Is your website no longer ranking in the top Google search results? Your ad campaigns on social media, like Facebook and Instagram, are generating fewer leads than they used to? Maybe you should ask yourself if you’re reaching customers on the right channels. Either way, email marketing allows you to directly reach prospects or customers who have already shown interest in your brand.
By 2022, 81% of small businesses use email as their primary customer acquisition channel, and 80% for retention, which is why email marketing is so important.
We have researched and evaluated several free email marketing tools to provide you with the best ones, according to your type of business. They also offer a bilingual platform so you can send emails in English or French.
7 free email marketing tools in 2022
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, here’s a quick summary of the free email marketing tools we’ll be discussing, as well as the various limitations of their free plan:
What should you look for in a free email marketing tool?
How did we research and evaluate the tools?
We based this article on information gathered from each of the free email marketing tools’ websites. We are not paid and the article is not sponsored by any of the tools offered. We have simply selected a variety of tools that may be suitable for different types of businesses, that offer a bilingual platform and based on reviews left by users.
There are a ton of email marketing tools that offer a free subscription up to a certain number of contacts or emails you can send per month/day. This allows you to test if the tool meets your needs and try out the different features before moving to a paid plan. In short, you wouldn’t necessarily want to pay for features you’ll never use.
What to look for in a free email marketing tool?
The number of subscribers and emails included in the free plan: some email marketing platforms offer a free plan based on the number of emails you can send per month while others are based on the number of subscribers. For an e-commerce business, it might be more advantageous to choose a plan based on the number of contacts rather than the number of emails sent. This way, you won’t feel as if you have to limit the number of emails you send to welcome your new subscribers, announce your promotions or new products.
Email templates and customization: the best email marketing tools offer fully designed professional email templates. Some tools provide a wide variety of pre-designed email templates and let you customize their colors, logo and images with a lot of flexibility.
Quality of customer service: if you are new to email marketing, it may be important to choose a tool that offers good customer service, is easy to reach and, most importantly, is in your language. Answers to your questions are not always found online and sometimes problems are solved faster when you can talk to someone.
Contact list segmentation: the success of an email marketing campaign depends on personalization. This means sending the right message, at the right time, to the right person. For a company that wants to grow and increase its sales, it is therefore essential to have a platform with a powerful contact list segmentation tool.
Marketing automation: this tool allows you to automate the sending of emails after a user has performed a specific action. For example, when a prospect signs up for your newsletter, you can automatically send them a welcome email, wait seven days, and then send a promo code to encourage them to make a purchase. Automated marketing is the best way to convert your prospects into customers.
Scalability as you grow: the best email marketing tools should be able to scale as your business grows. Whether you go from a free to a paid plan, the limits on emails sent or contacts should increase as your business grows.
The email marketing tool to build, send and automate emails with ease
Cyberimpact
Cyberimpact is a Quebec-based email marketing tool that is mainly aimed at small and medium-sized businesses and Canadian organizations. Known as one of the easiest platforms to use, you will be able to adopt it quickly even if your knowledge of email marketing is limited.
According to the reviews left on Google, Cyberimpact is very appreciated by its users for offering great customer service. Whether you have questions or difficulty completing a task, you can easily reach the customer support by chat, email or phone to get an answer in English or French. The other great advantage is that you’ll speak directly with a real human via chat, and not with a robot!
With Cyberimpact, you can manage your subscriber lists and their consent, create effective marketing campaigns and display clear statistics. It is possible to segment your contact lists according to different basic or custom fields that you will have chosen beforehand, for example; the language spoken, the gender, the region, the preferred color, etc. The email automation feature allows you to create an unlimited number of scenarios based on the actions of the contacts. Note that the email automation feature is available for a period of 30 days with a free account. You can also create subscription forms, discount coupons, mini-surveys and much more!
Cyberimpact offers hundreds of email templates that are all available in English and French. However, like many email marketing platforms, some templates are unlocked for paying accounts only. The platform can integrate with other applications via Zapier and is compliant with the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL). In addition, all data is hosted on Canadian servers to ensure an excellent delivery rate.
Cyberimpact plan: free up to 250 contacts and unlimited number of mailings (no credit card required)
The platform to connect your favorite web applications to your marketing campaigns
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is probably the most popular email marketing tool with its 12 million users. The American platform caters to businesses of all sizes and in any industry. Mailchimp allows integration with over 250 applications such as QuickBooks, Shopify, Zendesk, WordPress and many more.
With the free plan, you’ll be able to collect, organize, and leverage data from your customers or audiences. With the data collected, you can then address your audience via email, social media, digital ads and more.
Mailchimp’s design wizard allows you to import your logo, brand colors and fonts from your company’s website and create emails with a drag and drop editor. About 100 email templates are offered, however, with the free plan the options are very limited. So you have to be creative to get an attractive design. Although the application is available in several languages, some sections of an email, such as the footer, may be difficult to put in the language of your choice other than English.
The platform also offers the ability to create a website, landing pages and signup forms for free under the Mailchimp domain. The tool for creating ads on your social media will allow your business to have an impact, even outside of your email marketing campaigns. However, while the latter feature is free, you have to pay when it comes to launching the ad.
Mailchimp is a powerful, all-in-one marketing tool that offers a host of features. However, mastering the platform can be quite a challenge, especially if you have no idea about email marketing.
