPress form

Now you know the basics on how to create an email subscription form in WordPress, here’s some ways you can boost its conversion rates. 

Keep it simple

While it’s tempting to use your form to get as much information as possible from subscribers, this can hurt your signup numbers. In most cases you’re better off sticking to the essentials. You can always ask for extra information once the relationship is more established.

Get your pitch right

For someone to hand over their email address, they need to know what’s in it for them. Avoid generic descriptions and instead give concrete examples of the value in your emails, whether that’s being the first to hear your latest updates or getting access to exclusive content. 

Being clear about what subscribers should expect — and sticking to your promise — will also help avoid unsubscribes and complaints further down the line. 

Offer something in return

While in an ideal world people would sign up to your emails purely because they want to hear from you, adding an incentive can help sweeten the deal. Depending on your business, you could give subscribers a piece of downloadable content or a one-off coupon. For more examples, check out these other lead magnet ideas. 

One word of warning though — offering freebies will help build your list faster but you may not get the best engagement from these signups. To make sure you’re attracting the right people to your list, your offer must be relevant to the content you’ll be sending. 

Place your form strategically

Earlier you saw some examples for where you might put your WordPress email signup form. However, the best placement will depend on your website. 

You want to make sure visitors see your form when they’re most likely to sign up. So, avoid pages already focusing on other calls to action that might distract the user. Instead, choose places where your ask is relevant to the content they’re looking at. For example, if someone is reading an educational blog post, they’ll probably be interested in signing up for emails sharing similar tips. 

Further reading: 20 Newsletter Signup Examples to Take Inspiration From

Get started with Brevo’s WordPress email subscription plugin

By following the steps in this guide, you’ll have your WordPress email subscription form set up in no time. Then, it’s up to you to make the most of it.

Brevo’s email marketing tool gives you everything you need to create long-term relationships with your subscribers. Key features include signup forms, custom landing pages, and email list segmentation. Sign up for free to get the Drag & Drop editor, 40+ email templates, and 300 emails/day.

Upgrade to a paid plan for more advanced features. Pricing starts at just $9/month.

The post How to Add Email Subscription to Your WordPress Site in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on Brevo.

Outbound sales is a digital-first process 

Outbound sales is changing on macro and micro levels, shifting to a digital-first approach. Until recently, you still had initial outreach efforts where sales reps were making phone calls and walking up to a business address and shaking someone’s hand. Only a handful of pioneers were using sales automation and tech stacks. Today, it’s standard business practice. The differentiator for businesses now, and moving ahead, is really how these tools are being used.

We’re moving away from industrialized digital overload

Outbound sales has become more digital and with automation and multichannel tools, businesses can easily scale their outreach efforts. However, it’s important that businesses are really scaling and not industrializing their approach.

For example, each business has its ICP, comprising of company size, title, etc., that it targets. Their teams automate lead collection on LinkedIn to build their network and their prospect list, and then they use their CRM to start contacting these leads through nurturing sequences. 

This is a highly effective way to gather leads. But it can also contribute to overload if prospects are being entered into a sequence where they don’t belong. 

Brands need to dig deeper into their ICP to find the criteria that signals this prospect is ready for outreach. Valuable indicators might include company activity such as mergers, expansions, job postings, webinar attendance, and so forth. 

A fintech ICP, for example, might target companies that are hiring a financial analyst. This criteria suggests that this prospect is changing a relevant business process and potentially needs a new tool, signalling a strong opportunity for conversion. 

As it stands now, our users already detect hyper-refined signals with automation workflows to gather intel, machine learning to enrich and segment prospects, and instant notifications so sales reps never miss a beat — The UX is just going to become a whole lot more seamless as we continue incorporating AI.

AI will allow teams to be more human

As machines get more powerful, AI will play an increasingly central role in analyzing data and signaling to businesses when a prospect has the most potential for conversion. It’ll no longer be human teams setting up automation triggers to find the ideal moment; AI will. 

However, the more cold outreach becomes automated, the more buyers will look for and value human interactions. Businesses should use AI to carry out routine and analytical processes so sales reps spend less time on top of the funnel tasks and more time engaging accounts. 

AI can act as an internal coach and review your sales processes to find red flags. Say your email campaigns aren’t performing well, then your team can switch to SMS for particular segments. 

It can also help you evaluate the performance of your team and see where they’re having difficulty. With less time spent doing reporting and performance analysis, managers can dedicate time to training stronger reps. 

