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As a digital marketer, online email marketing services are one of those marketing devices you must take seriously. It ranks as one of the most effective and least expensive channels to send out your message. It is all involved with diverse, effective ways of engaging and nurturing your audience.
When you combine email marketing with newsletters and a good sales page, the result is always worth the effort. But you must get it right by finding a perfect online email marketing service provider for your business.
Also, you must learn the techniques require for this business. I have found the ebook – Secret Email System very resourceful.
You should lookout for an email service provider that will help drive engagement, build relationships, and reduce your marketing cost to the barest minimum. It is my focus in this article; I will look at the features you should look out for in free online email marketing services and point you to a list of such services from which you can choose.
Table of Contents
Why You Need a Good Online Email Marketing Services
Whether you are opting for free or paid online email marketing services, there are some essential benefits you should watch out for. While some of these benefits are obvious, others are not that conspicuous.
In it all, they should help you deliver a good user experience for your subscribers and grow your list consistently. Below are some of the benefits you should watch out for from an Online email marketing services provider.
Features of Good Email marketing Services
1. Message Automation (Autoresponder Services)
Whether you call it message automation or autoresponder services, it is one of the essential services your email service provider must deliver. This feature will allow you to present a series of emails and send them based on some set instructions.
A good example is setting up an email series triggered by users signing up for your lead magnet or a shopper subscribing for your sets of the newsletter. You can set up a delivery mail that thanks the shopper for subscribing and that delivers newsletters on specific week dates for a specific period before offering your products.
2. Easy to Integrate with Other Platforms
To qualify as one of the best email marketing services providers, it must integrate easily. Email marketing does not work well when it stands on its own, but you will benefit more from it when it easily integrates with other platforms.
There is always the likelihood to integrate your email marketing platform with your WordPress website, social medium platforms, and other platforms
3. Spam control and Compliance
The US Federal Trade Commission has the right to enforce the law against unsolicited, pornographic marketing via commercial emails. It is backedup by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. It covers areas such as management of subscription, content, and sending natures.
A good email marketing service must cover your track to ensure compliance with such regulations.
4. Pricing
I agree that email marketing is one of the best methods of reaching out to a target and broad audience. But you do not need to empty your pause because of this. Instead, it would help to think of a platform with multiple benefits at an affordable cost.
5. Robust analytics
If you succeed in digital marketing, you must be interested in data. Funny enough, no one platform is an island of it. At the same time, some platforms might seem overwhelming with data others claim to be scanty.
The system should have just enough of what you need to get started. It will tell you the status of your subscriber. If your subscriber signed on and verified the double opt-in form sent to their email, send steed will mark them as “active subscribers.” If your subscriber did not confirm it, then they are marked as “Unverified,” but if your subscriber does not open any of your mails for some while, then they are classed as “inactive subscribers.”
Also, the system is designed to indicate your subscriber’s interaction with your email. It tells the number of emails that were sent and opened. It reveals the number that has links and how many were opened.
6. Message Limits
Most email service providers usually create a limit for the number of messages you can send in a month. Look out for a service provider that provides an unlimited number of messages for free subscribers monthly.
If your number of subscribers is 1,000, you will need an email message of not less than 3,000. You will not want to switch email services providers; look for a flexible provider.
7. Email Deliverability
There will be no marketing if your emails are not delivered. Email deliverability is a major feature of top email service providers. In your search for the best free online email marketing service provider, look out for an ESP that runs email deliverability best practices.
They should provide data about feedback irrespective of email deliverability.
Free Online Email Marketing Services Providers
Below are a list of my most prefered Free Online Email Marketing Services
1. Sendstead
Sendstead is a free email marketing platform designed for digital marketers, created by Kenneth – the founder of leadsleap (a comprehensive digital marketing platform). The aim was to assist digital marketers create their list and interact with their leads by sending engaging messages.
With Sendstead, you can easily set up an autoresponder that will allow you to create a series of emails for your prospect or leads. They will send automated emails at the right time.
Sendsteed is 100% free. All you need to do is join the Leadsleap platform. You can join this platform as a free member, audit the platform, and enjoin the various tools on the platform. When you are convinced, then you can go pro on and continue with the platform.
Let me itemize what you get as a free subscriber with SendSteed
- You can create as many as ten different mailing list
- You can broadcast at least a mail per day to your list
- You can create free Lead capture forms (sign-up forms)
- You can Create Landing pages with lead capture forms
- You can track your mails to know if they are sent, opened, and if links are being clicked
But if you are a pro member on the Leadsleap platform, you will gain access to all that is above, including the following
- Unlimited List
- AutoResponders (Email List)
- Repeat Broadcast. You can repeat the same message if you want it to go out repeatedly.
- Can send Unlimited broadcast to your active subscribers
- Can send twice to inactive subscribers in a month
2. Sender
Sender is the second on our priority when it comes to free online email marketing services providers. They allow you to add as many as 2,500 subscribers and send 15000 mail monthly on their free plan. They make available one of the best tools for email deliverability, create a robust platform for creating beautiful newsletters without knowledge of HTML, and you can freely include images and videos in your newsletter. All are included in the free plan.
The free plan also comes with advanced automation, such that you can send campaigns to users who abandoned items in their cart, and you can freely move your subscribers from one list to another. Another feature that is worth mentioning is analytics. It allows you to track when your emails are opened, click on links within your emails, and lots more.
3. Sendpulse
If you are looking for a platform that goes beyond email marketing, then SendPulse might be the right option for you. They are a multichannel marketing platform that comes with other solutions like web push notification, SMS, and Viber.
The platform offers an email sending limit of as much as 15,000 mails within the month but allows just 500 subscribers for their free plan. They come with customized email templates that you can easily use for your campaign.
Their analytics is another lovely tool; it helps you see at a glance your email open and click rate. I will recommend Sendpulse if your business uses transactional emails. You will be able to generate both transactional mails and SMS to your clients without extra cost.
4. SendInBlue
Sendinblue is another multichannel email marketing platform. They allow you to gain an unlimited number of subscribers on their free platform but with some drawbacks. At the same time, the premium membership allows you to an unlimited number of mails per day but the cap it at 300 for the free platform.
Although they give their free plan access to their beautiful email templates, they will not give you room to enjoy their analytics. Their free plan do not give access to email open and click rates. I see them as better suited for a business that concentrates less on sending newsletters but work with triggered emails like transactional and cart-based emails.
5. HubSpot Email
Hubspot is a popular Customer relationship management platform that is well known for marketing automation. They allow you to use their free email marketing to send a maximum of 2,000 emails monthly free. You can craft these mails with their beautiful drag and drop editor that is easy to use.
The top of it is that the free platform grants you access to their CRM package and other features like landing pages.
6. MailJet
Mailjet makes my list of free online email marketing services because it has robust features that can help you build your email list even as a free subscriber. You can customize the templates to create your emails that will impress your clients and cause a wahoo.
The platform has features to help you create dynamic content that you can easily personalize your emails for each client. Email personalization is one of the secrets to getting results from your marketing effort.