Did you know reply rates can increase by 250% by automating outreach and follow up emails?
That’s right! If you’re aiming to market successfully in the coming year, it’s time to automate your sales process by creating advanced email sequences and sending them using send time optimization.
Read ahead to find the list of features you need to check before buying an automation tool plan.
Table of Contents
Things You Need In An Email Marketing Automation Tool
- Advanced email sequences: A series of emails that are scheduled to be sent automatically based on the actions of the customers or subscribers.
- Optimizing Sending Time: This feature optimizes the time of sending the email depending on the customers’ convenient hour.
- A/B Testing: This feature is to test send two emails (email A & B) to two sets of audiences to check which email performed better. You might know this feature as split testing.
- Readymade email templates
- Preview the emails before sending out
- Lead generation: The process of attracting potential clients to your business and initiating their interest gradually to convert them to your loyal customers.
- Landing pages & Forms
- Dedicated IP Address
- List verification: The process of eliminating undeliverable, inactive, or dangerous emails from your list.
- CRM or Customer relationship management: This feature allows both small and large scale businesses to organize, plan, and automate emails necessary at every step of customer interaction.
- Analytics and reporting
The 5 Best Automation Tools To Ace Email Marketing In 2023
| Software | Starting Plan | Best for | Rating in g2.com |
| SendInBlue | $25/month for 20k emails to 2000 contacts | Building an audience | 4.5/5 |
| ActiveCampaign | $29/month for unlimited emails to 1000 contacts | Ecommerce | 4.6/5 |
| Hubspot | $45/month for 5k emails to 1000 contacts | B2B Companies | 4.4/5 |
| Converkit | $9/month for unlimited emails to 300 contacts | Bloggers & Solopreneurs | 4.4/5 |
| Smartlead | $24/month for 6k emails to 2000 active leads | Beginners | 4.9/5 |
1. SendInBlue
Notable Features:
- CRM
- Sent Time Optimization
- A/B Testing
- Automates segmentation and marketing messages
- Landing pages, forms & Facebook ads
- Drag & drop
- SMS marketing
Review
SendInBlue is one of the most efficient email marketing automation tools in the market. You can design emails using this software for upcoming email campaigns and send them at your customer’s convenient time using the sent time optimization feature.
You can create automated, time-sensitive offers for your customer segments without any hassle.
It’s the best for expanding the customer base.
Talking about the hassle, this software is also a great platform to organize your team and customer interaction in the CRM. It offers a customizable sales pipeline in which you can track deals and revenue potential as your leads move across the funnel.
Stefanel R., a product manager, says on g2.com, "User-friendly all-in-one tool perfect for small businesses”.
PROS
✅ Easy to use
✅ User-friendly interface
✅ Free Plan available
✅ Versatile software
CONS
❌ Inadequate user tutorial
2. ActiveCampaign
Notable Features:
- Advanced email sequences
- A/B Testing
- Email templates & Previews
- Dedicated IP Address
- CRM
- Geo-Tracking & Site-tracking
- Analytics and reporting
Review
ActiveCampaign was undoubtedly the most commonly used email marketing automation software around the globe, and there's a valid reason behind it. You can automate any type of email using ActiveCampaign, such as broadcast, targeted, triggered, email autoresponders, transactional, and scheduled emails.
It’s recommended for e-commerce.
From a B2B company to e-commerce, it’s compatible with almost all types of business. Overall, it’s a great tool for creating drip emails that will enhance your subscriber interaction, interests, demographics, history, and more.
PROS
✅ Great customer support
✅ Easy to use
✅ Can send unlimited emails
CONS
❌ Less number of contacts allowed
❌ No free trial
3. Hubspot
Notable Features:
- Form automation
- Email automation
- Forms
- Email marketing
- Landing pages
- Live chat
Review
Hubspot is the most famous name on this list. From email marketing features to content management systems, it has all the major features an email automation tool can have!
It’s highly recommended for B2B companies.
This software provides an all-in-one CRM that will make email marketing automation a smooth sail for you. It comes with various unique features, such as its unsubscription choices.
Unlike other automation platforms, Hubspot allows its customers to unsubscribe some selected email topics or lists, instead of permanently unsubscribing. On top of that, this software also allows the readers to personalize your content based on specific taste.
In a nutshell, Hubspot is the best tool out there for B2B email marketing.
PROS
✅ Free plan
✅ Excellent CRM
✅ Can track ROI with revenue attribution reporting
CONS
❌ Expensive
4. Convertkit
Notable Features:
- Automated email sequences
- Unlimited landing pages, forms & broadcasts
- One additional team member
- Third-party integration
- Live chat & email support
Review
Are you a solopreneur wanting to start a business? If yes, you must try Convertkit. It’s the best marketing automation software for bloggers and content creators.
ConvertKit helps you with everything you need, including unlimited landing pages, forms & broadcast messages. You can use this tool to create email sequences and custom opt-in forms.
The highlight is that you can use the drag & drop feature to create minimalistic email content that will suit your branding.
PROS
✅ Easy to use
✅ Drag & drop feature
✅ Free plan
✅ Affordable pricing
CONS
❌ The free plan doesn’t provide automation
5. SmartLead
Notable Features:
- Sent time optimization
- Advanced email sequences
- A/B Testing
- Ready-made email templates
- Preview
- Lead generation
- Dedicated IP Address Y
- List verification
- CRM
- Analytics and reporting
Review
Don’t have your audience yet? This automation platform can help you. It provides a list of active leads with unlimited email accounts and warmups.
If you’re a beginner in email marketing, then automation tools can be a lot more confusing than you think. Sometimes, even excellent automation platforms such as SendInBlue and ActiveCampaigns can be hard to use.
Therefore, if it’s your first time using an email automation tool, I suggest you try Smartlead. The best thing is that the founder himself sees the onboarding process and helps with everything till the user is ready to send emails.
You can use this platform to send emails from various sender addresses to your targeted audience at their convenient hour using the send time optimization feature.
Joseph S, a small business owner, says on g2.com, "Smartlead is like the top 3 ESPs but on steroids."
Overall, this is the best software for beginners with essential automation features.
PROS
✅ Easy to use
✅ Excellent onboarding process
✅ Free 14 days trial
✅ Affordable pricing
CONS
❌ No landing pages & forms
Final Thoughts!
Dear fellow marketers, it’s time to accept that AI-based automation tools are the future of email marketing. While you do that, it is also necessary to understand that automation doesn’t replace your team.
It only makes the process easier for them so that they can use their skills in creating ideas, not implementing them.
Let the AI do the manual labor! Pick any one software from the above list according to your needs and get started today.
All the best for the upcoming holiday sales!
Vaibhav is the founder of smartlead.ai and smartwriter.ai, cold outreach and personalization platforms used by Stripe, GaryVee, Meta, and 16000 other businesses using SEO. Before this, he exited an AI business analytics business & bootstrapped his software consultancy, which built 55 funded startups that, in total, have raised $200M & generate >$14M in Monthly Revenue. He posts actively about SEO, growth marketing, and product.