As CRMs get smarter with integrated AI functionalities, humans will do fewer manual tasks and be free to engage their prospects and their teams. Buyers will get more qualitative sales information and valuable in-person interactions, and internal teams will get more face time with and training from their managers. 

Next steps

At Brevo, our trajectory is to provide flawless coordination between sales processes and empower teams to make an impact. We’re on a mission to develop a smart CRM that will put the human back in the driver’s seat. 

About the author

As a product lead, Antoine is an expert on the tools businesses need for successful sales. He and his team consistently analyze the market and listen closely to what our clients need to ensure Brevo equips them with the features that will always keep them one step ahead.

The post CRMs are Getting Smarter and Humanizing Outbound Sales appeared first on Brevo.

All email marketing automation software works in the same way, by sending emails based on triggers — pre-defined steps your prospects will take in their customer journey. 

Unlike regular marketing emails that are sent to a contact list on a fixed schedule or at intervals (like in a drip campaign), automated emails are sent when customer behavior matches the conditions defined in an automated workflow.

What to look for in email marketing automation software

Pricing for email marketing automation platforms generally fall into two categories:

• Pricing that limits the number of contacts (aka subscribers)
• Pricing that limits the number of email sends

Some email automation tools are more expensive when you have a large number of subscribers. Ecommerce businesses typically have a large contact list which makes email service providers with unlimited contacts particularly attractive from a pricing standpoint.

Agencies and other types of businesses with fewer, high-value clients usually have a much smaller contact list and are therefore likely to favor ESPs who only limit the number of sent emails.

Other things to look out for in an email automation platform:

• Contact management with list and tag sorting
• CMS & website integrations that include visitor tracking
• Cross promotional messaging tools like SMS and Live Chat
• Ready-made and fully customizable email templates
• Direct email messaging and autoresponders
• Custom landing pages with opt-in forms
• Automated workflow builder with workflow templates
• drag-and-drop editor with the option to edit email HTML directly

Further reading: 16 Key Benefits of Marketing Automation

The top email automation tools at a glance

The 11 best email automation tools

There are plenty of email marketing software providers and each has different strengths and pricing schemes. 

To make it easier for you to select the best marketing solution for your business, we’ve narrowed down our list to only include providers with quality customer support, great ease of use, and transparent pricing models.

1. Brevo – Best Overall
2. Hubspot – Best for Agencies
3. Constant Contact – Best for Event Marketing
4. MailerLite – Best for Bloggers
5. ActiveCampaign – Best for SaaS (Integrations)
6. GetResponse – Best for Influencers (Webinars, Live Collaboration)
7. Drip – Best for Online Storefronts
8. Omnisend – Best for Ecommerce
9. Mailchimp – Best for Creatives
10. EmailOctopus – Best for Web Developers
11. Lemlist – Best for Sales Teams

1. Brevo

Brevo is an email marketing automation platform that caters to businesses of all sizes. 

Email marketing beginners can launch their first campaign in minutes using ready workflows and email templates. More experienced marketers can quickly create landing pages and run cross-promotions with Facebook ads, push notifications, WhatsApp, and SMS all in one dashboard.

An AI subject line generator will help you get your emails opened and read.

You can also connect your website with one-click integrations for WordPress, Shopify, and PrestaShop, or use Zapier to connect thousands of apps to streamline your workflow. Website tracking makes it possible to use any user action or website event for automation and engagement.

Examples of popular automation workflows, ready to be activated in Brevo

Brevo’s extensible API gives developers the power to create custom plugins for any use case, such as transactional emails triggered by in-app interactions, or smart product recommendations for a custom storefront. 

Best features

What makes Brevo stand out is its high rate of email deliverability. Getting your emails into the inbox of your subscribers — and avoiding spam labels — is crucial for the success of all your email campaigns. 

Brevo uses double opt-in by default and lets you divide transactional and marketing emails into separate streams with different IP addresses (for free). Brevo also lets you automatically exclude unengaged subscribers, effectively guaranteeing higher open rates.

Pricing

On the Free plan, Brevo provides audience segmentation, signup forms, a Sales Platform, page tracking, and marketing automation workflows for up to 2,000 contacts with a sending limit of 300 emails per day.

Paid plans start at $9 a month. Unlimited automation and full features start at $65/month.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is a widely used email automation tool among marketing agencies. Its most popular features are contact management, email tracking, and lead scoring.

While HubSpot is more of a CRM tool and most often associated with its lead generation pipeline, it has plenty of other features in its Marketing Hub toolset that make it a full-featured email marketing tool.

