Every business, whether digital or physical, depends on engagement with existing and prospective customers.
That’s especially true for businesses that employ a mix of channels like email and text messages.
A report by Invesp has found that companies can retain 89% of their customers by combining multiple engagement channels.
Another study by the same firm reports that half of those who use multiple channels always meet their targets financially.
How about we get a little more specific?
- Email marketing has an average of 3600% return on investment. That’s a whopping $36 for every dollar spent.
- Text messages have a 98% open rate with a response rate of 209% higher than other channels.
Therefore, it is safe to say that text and email marketing have brought an entirely new level of possibility to business engagement.
However, choosing the right software can get tricky with so many factors to consider.
That’s why I would be revealing the best text and email marketing platforms to up your engagement game immediately.
Let’s get to it.
What are the best Text and Email Marketing Software?
Here’s a summary.
Software | Pricing (starts from) | Contacts/ Emails per basic plan | Free Trial/Plan? | Auto-responders |
---|---|---|---|---|
Sendinblue | $25/month | Unlimited/20,000 | ✅ | ❌ |
Drip | $19/month | 500/Unlimited | ✅ | ❌ |
Omnisend | $16/month | 500/6,000 | ✅ | ❌ |
ActiveCampaign | $49/month | 500/Unlimited | ✅ | ✅ |
SendPulse | £6/month | 500/Unlimited | ✅ | ❌ |
Klaviyo | $25/month | 500/5,000 | ✅ | ❌ |
EngageBay | $11.99/month | 1,000/3,000 | ✅ | ✅ |
1. Sendinblue
Sendinblue’s dedication to helping businesses thrive is visible through its many email and text messaging solutions. It offers a wide range of features for boosting the performance of your campaigns.
Sendinblue has one of the most effective personalization in terms of digital marketing.
You can build custom emails and send personalized text messages that reflect your brand and speak directly to your customers. They have templates and a drag-and-drop editor to help you out with this.
Target customers better with Sendinblue’s automation, list segmentation, and SendInTime.
Sendinblue lets you leverage the power of list segmentation for more tailored delivery, whether you’re sending a text message or email. When combined with the marketing automation feature, you have a system that sorts your contact lists dynamically.
SendInTime uses machine learning to determine the best time to send messages, just like other AI marketing tools I’ve reviewed.
Other notable features:
- Facebook ads, landing pages, and signup forms to get more customers from your visitors.
- Transactional emails and live chat function to keep an up-to-date relationship with customers.
- Over 150 integrations for easy e-commerce activities.
- A/B testing and advanced reporting system to generate reports and keep track of customer data.
Pricing:
Pricing on Sendinblue starts at $25/month for the Lite plan. They also have a Premium plan at $65/month and an Enterprise plan for more personalized marketing campaigns.
💬 The bottom line
Sendinblue is an all-in-one digital marketing platform. It lets you set up effective email campaigns, complements it with the best SMS marketing software, and makes it all easy with helpful features.
2. Omnisend
Omnisend is another household name as far as email marketing is concerned. But what makes their services enjoyed by over 70,000 customers includes their powerful SMS campaigns.
This software gives you the perfect combination of email and SMS marketing. It has pre-built templates that incorporate custom text messages and emails at the correct levels within your campaign.
Omnisend helps you save all the time in the world by letting you automate many processes and target customers based on their activities. Think of automated welcome emails, SMS messages to confirm orders, cart abandonment emails, etc.
Other notable features:
- Build campaigns and customize existing ones with loads of templates and an easy-to-use builder.
- Omnisend’s campaign optimization helps to increase conversion rates. It has a 62.2% order rate on segmented campaigns and 47.7% more on conversion.
- Comprehensive reporting about your message engagement, automation, and overall performance.
Pricing:
Omnisend’s lowest pricing is the Standard plan, which allows email and SMS marketing automation for 500 contacts. However, there is a dedicated Email & SMS plan for more text messages and unlimited emails.
💬 The bottom line
Omnisend tops my list of the best email marketing tools for Shopify – which shows how robust the software is. It is also close to the top on this occasion, thanks to its extended features and personalization.
3. Drip
Drip is a fast-growing digital marketing software that helps e-commerce brands generate customers and engage existing ones through personalized campaigns.
There are loads of e-commerce designed features on offer. That includes a multi-channel marketing campaign that uses text message and email marketing automation.
So whether it’s a welcome email for new customers, cart abandonment, or a post-purchase situation, you can automate marketing messages that keep them on your side. Drip has pre-built playbooks that make this easy.
With Drip’s recent acquisition of Sleeknote, it adds more firepower to its engagement-building game to convert more website visitors into customers. Sleeknote is renowned for excellent opt-in forms and popups and all that is now available with Drip.
Other notable features:
- The power of precision for targeting specific customers.
- Drip also helps you stay in line with TCPA compliance while you deal with what matters.
- Enjoy integration with the biggest e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooComerce.
- You can generate in-depth reports and analyses about your email and SMS marketing campaign.
Pricing:
Drip’s pricing starts at $19 for up to 500 contracts, 33 text messages, and unlimited emails. The price changes slightly as you add more contacts or SMS messages.
