3 Best Email Marketing Software for Sales Teams

This guide will introduce the unique email marketing needs of salespeople. We’ll then highlight the three best email marketing software solutions. By the end, you’ll know exactly which platform to choose to take your sales processes and email automation to the next level.

What Makes the Best Email Marketing Software for Sales Teams

Before we dive into the best email marketing platforms for sales, we first need to make it clear how we can determine them. Sales teams have certain requirements that bloggers, for example, do not have. It is therefore important to adapt the criteria for selecting the optimal software precisely to the area of sales.

We have used our research from the overall Best Picks as the basis and paid particular attention to the following aspects to tailor our ranking to the needs of salespeople.

Sales & Marketing Automation

Automation in sales and marketing refers to capabilities that allow you to decrease manual tasks through tools and automated workflows. Automated workflows in particular are extremely helpful for sales teams, as these sequences run automatically in the background, contributing to your results without any manual input once they have been set up.

The best software tools allow you to define a variety of triggers and subsequent actions in an automation builder, which then automates specific sales and communication processes, making them more effective and boosting your team’s productivity.

Since automation has enormous potential for sales teams, it is also the criterion that we weighted most heavily in our ranking. We took the availability and usability of an automation builder, the variety of triggers, actions, and conditions, as well as the depth of settings, and A/B testing options, as the primary focus for evaluating the sales and marketing automation capabilities of all providers.

CRM

Every sales team needs a CRM system to maintain a sales pipeline, manage deals, and have all customer data in one place. It's therefore even better if your email marketing software already has this function included without having to create a connection between two different tools. With an integrated CRM solution, you ensure that no information gets lost and that your automation can directly feed and pull in all the necessary data.

We have explicitly looked at which software providers offer a comprehensive CRM solution as part of their platform, how extensive the range of features is, and what analytics and reporting capabilities they have.

Integrations

If you are already using a CRM and do not want to replace it, the integration possibilities of email marketing software providers become even more important. Integrations allow you to move data between your tools and even trigger actions in them. Beyond your CRM, there are countless other applications, including your CMS, payment processor, or accounting software, where an integration can further help automate your processes. In this context, we evaluated the number of native integrations offered, the ability to connect to the most commonly used tools, API access, as well as the amount of Zapier functions offered.

Deliverability

When selling premium products or services, you can't risk your emails ending up in the spam folder. The hard truth is that each email that doesn’t land in the inbox can result in a lost deal – it’s that simple. High deliverability has a direct influence on your perceived professionalism and significantly affects your sales.

To evaluate this criterion, we analyzed the average delivery rates of the software providers and their methods for maintaining a good sender reputation. Secondly, we also checked who offers transactional emails and an option to purchase a dedicated IP address (only relevant for sales teams with large email volumes).

Pricing

Whether you have a small or large sales team, the right email marketing software should scale appropriately in terms of its price. It is important to focus not only on the bare figures but also on what you get in return for your money. A balanced software offers a good ratio between the scope of its services and the price asked. We considered how providers set their prices, which pricing models and plan options they offer, and how the solutions scale according to the size and growth of different sales teams.

Ease of Use

Software that’s so complex that nobody wants to use it is rarely helpful for salespeople, and certainly not for entire teams where everyone needs to get along with it. You want to have tools that make your team's life easier and more productive. Essential for this is an intuitive navigation with a clean interface and useful customization options. In our assessment, we took exactly these points into account, next to the availability of templates and drag-and-drop builders for emails and automation.

3 Best Email Marketing Software for Sales Teams

Now that you know how we evaluated all providers in the market and what makes the best email marketing software for sales teams, let’s examine the top solutions.

1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a household name in the email marketing sphere, with over 20 years of experience fine-tuning its platform. What started with email marketing is now one of the most comprehensive solutions for marketing and sales automation.

The platform leaves virtually nothing to be desired in terms of building automated workflows, meaning that even the most complex sequences can be set up. Due to its wide range of functions and possibilities, ActiveCampaign may not be the easiest solution at first, but it offers sales teams enormous potential once the initial learning curve has been overcome.

We like that the platform can be put together according to your needs. For example, if you only need email marketing and no CRM, then you don't have to pay for the CRM, and vice versa. If you need both, there is a bundle for that. The same applies to other features, such as transactional emails and SMS marketing.

The software is not only in the first place because of its outstanding features. It also comes out on top in terms of deliverability and the wide range of integration options, while remaining reasonably priced.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is perfect for sales teams who want to create advanced automation in email and sales to automate processes as much as possible.

2. HubSpot

Email marketing may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of HubSpot. While most people know it for their CRM, it’s far more than that. The platform offers a full suite of tools for marketing, sales, service, operations, and more.

Their "Marketing Hub" complements HubSpot's CRM also known as "Sales Hub" by combining their features and data in one platform. Depending on your needs, additional modules can be added so that, in theory, an entire business can run via HubSpot.

From a sales perspective, HubSpot offers by far the strongest CRM system compared to all other email marketing software providers. The marketing and sales automation capabilities from the Marketing Hub also offer good functionalities but are not quite at the level of ActiveCampaign.

A major advantage of HubSpot is that you can start with all modules completely free of charge and there is a low-cost starter plan available for each module. However, the disadvantage is that some of the modules are quite limited, and the higher plans and bundles are relatively expensive.

That said, HubSpot is not cheap, especially as your business and requirements grow, but it delivers exceptional solutions for funded sales teams and those in need of the most advanced CRM with an email marketing upgrade on the side.

3. Brevo

Now comes the rescue for those who find HubSpot and ActiveCampaign too expensive or complex.

With Brevo, sales teams get a similar module system to HubSpot and similar automation features to ActiveCampaign – but with easier use and at a lower price.

What's special about Brevo's email marketing platform is that, unlike other providers, you don't pay for the number of contacts but only for the volume of emails you can send per month. This means you can have as many contacts in your email lists and CRM as you want without ever paying for it. You can start with both email marketing and CRM completely free of charge, just like with HubSpot, with the slight difference that you can do more with Brevo’s free plan.

While the automation and CRM features are less sophisticated, they also make Brevo a lot easier to use without the average sales team missing out on much.

Just like the other two providers, the software allows you to buy a phone number and call customers directly through the platform, create an appointment schedule link, and integrate a live chat on your website.

Overall, Brevo is a great solution for small sales teams who value ease of use and anyone with more basic email marketing and CRM requirements.

Conclusion

Efficient email marketing delivers an unmatched ROI – making it an essential sales driver. We highlighted the key factors that determine the best email marketing software for sales teams, including sales and marketing automation, CRM, integrations, deliverability, pricing, and ease of use (visit our Best Picks for more details), and presented the top three solutions with their unique strengths and weaknesses.

To make your decision for the right email marketing software easier, we can summarize the following:

• ActiveCampaign offers the overall best email marketing software for sales teams, with the most advanced marketing and sales automation capabilities, fair pricing, plenty of integrations, and great deliverability.
• HubSpot is a great alternative for teams with a higher budget and need for advanced CRM capabilities rather than automation capabilities.
• Brevo is the most affordable and easiest-to-use solution, with slightly less detailed features. It allows solo salespeople and small teams to start for free and scale very cost-effectively, providing the perfect solution for those who are just getting started or have rather simple requirements.

The good thing about all of the three solutions is that you can add their CRM as you wish without having to pay for it by default if you prefer a different CRM solution. Although it is advisable to have email marketing and CRM on one platform, just make sure that you can integrate your CRM sufficiently to create a seamless data flow.