In case you didn't know, email usage is at an all-time high. In fact, more than 3.7 billion people use email worldwide. So it's no wonder we all constantly receive marketing emails from businesses. Put simply, email marketing works. This is true even in the B2B space.
In fact, 86% of B2B marketers rely on email marketing campaigns to promote new business. This begs the question — are you using email marketing effectively for your business?
There are a variety of email marketing service tools available today to help you with your email marketing — some of which are completely free forever. But, it's important to note, not all free email marketing tools offer the same features.
Free Email Marketing Tools
Fortunately, we have you covered — here, we've listed and reviewed the best free email marketing tools available today.
1. HubSpot Free Email Marketing Tool
Price: Free; paid plans with Marketing Hub: $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)
HubSpot offers a reliable and feature-packed email marketing tool that’s suited for growing businesses — for free. Create professional, personalized, and on-brand marketing emails that engage and grow your audience.
With the drag-and-drop email builder, you don't need to wait on IT or designers to help you create your emails.
Additionally, the tool is automatically integrated with your free, all-in-one CRM platform. This means you can easily tailor and personalize emails based on relevant data stored in your CRM (e.g. name, company, previous purchases, previous sales conversations, previous support tickets, etc.).
Lastly, with the tool's email reporting analytics, you’ll be able to identify exactly what is and isn't working among your audience members.
Pro Tip: Get HubSpot's Free Email Marketing Tools to create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.2. Moosend
Price: Free; $8/mo (Pro), request a custom plan (Enterprise)
Moosend is ideal for people looking to get their feet wet in email marketing. The free tier comes feature-packed, but you're maxed at 1,000 subscribers and won't have a dedicated IP address.
Moosend offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, email marketing automation triggers, real-time analytics, and list segmentation features. Moosend doesn't offer a CRM, but if you're looking to solely do email marketing, it might be a good start for your business.
3. SendPulse
Price: Free; $8/mo (Standard), $9.60/mo (Pro), $13.44/mo (Enterprise)
Send Pulse has over 130+ templates to choose from or you can create your own using the drag-and-drop editor. Under the free plan, you'll have access to Send Pulse's highly regarded support team, including support via live chat.
In terms of functionality, Send Pulse has a "Resend" feature that allows you to resend unopened emails with different subject lines, which is valuable for time scrapped marketers. They also offer web pushes, SMTP, Viber, and more.
4. Sendinblue
Price: Free; $25/mo (Lite), $65/mo (Premium), request a custom quote (Enterprise)
If your business relies heavily on transactional emails, such as forgotten password help and invoice receipts, then Sendinblue might be ideal for you. With their extensive developer APIs, you'll be able to integrate with their email system to achieve custom and required technical processes.
With Sendinblue's free plan, you'll have access to a vast array of templates, personalization, A/B testing, contact management, workflow editor, and real-time reporting.
5. Netcore Email API
Price: 30,000 emails free for the first 30 days, then100/ day free, forever; paid plans start at $25/mo for 150,000 emails
Netcore Email API (formerly Pepipost) is an integrable SMTP relay service for fast email delivery. That means your emails are sent to your customers in less than three seconds.
Easy email APIs give you the freedom to connect custom apps and platforms or use open source marketing platforms like Mautic and Mailtrain for sending your emails.
Once your emails are sent, the dashboard displays real-time updates about your campaign performance including the number of deliveries, opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces.
The AI-powered servers optimize your emails based on the success metrics for the type of email you send. For example, the predictive engagement feature automatically prioritizes delivery to users who are most likely to engage, and send-time optimization ensures your emails are sent at the most optimal time.
You also gain access to in-depth analytics that can also be delivered straight to your internal systems with the use of powerful webhooks. And if you experience any issues, the 24/7 email experts on chat resolve those quickly.
6. Mailchimp
Price: Free; $9/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299/mo (Premium)
Mailchimp offers access to email marketing features such as list segmentation, A/B testing, contact profiles, and more. However, it's important to note you'll have Mailchimp branding in your email footers with the free plan and won't have access to premium support.
Mailchimp integrates with ecommerce providers including WooCommerce and Magento if you have an ecommerce store. Additionally, the tool integrates with WordPress, if that's your CMS software of choice. Lastly, Mailchimp offers reports and analytics for emails so you can identify areas of opportunity.
7. Zoho Campaigns
Price: Free; $3/mo (Email-Based Plan), $4.50/mo (Subscriber-Based Plan), $7/mo (Pay by Email Credits)
Zoho Campaigns provides access to features such as A/B testing, reports, and email templates. If you're already using the Zoho CRM, it makes sense to check out Zoho campaigns to see how email and CRM work together. This type of email marketing tool and CRM integration will improve your workflows and productivity.
It's important to note that while the free version provides a variety of email marketing features, most of them have limitations.
8. Mailjet
Price: Free; $9.65/mo (Basic), $20.95 (Premium), request a quote (Enterprise)
With Mailjet's free plan, you'll have access to unlimited contacts, APIs and webhooks, an advanced email editor, and analytics. However, with the free plan, there are no available features for A/B testing or automation.
Mailjet's interface is easy to use and since the tool gives you full API access, Mailjet is ideal for businesses that require technical adjustments.
