11 Free Email Automation Tools for Small Businesses

Summary: Free email automation tools are a boon for small businesses who want to automate their email procedure and customize emails without affecting their budget. Here’re some of the best free email automation tools you can use for email automation in the article below.

There are a lot of things you need to focus on for the success of your email marketing campaigns. Not just designing and customizing emails, you also need to manage contacts details, constantly test emails for effectiveness, measure open or CTR rates, and a lot more. Doing all this manually can take a lot of time. However, an email automation tool can automate all these tasks so that users can focus on other aspects of marketing strategy.

With email automation tool, you can run personalized email campaigns, preview emails before sending, optimize them, and engage with more customers at once. Some of the best email automation platforms also let users create a highly segmented email list depending on customers’ behavior, preferences, and purchase history. The segmented email lists would ensure that only the relevant information has been provided to the targeted audience.

In addition to that, you can do a lot more with email automation tools. But first, we will learn about what exactly email automation is and how you can use it for running successful email campaigns.

What Is Email Automation?

Email automation is the creation and sending of automated email responses as a direct response to user actions. The automation of email starts when you set trigger actions to send email responses. Once set, a responsive mail is designed for triggered actions. After the trigger action and responsive mail is configured, the automation is activated. Hence, every time a customer performs a specific action, the pre-set mail is sent to customers, thereby saving the time spent on sending emails.

It can be used to send welcoming mails, products recommendations, feedback collection forms, and a lot more. With email automation, users can create customer journey workflow, promote products, collect feedback to improve the services, and much more.

11 Best Free Email Automation Tools Example for Small Business

Drip
Sendinblue
GetResponse
Litmus
ConvertKit
MailerLite
ConstantContact
Mailjet
ActiveCampaign
Aweber
Omnisend

Small businesses can make the most of free email automation tools as it could help in improving customer experience and promoting services under the budget. Some of the best email marketing automation tools that small businesses can consider are:

Drip

Drip is one of the most popular email marketing automation tools to create customer journey workflow, track customers engagement, and send personalized emails to them. With Drip, you can add product recommendations in emails, integrate your e-commerce store, and get pre-built templates for email customization.

Drip Features

Split testing for emails
Support post-purchase workflows
Customer segmentation and email personalization

Drip Pros and Cons

Users can easily create responsive HTML email templates with it.
Provides pre-built playbooks to automate emails, campaigns, ongoing sales tasks, etc.
You can customize content according to the target

It does not support workflow re-editing
Basic analytic and reporting

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 3,227.50 per month

G2 Rating: 4.4

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is an email automation tool that helps in creating personalized email marketing campaigns to improve the customer experience. With it, users can create marketing campaigns, chat with their customers, send transactional emails, and manage customer details. Other features include customized landing pages, audience segmentation, etc. You can also launch Facebook ads to retarget customers.

Sendinblue Features

SMS and WhatsApp Campaigns
Customized email templates
Support for transactional emails

Sendinblue Pros and Cons

It lets you create different marketing campaigns for the segmented audience
Users can set up the time to send automated emails
You can add unlimited contacts even in its free plan

Users find a bit difficult to design the workflow
Adding images in HTML is difficult

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1575/month

G2 Rating: 4.5

GetResponse

GetResponse is an email marketing automation and campaigning tool to boost marketing efforts. It provides users with email templates to create professional emails and advanced segmentation tools to segment the target audience. Further, this automated email marketing tool can be used to create templates, perform A/B testing for emails, build websites and templates, and a lot more.

GetResponse Features

1000 emails supported
Visual email editor
SMS marketing automation

GetResponse Pros and Cons

You can also build landing pages with it
Supports advanced customer segmentation
Provides ready-to-use conversion funnels to quickly collects leads

Sometimes messages get to spam folders
Contact importing function does not work properly

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,569.62 per month, You can also look into the best GetResponse Alternatives.

G2 Rating: 4.2

Litmus

Litmus is a marketing platform enabling businesses to create, customize, review, and analyze their emails to improve their conversion rate. With Litmus, users can personalize bulk emails, find factors affecting the campaigns, and integrate with different apps to boost productivity.

Litmus Features

Pre-send spam testing
Custom email previewing
Data security with advanced security and user permissions

Litmus Pros and Cons

Users can preview campaigns for 100+ email clients quickly
You can create branded email templates without any coding
It lets users check email campaigns’ effectiveness via engagement data and analytics

Email analytics functionality is only available for premium users
Only 1 account supported in the basic plan

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 8,189.48 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.6

ConvertKit

ConvertKit helps businesses grow their audience, automate marketing operations, and sell products digitally. It is specially designed for e-commerce stores to create professional emails with an email editor, add images and videos in emails, and get the subscribers’ engagement scoring for your website. ConvertKity also provides in-depth analysis of every email campaign’s performance. Further, you can also create conditional email content and get deliverability reports.

ConvertKit Features

Automated email sequences
Audience tagging and segmentation
A/B testing for email testing

ConvertKit Pros and Cons

You can optimize unlimited landing pages even in the free plan
It lets users create exit-intent pop-up forms to gather information
Users can run and manage their e-commerce store via integration

It has a basic email template editor

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 744.74 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.7

MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing platform that offers advanced marketing features like emails segmentation and A/B testing to strengthen customer relationships and improve lead conversion. This email automation tool helps in creating personalized emails, auto resend campaigns, deliver emails in a specific time zone and much more.

