Emailing software enables companies to develop their marketing strategies on the web. Highly prized especially for B2B purposes, they offer the possibility to contact a large number of leads qualified in an automated way.

‍What is emailing?

Emailing is simply a marketing approach whose goal is to send targeted emails to members of the same database. It is a method of lead recovery and commercial prospecting to increase sales. The efficiency of emailing software is mainly measured by the conversion rate, i.e. the ratio between the number of prospects approached and the number of new customers.

We can distinguish two types of emailing:

• The cold mailing which consists in contacting which there has never been an exchange
• Email marketing that refers to sending emails to a community that is previously approached (such as newsletters).

It is today on cold mailing that we will focus. We will present three of the most powerful SaaS tools in our opinion in terms of cold mailing.

What criteria should these emailing software meet?

There are a few criteria that these software must meet in order to be really efficient.

First of all, there is a quantitative issue: companies are looking to contact as many prospects as possible in order to increase their chances of recovering customers. The software must therefore be able to send hundreds of emails a day and to support this cadence in the long term, being the preferred means of prospecting for companies.

This software must also be addressed to qualified leads, i.e. the most likely to respond to prospecting messages.

Finally, they must perform “personalized automation” functions. In other words, they must be able to combine a lot of sending and personalizing messages. This results in the insertion of automatic fields returning information about the contact and his company. This information is pre-filled in the lead database. An email containing your name and first name will be more likely to touch you, as it will seem to be intended for you directly and will create a sense of closeness with the company.

There is a wide range of emailing software available. Today, we are going to talk about Sendinblue, ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp, three market leaders.

‍Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a French emailing software created in 2007. A true veteran on the market, he has gradually developed into CRM. However, its marketing department and emailing capabilities remain the heart of its success. Indeed, ActiveCampaign is very complete in terms of emailing, especially thanks to its email campaigns and templates.

‍‍‍What Sendinblue offers:

Emailing Campaigns

This feature allows you to send emails to multiple contacts at the same time. Just name the campaign, fill in the subject of the email, and the information will be in this campaign and will be sent to the contacts registered there. An analysis and a data report will allow you to refine your copywriting and determine which approaches are best.

‍Email templates

Since the global redesign of its email editor in 2020, Sendinblue has been offering different email templates quickly and intuitively, with a drag & drop system. Text, images, links (especially social networks with logos), you can integrate a large number of components into your emails. Most people now consult their emails on the phone, it is also possible to choose a different email format for the mobile version.

Marketing automation

Sendinblue also offers marketing automation functionality giving the ability to create scenarios with customizable trigger addition. These “triggers” allow the automation of certain actions when another occurs, such as automatic mailmail when someone clicks on a particular link.

‍Contact Manager

One of the other features of Sendinblue is its contact manager. Clear and segmentable, it allows you to quickly select your prospects according to many criteria. You can add these prospects to a campaign afterwards. It is also possible to store the same contact in several lists at no additional cost. You can create folders to organize your lists, allowing you to better overview your contacts.

‍SMS messaging service

This service can be integrated with marketing automation campaigns and services. This allows you to inform your customers of the latest offers or send urgent messages. These messages are also customizable thanks to the segmentation or the addition of attributes such as surname, first name, or company.

‍The prices

On the budget side, Sendinblue offers a progressive rate, with a free first level guaranteeing 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts. The most expensive fixed offer is €49 per month.

With very affordable rates, a very intuitive interface and an efficient marketing automation service, Sendinblue is a benchmark among emailing software. A point to highlight however: it is strongly suggested to buy a dedicated IP address for your emails so as not to end up in spam.

‍ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an American CRM created in 2003. It is a fairly wide CRM tool, specialized in emailing, available in French since 2020 only.

But ActiveCampaign is not only defined as an emailing software: it is also a very complete tool in terms of marketing automation as well as in full-fledged CRM, similar to Sendinblue on this point.

What ActiveCampaign offers:

Service A/B testing

The major advantage of ActiveCampaign is the A/B testing service. It refers to a comparative method that determines the effectiveness between two variables. Here, for example, this translates to the comparison between two email campaigns according to their open rates. The software leaves you with a wide range of options to configure your tests, allowing a quality comparison.

‍Contact Management Service

ActiveCampaign offers you a very thorough contact management service. This contact list management is coupled with automation processes that allow you to assign tasks, schedule appointments or send a message based on the actions of your contacts.

‍Importing contacts

American CRM makes your life easier! You can import contacts via CSV file but also thanks to the many native connections to other SaaS tools, including large CRMs such as Salesforce. This import is segmentable according to the various information you have on the database of your contacts using tags.

‍Creation of campaigns

Very effective, they offer rather classic features such as the automatic or manual sending of an email sequence to a predefined number of contacts. What allows ActiveCampaign to stand out, however, is the email templates that can be integrated into the campaigns. This software offers more than 25 very qualitative templates in terms of design that will attract attention. You can also create your own templates in addition to existing templates.

