The challenge that growing businesses constantly face is usually that they quickly become victims of their success. Customer Relationship Management systems like Salesforce and Microsoft D365 are therefore meant to help with this challenge by providing tools that help businesses scale up seamlessly.
In this article, we explore one of those, enterprise email marketing platforms. We take a look at some of the best CRM software for email marketing available today, including enterprise-level email marketing software, as well as solutions for small businesses.
What is an Email Marketing Automation Software
In general, CRMs provide tools for automation for many different department operations, helping companies eliminate human error, improve efficiency, and generate data that can be used in other operations as well. CRMs also produce reports that are crucial for decision-making because they are timely, accurate, and well-formatted.
Email automation software fulfills precisely the same purpose for sales and marketing teams. It is specifically targeted to help companies manage their email campaigns, meaning the software provides a set of features that enhance operations and add value to email marketing. Enterprise email marketing software may come as part of a CRM offering, or as a standalone solution.
What Makes a Good Email Automation Platform
The definition of a top email automation platform is not set in stone. There are some features though, that every solution, from enterprise email marketing solutions to those made for small to medium size businesses, should offer.
One of the first things is automation. This can be implemented to varying levels of complexity depending on the solution you are working with. However, you want to be able to design and deploy workflows that enable you to send personalized emails without the input of your marketing or sales staff.
Beyond that, you want to be able to perform certain tasks, like segregating your audience into segments and checking the quality of the emails you are sending by previewing how images, links, and layouts appear on different devices, web browsers, and platforms. And good analytics to help you keep your finger on the pulse and facilitate continuous optimization of the campaigns you send out.
How We Chose the Best Enterprise Email Platforms
The email automation software niche is rather saturated. That’s why it was important for us to handpick only the best tools – and we needed a list of criteria.
Ultimately, our team has settled on the following criteria when analyzing the top enterprise email platforms and choosing the best ones:
- Email Automation Capabilities: A platform should provide robust email automation capabilities. This includes drip campaigns, segmentation, personalization, and the ability to trigger emails based on user behavior.
- User-Friendliness: We consider the platform’s user interface and overall user experience. A user-friendly platform ensures that a sales team can quickly adopt and leverage its features without extensive training.
- Integration Capabilities: We check the platform’s compatibility with other existing tools and systems. Seamless integration with CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot is crucial for streamlined workflows.
- Analytics and Reporting: We assess the platform’s analytics and reporting capabilities. It should provide insights into campaign performance and KPIs such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and more.
- Compliance: We ensure that the software complies with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR or CAN-SPAM Act, depending on your target audience.
- Reviews and Testimonials: We’ve read reviews and testimonials from other businesses using the platform. This is how we gain insights into how well the platform aligns with real-world scenarios.
5 Best Enterprise Email Marketing Platforms
Salesforce Pardot
Salesforce is one of the best-known CRMs on the market today. It offers a whole range of modules that support different business operations – solutions for sales, warehouse management, inventory, and so on.
Pardot is the best enterprise email marketing platform that is meant to support sales and marketing teams with automated tools that enable them to generate, nurture, and qualify leads, increase sales, and track performance and ROI.
How It Works
For email marketing in particular, Pardot offers the following features:
Engagement Studio
This is meant to help you nurture leads. You automate a logical path with a set of actions, triggers, and rules. You can send emails to contacts (action), and depending on their interaction with them, or lack thereof, program a set of subsequent steps to take. For example, if a contact doesn’t open an email after a predetermined period (trigger), you can program the email to be resent with a few changes, for example, a different subject line. An example of a rule would be sending the second email only if the contact is part of a certain list.
Drip programs
Drip programs are legacy versions of Engagement Studio. They are slowly being phased out as new versions of Pardot are released. They essentially do the same tasks but instead of using a canvas in the UI for creating email campaigns, they use wizards to guide you through the steps.
One-to-one emails
This does exactly what it says on the tin. It is meant for communicating to individual recipients. There may be cases where a rep needs to communicate with a particular contact. Pardot offers the option to do this.
List emails
Like the one-to-one email feature, list emails are provided to send emails to a list manually. This could be for some one-time event, a press release for instance, or some special offer.
Auto-responders
These can be set to send emails as a response to certain triggers, like a prospect completing a form and signing up for a brochure, or newsletter.
Testing
Pardot also has features that let you test your email campaigns. You can use Litmus to preview how your emails are displayed on different devices, see how they work on different browsers, and also see whether or not your emails go to spam. You can also use Pardot’s testing features to see if all your links and tags work as intended.
Pros
- Powerful automation capabilities enable marketers to create personalized and targeted campaigns based on user behavior and interactions
- Salesforce offers training resources, documentation, and a supportive community
- Extensive reporting and analytics features provide insights into campaign performance, lead generation, and other key metrics
- Seamless integration with Salesforce CRM allows for better alignment between marketing and sales teams
Cons
- Pardot can be relatively expensive, especially for smaller businesses
- Some users may find Pardot’s interface and features complex, resulting in a steeper learning curve
- The user interface has been criticized for being less intuitive and user-friendly than some competing marketing automation tools
Pricing
- Pardot Growth – $1,250/month
- Pardot Plus – $2,500/month
- Pardot Advanced – $4,000/month
- Pardot Premium – $15,000/month
Link To Official Website
Hubspot
HubSpot’s offers an email marketing solution within its Marketing Hub software – a solution that is meant to help marketing teams create content for landing pages, email, and other platforms, implement marketing automation, and track ROI.
How It Works
Using a drag-and-drop editor, you can design your emails with different layouts, and your branding, and add calls to action. Alternatively, you can choose from a whole catalog of templates from the Hubspot marketplace.