Mailchimp plan: free up to a maximum of 2,000 contacts and a limit of 10,000 emails per month or 2,000 emails per day (no credit card required).
The email marketing tool for creating automated workflows
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a French all-in-one digital marketing platform for B2C, B2B, agencies and e-commerce sellers. The app offers a powerful and easy-to-use marketing automation tool where you can choose from a variety of automation workflows, depending on your goals. Whether you want to improve engagement, increase traffic, grow revenue or build relationships, it’s all possible. However, while the number of scenarios is unlimited, once you exceed 2,000 contacts, you’ll need to turn to a paid plan.
The free plan also allows you to have an unlimited number of contacts, segment your audience, create subscription forms, install a chat window on your website, create landing pages and even send transactional emails. Furthermore, you can get a real-time report on the performance of your email marketing campaign.
You will have access to a library of email templates or the option to start from scratch. Although Sendinblue is a French company, there are only email templates in English.
With Sendinblue, you can’t send as many emails at once as with other free email marketing tools, but you can manage more contacts and divide them into targeted lists. In addition, the platform allows you to purchase prepaid credits to send more than your daily email limit, with no expiration date.
Sendinblue plan: free up to 300 emails per day (no credit card required).
An application for advanced email marketers
MailerLite
MailerLite is an email marketing tool that helps you grow your audiences faster and generate revenue smarter. The app does not offer pre-designed email templates in its free subscription, however, the dynamic pre-designed content blocks makes up for the lack of templates. MailerLite offers three types of editors for creating your emails. You can choose the drag-and-drop editor, the rich text editor with content blocks or the custom HTML editor for experts.
In addition to email content, MailerLite also includes robust automation and audience segmentation features in its free plan. An intuitive builder allows you to quickly build automation workflows. For example, you can decide to send an automated email when a user purchases a specific product on your website, when they abandon their shopping cart, or if they purchase a particular product category.
With the free plan, you will also be allowed to create a website, 10 landing pages, subscription forms, pop-up forms, do A/B testing, send surveys and analyze the performance of your email campaigns.
When you create a free account, you will have the opportunity to test all the features offered in the premium plan for 30 days. MailerLite is an email marketing tool that offers a multitude of features. However, since no templates are offered with the free plan, either for emails or landing pages, it might take you longer before you are ready to send your first marketing campaign.
Mailerliteplan: free up to a maximum of 1,000 contacts and a limit of 12,000 emails per month (no credit card required).
The email marketing tool that offers a wide variety of pre-designed email templates
Cakemail
Cakemail is a platform for businesses of all sizes. You will be impressed by the hundreds of email templates, there is no lack of choice! Regardless of your industry, you will surely find a template for your business.
With the free plan, you can also create automated workflows, segment your audiences by their interests, create signup forms and get reports on the performance of your marketing campaigns. Note that with the free plan you can only segment your contacts in one email list.
Even though Cakemail is a Quebec company, you will only find email templates in English. However, nothing prevents you from integrating your text in French or in the language of your choice to the existing templates.
Cakemail features are limited. However, for a company that is just starting out in the world of email marketing, you will be able to meet your needs.
Cakemail plan: free up to 1,000 contacts and a limit of 6,000 emails in total (no credit card required).
The platform to send interactive emails
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is an email marketing tool that allows you to send personalized messages to subscribers and trigger automated workflows. Context-based marketing is emphasized at Zoho, which means sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time.
The drag and drop editor works the way you want it to. It supports dynamic content blocks and you can customize them based on your customer segments. For example, you may decide to personalize a section of your email with women’s clothing and send it to your female contacts only.
With the free plan, you will also be able to create signup forms, have access to a library of email templates, get reports on the performance of your campaigns and get chat, phone or email support. If you have an online store, you can even synchronize your contacts, products and promotional coupons, segment your customers according to their purchase profile and know the sales on your online store vs. the sales based on your email campaigns.
With Zoho Campaigns, you can purchase credits to send emails without a monthly or annual subscription.
Zoho Campaigns plan: free up to 2,000 contacts and a limit of 6,000 emails per month (no credit card required).
The email marketing tool for e-commerce specialists
Benchmark
Benchmark is an email marketing tool that allows you to easily create email templates that will help you generate sales. The platform is built for e-commerce businesses as it connects your Shopify store and offers many email templates for selling products or services.
With the free plan, you can manage and segment your contact lists, create signup forms, have access to a host of pre-designed email templates, create surveys, get statistics on the performance of your campaigns and schedule your mailings. Note that creating automated marketing workflows based on your users’ behavior is not offered with the free plan, nor is the creation of landing pages. There is also a 10 MB limit for importing your personal images.
Benchmark can integrate with over 1,500 applications such as Google Analytics, Shopify, PayPal, WordPress and many more. You can also benefit from customer support via chat or email.
Benchmark plan: free up to 250 emails sent per month (no credit card required).
In conclusion, what is the best free email marketing tool?
Each of the solutions presented to you has its own strengths and advantages. It’s up to you to choose the platform that best suits the needs of your business, your resources and your knowledge. Free plans exist to allow you to try and test the tools. However, as your business grows, a paid plan will allow you to reach more prospects and get more features.