Best Email List Management Software

What is email list management?

Email list management is about managing contacts in lists to ensure you are targeting the right contacts with the right personalized content.

To succeed, you need a strategy for managing tags, segments, and contacts of your list. This will allow you to personalize emails according to each subscriber to create a personalized experience, and therefore more engagement and feedback with your customers.

 

Why email list management is important?

The contacts you have in your email lists have subscribed to your newsletter because they think your site has something interesting and valuable for them. Maybe they are interested in offers, special discount coupons, news about a product launch or updates, or any other topics.

You can store your contacts in an Excel or Google Sheet file with multiple columns and high detail. But when it comes to sending an email to certain contacts from your list, pasting and copying data isn’t the best approach.

With the proper email list management software you can keep your list ordered and clean. These apps keep data organized and classified according to certain criteria and offer an easy way to manage email marketing campaigns.

And as these tools always provide some kind of automation and integrations, you will save a lot of time and effort planning your email campaigns.

 

 

What are the best practices for email list management?

A valid email database is an important asset for your business since it contains a list of prospects interested in your products, services, or articles.

For optimal results, you should consider the following:

Segmentation:

Segmentation is a strong word in classic marketing, and even more relevant in digital marketing.

In email marketing, segmentation refers to the process of splitting a list of prospects into smaller and more defined categories.

Thus, grouping subscribers that have common attributes allows you to know them better and identify the best way to meet their needs with your product or service.

You can filter contacts by age, gender, geo-location, or any other contact information useful to your business. Creating filters will allow you to send personalized emails to your contacts based on these filters.

And the big advantage of filters is that you don’t need to keep separate lists for every segment. You always work with one list and pick the contacts according to the email marketing campaign requirements.

Contact tags:

Contact tags add an extra layer of detail to your segments. A tag can be about geolocation, a file downloaded by the contact, or products that the contact purchased before.

Tagging a contact helps to refine the contact’s interests and to provide value with personalized emails.

Suppose you sell dog food, and you want to set up a campaign about a new product launch. You have three customer segments based on dogs’ size: small, medium, and big.

And each segment will have personalized messages according to their different needs. But you want to send a different email to those dog owners who have bought a dietary supplement before. So, you set up a “contact tag” for those customers that have bought the supplement before.

You will end up with 6 emails, one for each segment (small, medium, and big) who has bought the supplement and one for the segment that hasn’t.

A/B Testing:

With A/B testing you can test how emails perform. You send two versions of the email with minor changes to a small group of contacts in your list, and the email that gets the best results is sent to the remaining contacts of the list.

There are lots of options to test, but the more common are subject lines, send times, design, call-to-actions, and more. For a proper result, you must consider only one change between the two templates, because if the difference is big you won’t know why the results are different.

Email metrics:

You must keep an eye on 5 important metrics of your email campaign:

1-Open rates: This metric tells you if your contacts open your emails. You must consider several factors such as sender address, subject lines, and send times to get a high open-rate.

2-Conversion rate: The percentage of people that clicked on a link and completed the desired action, for example purchasing a product.

3-Clickthrough rate: The percentage of email recipients that clicked on an email versus the number of delivered emails.

4-Bounce rate: The percentage of total emails sent that couldn’t reach the recipient’s inbox.

5-Unsubscribe rate: The percentage of email recipients that unsubscribe from your list.

There are many more metrics to consider depending on your campaign objective, although the listed above are the most relevant.

 

RELATED : Interactive Marketing Tools for Small Business

 

We have compiled the best email list management software below, so you can compare and choose the best solution for your business.

Best email list management tools:

Campaign Monitor

 

 

Campaign Monitor is an email management solution for creative professionals. While it features the most common features an email marketing software has, with this platform you can manage different clients from one single account.

With hundreds of professional templates, a drag-and-drop editor allows you to customize your preferred template to match your branding. Marketing automation lets you set customer’s journey according to their interests and behaviors.

Campaign Monitor Pricing:  Starting at $9/month for 500 contacts, up to 2,500 emails, core email marketing features, analytics, link review, and marketing automation. The next plan $29/month with unlimited emails, time zone sending, unlimited spam testing, and countdown timer (add urgency for limited-time offers)

 

 

Sendinblue 

 

 

Sendinblue is a complete marketing platform. This includes email list management, CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), automation, and all the features you need to build a successful email marketing campaign.

