Emailing software allows businesses to develop their marketing strategies on the web. Very popular especially for B2B purposes, they offer the possibility of contacting a large number of qualified leads in an automated manner.

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What is emailing?

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

We can distinguish between two types of emailing:

• The cold mailing Which consists in seeking contacts with whom there has never been an exchange
• Email marketing which refers to the sending of emails to a community that has been contacted in advance (such as newsletters).

Today we are going to focus on cold mailing. We are going to present three of the most efficient 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 challenge: businesses seek 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 per day and to support this pace in the long term, being the preferred means of prospecting for companies.

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

Finally, they must perform “custom automation” functions. In other words, they must be able to combine the quantity of messages sent and the personalization of messages. This results in the insertion of automatic fields that return information about the contact and the company. This information is pre-filled in the lead database. An email containing your first and last name will be more likely to reach you, as it will seem to be aimed directly at you and will create a feeling of proximity to 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.

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Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a French emailing software created in 2007. A true veteran on the market, he gradually developed into CRM. However, its marketing service and its emailing features remain the core of its success. Indeed, ActiveCampaign is very complete in terms of emailing, in particular thanks to its email campaigns as well as its templates.

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What Sendinblue offers:

Emailing campaigns

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

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Email templates

Since the global redesign of its email editor in 2020, Sendinblue offers various 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. Since 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 a marketing automation feature that allows you to create scenarios with the customizable addition of triggers. These “triggers” allow the automation of certain actions when another occurs, such as automatic emails when someone clicks on a particular link.

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Contact manager

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

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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 to send urgent messages. These messages are also customizable through segmentation or the addition of attributes such as name, first name, or company.

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The prices

On the budget side, Sendinblue offers a progressive rate, with a free first tier 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 effective marketing automation service, Sendinblue is a reference among emailing software. However, one point to highlight: it is strongly suggested to buy a dedicated IP address for your emails in order not to end up in spam.

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ActiveCampaign

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

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 a fully-fledged CRM, similar to Sendinblue in this respect.

What ActiveCampaign offers:

A/B testing service

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, this means, for example, comparing two email campaigns according to their open rates. The software gives you a wide range of options to configure your tests, allowing for a quality comparison.

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Contact management service

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

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Importing contacts

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

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Creating campaigns

Very effective, they offer fairly standard functionalities such as the automatic or manual sending of an email sequence to a predefined number of contacts. However, what allows ActiveCampaign to stand out are the email templates that can be integrated into campaigns. In fact, 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.

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Campaign programming and email editing

If you do not want to send your emails immediately, it is possible to program them. All you need to do is choose the date and time that works for you. Very intuitive and well-guided functionality, you will have no trouble finding your way around.

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Marketing automation service

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

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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. However, Active Campaign adds a variable in terms of the number of contacts in your database. The cheapest offer costs $9 per month, for 500 contacts and 3 users.

ActiveCampaign is an email software that has been proven to be effective. Its email creation and marketing automation services are perfectly satisfactory, but it is especially for its A/B testing functionality that it stands out from its competitors.

MailChimp

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

MailChimp is mostly 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 directly imported 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 criteria maximum to configure a new list). There are a multitude of criteria available that will allow you to easily and accurately segment your leads.

Editing email templates

This is one of Mailchimp's strengths. This strength lies in the number of templates available (over 300!) but also in their graphic quality. In addition, these templates can be customized in drag & drop for emails that correspond even more to your brand image. The 25 layouts offered by MailChimp can also be modified by drag & drop. All templates are responsive. You can also create your own templates yourself using an HTML edition (which is not #NoCode friendly).

Email editing

Email editing by MailChimp has the classic features of most email services, including the ability to use contact information (name, first name, company, etc.) to better personalize your emails. This service is very useful in campaigns to add personalization to emails that you send in large quantities through 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 the templates previously built. 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 in order to give the impression that the email is addressed 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. We find the same functionality with 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 varying their content. A very practical tool for automating the sending of new blog posts to 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 on a site.

prix

MailChimp offers a free version with limited features, for 2,000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month. If you are starting a business, need prospecting and do not necessarily have a budget to allocate to paid emailing software, this offer may be interesting. Like ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp includes double progressive pricing depending on the features available and the number of contacts.

With the help of sending functionalities, such as temporary settings, editable display on different devices and automatic response configurations, MailChimp offers a very complete but also very effective emailing software. Indeed, the deliverability of campaigns is greater than 90%. This honorable rate is a source of pride for MailChimp, which will not hesitate to part with its customers with abnormally low rates, in order to maintain its statistics.

Conclusion

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

ActiveCampaign is very similar to Sendinblue, but focuses more on campaign quality than quantity, thanks to its A/B testing advantage for which it is famous.

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

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

Finally, it should not be forgotten that some functionalities of these software are integrated into CRM tools, such as the Hubspot marketing service. These services are generally not as powerful as software specialized in emailing, but may be sufficient if your needs are minimal.