6 Best Newsletter Tools for Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the core tactics that surpasses others – even social media – in revenue and ROI:
And with good reason. Email marketing falls under the category of owned media, meaning that businesses can control the channel and not depend on an external algorithm to measure their success.
Look, let's talk numbers because that's what actually matters. Email marketing delivers an average return of £42 for every £1 you spend, which frankly makes most other marketing channels look a bit rubbish.
The average open rate across industries sits at about 21.33%, whilst click-through rates hover around 2.62%. Thing is, email marketing outperforms social media by 40 times when it comes to customer acquisition, which is why smart businesses prioritise it.
In our day and age, email newsletter tools can help brands reach that ROI with advanced features, valuable email design, and great segmentation and personalisation options that offer high open rates, as well as click-through rates.
But how would you know what the best email marketing software is? More importantly, can you be sure about the type of email marketing platform you're interested in? Are you going for more email automation options or CRM functionalities?
In this article, I will discuss some tried and true email newsletter tools and the features to look out for when investing in an email marketing platform.
Why Email Newsletters?
While social media platforms are prominent in 2024, the power of email newsletters must be considered. As mentioned above, email newsletters offer direct communication with your audience that can be measurable, unlike social media platforms. The former can land directly in your subscribers' inboxes, while the latter can leave your content at the mercy of algorithms. Email newsletters ensure that your message is seen and has a higher chance of being read and acted upon.
Email newsletters offer a level of personalisation that is hard to achieve on other channels. You can segment your audience based on their preferences, behaviour, and demographics and send them targeted content that resonates with them. Being in touch with your audience and being relevant can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Compared to other marketing channels, email newsletters are relatively low-cost. All you need is a good email marketing tool, a beautiful newsletter design, and some compelling content, and you'll get highly measurable email campaigns with an open and click-through rate that will boost your business.
Of course, this means that email newsletters are highly measurable. Most email marketing tools provide detailed analytics on open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. This allows you to track the performance of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve your results on each email marketing campaign.
Email newsletters are a great way to build and nurture relationships with your audience. By providing valuable content and updates on your business and your products or new releases, you can keep your audience engaged and interested in your brand. This can lead to increased loyalty and trust, which is essential for long-term success.
Newsletter Tools: The Features to Look For
The best newsletter tools always sport crucial features that are the basis of every marketer's research. Some of those include:
- Segmentation features
- Intuitive functionalities
- A Drag-and-Drop editor
- HTML templates
- Mobile responsiveness (81% of emails are opened on mobile devices)
- Integration with WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, HubSpot, and Salesforce
Mobile optimisation isn't just about shrinking your desktop email to fit a phone screen. You need single-column layouts, touch-friendly buttons that are at least 44 pixels wide, and text that's readable without zooming.
The best newsletter tools automatically adjust images and font sizes for different devices. If your emails look rubbish on mobile, you're losing over three-quarters of your potential engagement.
Proper integrations save you hours of manual work every week. Connect your newsletter tool to your CRM, and subscriber data flows automatically.
Link it to your eCommerce platform, and you can trigger abandoned cart emails without lifting a finger. WordPress integration means new blog posts can automatically go out to your email list.
The best tools offer native integrations rather than clunky third-party connections through Zapier.
Of course, the above features are staples among big and small players in the email marketing field, like Brevo, Mailchimp, Moosend, and other newsletter apps we will discuss as the post unfolds.
The important thing about picking an email newsletter platform to help you create and curate spot-on email marketing campaigns that your audience will love is to know the features that will help your email marketing plan flourish.
Let's be more specific.
The first thing to look for would be easy and sophisticated segmentation abilities. Email lists can be very extensive, and grouping up users according to a common characteristic is imperative. You can use any type of demographic or psychographic that serves your purpose:
Segmentation can lead to personalisation options that will help you create the proper email containing the right message at the right time. In 2024, AI audience segmentation models will become increasingly common, allowing you to design and curate your marketing message with ease.