With lots of pre-built templates, an easy to use drag-and-drop editor allows creating an email in a few minutes. These templates are fully responsive, and you can preview the final design on any screen size so you are sure the message is legible on any device.

Marketing automation allows sending emails based on specific triggers depending on customer’s behavior. For example, if a visitor clicked on a link on your website you can send an email with more information, or detect abandoned carts and send an email to recover that sale.

With A/B testing and email heat map, you can test your campaign and find the best way to reach your audience.

This platform offers social media marketing too, with a separate module for creating Facebook ads.

An excellent report module helps to track results in real-time, open rates and CTR reports as well as email heat maps.

Sendinblue Pricing: Free plan with daily 300 email limit and unlimited contacts. This is a good choice if you are just starting to build your list. The next plan $25/month.

 

 

Mailer Lite 

 

 

Mailer Lite offers many advanced tools for email management, including landing pages, pops ups and automation. This platform features a rich-text editor and a built-in photo editor to create professional-looking emails.

This tool comes with many pre-made templates to choose from, and all of them are responsive. This helps to increase the chances of conversions on every device. If you add a powerful website builder, a landing page builder, pop-ups management, and forms, the result is an excellent platform for email marketing.

Campaign tracking is another point where Mailer Lite stands out. You get full campaign reports, click maps (a sort of heat maps to know how your visitors interacted with your website), and open by location reports.

Segmentation, tagging, A/B reports, integrations, developer API (an uncommon feature in this kind of tool), and dedicated IP availability complete the suite.

Mailer Lite Pricing: A very generous free plan for 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. This plan includes a rich-text editor and photo editor, email automation, segmentation, tagging, and A/B testing. The next plan $10/month for 1,000 subscribers and unlimited emails per month.

 

Active Campaign 

 

 

Active Campaign is one of the best email marketing tools available. A powerful email creation wizard helps to set-up email campaigns from start to finish in an easy way. This tool allows creating emails, segment lists, and track results.

With 25+ professional email templates, all you need to do is change words and images to match your business. All templates are mobile-optimized so you can target your prospects no matter with device they use.

Active Campaign is a good choice when it comes to deliverability, landing your emails in the inbox of free providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and the like.

For email list management, you can use tags to segment and target your audience. Tags can be added by the system automatically when visitors are browsing your site according to their behavior. Therefore, you don’t have to work harder and waste time if you are managing a large list.

Active Campaign Pricing: From $9/month for 500 contacts, marketing automation, segmentation, and 300+ integrations. The next plan $49/month adds landing pages, mobile CRM app, Salesforce integration, SMS, and task reporting.

 

Mailercloud

 

Mailercloud’s mantra is “email marketing made easy.” The idea behind this software is to create, send and analyze your campaigns with minimum effort.

You can design, communicate, track and improve your campaign with many tools. A template library offers a wide choice of layouts; these are highly customizable using a drag and drop builder. Still, you can also use HTML codes to create engaging and responsive email templates.

As a regular feature, Mailercloud offers A/B testing, email automation, autoresponders, contact rating and contact monitoring, form builder, and advanced analytics reports.

And to keep your email away from the spam folder, custom domains, dedicated IP, and blacklist monitoring are also available to ensure your email reaches the customers’ inbox.

This platform integrates with Zapier, WordPress, GoogleSheets, MailChimp, HubSpot, Shopify, ZohoCRM, Salesforce, Intercom, Google Forms, and Stripe.

Mailercloud pricing:

Free plan for 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails/month. This plan has all Mailercloud advanced features but a dedicated IP, awesome if you are starting to build your email list.

The next plan starts at $10/month for 1,000 contacts and unlimited emails/month. You can personalize your plan according to the number of monthly contacts.

 

OptinMonster

 

Optin Monster is an email list management tool that offers solutions to grow your email list, reduce cart abandonment and increase sales conversions.

OptinMonster generates more subscribers, leads, and sales from your traffic using the right tools to classify your contacts.

There are 75+ pre-made templates to choose from. All are mobile-friendly and customizable through an easy to use drag-and-drop builder.

There are multiple form types; popups, floating bars, full-screen overlays, or even slide-ins. You can also track user’s behavior to maximize conversions and sales.

