Top 8 (+2) Email Marketing Software for Agencies: Which One’s Right for You?

Email marketing is a strategy that continues to be one of the cheapest, most effective ways to reach target customers and build brand loyalty. When it comes to email marketing for agencies, though, it’s incredibly important to use the right tool. That means having access to the email marketing software that caters to your individual needs. But which one is the best?

In this article, I’ll take a look at the top 8 most popular email marketing software for agencies: what they do best, how much they cost, and what type of agency they’re best for.

MailerLite

MailerLite is not only one of the most well-known email marketing platforms on the market—it’s also an all-in-one platform for agencies looking to get the most out of their online presence.

Notable features include email marketing, email automation, newsletter sending, drag and drop website building, landing page building, and form building. In other words, MailerLite provides you with everything you need for your targeted email marketing.

Does it excel at all of these features? Not necessarily but if you’re just starting out and you want to make sure all of your bases are covered, MailerLite is a great option. Do keep in mind that once you scale your agency, you might want to move to a different tool stack, so it’s important to consider that when making your decision.

Pricing

MailerLite’s pricing scheme is as customizable as possible. You have four pricing tiers to choose from (Free, Growing Business, Advanced, and Enterprise), each with its own pricing for a given number of email subscribers.

For instance, if you have 1,000 contacts, you can choose the Free version, the Growing Business one at $9/month, the Advanced one at $19/month, or the Enterprise one at custom pricing. Likewise, if you have 10,000 contacts, the Free version is not available, the Growing Business plan costs $49/month, and the Advanced one is $77/month.

Sendinble

Sendinblue is another powerful email marketing tool smaller and medium-sized agencies and brands who want to do more with fewer tools. More specifically. Sendinblue allows you to create email campaigns, campaigns for SMS lead generation, Facebook Ads campaigns, and more. The same tool allows you to embed a chat on your website, acts as a sales CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, and create signup forms.

If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is—but with a G2 score of 4.5/5 from more than 1,600 people, you can rest assured you get good quality software. Sendinblue may not be a good fit if you have complex email campaigns and automations to set up—but it will definitely do a great job, especially for the price. Which brings us to the pricing.

Pricing

Sendinblue comes with a more than attractive proposition: marketing automation for unlimited contacts for $0/month, $25/month, $65/month, or at a custom price (if you want the Enterprise solution).

They cap the free plan at 300 email sends/day, and it does have fewer features than the paid versions. With that said, if you’re just starting out with your agency, you might find this email marketing software to be one of the best options.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a more advanced, robust email tool that allows you to build elaborate email marketing campaigns, SMS campaigns, and social media marketing campaigns. Furthermore, Constant Contact comes with an integrated builder for lead generation landing pages, it does very well with engaging quizzes, and it also enables you to work with attractive email design templates.

Since data makes the world go round, Constant Contact will also provide you with analytics and A/B testing capabilities, which can help you measure your campaign effectiveness and adjust accordingly.

Pricing

Constant Contact has two main products: the email and digital marketing tool and the lead gen & CRM one. For the email and digital marketing software, there are three pricing tiers: Lite ($12/month), Standard ($35/month), and Premium ($80/month.) These prices are for up to 500 email sends a month—if you need more, the price will go up incrementally, on each of the tiers.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is a very good option for agencies with complex buying cycles. Because it allows you a more advanced segmentation, Campaign Monitor enables you to personalize your campaigns and target your customers with more precision. It also comes with a very good drag-and-drop email editor, analytics, a slew of integrations, and SMS marketing capabilities.

Although not the most advanced email marketing software on the market, Campaign Monitor takes things up a notch with their email marketing automation capabilities. Those who want to leverage their email campaigns, and nurture leads and customers can benefit from it.

Pricing

Campaign Monitor’s pricing is structured on three plans: Basic, Unlimited, and Premier. Each of them is priced according to the number of contacts in your list. For example, if you have up to 500 contacts, the Basic plan will cost you $9/month, the Unlimited one $29/month, and the Premier one $149/month.

Naturally, the highest-tiered plan also comes with the most advanced features, including complex segmentation, time zone sending, email section locking, and so on. The good news is that most of the agency-focused features are actually available on all pricing tiers.

Mailchimp

Perhaps the most popular email marketing software in the world, Mailchimp is a very solid option for agencies when it comes to building email campaigns. It’s easy to use, comes with a lot of attractive templates, and it provides you with enough advanced features to help you segment your audience and increase your deliverability.

Mailchimp also allows you to build automated campaigns, monitor their performance with analytics, and allows you to connect your email marketing with more than 250 other tools. If your agency needs a fully integrated email marketing solution, Mailchimp is one of your best options.

