July 7th, 2021 | Updated on August 2nd, 2023
Marketing channels and trends advance with time. While some trends quickly come and go, a channel that has pretty much remained the same is email. You’ll be surprised to know that email marketing is the preferred channel for content marketing for both B2B as well as B2C marketers.
Email marketing is an excellent way to boost your other marketing channels such as social media. However, that doesn’t mean email marketing doesn’t come with its own set of challenges.
One o the biggest challenges is the time and effort it requires to set up.
Without effective tools, you may end up spending a lot of money and time sending emails that don’t look stunning.
This will not only hinder your productivity but will also bring down your marketing ROI.
A number of businesses settle for it because they don’t know which tools to use to make the entire process easier.
A common myth is that email marketing is expensive and can’t be used to promote small businesses.
You can easily find several email marketing tools that’ll help you save money and time.
Intrigued? Read this article that contains our handpicked list of the 6 best free email marketing tools for small businesses:
1. Mailchimp
It’s the most popular email marketing tool and for all the right reasons.
Their free plan includes basic email marketing features like the creation and scheduling of emails.
What sets it apart is its intelligent recommendations feature that provide you with invaluable audience insights to optimise your strategy.
Easily design emails using the content manager where you can store your files and images.
It also allows you to automate emails that can have a profound impact on the buyer journey.
Easily send welcome emails, abandoned cart reminder, order confirmation and more with a single click!
2. HubSpot
They’re known for their marketing automation platform but their free email marketing tool is worth trying.
It can easily support your business’ transactional emailing needs.
Be it emails from leads or thank you emails to your customers or promoting an ongoing campaign, HubSpot has you covered.
Another reason why I included it in this list today is because of how simple and easy is it to use it.
Equipped with beautiful pre-made templates and a drag and drop visual editor and it can get you started in no time!
One of its best features, however, is its integration with other free tools from HubSpot such as the free CRM.
You can set up and sync both accounts to get a centralized database, organise lists, manage, track and improve performance.
3. Benchmark
It’s a fabulous option if you’re looking for responsive emails that look good on any device they’re viewed on.
Add images, stickers, text and effects and send them across to your audience.
They also have a plethora of pre-designed templates for you to choose from based on occasion, type and industry which makes it one of the best free email marketing tools for small businesses.
Regardless of which industry, type or occasion you’re creating an email outreach for, Benchmark has you covered.
If you’re HTML savvy, you can play around with the code editor to build customised emails.
The dual-view feature allows you to see your design as you’re editing it which helps you optimise your emails in real-time.
4. Mailjet
It comes with collaborative and intuitive tools that help you build efficient email outreach campaigns.
Simply begin by customizing any template of your choice to create responsive emails to impress your audience, regardless of the device they’re using.
What sets Mailjet apart is its real-time collaborative feature that helps you seamlessly collaborate with your team.
Add dynamic content to your emails to create relevant and personalized emails for each recipient.
This helps you get more out of your email marketing campaign.
Additionally, you can integrate it into your CRM to manage your mailing list via a single dashboard!
5. Sendinblue
It’s a marketing platform that features landing page creation, email marketing tools and CRM.
It contains about 70 pre-designed templates to help you create stunning emails to increase conversion rates.
The best part is that all the templates are responsive. They can be previewed to ensure that your design is perfect in every format.
Once you design the email, use their segmented recipient list and A/B testing features to optimise your campaign.
6. SendPulse
Equipped with a wide variety of pre-designed templates, it can be used for all small and medium-sized businesses.
Customize any template using their drag and drop visual editor.
Schedule these emails so that they can be sent at the right time to the right recipients to trigger conversion.
What sends SendPulse apart is its subscriber rating feature that helps you identify the most valuable subscribers.
Easily analyze the open-click rates, read-unread rate of all the subscribers to make the most of your email marketing campaign.
Set replaceable text fields such as job role, age, gender, name and more to send out personalized emails.
The Takeaway
7. Atomic Mail Sender
It’s a multifunctional automatic email sender that will greatly simplify your routine of sending emails to your clients or partners. You can use all its features absolutely free during the 7-day trial period.
With the help of the tool you can conveniently and quickly personalize each of your emails, use a convenient email template (the program already includes a gallery of free templates, but you can also use your own template), connect an unlimited number of SMTP servers or use the built-in one, track your mailing performance indicators such as CTR, bounce rate, email open rate and much more.
There you have it: 7 Free Email Marketing Tools for Small Businesses.
All of these email marketing tools come with robust features that don’t require any additional paid plans.
As a small business owner, you can create a lucrative business using these email marketing tools by boosting your conversions.
Once you have optimised your campaigns and reached your targets, you can opt-in for the paid plans which are affordable enough to fit your budget.
Which email marketing tools are you planning to try and how are you going to optimize your campaigns? Tell us in the comments section below!