Marketing Hub also offers the ability to adapt your correspondence depending on which stage of the lifecycle your recipient is at. Drawing from data in the wider Hubspot CRM, the email functionality uses the data you have on your contacts to automatically tailor subject lines, calls to actions, links, and other assets, to be more relevant to the subscriber, making your email campaigns more effective.
Marketing Hub also offers A/B testing capabilities for email campaigns. It serves up reports that enable you to determine which subscribers are connecting, which content is most effective, at what times, and other relevant metrics that help you improve your conversion rates.
Pros
- HubSpot is known for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise
- HubSpot provides a comprehensive suite of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service
- HubSpot includes a built-in CMS, making it easy to create and manage website content directly within the platform
Cons
- HubSpot’s pricing can be a drawback for small businesses with limited budgets
- The email capabilities in the free version of HubSpot may be limited
Pricing
- Starter: from $45/month
- Professional: from $800/month
- Enterprise: from $3,600/month
Link To Official Website
https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is another platform for automating marketing best known for its dedicated email marketing features. It started as one of the enterprise email marketing tools and has since expanded its core focus to cover more marketing functionality.
How It Works
Mailchimp has tools for creating personalized journeys for clients. You can set up messages that are delivered based on who the subscriber is, and what interactions they have had with your brand.
Mailchimp offers additional data-driven functionality to enable businesses to optimize the times emails are sent out, and improve open and click-through rates. You can also set up emails to go out once purchases are made, or some account activity takes place.
There are triggers, scheduling tools, automation, visual journeys, and other pre-built tools to help you along. A Content Optimizer helps you enhance your email content – copy, pictures, layout, and more – based on the data taken from top-performing campaigns.
Also, there are segmentation features that help you group your audiences based on different parameters to ensure your emails are relevant. You can also get data-driven recommendations on which segments to target based on behaviors, activities, and characteristics.
Pros
- Mailchimp provides a variety of professionally designed templates and customization options
- Mailchimp offers a free plan with basic features, making it suitable for small businesses
- Users can conduct A/B testing to optimize email campaigns by testing different subject lines, content, and send times
- Mailchimp integrates seamlessly with a wide range of third-party applications and platforms, including e-commerce, CRM, and analytics tools
Cons
- Removing the limits placed on the number of contacts and emails sends may significantly increase the cost
- Tracking your campaigns is not straightforward and has fewer features than competitor solutions
Pricing
- Essentials: from $11/month
- Standard: from $17/month
- Premium: from $299/month
Link To Official Website
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is another product whose core focus is marketing automation. It has a raft of features to support omnichannel marketing. You can track how your subscribers engage with your campaigns using tags, you can create custom fields, and there are rich analytics and very helpful reports.
How It Works
ActiveCampaign offers options to send emails to lists or have emails go out based on triggers. For example, a subscriber visiting your website or engaging with your content. The platform also offers options to send emails to lists or have emails go out based on triggers. Triggers could be actions like a subscriber visiting your website or engaging with your content.
Activecampaign also gives you the option to divide your audience into segments based on different parameters so that you can send more targeted content. Use the platform’s email autoresponders to, for example, automatically send welcome emails or respond to triggers and deliver a more cohesive experience.
Pros
- ActiveCampaign provides a unified platform that combines email marketing, automation, CRM, and sales automation
- ActiveCampaign supports various communication channels, including email, SMS, site messages, and social media integration
- Detailed reporting and analytics features provide insights into campaign performance, lead behavior, and other key metrics
Cons
- ActiveCampaign’s pricing is based on the number of contacts, which could result in increased costs as your contact list grows
- While ActiveCampaign offers support, some users have reported that response times could be improved
- While there are templates available, users may find the design options and flexibility somewhat less extensive
Pricing
- Lite: from $29/month
- Plus: from $49/month
- Professional: from $149/month
- Enterprise: On request
Link To Official Website
https://www.activecampaign.com/
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a dedicated email marketing platform that is focused on being user-friendly. It’s a great fit for smaller businesses and those who don’t have advanced needs, or skills, in email marketing.
How It Works
The platform provides drag-and-drop capabilities for designing emails. If you want to, you can instead use one of the pre-designed email templates, or simply add a link to your website, and the campaign monitor will import your brand colors, your logo, and use the concept to style your email campaigns.
Campaign Monitor also offers segmentation features that enable you to use the contact data you have to create specialized categories and send them emails that are relevant and more likely to be effective.
Use the platform’s link review tool to ensure that any links that you include in your emails are working properly and are not broken or out of date. You can also create journeys for your clients that will help ensure that each subscriber remains engaged and that the system is communicating relevant information that will spur them on to the next step in the journey you have envisioned for them.
Additionally, the platform also provides smart analytics that helps you improve your email campaigns’ performance by using metrics like geography, acquisition statistics, and the amount of engagement each campaign garners. Additionally, the platform also provides smart analytics that helps you improve and enhance how well your email campaigns do using metrics like geography acquisition and the amount of engagement that each campaign garners.
Pros
- The drag-and-drop email editor makes it easy to create visually appealing campaigns
- Campaign Monitor provides automation features, including a Journey Builder for creating automated customer journeys
- Users can send transactional emails through the platform for consistent branding and engagement
Cons
- While Campaign Monitor offers automation features, it may not be as advanced
- The platform’s social media features are not as extensive
Pricing
- Basic: from $9/month
- Unlimited: from $29/month
- Premier: from $149/month
Link To Official Website
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/
Conclusion
A digital marketing strategy is never complete without an effective email marketing plan. Email has endured as a platform and proved beyond doubt that it is here to stay. With the list of email marketing services that we have provided here, you should be able to sort through the many options that are out there right now and take steps toward finding the right solution for your business.