Best Mailing List Software to Improve your Email Marketing Strategy

When I first began my marketing career, I was envious of emails.

While this sounds like an interesting quirk, I'm pretty sure most marketers can agree: some emails are hard not to envy.

From sparkling campaigns to flawless design, sometimes I open a newsletter and I'm surprised at how brands segment me into a list that's so accurate.

Email lists are an essential aspect of any marketing strategy since they enable marketers to target the right subscribers and grow leads.

Email list management

Email list management describes the process of controlling contacts in segments or lists to ensure you're sending targeted and personalized content to each sub-group of your larger contact inventory.

An example of this would be segmenting blog subscribers and only sending specific blog posts to that list based on criteria you establish such as their interests or past purchases.

To personalize marketing emails and improve ROI, email list management is a crucial step in marketing efforts. It can help your team generate leads while simultaneously creating a more delightful and personalized customer experience.

Mailing List Software

Using mailing list software or other email management tools is an easy way to segment your audience, send targeted emails, and analyze email metrics that matter most to your team (CTR, subscriber count, etc.). Often, mailing list and email management tools provide robust insights and suggestions on how to improve ROI through email.

To save you the hassle of researching the best software tools for email list management, we've done the heavy lifting for you. Take a look at the best email list management software tools below.

Best Email List Management Software

1. HubSpot for the best all-around email marketing tool that also integrates with your all-in-one CRM platform.
2. Zapier for syncing your email and marketing apps, and moving data between those apps.
3. OptinMonster for lead generation-focused small businesses including marketing agencies, bloggers, and ecommerce sites.
4. Campaign Monitor for email campaign and customer journey management.
5. Mailchimp for creating branded and professional emails without the need for technical assistance or experience.
6. Constant Contact for email marketers at small businesses, nonprofits, and startups.
7. ActiveCampaign for businesses that want a customer experience platform with email marketing, newsletters, and campaign features.
8. Mad Mimi for creating, sending, and tracking HTML email newsletters.
9. AdRoll for an AI-powered marketing platform that recommends email content for you.
10. Picreel for built-in integrations and lead generation forms.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing Tools

Price: Free; $45/mo (Starter), $800/mo (Professional), $3,200/mo (Enterprise)

With HubSpot's Email Marketing Tools, you'll be able to create, personalize, and optimize all of your marketing emails without the need for code, designers, IT, or other technical support.

With HubSpot, it's easy to increase ROI because the tool helps you create and automate personalized emails for each individual recipient.HubSpot's Email Marketing Tools are also powered by your all-in-one CRM platform, meaning the data that you need to customize your emails are at your fingertips and up-to-date.

A/B test different versions of your emails to determine which convert the most recipients and then analyze all email campaign data to continually improve upon your email marketing strategy.

Use HubSpot's Email Marketing Tools to manage your mailing list and create, personalize, and optimize your marketing emails without waiting on designers or IT.

2. Zapier

Price: Free, $19.99/ mo (Starter), $49/ mo (Professional), $299/ mo (Team), $599/ mo (Company)

With Zapier, you can easily build and create email workflows — which sync to apps such as Dropbox and Gmail — to automate your email marketing strategy and campaigns.

Zapier lets you import your subscriber list from Facebook, Eventbrite, or Google Sheets so you can quickly send your emails to the right group of people. Lastly, share and back up Zapier data to Google Sheets to analyze your email campaigns and collaborate with your team.

3. OptinMonster

Price: $14/mo (Basic), $30/mo (Plus), $47/mo (Pro), $49/mo (Growth)

OptinMonster offers an email form template that lets you decide how to set up your emails for different customer segments. The tool supports multiple campaign structures and has different toggles for the metrics you choose to track and analyze. OptinMonster makes it easy to ensure you're establishing a workflow that works with the type of campaign you're rolling out.

4. Campaign Monitor

Price: $9/mo (Basic), $29/mo (Unlimited), $149/mo (Premier)

Campaign Monitor is ideal for creative professionals who handle email campaigns — it makes the process of managing email marketing from multiple accounts easy. The tool also offers email personalization, email template builders, RSS email, A/B testing, and analytics so you can handle all aspects of your email marketing strategy from a single tool.

5. Mailchimp

Price: Free, $9.99/mo (Essentials), $14.99/mo (Standard), $299 (Premium)

Mailchimp is a marketing platform with a variety of email, ecommerce, marketing campaign, audience management, and marketing automation tools. The software makes it easy to brand, design, and customize all of your emails.

The pre-made templates and the drag-and-drop builder make the process of creating your emails easy and efficient. You can set up automations so that your emails are triggered and sent based on when certain criteria are met (e.g. when someone subscribes to your blog). There are transactional email options that you can have Mailchimp automatically send after a purchase, sign up, and more.

Mailchimp also tracks and visualizes the success of your email campaigns in real-time via the internal dashboard so you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter most to your team.

6. Constant Contact

Price: $10/mo (Website Builder), $20/mo (Email), $45/mo (Email Plus), $195/mo (Ecommerce Plus)

Constant Contact offers customizable email templates — you can edit the templates with one click, making email creation and design easy. The tool comes with open-rate tracking, click-rate tracking, and social media integration (so your email and social campaigns and contacts are integrated).

7. ActiveCampaign

Price: $9/mo (Lite), $49/mo (Plus), $129/mo (Professional), $229/mo (Enterprise)

ActiveCampaign helps you create customized emails, customer segments and lists, and campaign reports so you can analyze your results. You can create broadcast emails, trigger emails, targeted emails, and email funnels.

Automate the process of sending emails by scheduling them in advance. The tool also lets you test emails before you send them as well as sets up auto-response emails based on criteria that you establish.

8. Mad Mimi

Price: $10/mo (Basic), $42/mo (Pro), $199/mo (Silver), $1,049/mo (Gold)

Mad Mimi makes it easy to create, send, and track email newsletters. All of your emails are automatically mobile-friendly and the user interface makes it simple to design emails no matter your technical background.

In fact, the tool is a great choice for beginners who are interested in diving into the specifics of email creation because it provides walkthroughs of some features that might be difficult to understand, like RSS to email and drip campaigns.

9. AdRoll

Price: Free, $19/mo (Growth)

AdRroll blends email marketing, display advertising, and social media planning — meaning, the tool enables you to establish and maintain a holistic view of your email marketing strategy. Subscriber lists from other platforms can be uploaded onto the platform seamlessly so all of your data is centrally stored.

10. Picreel

Price: $14/month (Starter), $52/month (Basic), $112/month (Plus), $299/month (Pro)

Picreel is a powerful lead generation tool that lets you monitor the digital footprints of visitors and target them with lead generation forms at the perfect moment. 

With these forms, you can encourage people to share their email addresses in exchange for benefits like discounts, promotions, free subscriptions, and more. The email addresses are automatically directed to your email marketing accounts, where you can build targeted campaigns and drive conversions. Picreel also offers beautiful overlays for sign-up offers, exit surveys, and discount offers, among others. 

This functionality is offered as a part of Picreel’s integrations with a variety of email marketing tools including HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Campaign Monitor, and many others. 

Start Using Mailing List Software

Identify the right mailing list software for your team and start creating, customizing, sending, tracking, and analyzing your business's marketing emails.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.