9. Benchmark
Price: Free; $13/mo (Pro), request a quote (Enterprise)
Benchmark is designed to cater to enterprise-level businesses, is user-friendly, and easy to implement. It has a drag-and-drop editor, a variety of email templates, sign-up form options, and drip campaign features.
However, there's no option for A/B testing or automation features on the free tool. Furthermore, contacts can't be added via list import in the free plan — you can only email contacts who fill out Benchmark subscriber forms.
10. MailerLite
Price: Free; $10+/ mo for 1,000+ subscribers
MailerLite is ideal for small businesses that want to send bulk marketing emails. It's well-equipped with preview features so you can review your email on desktop and mobile before sending it.
However, the API and integration capabilities are not as robust as some of the other options in this list.
11. ExpressPigeon
Price: Free; request for custom pricing for paid plans.
ExpressPigeon is a good solutionfor businesses with short email lists that include high-priority subscribers. With ExpressPigeon, you can effortlessly build and personalize emails, automate email responses, and send high-volume emails.
Best of all, you gain access to all of the premium features with the free plan — however, there are low send and subscriber limits. ExpressPigeon is regarded as having some of the best customer satisfaction scores in the industry.
12. Stripo
Price: Free; $125/mo (Business), $400/mo (Agency)
Stripo is drag-and-drop email template software. You can use this service to customize personalized emails without any design experience and ensure that your emails will be beautiful and professional.
There are two different types of editors on Stripo, one specifically for marketers, or anyone with little-to-no design experience. The other editor, the HTML code editor, is made for email developers.
Stripo gives you access to over 300 finished templates, add-ons for embedding, interactivity, and smart features. The tool also integrates with HubSpot and lets you export your emails into the CRM with two clicks. The integration also allows for account sync for both accounts.
13. Kickbox Email Validation
Price: Free; paid plans based on subscribers (e.g. 500 addresses for $5/mo).
Kickbox is an email verification software that ensures your emails are reaching the customers you aim to target. When emails are verified, major email providers are less likely to mark those emails as spam, which means your email has a greater chance of appearing in the main inbox of your customer.
Kickbox combs through your email list and ensures all of the recipients are real accounts that aren't outdated. This saves you money in the long run because your email list will be smaller, more concise, and accurate.
The software integrates with HubSpot as well, and the integration lets you verify email in the HubSpot CRM. Kickbox owns its own validation network, so you can be sure your data will be accurate, while HubSpot validates the data for deliverability.
Chose Your Free Email Marketing Software
Now, you have a better sense of the best free email marketing tools at your disposal. Fortunately, you don't need to commit to any service. Since they're free, you can try these tools out depending on your business' needs, then select the one most ideal for you.
Email Marketing
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the use of Email to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers or clients. It is essentially direct mail done electronically instead of through the postal service.
Learn about the perks of email marketing, methods do it right, and how it compares to some other forms of marketing.
What is Email Marketing?
Anytime a company sends out an email, aside from order confirmations and direct responses to customer questions, it could be considered a form of email marketing. Email marketing is one segment of internet marketing, which encompasses online marketing via websites, social media, blogs and more.
Email marketing can include newsletters with updates on the company, or promotions of sales and exclusive deals for subscribers. Marketing emails may also seek to share a general message on the company’s behalf, such as in the wake of natural disaster or company scandal.
At its best, email marketing allows business to keep their customers informed and tailor their marketing messages to their audience. Ai its worst, this kind of marketing can drive customers away with persistently annoying spam emails.
How Email Marketing Works
It’s easy to set up and track an email marketing campaign, which makes it accessible for small businesses. You can add a newsletter sign-up option to your website, for instance. As people sign-up, you can send newsletters to a growing audience. You can also direct customers to the newsletter from your social media profiles.
Note: The two biggest advantages of email marketing are price and ease. Compared to other types of marketing, email is an inexpensive way to advertise your company and its products or services.
A regular newsletter is a simple and effective way to send updates about your company, upcoming events, and special offers. Email software also makes it easy to schedule automated promotional emails for customers who haven’t purchased recently.
Email marketing allows you to target particular group of customers or even specific individuals. Offering individual customers special birthday deals on merchandise or services is one way to do this.
A restaurant, for instance, might send an email to customers on their birthday offering 50% off an entrée. This kind of personalization helps a business develop and maintains a relationship with a customer- and that cam lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.
Email Marketing Remains Relevant
In the age of social media, its tempting to write off email. However, there is statistical evidence that it remains an important aspect of marketing efforts. For instance:
• Experts with the email marketing company Litmus estimate that email marketing returns an average of $42 for every $1 spent.• One survey found that 59% of respondents were influenced by email when it came to purchasing decisions.• A study of more than 1 billion shopping sessions in 2019 found that email marketing has a conversion rate of 2.3%, compared to 1% for social media.
One huge advantage of email over social media is that customers are more likely to see an email than social media. Just posting something on social media doesn’t mean that everyone you want to see your message will see it. However, an email will sit in an inbox until it’s read (or deleted).
Ideally, email marketing should go hand to hand with social media. Adding social media “like” or “share” buttons to your marketing emails gives an additional way for customers to connect with your brand. Snippets of positive reviews from social media fans can be included in emails, and social media posts can drive customers to your email newsletters.