Intuitive platforms are always at the top of the list, as the ease of use is more than most marketers seek when picking out an email marketing service. Tools that are not enticing enough to have you engage with their platform are an immediate no-go. It's better to have a pleasant onboarding experience than to look for extensive how-to videos on working with a tool you haven't bought yet.
The pricing points of the tool are also something that gets a lot of marketers thinking. More than most opt for a free plan to ensure the tool is a good fit. However, this doesn't mean that paid plans will break the bank for you, as some email marketing tools allow you to partake in all email marketing trends and offer plenty of features at a minimal price.
Right, here's something you can't ignore – compliance. Every decent newsletter tool needs proper GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliance built in.
You'll want double opt-in mechanisms, clear unsubscribe options, and proper data protection measures. The tool should handle consent management automatically and sort out data retention policies for you.
Don't mess about with this stuff – getting it wrong can cost you thousands in fines.
A variety of newsletter templates and options like pop-ups and landing pages are also among the most sought-after features of the best newsletter tools. Users don't want to have many different tools to complete the core functions of their email marketing plan.
And, of course, we can't forget advanced reporting and analytics that can offer you a comprehensive view of your campaign.
Some notable mentions would be the fully responsive email templates, a/b testing options, and perhaps a subject line tool that could generate content your audience will love to check out.
Also, consider the industry you're in and think whether your subscribers would see benefit in the tools your email marketing platform offers. For example, small businesses sometimes don't need to conduct a/b testing, as they don't have the audience size or the diversity to do so. Also, some eCommerce features, like triggered cart abandonment emails, will be included in a price point that could be illogical for an agency or a publisher looking to delve into email marketing.
Whatever you do, make sure your choice of newsletter software can answer the following questions:
- What is the cost, and how does it change as your email list grows?
- What tools would benefit your subscribers in terms of content?
- Is the free plan beneficial for your brand?
- How many integrations are there?
- What type of customer support does the platform offer?
- What are its deliverability rates?
- Are the automation features offered too many or not enough?
A newsletter platform, when used correctly, allows you to grow your contact list, create content that your audience will love, and boost the metrics you care about, like your ROI and your overall conversion rate.
Email Deliverability: Getting Your Emails Actually Seen
Here's the thing most people don't talk about – what's the point of brilliant emails if they end up in spam folders? Deliverability rates matter more than fancy templates.
Your sender reputation is everything. Email providers like Gmail and Outlook track how people interact with your emails.
If loads of people mark you as spam or don't open your emails, you're stuffed. Good newsletter tools help manage this with proper authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Look for tools that offer IP warming for new accounts. This gradually builds your sending reputation rather than blasting out thousands of emails on day one.
The best platforms maintain their own relationships with major email providers and monitor blacklists for you.
The smartest newsletter platforms monitor your deliverability rates in real-time and alert you when something's wrong. They'll track your emails across different providers and show you exactly where your messages are landing.
Some tools even offer dedicated IP addresses for high-volume senders, giving you complete control over your reputation. Look for platforms that provide detailed bounce reports and automatically clean your lists of invalid addresses.
6 Best Newsletter Software Tools for 2024
I believe that, at this point, we're ready to look into the six best newsletter tools for 2024, complete with pros, cons, and the pricing point each tool sports.
Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email automation tool designed to simplify creating and tracking email marketing campaigns through a user-friendly interface and various responsive email templates.
Constant Contact is one of the newsletter apps that offers social media integrations and is ideal for marketers who'd like to use autoresponders, drip campaigns, and automate their workflows. As a tool, it's pretty good for email marketing novices and users who could do well with ready-made email templates. It also sports the core automation features needed by beginners and solopreneurs.
Constant Contact has stepped up their game recently with improved automation workflows and a much better reporting dashboard. They've added proper social media advertising integration, so you can sync your email campaigns with Facebook ads.
The SMS marketing add-on is decent too, though it'll cost you extra.
Pros
Constant Contact's ease of use and the variety of templates make it relatively easy for beginners to understand and curate an email marketing campaign, especially if they want to entice more eCommerce clients and go for the basics of segmentation and reporting. The fact that it offers phone support is a huge plus, as well as its capability of A/B testing an email subject line.
