11 Free Email Automation Tools for Small Businesses

11 Free Email Automation Tools for Small Businesses-feature image
October 9, 2023 Reviewed By : Kumar Abinash .11 Min read

Summary: Free email automation tools are a boon for small businesses who want to automate their email procedure and customize emails without affecting their budget. Here’re some of the best free email automation tools you can use for email automation in the article below.

There are a lot of things you need to focus on for the success of your email marketing campaigns. Not just designing and customizing emails, you also need to manage contacts details, constantly test emails for effectiveness, measure open or CTR rates, and a lot more. Doing all this manually can take a lot of time. However, an email automation tool can automate all these tasks so that users can focus on other aspects of marketing strategy.

With email automation tool, you can run personalized email campaigns, preview emails before sending, optimize them, and engage with more customers at once. Some of the best email automation platforms also let users create a highly segmented email list depending on customers’ behavior, preferences, and purchase history. The segmented email lists would ensure that only the relevant information has been provided to the targeted audience.

In addition to that, you can do a lot more with email automation tools. But first, we will learn about what exactly email automation is and how you can use it for running successful email campaigns.

What Is Email Automation?

Email automation is the creation and sending of automated email responses as a direct response to user actions. The automation of email starts when you set trigger actions to send email responses. Once set, a responsive mail is designed for triggered actions. After the trigger action and responsive mail is configured, the automation is activated. Hence, every time a customer performs a specific action, the pre-set mail is sent to customers, thereby saving the time spent on sending emails.

It can be used to send welcoming mails, products recommendations, feedback collection forms, and a lot more. With email automation, users can create customer journey workflow, promote products, collect feedback to improve the services, and much more.

11 Best Free Email Automation Tools Example for Small Business

Small businesses can make the most of free email automation tools as it could help in improving customer experience and promoting services under the budget. Some of the best email marketing automation tools that small businesses can consider are:

  • Drip

Drip

Drip is one of the most popular email marketing automation tools to create customer journey workflow, track customers engagement, and send personalized emails to them. With Drip, you can add product recommendations in emails, integrate your e-commerce store, and get pre-built templates for email customization.

Drip Features

  • Split testing for emails
  • Support post-purchase workflows
  • Customer segmentation and email personalization

Drip Pros and Cons

  • Users can easily create responsive HTML email templates with it.
  • Provides pre-built playbooks to automate emails, campaigns, ongoing sales tasks, etc.
  • You can customize content according to the target
  • It does not support workflow re-editing
  • Basic analytic and reporting

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 3,227.50 per month

G2 Rating: 4.4

  • Sendinblue

Sendinblue is an email automation tool that helps in creating personalized email marketing campaigns to improve the customer experience. With it, users can create marketing campaigns, chat with their customers, send transactional emails, and manage customer details. Other features include customized landing pages, audience segmentation, etc. You can also launch Facebook ads to retarget customers.

Sendinblue Features

  • SMS and WhatsApp Campaigns
  • Customized email templates
  • Support for transactional emails

Sendinblue Pros and Cons

  • It lets you create different marketing campaigns for the segmented audience
  • Users can set up the time to send automated emails
  • You can add unlimited contacts even in its free plan
  • Users find a bit difficult to design the workflow
  • Adding images in HTML is difficult

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1575/month

G2 Rating: 4.5

  • GetResponse

GetResponse

GetResponse is an email marketing automation and campaigning tool to boost marketing efforts. It provides users with email templates to create professional emails and advanced segmentation tools to segment the target audience. Further, this automated email marketing tool can be used to create templates, perform A/B testing for emails, build websites and templates, and a lot more.

GetResponse Features

  • 1000 emails supported
  • Visual email editor
  • SMS marketing automation

GetResponse Pros and Cons

  • You can also build landing pages with it
  • Supports advanced customer segmentation
  • Provides ready-to-use conversion funnels to quickly collects leads
  • Sometimes messages get to spam folders
  • Contact importing function does not work properly

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,569.62 per month, You can also look into the best GetResponse Alternatives.