‍Campaign programming and email publishing

If you do not want to send your emails immediately, it is possible to schedule them. You just have to choose the date and time that suits you. Very intuitive and well guided functionality, you will have no trouble finding your way around.

‍Marketing automation service

ActiveCampaign has a marketing automation service that is similar to Sendinblue. We thus find the customizable configuration of scenarios according to the different “triggers” proposed. This process is easy to use since it is a drag & drop, a very intuitive method.

‍Other features

ActiveCampaign also offers the creation of forms, as well as a data analysis and reporting service, allowing you to easily visualize the quality of your prospecting in order to improve it.

The cost

ActiveCampaign prices are relatively high. There is no free version and the rates are progressive. Nevertheless, Active Campaign adds a variable about the number of contacts in your database. The cheapest offer costs $9 per month, for 500 contacts and 3 users.

ActiveCampaign is an e-mailing software that has been proven to be effective. His emailing and marketing automation services are perfectly satisfying, but it is especially for his A/B testing functionality that he stands out from his competitors.

MailChimp

Launched in 2001, this software is a real reference and displays impressive figures today: it manages on average more than 500 million emails per month. However, this American software has the disadvantage of not being available in French.

MailChimp is mainly used for its email marketing features, especially for cold emailing. It is very popular for the simplicity of its interface and the efficiency of its operation.

What Mailchimp offers: 

Contact management

MailChimp offers list segmentation with up to 30 columns of intelligence criteria. Contacts can be imported directly by CSV file, but also by connecting the software with your CRM via the MailChimp API (or failing that using an external connector). However, segmentation is limited to 5 criteria (i.e. 5 maximum criteria to configure a new list). There are a multitude of criteria available that will allow you to easily and accurately segment your leads.

Email templates editing

This is one of the strengths of Mailchimp. This strength lies in the number of templates available (more than 300!) but also in their graphic quality. In addition, these templates are customizable in drag & drop for emails that fit your brand image even more. The 25 layouts that MailChimp offers can also be modified in drag & drop. All templates are responsive. You can also create your own templates yourself by going through an HTML edition (which is not #no-code friendly).

Edition of mails

MailChimp’s email editing has the classic features of the majority of emailing services, including the ability to use contact information (surname, first name, company, etc.) to better personalize your emails. This service is very useful in campaigns to add personalization in the emails you send in large quantities via campaigns.

Email Campaigns

Of course, it is possible to create email campaigns. MailChimp divides them into four categories:

• Regular Campaign: these are the classic email campaigns in which you can use previously built templates. This tool is particularly useful for newsletters.
• Plain Test Campaign: Plain-Text campaigns allow you to send very simple emails composed of text only. This type of campaign is sometimes used to send prospecting emails to give the impression that the email is sent to a contact only.
• A/B Test Campaign: A/B testing campaigns allow you to send the same campaign to your list by changing some key elements, in order to compare the results obtained. The same functionality is available at ActiveCampaign.
• RSS-Driven Campaign: campaigns based on RSS feeds are among the most interesting features of MailChimp. They allow you to automate the sending of daily, weekly or monthly emails, by making its content more variable. A very practical tool to automate the sending of new blog posts to its subscribers.

Marketing automation

MailChimp’s marketing automation has the merit of offering the creation of classic scenarios. However, unlike ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue, the software interface does not offer a complex drag & drop scenario editor and it is not possible to trace the journey of your contacts to a site.

Price

>

MailChimp offers a free version with limited features, for 2 000 contacts and 12 000 emails per month. If you start a business, you need prospecting and don’t necessarily have a budget to allocate to a paid emailing software, this offer can be interesting. Like ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp includes a double progressive pricing according to the available features and the number of contacts.

Using the sending features, such as temporary adjustment, editable display on different devices and automatic response configurations, MailChimp offers a very complete but also very efficient emailing software. Indeed, the deliverability of campaigns is more than 90%. This honorable rate is a pride of MailChimp, who will not hesitate to part with its customers with abnormally low rates, in order to keep its statistics.

Conclusion

In summary, Sendinblue offers a high-capacity emailing service, supported by a marketing automation department and a personalization of effective email campaigns.

ActiveCampaign is very similar to Sendinblue, but focuses more on the quality of the campaigns than the quantity, thanks to its A/B testing advantage that makes its reputation.

MailChimp is finally defined as a complete emailing software, which particularly relies on the performance of its campaigns.

Although these software have different features, it is not really possible to prioritize them. Indeed, it is important to note that your choice of emailing software depends first of all on its adaptability to your business plan and your marketing strategy. The best software is the one that adapts most to your needs and your budget.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that some features of these software are integrated into CRM tools, such as the Hubspot marketing department. These services are generally not as powerful as emailing software, but can be enough if your needs are minimal.