Best features

Dynamic list building, segmentation, lead routing, and internal notifications make it the ideal tool for sales and marketing teams that want to work in collaboration.

Pricing 

HubSpot has a feature-restricted free plan which provides basic contact management with up to one million free contacts. 

Its Basic plan starts at $50/month. However, as soon as you can upgrade to the Professional plan of its Marketing Hub to take advantage of automation features, the costs skyrocket to $890/month along with a mandatory $3000 (one-off) onboarding fee.

If you’re a marketing agency that caters to high-value accounts, HubSpot is certainly worth the investment. But for businesses with basic needs, its hefty price tag and piecemeal approach to unlocking functionality might not feel justified.

3. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is perhaps the only email marketing tool in this list that could be referred to as legacy software, with a history that dates back to the mid-nineties. While its user interface might feel outdated and uninspired, its simplicity makes it easier to use for a non-technical audience.

It comes with all the features you’d expect to see in time-tested email automation software, including list management, workflow automations, embeddable website forms, and simplified reporting.

Best features

What makes Constant Contact stand out from the competition is its niche event marketing tools that let you manage registrations for classes, workshops, fundraisers, product demos, and more. 

When paired with its social media management capabilities, marketers can easily set up a content calendar, respond to messages in real-time, and run social ads on Instagram and Facebook.

Pricing

Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan. Its pricing starts at $9.99/month for its Core Plan which comes with a 500 subscriber limit. 

Constant Contact’s costs scale according to the number of total subscribers and is generally more expensive than other tools with a similar feature set. If this doesn’t fit your needs, find out more about Constant Contact alternatives.

4. MailerLite

MailerLite is a relatively new contender in the email marketing space and prides itself on being an email automation tool designed from the ground up for beginners. 

However, it lacks the level of depth required for an advanced marketing workflow, such as timing emails based on website visits, or making product recommendations based on individual customer shopping history.

Best features

Its user-friendly design makes setting up workflow triggers simple and intuitive for those who are completely new to email marketers.

Pricing

For just $10/month, MailerLite provides an email list manager, landing pages, ecommerce integrations (Shopify, Woocommerce, Gumroad, etc), and a pop-up builder. 

But to take advantage of multiple triggers in a single workflow automation (a very useful feature), its base price jumps to $21/month on the Advanced Plan — which many would consider its real price tag.

5. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a email automation platform that lets you fine-tune email marketing campaigns with incredible precision. Contacts can be sorted into both lists and tags, which opens up many more creative ways to design a marketing strategy.

ActiveCampaign also has its own built-in CRM and the unique ability to smoothly transition from list-based campaigns to one-to-one conversations as the need arises. 

Best Features

Direct emails, canned responses and personalized email signatures make ActiveCampaign a favorite among sales teams that want to double up on their marketing efforts.

Pricing

The Lite Plan starts at $15/month for 500 contacts and quickly increases in price as the number of subscribers increases. Most of its cross-channel marketing features like SMS, landing pages, and branded forms are only available on the Plus Plan or higher, which starts at $70/month — making it one of the pricier options on this list.

Over 850+ supported integrations and a robust API make ActiveCampaign a good fit for SaaS companies that want highly customizable emails triggered by a broad range of user actions.

6. GetResponse

GetResponse is a full-featured marketing automation suite with a few neat features that set it apart from more specialized email automation software, including a webinar hosting tool, live chat, and an AI-powered website generator.

Its advanced contact management and flexible workflow automation builder are similar to ActiveCampaign.

GetResponse’s free plan lets you send newsletter campaigns with a 500 contacts limit, along with just one landing page, sign-up forms, and pop-up ups. 

Best features

GetResponse is a great tool for influencer marketing, especially for businesses that frequently host webinars and collaborative online events.

Pricing

The Email Marketing plan starts at $19/month with basic segmentation, and email automation limited to autoresponders.

From $59/month, the Marketing Automation plan comes with email marketing and event-based automation.

Read more: 9 Best Email Autoresponders [Free and Paid]

7. Drip

Drip is a streamlined email marketing automation tool designed exclusively for online storefronts. Its native ecommerce integrations include Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Its API can be extended to work with custom storefronts as well.

Drip also provides a useful set of workflow templates that include abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back, birthday, and welcome emails.

Best features

Retail brands love Drip’s smart analytics which drives personalized product recommendations. Drip also syncs its segmentation feature with Facebook Custom Audience insights to create comprehensive customer profiles.

Pricing

Drip has the most straightforward pricing structure: $39/month for all its features with a 2,500 contacts limit and unlimited email sends. 

