Email clients like Microsoft Outlook and Gmail are great for one-to-one business communications. But if you want to run successful email marketing campaigns, you need a different kind of tool: Email marketing applications.
Email marketing software allows you to broadcast a message to a large group of people and track live results such as open rate, click-through rate, social shares and unsubscribes to name a few.
With the advent of social media, some people think that email marketing is passé, but various studies indicate that it still delivers the highest return on investment for direct marketers.
Naturally, email marketing cannot be done without email lists. And while permission-based email marketing has long been advertised as a best practice, Canada’s anti-spam legislation has turned it into a legal requirement. As a result, most Canadian companies nowadays prefer to use double opt-in instead of single opt-in to confirm the explicit permission of their subscribers.
How does email marketing software help?
Email marketing can be used in a variety of forms and the value it brings will depend on your objectives and strategies, but most businesses find it useful to:
- increase awareness and stay top-of-mind;
- acquire new customers, while reducing the cost of communication;
- improve the relevancy of communications with personalization;
- nurture viable prospects until they’re ready to buy;
- automate repetitive tasks;
- up-sell and cross-sell to existing customers;
- increase customer satisfaction and retention; and
- solicit referrals.
What does email marketing software do?
Email marketing software in its simplest form allows you to create campaigns, capture and manage subscribers’ information, send emails and track your email campaign’s results.
Some CRM applications nowadays include email marketing capabilities, but marketing automation tools take it one step further by integrating email, your website and social media, and automating specific marketing tasks. They are typically offered at a higher price range and, therefore, have not been included in this list, although some email marketing solutions include automation capabilities.
Free and low-cost email marketing solutions
If you are looking for a low-cost or free email marketing software, you may want to consider the following. (SaaS refers to "software as a service.")
Revised March 2023
ActiveTrail
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
ActiveTrail is one of the preferred options of businesses that target mobile users. It offers responsive mobile email designs, SMS marketing software, newsletter templates and a marketing automation platform. And to ensure your email campaigns are successful, it lets you perform three different types of A/B testing.
ADNETIS
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
ADNETIS is an affordable bilingual email marketing platform built for CASL compliance. Not only does it keep track of all historical data, but it also sends you monthly alerts to proactively monitor tacit consents that are about to expire. ADNETIS is a Canadian company, headquartered in Gatineau, Quebec.
Aweber
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
Aweber provides easy-to-use email marketing and autoresponder tools and one of the best deliverability rates of the industry. You can create and send professional emails from scratch or choose from a vast selection of mobile responsive email templates. AWeber integrates with a variety of services such as Facebook, WordPress, and Shopify to name a few. The company is an email marketing veteran and is often praised for the quality of its customer support.
BenchMark
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
BenchMark comes with an intuitive user interface and photo editor. Beginners can pick a template or use the drag & drop editor, while more advanced users can write their own code with the HTML editor. It can be used for free with certain limitations.
Cakemail
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
Cakemail offers affordable email marketing to small businesses. It has pretty much all the email marketing functionalities you need for a price you can afford. Cakemail is a 100% Canadian company that hosts your personal data on Canadian soil.
Campaign Monitor
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
Campaign Monitor is very intuitive to use and offers hundreds of professionally designed templates. The Visual Journey Designer makes it easy to create personalized customer journeys from any of the existing data stored in Campaign Monitor. The email testing tools, reporting and detailed analytics provide the information you need to optimize the performance of your campaigns. Not to mention the ability to send campaigns based on your subscribers time zone.
ConverKit
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
ConverKit enables content creators to grow their audience by turning casual social media followers, YouTube viewers, and blog readers into subscribers. Some of the advanced features include custom landing pages and forms, automated funnels and email sequences, and tools to easily sell digital products.
Cyberimpact
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
Cyberimpact is a 100% bilingual email marketing platform. Whether you want to simply send newsletters, e-coupons or greeting cards, Cyberimpact makes it easy to create communications and even automate certain messages. It is built with the Canadian anti-spam law in mind to ensure compliance. The company is based in Terrebonne, Quebec and stores customer data in Canada.
GetResponse
Free English French English support French support: Partly Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
GetResponse offers email marketing, landing pages, autoresponders, a free website builder and the possibility to create webinars within a few minutes. Their autoresponder options are impressive. You can trigger drip campaigns, welcome messages and more with triggers that are time or action based (clicked, opened, goal reached, etc.). The native ecommerce plugins make it easy to populate your product inventory and even process payment straight from your landing pages.
iContact
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
iContact is another user-friendly solution that does not require any email marketing experience. You get access to an impressive list of features at a reasonable price. The acquisition of SEO reporting tool Moz also indicates iContact plans to build or integrate more SEO products.
MailChimp
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
MailChimp by Intuit started out as an email marketing platform. Over the years, it has evolved into an all-in-one marketing solution that allows you to create integrated campaigns with landing pages, Facebook and Google ads, social posts and CRM tools. While Mailchimp comes with a free plan, you may need to subscribe to a paid option to enjoy more advanced features.
MailerLite
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
MailerLite is an email marketing service provider that focuses on simplicity. The sleek interface and templates make it easy to quickly create responsive email newsletters, landing pages, and popup subscribe forms that match your brand. Campaign reports allow you to track your email campaign activity as well as what your subscribers are interested in. Pricing plans are based on the number of subscribers you have, starting with a free plan for up to 1,000 contacts.
Mailjet
Free English French English support French support Data stored in Canada iOS app. Android Double opt-in
Mailjet offers an all-in-one solution to create, send and track transactional, notification and marketing emails. Available in multiple languages, Mailjet optimizes the deliverability of emails and integrates with hundreds of other applications via Zapier. Mailjet’s pricing structure allows you to start for free and scale up as you grow.
This table lists applications alphabetically and isn’t exhaustive. Hyperlinks to external sites do not constitute endorsement by BDC of those websites or any information, opinions, products or services expressed or described on them.
Furthermore, the list is only a starting point and excludes applications not offered either in English or in French, or that are neither low cost nor free. When assessing which solution is best for your organization, you will probably consider many other factors.
BDC will review and edit this list regularly. If you are an email marketing software vendor and would like us to consider adding your solution, please contact us.