💬 The bottom line
Drip is excellent for small business owners due to its generous offer. In addition, there are enough features to take care of most of your needs, including automation, segmentation, and analytics.
4. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign takes your marketing campaigns further to give your visitors and customers an enjoyable experience.
What I love most about ActiveCampaign is it caters to any type of email or SMS you want. You can send broadcast emails to all contacts, target specific contacts, automate trigger emails, or use email funneling.
With its drag-and-drop builder, you can get everything set in just a few clicks. It also has more than 125 beautiful templates to help in this regard.
This marketing software lets you connect with customers on third-party apps, like WhatsApp, Twilio, and BulkSMS, whether you run an e-commerce, B2B, or B2C business.
Other notable features:
- ActiveCampaign has numerous tools for managing marketing channels for your eCommerce business, from multi-user editing to mobile optimization, geotracking, and action linking.
- Its analytics function takes you behind the scene to show how contacts deal with your messages.
- Audience segmentation and personalization to deliver precisey what each contact wants to see.
Pricing:
You will enjoy a massive discount on pricing when you opt for annual billing with the Lite plan starting at $9/month, Plus plan at $49/month, and professional at $149/month.
However, bear in mind that the Lite plan does not offer SMS marketing automation.
💬 The bottom line
ActiveCampaign thrives on giving users a lot of freedom. For instance, they let you add contacts and engage them in multiple ways, which is great for anyone on the go.
5. SendPulse
SendPulse is a modern marketing platform that connects you to customers through email, SMS, chatbots, and web push notifications. The main upside to using SendPulse is it lets you run independent campaigns.
However, it does more than just send messages. Additionally, SendPulse’s CRM system assists with your marketing to get contact details, communicate, collaborate, and make decisions.
Automation 360 also lets you deal better with repetitive tasks by automating setting workflows for text messages and emails.
The analytics and reporting go the extra mile to reveal click details, geographic statistics, device information, and even errors.
Other notable features:
- Get more visitors on your list with subscription forms, landing pages, page builders, and templates.
- Integration with 40+ industry-leading platforms, including Bitrix24, Zapier, WordPress, etc.
- SendPulse takes you seriously and hence, provides round-the-clock support in multiple languages.
Pricing:
SendPulse pricing is one of the most competitive I’ve seen. In addition to a free plan, they give you 20% and 10% discounts for 1-year and 6-month subscriptions, respectively.
They even have a Pay AS you GO plan that I think is relatively high. Without the discounts, the lowest plan starts at £6/month, while SMS messaging prices depend on the destination.
💬 The bottom line
SendPulse is the option for anyone who would like to run separate email and bulk SMS campaigns for any reason. The good part is it packs some nice features and lets you connect in a couple of ways. No wonder it’s trusted by brands like Samsung, Puma, Tata, and Radisson Blu.
6. Klaviyo
Klaviyo believes your business will grow easily if you’re in charge of your data. That is precisely what it helps you achieve. Therefore, the services aim to leverage customer data to deliver tailored solutions.
This tool has a vast database that stores a wide range of information, including business email and SMS campaigns, events, history, transactions, profiles, integrations, and segmentations. As a result, you can improve your campaigns, get more leads, and sell more.
It also means Klaviyo learns your customer behavior to deliver in-depth reports and analytics when you need them.
Other notable features:
- Over 200 integrations to converge all your e-commerce needs on a single platform.
- Huge template library and automation for e-commerce needs like welcome emails, cart abandonment, newsletters, etc.
- Benchmarks to improve campaign performance.
Pricing:
You can calculate specific prices for your contact sizes on the pricing page, starting at $25/month.
💬 The bottom line
Klaviyo marketing platform is a smart self-learning solution for text and email marketing. This is the right tool for you if you’d like to be in more control of your data.
7. EngageBay
If you’re selling online, you can trust EngageBay to help you improve your business through its email and SMS marketing solutions.
The offerings are pretty similar for text messages and emails, and they include:
Both email and text messages can be set up quickly. Firstly, there are loads of templates to choose from. Then, EngageBay uses a drag-and-drop feature for building more personalized messages.
This software also has a decent personalization feature to add essential touches to both text messages and emails.
Other notable features:
● Message scheduling feature to send messages at the right time.
● Autoresponders as part of an automation function that works.
● Campaign tracking to monitor performance and quickly optimize.
● Build excellent relationships with CRM tools like scheduling, deal pipeline, contact management, etc.
Pricing:
EngageBay’s all-in-one pricing has a free plan that doesn’t include SMS marketing services. Instead, you can opt for the Basic plan starting at $11.99/month.
💬 The bottom line
EngageBay is a straight-to-the-point text message and SMS marketing platform. There are not many features like other marketing software on the list. Instead, it delivers the essentials and a little more.
Final Thoughts
Increasing online engagement and sales isn’t rocket science. It has even gotten a lot easier with the advent of these text and email marketing platforms.
And while a lot of it comes down to strategy, you also need the right software to make it all come to life. Above, you have a list of the top tools for effectively combining two of the best marketing channels available today.
The impacts on your business are substantial. These tools can point you in the right direction, from insights, automation, and segmentation to analytics. And most significantly, they give you time to work on the more important areas of your business.
Good Luck!
Jessica