G2 Rating: 4.2

  • Litmus

Litmus is a marketing platform enabling businesses to create, customize, review, and analyze their emails to improve their conversion rate. With Litmus, users can personalize bulk emails, find factors affecting the campaigns, and integrate with different apps to boost productivity.

Litmus Features

  • Pre-send spam testing
  • Custom email previewing
  • Data security with advanced security and user permissions

Litmus Pros and Cons

  • Users can preview campaigns for 100+ email clients quickly
  • You can create branded email templates without any coding
  • It lets users check email campaigns’ effectiveness via engagement data and analytics
  • Email analytics functionality is only available for premium users
  • Only 1 account supported in the basic plan

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 8,189.48 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.6

  • ConvertKit

ConvertKit

ConvertKit helps businesses grow their audience, automate marketing operations, and sell products digitally. It is specially designed for e-commerce stores to create professional emails with an email editor, add images and videos in emails, and get the subscribers’ engagement scoring for your website. ConvertKity also provides in-depth analysis of every email campaign’s performance. Further, you can also create conditional email content and get deliverability reports.

ConvertKit Features

  • Automated email sequences
  • Audience tagging and segmentation
  • A/B testing for email testing

ConvertKit Pros and Cons

  • You can optimize unlimited landing pages even in the free plan
  • It lets users create exit-intent pop-up forms to gather information
  • Users can run and manage their e-commerce store via integration
  • It has a basic email template editor

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 744.74 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.7

  • MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing platform that offers advanced marketing features like emails segmentation and A/B testing to strengthen customer relationships and improve lead conversion. This email automation tool helps in creating personalized emails, auto resend campaigns, deliver emails in a specific time zone and much more.

MailerLite Features

  • Workflow automation for campaigns
  • Campaign performance monitoring
  • Audience monetization via e-commerce platform integration

MailerLite Pros and Cons

  • Users can customize segments to compliment campaign requirements
  • Helps create your own newsletter templates
  • You can customize landing pages
  • It is difficult to insert email forms on their website

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 744.21 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.7

  • ConstantContact

ConstantContact

ConstantContact is one of the email campaign tools for creating, sending, and tracking emails campaigns. This email automation tool helps with driving in more sales, improving customer engagement via effective email campaigns. Further, with in-depth reporting, users can measure the campaign effectiveness and check the conversion rate.

ConstantContact Features

  • Engagement reporting
  • Support for automated communications
  • Automated customer segmentation for better targeting

ConstantContact Pros and Cons

  • You can create ads for your social media accounts.
  • Provides audience insights to optimize emails and landing pages
  • It supports content personalization
  • Spam testing is not available
  • Users find it difficult exporting HTML version of all the emails

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 644 per month

G2 Rating: 4

Suggested Read: 15 Best Free Email Marketing Tools in 2023 for Successful Campaigns

  • Mailjet

Mailjet helps users with designing and sending email marketing campaigns, newsletters, automated mail, etc. This automation tool is used to tailor emails as per the target audience, study customer behavior, customize mails for brand consistency, and manage users’ permissions. With an overview of audience engagement analytics, users can analyze email opening, click-through, unsubscribe, spam rates, etc.

Mailjet Features

  • Audience segmentation
  • Email previewing
  • A/B testing to improve campaigns

Mailjet Pros and Cons

  • You can manage user permissions to create or edit mails.
  • Helps optimize emails to fit any screen with built-in email optimizer
  • Provides monthly delivery for all the emails
  • Limited autoresponder functionality
  • Users have reported navigational issues

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,240.73 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.3

  • ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign lets users create and send email newsletters and campaigns to develop brand loyalty and improve customer experience. With multi-channel communication, users can connect with their customers from a single solution. It is a great email automation tool to create geotargeted campaigns and track customer website behavior. Also, you can customize your emails with conditional content.