Cons
If you're looking for a sophisticated tool or you're an advanced email marketer, Constant Contact could be a little too basic to meet your needs. There is no free plan; however, there is a free 60-day trial option.
Pricing
Constant Contact's prices start at $12/month, and the pricing plans are based on the number of contacts and the emails sent per month. SMS marketing options can be added to the Lite and Essentials plans but will cost an additional $10/month for up to 500 messages.
Moosend
Moosend is one of the newest email marketing and automation platforms, and Fortune 500 companies and small businesses prefer it. Its short learning curve and intuitive design make it quite popular for beginners, while its sophisticated tools are ideal for seasoned marketers.
Its robust drag-and-drop email editor is one of the most popular ones, as it allows users to create email designs without prior knowledge of HTML. There are also pre-made email templates that are fully customisable to meet the marketer's needs.
Moosend's automation features are properly impressive once you get into them. You can set up behavioural triggers based on website activity, cart abandonment sequences that actually work, and re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.
The conditional logic lets you create different paths based on how people interact with your emails, which is brilliant for personalisation.
Moosend is also an email marketing tool that allows automated lead generation through its advanced signup forms and landing page builder. Moreover, its advanced automation capabilities, coupled with sophisticated segmentation options, will allow you to send the right thing at the right time.
Pros
Apart from the apparent pros that allow you to grow your email list, Moosend's automation workflows offer marketers the chance to send triggered campaigns that stem from user interactions. That, coupled with its advanced reporting and analytics capabilities, can create actionable insights for marketers to implement in their email marketing campaigns.
Cons
According to G2 reviews, there are not many cons to be discussed. One that stood out is the fact that while the platform comes with many capabilities, Moosend sports plenty of integrations, but not all of them are native ones.
Pricing
Moosend's pricing tiers start at $9/month. The platform offers a free 30-day trial option to ensure it's the right fit for you. Remember that Moosend's pricing plans are based on the number of contacts in your lists.
Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo is a newsletter tool most preferred by publishers and eCommerce professionals, as it has plenty of features that can help them hit their eCommerce KPIs faster and at a lower price than some of the most popular email marketing platforms.
Brevo's automation capabilities and workflows are pretty solid, even though its email templates could be dubbed as outdated, according to G2 reviews. Its transactional email feature is also quite useful, especially for eCommerce marketers, while it also sports CRM capabilities.
Brevo's transactional email capabilities are where it really shines. We're talking delivery speeds under one second, which is mad fast.
You can customise templates for order confirmations, password resets, and shipping notifications through their API. If you're running an eCommerce site, this feature alone might justify choosing Brevo over competitors.
Brevo is an email automation platform that can offer more for less. Its free plan has a cap of 300 emails/day and 9000 emails in total, and its advanced email automation and segmentation options are ideal for small business marketing.
Pros
The SMS marketing tool is a huge plus, especially for eCommerce professionals. Brevo's templates are fully responsive, albeit not too many. They're also organised by purpose rather than category, which is a plus for some users.
Cons
The sending limit of this newsletter tool can be a hassle, as 300 emails daily are not too many. Another con users have pinpointed is that while all templates are available for all plans, the Brevo branding is a staple for the free plan.
Pricing
Brevo offers a free plan for up to 300 daily emails with unlimited contacts. Its prices start at $25/month and offer all the basics, plus email support.
AWeber
AWeber is a popular and sophisticated email tool that promises to turn novices into email marketing experts with its smart email editor. The unique thing about this newsletter tool is that it can create email templates with ready designs sourced from various channels, like the brand's website. It offers a great chance to automate scenarios and boost efforts like lead generation and content continuation.
As one of the oldest email marketing tools in the business, AWeber offers phone support and email and live chat options. Its wide variety of responsive templates and colour schemes makes it a versatile tool, especially if you're using it for branding purposes.
AWeber's email marketing automation options can help you create triggered newsletters, especially for new subscribers. There is also a dedicated campaign marketplace for sophisticated, pre-written automated campaigns.