MailerLite Features

Workflow automation for campaigns
Campaign performance monitoring
Audience monetization via e-commerce platform integration

MailerLite Pros and Cons

Users can customize segments to compliment campaign requirements
Helps create your own newsletter templates
You can customize landing pages

It is difficult to insert email forms on their website

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 744.21 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.7

ConstantContact

ConstantContact is one of the email campaign tools for creating, sending, and tracking emails campaigns. This email automation tool helps with driving in more sales, improving customer engagement via effective email campaigns. Further, with in-depth reporting, users can measure the campaign effectiveness and check the conversion rate.

ConstantContact Features

Engagement reporting
Support for automated communications
Automated customer segmentation for better targeting

ConstantContact Pros and Cons

You can create ads for your social media accounts.
Provides audience insights to optimize emails and landing pages
It supports content personalization

Spam testing is not available
Users find it difficult exporting HTML version of all the emails

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 644 per month

G2 Rating: 4

Mailjet

Mailjet helps users with designing and sending email marketing campaigns, newsletters, automated mail, etc. This automation tool is used to tailor emails as per the target audience, study customer behavior, customize mails for brand consistency, and manage users’ permissions. With an overview of audience engagement analytics, users can analyze email opening, click-through, unsubscribe, spam rates, etc.

Mailjet Features

Audience segmentation
Email previewing
A/B testing to improve campaigns

Mailjet Pros and Cons

You can manage user permissions to create or edit mails.
Helps optimize emails to fit any screen with built-in email optimizer
Provides monthly delivery for all the emails

Limited autoresponder functionality
Users have reported navigational issues

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,240.73 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.3

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign lets users create and send email newsletters and campaigns to develop brand loyalty and improve customer experience. With multi-channel communication, users can connect with their customers from a single solution. It is a great email automation tool to create geotargeted campaigns and track customer website behavior. Also, you can customize your emails with conditional content.

ActiveCampaign Features

Landing pages optimization
Email engagement tracking
Inbox previewing

ActiveCampaign Pros and Cons

You can segment the targeted audience for better engagement
Provides 250+ email templates that can work with even HTML
Supports lead scoring to find potential customers

Steep learning curve
Not many options available for customization

Pricing: No free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 2,398.72 per month

G2 Rating: 4.6

Aweber

Aweber enables you to create email campaigns, optimize landing pages, and automate key marketing tasks. This automated email marketing tool can be used for tracking most clicked emails, improving the email delivery rate, and analyzing the customer website engagement. Aweber can also be used to quickly create your online store website through its landing pages builder.

Aweber Features

Split testing for testing emails
Website click-tracking
Email sales tracking

Aweber Pros and Cons

It does not have any limit on sending emails in its pro plan
Aweber can also create HTML emails
Ready to use sign-up form templates that can be easily added to the website.

Users find it difficult to add or remove customer segments simultaneously when sending an e-newsletter

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,336.39 per month

Capterra Rating: 4.4

Omnisend

Omnisend email marketing tool is designed to assist e-commerce businesses in creating and sending email and SMS campaigns. It helps them to automatically add product lists in the email, check the highest clicked products, create exit-intent forms, and a lot more. With Omnisend, you can check the website history of all visitors to create personalized email campaigns.

Omnisend Features

Pre-built Ecommerce workflow
A/B Split Testing for emails
Support SMS and email campaigns

Omnisend Pros and Cons

Easily segment customers based on their demographics, purchase history, etc.
Automatically adds product recommendations in email campaigns.
It lets users identify the most valuable customers through segment reporting

Limited email designing templates
Web push notifications and Facebook retargeting are only supported with Shopify and API integration

Pricing: Free plan available | Paid plan starts from INR 1,324.19 per month

G2 Rating: 4.6

Features of Email Marketing Automation Tools to Look for

Some of the most common features of email marketing automation tools that you should look for-

Contacts Management: This feature helps in storing and tracking all the customers data in one place. The data gathered can be used to segment customers based on geolocation, autoresponder feedback, purchase history, etc. This would help in creating personalized email campaigns.
A/B Testing Tool: The tool would help in comparing multiple emails and finding the highest converting mails to boost the marketing strategy.
Autoresponders: This feature would help in sending automated mails to the targeted audience based on their engagement with your business or on the triggered actions you have set.
Templates: An email marketing tool should come with multiple templates to create emails, sign up forms, optimizing the landing pages as per the business requirements.
Contact segmentation: The contact segmentation feature would help in segmented audience into smaller groups and send personalized emails. This would help in improving customer engagement.
Reporting: The reporting and analytical feature helps in measuring the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by studying key metrics like open rates, CTRs, trending content, customer demographics, etc.
Form Builder: The form builder would help in creating different types of forms such as a pop-up or floating subscription form for the website. These forms can be used to gather email addresses and related visitor data for analyzing the website engagement.
Real-Time Collaboration: This would help team members to work and collaborate in real time on marketing automation procedures, email marketing campaigns, and a lot more.

How to Use Email Automation Tools to Send Automatic Mailers?

Follow the below mentioned steps to use an email automation tool and create personalized emails for your customers.

Download and install the email marketing tool of your choice.
Build the email sending list based on the segmented target audience.
Create an action trigger that will activate the email automation.
Design the responsive action email for the set triggered action.
Set the time to activate the email automation
Measure the effectiveness of the campaigns and constantly optimize them to boost customer engagement and sales.

Conclusion

Email automation tools have made it easier for users to send emails in bulk through automation. These tools provide endless options to boost customer engagement and increase ROI by personalizing emails, segmenting audience, improving email marketing campaigns, and a lot more.