ActiveCampaign Features

  • Landing pages optimization
  • Email engagement tracking
  • Inbox previewing

ActiveCampaign Pros and Cons

  • You can segment the targeted audience for better engagement
  • Provides 250+ email templates that can work with even HTML
  • Supports lead scoring to find potential customers
  • Steep learning curve
  • Not many options available for customization

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 2,398.72 per month

G2 Rating: 4.6

  • Aweber

Aweber

Aweber enables you to create email campaigns, optimize landing pages, and automate key marketing tasks. This automated email marketing tool can be used for tracking most clicked emails, improving the email delivery rate, and analyzing the customer website engagement. Aweber can also be used to quickly create your online store website through its landing pages builder.

Aweber Features

  • Split testing for testing emails
  • Website click-tracking
  • Email sales tracking

Aweber Pros and Cons

  • It does not have any limit on sending emails in its pro plan
  • Aweber can also create HTML emails
  • Ready to use sign-up form templates that can be easily added to the website.
  • Users find it difficult to add or remove customer segments simultaneously when sending an e-newsletter

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,336.39 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.4

  • Omnisend

Omnisend email marketing tool is designed to assist e-commerce businesses in creating and sending email and SMS campaigns. It helps them to automatically add product lists in the email, check the highest clicked products, create exit-intent forms, and a lot more. With Omnisend, you can check the website history of all visitors to create personalized email campaigns.

Omnisend Features

  • Pre-built Ecommerce workflow
  • A/B Split Testing for emails
  • Support SMS and email campaigns

Omnisend Pros and Cons

  • Easily segment customers based on their demographics, purchase history, etc.
  • Automatically adds product recommendations in email campaigns.
  • It lets users identify the most valuable customers through segment reporting
  • Limited email designing templates
  • Web push notifications and Facebook retargeting are only supported with Shopify and API integration

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,324.19 per month

G2 Rating: 4.6

Features of Email Marketing Automation Tools to Look for

Email Marketing Automation Tool

Some of the most common features of email marketing automation tools that you should look for-

  • Contacts Management: This feature helps in storing and tracking all the customers data in one place. The data gathered can be used to segment customers based on geolocation, autoresponder feedback, purchase history, etc. This would help in creating personalized email campaigns.
  • A/B Testing Tool: The tool would help in comparing multiple emails and finding the highest converting mails to boost the marketing strategy.
  • Autoresponders: This feature would help in sending automated mails to the targeted audience based on their engagement with your business or on the triggered actions you have set.
  • Templates: An email marketing tool should come with multiple templates to create emails, sign up forms, optimizing the landing pages as per the business requirements.
  • Contact segmentation: The contact segmentation feature would help in segmented audience into smaller groups and send personalized emails. This would help in improving customer engagement.
  • Reporting: The reporting and analytical feature helps in measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by studying key metrics like open rates, CTRs, trending content, customer demographics, etc.
  • Form Builder: The form builder would help in creating different types of forms such as a pop-up or floating subscription form for the website. These forms can be used to gather email addresses and related visitor data for analyzing the website engagement.
  • Real-Time Collaboration: This would help team members to work and collaborate in real time on marketing automation procedures, email marketing campaigns, and a lot more.

How to Use Email Automation Tools to Send Automatic Mailers?

Follow the below mentioned steps to use an email automation tool and create personalized emails for your customers.

  • Download and install the email marketing tool of your choice.
  • Build the email sending list based on the segmented target audience.
  • Create an action trigger that will activate the email automation.
  • Design the responsive action email for the set triggered action.
  • Set the time to activate the email automation
  • Measure the effectiveness of the campaigns and constantly optimize them to boost customer engagement and sales.

Conclusion

Email automation tools have made it easier for users to send emails in bulk through automation. These tools provide endless options to boost customer engagement and increase ROI by personalizing emails, segmenting audience, improving email marketing campaigns, and a lot more.

Related Categories: Email Backup Software | Email Security Software | Email Marketing Tools | Email Verification Tools

Written by Varsha

Varsha is an experienced content writer at Techjockey. She has been writing since 2021 and has covered several industries in her writing like fashion, technology, automobile, interior design, etc. Over the span of 1 year, she has written 100+ blogs focusing on security, finance, accounts, inventory, human resources,... Read more

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