However, sending limits are imposed when email senders hit 30,000 contacts which makes this seemingly inexpensive app much more costly at scale.

8. Omnisend

Omnisend is like Drip’s more fashionable cousin. It targets larger, multi-store ecommerce businesses. 

Its greatest time-saver is the dynamic customer lifecycle feature that automatically assigns tags to customers based on where they are in their customer journey.

Best features

Omnisend intuitively combines shopping history and social media interactions with ad retargeting on Google and Facebook to generate actionable customer data.

Pricing

Its free plan gives you access to all its features if you have a subscriber list of fewer than 250 contacts and plan on sending less than 500 emails per month. 

At $16/month, the subscriber limit is raised to 500 contacts and the sending limit rises to 6000 emails per month.

Omnisend’s Pro plan bundles unlimited email sends with a small SMS quota and starts at $59/month for up to 2500 contacts. Its pricing increases in proportion to the number of active contacts.

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp was once a simple newsletter tool that anyone could use. It gradually evolved into a much more complex email marketing automation platform over time. 

Mailchimp supports signup forms and surveys, a website builder, and separate volume pricing for transactional emails. 

However, Mailchimp’s newest features are entirely geared toward designers and creative agencies. 

Best features

Mailchimp’s content studio tool resizes content to fit non-traditional email design layouts. An email subject line helper and content optimizer supply marketers with helpful real-time suggestions. Its new creative assistant AI can even auto-generate email designs from company branding assets.

Pricing

Mailchimp’s free plan comes with a marketing CRM, website builder, forms, landing pages, and a monthly limit of 1,000 email sends (500 sends/day) and 500 contacts. Sounds limited? Check out the best Mailchimp alternatives.

Its Essential plan starts at $13/month with limited customer journey mapping. 

Mailchimp only really becomes a modern email automation tool when you upgrade to its Premium plan — which starts at $350/month and unlock its advanced segmentation, A/B testing, and comparative reporting features.

10. EmailOctopus

EmailOctopus is a barebones email automation software that gives its users the option to route their emails through Amazon Simple Email Service (SES).

Its email routing feature is aimed at developers who want the benefits of a simple email marketing service to help collect new subscribers and automate transactional and promotional emails. 

Best features

The ability to route emails through Amazon SES makes EmailOctopus significantly cheaper than most email service providers and a good fit for businesses with basic email marketing needs and their own in-house developer team.

Pricing

The Connect Starter plan is free for up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited emails (sent through the Amazon SES service). 

The EmailOctopus logo will be removed when you upgrade to their Connect Pro plan, which starts at just $7/month for 500 subscribers.

11. Lemlist

Lemlist is an email automation tool specifically for cold email outreach. It’s targeted toward sales teams, lead generation agencies, and small businesses looking to grow their customer base.

With Lemlist, users can send prospecting or meeting request emails and run multichannel campaigns (LinkedIn, phone, etc.).

Best features

Lemlist lets you personalize your outreach emails at scale, with custom text variables for the lead names, companies, and more. It also helps you find and verify leads’ emails automatically, saving you valuable time.

Pricing

The Email Starter plan costs $39/month. It includes email personalization, a leads database, and unlimited campaigns.

You’ll need to upgrade to access advanced features, such as the email finder and verifier, A/B testing, and CRM integrations. More comprehensive plans start at $69/month.

FAQs

1. What is email automation software?

A email automation tool is a software that allows you to automate emails. It does this using pre-defined triggers or conditions (e.g. when a customer subscribes to your newsletter, buys a product, etc.).

2. Why do you need email automation?

Email automation can help you save valuable time and effort. Manually inputting a customer’s name and scheduling the campaign for every welcome email would be time-consuming. Automation takes care of this, so you can focus on other tasks.

Email automation also makes sure you contact customers at the perfect time, no matter where they are in their journey. This creates a positive customer experience and helps your brand stand out.

3. What are examples of email automation?

Common automated emails include welcome emails, birthday emails, abandoned cart emails, and winback emails. Email automation tools like Brevo usually offer pre-made templates for typical automated emails.

4. Does Google have email automation?

Google does offer some email automation features. This includes canned responses and automated vacation responders.

Although it’s possible to send mass email in Gmail, it’s usually better to use a dedicated email automation tool.

Need help choosing the right email automation software?

It’s important to choose the best email automation tool for your company. We’ll guide you through the process of integrating your website or app and show you which features and pricing plan best fit your business needs.

Brevo has all the email marketing automation tools you’ll need to grow your business in one place at an affordable price.

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