Pros
AWeber's variety of tutorials and webinars is a fan favourite, as apparent from its G2 reviews. It also offers A/B testing options, so nothing goes amiss in your campaign. Lastly, it sports three mobile apps with additional functionalities, one allowing users to create and curate emails.
Cons
Some users have reported a lack of advanced workflows, while some would go for a better look regarding AWeber's email templates, which could be dubbed as a little outdated. According to other users, the email marketing features could be slightly more intuitive.
Pricing
AWeber offers a free plan for up to 500 subscribers and one email list with limited capabilities. Its prices start at $12.50/month.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the email newsletter tools that works beautifully for seasoned email marketers who want to manage their data in a way that will lead them to the best possible campaign through advanced A/B testing and marketing automation features.
While its automation capabilities may be overwhelming for the email newsletter novice, if your brand is going for advanced newsletters, this is an email newsletter tool you should try out. While the email editor might need some improvement, ActiveCampaign's automation features, like automatic follow-ups, are popular.
The platform's CRM feature is also a trendy option as it allows, as mentioned above, better data management and spot-on campaigns with any segment you may need. As it's a platform that caters to advanced email marketing options, the learning curve is quite steep.
Pros
As many users have reported, the most popular features of ActiveCampaign are its email automation options that can boost pretty much any type of marketing strategy and enhance the user's customer journey. This email newsletter software can also go beyond emails, as it has multi-channel capabilities, with SMS marketing and Facebook ads options.
Cons
As mentioned above, despite its advanced automation and list segmentation options, ActiveCampaign is a tool that won't do well with beginners or small businesses. This tool offers in-depth automation with some jargon as it uses its terminology. If you're interested in simple automation and are more interested in a powerful drag-and-drop email editor, perhaps you should check out other email services.
Pricing
ActiveCampaign offers a free trial option rather than a free plan, which, according to some users, is insufficient to test and understand the platform. Its prices start at $29/month, not including critical features like the SMS automation option.
Mailchimp
Arguably one of the most popular email newsletter tools in the business, Mailchimp is marketed as a solution for SMBs – primarily because of its free plan – but this doesn't mean it cannot get quite pricey.
It's a great solution, especially If you run an eCommerce store, but not a great option if you need a tool that can do more for less for you and help you generate income while saving money. If you need a drag-and-drop email editor, nice-looking and fully responsive email templates, and even appointment features, then you should look into this option.
According to user reviews, Mailchimp has given new life to their campaigns, but the limitations of the free plan are something other than what most are happy with. Some report that the pricing is a little too complicated and customer service isn't as efficient as they would've liked.
Pros
Admittedly, the platform's colossal pro is its intuitive interface and drag-and-drop email builder that allows both seasoned email marketers and novices to develop unique designs. The variety of email templates is also a huge plus. Lastly, the postcards feature is a nice change.
Cons
The interface, while intuitive, could be confusing for some users. At the same time, list management is more complex, and the pricing point is quite steep, primarily since Mailchimp is marketed as a small business-friendly tool.
Pricing
Mailchimp offers a free plan with limited capabilities that covers up to 1,000 emails per month and offers email support for the first 30 days. All Mailchimp plans are free for one month, and their prices start at $13/month.
The Takeaway
Selecting the right newsletter tool for your business in 2024 is crucial to maximise your email marketing efforts.
From drag-and-drop editors and responsive templates to advanced marketing automation, segmentation, and analytics features, the options are vast and cater to different needs.
Whether a small business owner or a large enterprise, investing in a reliable and feature-rich newsletter tool will undoubtedly pay off in the long run, helping you maintain a strong connection with your audience and drive conversions. Just pick out the right one and make sure the features are exactly what you need rather than what your future business would want to have.
Author Bio: Téa Liarokapi is a Senior Content Writer for Moosend, an email marketing and marketing automation platform, and an obsessive writer. In her free time, she finds new ways to stuff more books in her bookcase and content ideas – and cats – to play with.
