In a recent survey, 73% of marketers said the return on investment (ROI) from email marketing was excellent to good. This ranks it at the top of the ROI charts, ahead of SEO, which is why the average organization is investing 15% of their marketing budget on email.

Are you one of the marketers who’s heavily investing in email marketing this year?

Then it’s highly likely you’re looking at some automation software that’ll help you convert those all-important leads into sales.

But with so many email marketing platforms available, how do you choose the right one for your business?

We take a look at three of the most popular choices below:

Popular Email Marketing Platforms

Campaign Monitor

Hugely popular, Campaign Monitor is a leading email marketing platform. Where they really stand out is marketing automation. Campaign Monitor recently purchased customer data platform Tagga which will give customers the ability to further segment subscriber data for highly personalized emails.

For example, an online shoe retailer can identify all VIP spenders who have searched their website for stilettoes in the past 30 days but have not purchased. They will be able to then send them an email for some of the top selling stilettoes along with a discount code to entice them to buy.

The email builder boasts a drag-and-drop interface, which makes choosing a template and making it your own incredibly simple. There’s also a segmenting tool that enables you to establish different campaigns for your contacts based on their actions and behaviors. This allows you to personalize each message to your customers’ unique needs and wants, which ultimately provides you with much better results.

Other highlights include social sharing tools, optimization, great tracking/analytic facilities, and A/B testing. The award winning 24/7 customer support team is assigned to every client to ensure you get the highest ROI possible from every campaign.

Emma

Emma is great for businesses of all sizes, offering over 100 templates, complex auto-responders, custom integrations, and themed sign-up forms. This might be a bit overwhelming for small businesses or bloggers, but because of how the software’s been organized, you can opt for the functions you want to use without too much trouble.

The highlight of this platform is the response reporting that’s offered. It’s easy to interpret, but perhaps more importantly, you can use this to perform further targeted actions. For example, you can see which of your subscribers have performed a certain action, turning these contacts into a new, more targeted list.

Emma has created a niche within the market by focusing their functionality for personal trainers and gyms. They recently launched an integration with MINDBODY. MINDBODY helps fitness professionals manage their customers’ payments, scheduling and more. With the integration between these two platforms, gyms can now automate their customer communication. Emma has customer such as Orange Theory showing just how powerful their email automation for gyms is.

MailChimp

For small businesses who want marketing software that’s hassle-free and easy to use, MailChimp is the go-to tool. There are over 400 templates to choose from that can be easily adjusted to suit your brand, with many of these templates also being optimized for mobile. And if you do fancy having a go at coding your own email, you can.

You can easily integrate it with a number of platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and WordPress. Sign up to a free-forever plan that allows you to send 12,000 emails a month to as many as 2,000 subscribers. However, there are limitations to this plan, including no auto-responder feature.

MailChimp’s email marketing platform also provides you with a summary of each email you send, including complaints, unsubscribes, clicks, and opens. They also offer advice by comparing your emails’ performance to the average of others in your industry.

MailChimp is best for very small businesses, freelancers and bloggers due to it’s easy to use interface and paired down functionality compared to other platforms on this list.

Choosing Your Next Email Marketing Platform

Overall, if you’re looking for a simple, straightforward, and cost-effective way of marketing your small business, MailChimp’s free plan cannot be beaten. But if you’re looking to get more granular in your analytics, want to automate responses, and trial different email formats, investing in Campaign Monitor should help you achieve a positive ROI. Although we did find Emma to be a great tool, plans may be on the pricey side for small businesses.