A quick guide to our favourite email marketing platforms

It’s often said that email marketing offers the best ROI of any form of marketing – but it can often get forgotten about in the excitement of trends such as influencer marketing or paid social media. The truth is, email marketing should form a part of your marketing strategy – and to make it really work for you, you’ll need a cost-effective, easy-to-use and highly functional email marketing platform. To help you get your email marketing on track (and driving lots of qualified traffic to your business website) here are a few of our favourites…

Mailchimp Mailchimp is almost the default for email marketing. It’s the platform that most people think of when they think of email and for good reason. It’s a finely honed machine that is user friendly for the novice but capable of a wealth of tasks for the more advanced marketer. It can be integrate with more than 300 other apps, offers plenty of free templates, has a good visual editor and bags of tools to help you segment your lists, build your lists and track your effectiveness. What’s more, those with smaller lists can send emails for free. The scalable subscription makes it cost effective, whatever your list and business size. Campaign Monitor More than 2 million marketers currently use Campaign Monitor and it’s the platform of choice for brands like Adidas, Unicef and Rip Curl. It has a drag and drop email builder, so you don’t need to be a design wiz to create something that looks attractive on any device and its advanced customisation tools make it possible to get pixel-perfect designs. A basic account starts from £9 per month so it’s also an affordable option for SMEs just getting started. Constant Contact Constant Contact is one of the original email marketing platforms and as such, its interface is well-developed and tightly honed. As with the others on this list, it has a drag and drop editor for those who want to create an attractive. Mobile-responsive email easily. It offers automation too and a range of ecommerce tools to help drive sales directly from mail outs – perfect if you’ve just launched a new ecommerce website and are keen to maximise on the new look. Constant Contact additionally boasts of easy list management and real-time tracking tools for those who love data they can instantly put their hands on.