Best Email Marketing Automation Platforms
If you are looking for the best email marketing automation platforms to kickstart your next campaign, we have got you covered. In this guide, we will break down how you can quickly identify and unlock value from the best email marketing automation tools available to small business owners and in-house marketing teams. There is certainly no shortage of choice.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 87% of marketers use an email marketing software to disseminate their content. This makes email the second most popular content distribution channel, just behind social media at 89%. While email has become a go-to content distribution channel for marketers, email campaigns are only as good as the platforms powering them.
Table of contents
- Best Email Marketing Automation Platforms (What Do They Offer?)
- Comparing The Best Email Marketing Automation Tools
Best Email Marketing Automation Platforms (What Do They Offer?)
To identify the best email marketing strategy on automation platforms at your disposal and make a detailed email marketing platform comparison, you must have a solid understanding of what marketers have come to expect from these solutions. Typically, marketers are looking for all-encompassing email automation platforms. These come with a broad mix of useful features designed to streamline and optimize email marketing campaigns.
One-click email marketing integrations
Marketers need platforms that seamlessly integrate with their existing workflows. This enables you to build the best email marketing services around existing data and unify campaigns around your other marketing efforts. For instance, with a WordPress email marketing automation plugin, you can import contacts from lead capture forms on your website into your email campaigns.
It does not stop at WordPress plugins, many email automation platforms come with a wide range of integrations. These are fundamentally designed to turbocharge your campaigns and help you break new ground. From CRMs like Salesforce and Highrise to e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, the best solutions offer many integrations at your fingertips.
Campaign A/B testing functionality
Having the freedom and flexibility to split-test different campaign strategies is an important part of being an effective marketer. When you have the tools available to do this, you can push your campaigns forward and improve key performance metrics, such as open rates. These tools can help to foster campaign experimentation and enable marketers to unleash their creativity.
All the best email marketing automation platforms come with the ability to split-test different variables in your email marketing campaigns. For instance, many choose to split-test subject lines in a bid to find the winning formula for higher open rates. A/B testing different variables will support your efforts to build a high-performing campaign that fires on all cylinders.
Responsive email templates
While some marketers are comfortable building their email campaigns from scratch, others will happily embrace and utilize responsive email templates to get the ball rolling. These can provide creative inspiration and set the campaign off in the right direction. All popular email marketing tools come jam-packed with an eclectic mix of email templates for you to choose from.
Responsive email templates ensure the content is displayed correctly, no matter what device the recipient is using. For instance, responsive email templates will guarantee the email content looks incredible on both mobile and tablet devices, alongside standard desktop viewing. If you are creating media-rich email content, having access to responsive templates is essential.
Drag-and-drop email designer
With a drag-and-drop email designer at your fingertips, you can quickly craft stunning emails that are sure to engage your audience. The best drag-and-drop email tools will give you all the elements you need to effortlessly develop remarkable email sequences. This allows marketers, regardless of their technical ability, to unlock the full potential of email as a marketing channel.
The days of using HTML to develop eye-popping email marketing campaigns are long gone. A simple drag-and-drop email designer will radically streamline the creation of a campaign and allow marketers to pour more time and effort into other pressing marketing initiatives on their to-do lists. With access to the right platforms, marketers can more easily embrace email.
Comparing The Best Email Marketing Automation Tools
DirectIQ and Mailchimp are both held in high regard by marketers. These two platforms give marketers the functionality they need to build dynamic email campaigns. With clean interfaces, these two sophisticated options are easy to navigate and allow you to embrace a wide breadth of different features, without ever feeling overwhelmed by everything at your fingertips.
Affordability
Both DirectIQ and Mailchimp offer scalable solutions to email marketing. While DirectIQ has a free plan with an allowance of 250 contacts and 1,000 monthly email sends, Mailchimp offers 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends. Even though Mailchimp allows for more contacts and sends in its free plan, DirectIQ offers more favorable economics for those with ambitions to scale.
Scalability
Let’s say you have 10,000 contacts in your system. If you want to pour these into Mailchimp, the standard plan recommended by Mailchimp costs a hefty $115/month. Meanwhile, you can pour 10,000 contacts into DirectIQ for just $42/month on the essential plan. To embrace the full potential of email automation, you can try the unlimited plan for $69/month – which is still less!
Ease-of-use
Both platforms are easy to navigate. DirectIQ’s user interface is structured to fast-track the process of designing and delivering email campaigns. From using the responsive free templates to leveraging the drag-and-drop email designer to build a sequence from scratch, DirectIQ offers plenty of resources to help you unlock the potential of an email marketing tool for your business.
You can seamlessly integrate DirectIQ with all the applications in your tech stack, including CRMs and e-commerce platforms, to create unified workflows. You name it, you can connect it. This means you can utilize existing data from across your workflows to launch email campaigns even faster. If you are interested in exploring DirectIQ further, you can sign up for free today.
Want to see more comparisons ? You can check out this article to get more detailed comparisons between know ESP’s.