OptinMonster provides A/B testing and Onsite retargeting and personalization. These are essential features to customize offers depending on new visitors, recurring visitors, or actual customers.

OptinMonster Pricing: From $9/month (billed annually) with essential tools to get more leads for one site and 3,500 pageviews. This is a good plan to start if your site is just growing. Next plan $19/month for 2 sites includes A/B testing, full reporting, content locking, 15,000 pageviews.

 

 

Moosend

 

Moosend is an email management software with advanced segmentation features. This platform offers email marketing management, marketing automation, landing pages, subscription forms, personalization, advanced tracking, analytics, and integrations.

Moosend claims a sender score of  98% to deliver your messages to the recipients’ inbox and not to the spam folder.

This tool allows you to design email campaigns based on your subscribers’ behavior. Add this to advanced segmentation and you end up with excellent software to manage your lists.

Moosend Pricing: A generous free plan with unlimited emails, sign-ups, and subscription forms plus reporting and analytics. The next plan starts at $8/month with landing pages an SMTP server.

 

Constant Contact

 

 

Constant Contact is a simple and powerful tool for email list management. Featuring email marketing, customizable templates, A/B testing, tracking, reporting, logo maker, Facebook and Instagram ads, integrations, eCommerce, mobile-responsive website with custom domain and analytics. You have a bunch of tools to manage your email campaigns as well as some others marketing actions.

Constant Contact Pricing: From $20/month with basic functions, then $45/month with automated email, surveys, polls, coupons.

 

Omnisend

 

 

Omnisend is a complete marketing platform for eCommerce, email marketing, SMS, and automation. This software provides an omnichannel customer experience by combining email, SMS, web push notifications, Google retargeting, and Facebook retargeting.

With a robust drag-and-drop editor, you can create custom campaigns within minutes using a big library of pre-made templates. And if you own an eCommerce site, Omnisend provides dynamic content blocks designed specifically for this type of websites.

This platform also provides email automation, A/B testing, tagging, and advanced reporting for campaigns to measure how your marketing efforts are going.

Omnisend is an excellent choice if you run an eCommerce website. With features like Product Picker (to choose which products to include in an email), discount coupon codes, gift box, scratch card, you have plenty of tools for proper email campaign management.

Omnisend Pricing: Free plan with 15,000 emails/month, sign-up forms, boxes and pop-ups, email campaigns, basic segmentation, and reports. The next plan $16/month with email automation, SMS campaigns, and audience segmentation. Free 14-day trial available.

 

Hubspot

 

 

Hubspot offers an email marketing tool included in their Professional CRM.

This platform allows sending emails to existing leads that you can also manage from the CRM module.

With a simple to use drag-and-drop editor, you can customize an available template or start a new one from scratch. If you need to send emails for a campaign the free Hubspot version may be the right choice.

You can customize every email to target subscribers at different funnel stages, and also add A/B testing and analytics.

Hubspot Pricing: Free plan for email marketing and basic functionality. Then $45/month for 1,000 contacts, landing pages, ad management, forms, and conversational bots. Since Hubspot is a full marketing platform, check their page for detailed pricing and options.

 

Mailchimp

 

 

Mailchimp is a strong player in the email management business. With a simple interface, it’s easy to learn and set up a campaign with no experience.

If you have up to 2,000 subscribers, the free plan provides many options if you are on a budget. You can use pre-made templates, email automation, auto-responders, A/B testing, analytics, and more.

Regarding email list management, Mailchimp offers segmentation options that allow to combine up to five conditional relationships. And the ability to get insights to find audience patterns for more segmented messages.

This software provides a complete system to get your business online with a plethora of marketing tools, like creative tools and powerful insights and analytics. Their website also hosts lots of resources and tutorials to launch, monitor, and grow an email marketing campaign.

Mailchimp Pricing: Free plan up to 2,000 contacts, creative assistant, website builder, Mailchimp domain, and landing pages. Next plan $9.99/month up to 50,000 contacts, custom branding, A/B testing, and all email templates.

 

Conclusion

An email list is an important marketing asset for every business. These platforms help to organize contacts and send targeted emails to a specific audience. And also allow you to monitor whether your investment and efforts are delivering the right results.

Most of these tools offer powerful features even on free plans and are a good fit if you are just starting to build your lists and email campaigns. Once your business grows, paid plans are affordable and provide an excellent cost-benefit rate.