Pricing

Mailchimp has a pretty complex pricing system. They have a free plan, for up to 500 contacts, and with access to all integrations and a few features generally considered more advanced. The main downside is that this plan will only allow you to send 1,000 emails/ month—if you need more, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

They have three paid plans starting at $13/month (for 500 contacts), $20/month (for 500 contacts), and starting at $350/month (for very advanced features and up to 150,000 monthly sends.) The first two change, according to the number of contacts you have. For instance, if you have 5,000 contacts, you will pay $69/month or $100/month, respectively.

HubSpot

HubSpot is frequently regarded as a Holy Grail of CRM, email marketing, and automation solutions. It offers you an all-in-one platform to keep track of leads and customers, create automated emails and campaigns, build landing pages, and generate blog content. If your agency is really serious about getting the most out of its email and marketing efforts, then HubSpot should be an option you consider. What makes it special is the option to easily communicate and collaborate between marketing, sales, and customer care departments seamlessly.

Pricing

As a marketing tool, HubSpot doesn’t come cheap—at all. It comes in two main packages, Professional and Enterprise, each with its own set of features and a price for the number of contacts in your list. For instance, if you have 2,000 contacts in your list and you choose the Professional (monthly) option, you can expect to pay $890/month. For the same number of contacts on the Enterprise (monthly) option, you will pay $3,600/month.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a no-fuss, all-in-one email marketing solution that is targeted at small businesses. It comes with a variety of features, including powerful segmentation and automation capabilities, as well as more than 870 integrations.

This tool can help you build intricate sales pipelines and campaigns, send out SMS campaigns, multi-user access, email list segmentation, A/B testing, and more.

Pricing

ActiveCampaign’s email marketing software comes in four plans: at $29/month, $49/month, $149/month, and an Enterprise plan that comes at custom pricing. All pricing plans give you access to 24/7 support and automation features. The lowest-tier is for one user, the following one allows access for 3 users, and the highest-priced tier (outside the Enterprise one) allows 5 users. There are also features only available on the more expensive plans (e.g., the highest-priced tier allows predictive sending, split automations, and integrates with Salesforce).

Salesforce

Although Salesforce is (far) more than an email marketing software, it deserves a more than notable spot in our list. This is an all-in-one customer relationship management (CRM) system, which can help you manage leads and customers, build emails and campaigns, create automated workflows, and even build custom apps.

Pricing

Salesforce is another expensive CRM solution, but the pricing information is not publicly available. You can try it out for free and discuss with their Sales Team for more information on how much the tool costs.

Special mentions for eCommerce agencies

If you’re looking for an email marketing tool focused on eCommerce for your agency clients, check out the following.

Klaviyo

By far one of the best email marketing software options for eCommerce, Klaviyo is a powerful tool that comes packed with features such as segmentation, automations, and integrations. For instance, Klaviyo allows you to create cart abandonment campaigns, personalized emails, and newsletters, loyalty programs, automated flows triggered by events (e.g., a customer’s birthday or an abandoned cart).

Plus, Klaviyo integrates with data outside its own system (e.g., it can pull data from your Facebook campaigns), enabling you to create more personalized emails.

Pricing

Klaviyo has an attractive free email marketing pricing plan: it includes all the main features and it’s free for up to 150,000 contacts. However, it only allows you to send 500 emails every month. The next two pricing tiers have adjustable pricing, according to the number of contacts in your list.

The main difference between these pricing plans is that one will allow you to send SMS campaigns and email campaigns, while the other one will only allow you to send email campaigns. For example, for up to 500 contacts, the Email plan will be $20/month. For up to 2,500 contacts, the same plan will be $60/month. And if you need to send SMS campaigns too, the Email & SMS plan will cost you $35/month for up to 500 contacts, respectively $75/month for up to 2,500 contacts.

Drip

Drip focuses on helping you create personalized emails for your clients and customers, as well as add them to automated campaigns. It also offers automation and segmentation capabilities to help you target customers based on their behavior and response to your messages.

Drip doesn’t offer access to as much external data as Klaviyo does. They do, however, offer a pretty impressive predictive feature which will help you identify successful tactics.

Pricing

Drip’s pricing is simple: they base their prices on the number of contacts in your list and provide you the same features across the board. For up to 2,500 contacts, Drip will cost you $39/month, while for up to 10,000 contacts, it will cost you $154/month. They also have a free trial for 14 days (no credit card required), so you can test out the tool and see if it fits your agency.

Conclusion

Truth be told, there’s an email marketing software for any type of agency, from high-end options such as Salesforce and HubSpot to more affordable tools like Sendinblue and MailerLite. There are ultra-advanced ones and basic ones, those that focus on email and SMS and others that cover a wide range of needs beginner agency owners may have.

No matter what requirements you have, you’ll definitely find countless email marketing tools for agencies that will perfectly fit your needs. All it takes is a bit of research and you’ll have the perfect software to help you grow your business.

What’s next for your agency? The tools presented here are not cold email software. But for that topic, there’s a post that you can read all about in our post about cold email for a marketing agency.