Even though email and SMS are highly effective marketing channels on their own, companies can’t fully maximize their effectiveness until they are used together in the right way.
There are dozens of tools claiming to do everything, and it’s difficult to pick which one to trust.
We put together a list of the best sms marketing platform to get the most out of your campaigns and broke down the specific features that make them stand out.
Let’s go through our rankings of the 10 best email and SMS marketing tools to help propel businesses to new heights.
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Don’t want to bother with all of the details? No problem! Here is a quick summary of our rankings.
Patch is an all-in-one customer retention platform that helps eCommerce stores retain customers and maximize lifetime value.
The platform provides growing eCommerce brands with email and texting tools and a full suite of retention tools, including customer journey mapping, loyalty programs, referral platforms, chat, reviews, and more.
Patch is the most well-rounded platform with all the primary features you need to decrease attrition and drive higher lifetime value from their existing customers by offering unparalleled hands-on support and comprehensive analytics.
While the platform has an impressive feature set, it’s primarily designed for eCommerce stores on the Shopify platform for now, and may not be a perfect fit for categories like professional services, healthcare, or other SMBs with little need for high-volume, repeat customers.
Automated Custom Journeys: Create campaigns and let them do their thing. Patch will map out your customer journey to make sure they get the right message at the right time.
Conversational Two-way Texting: Truly set outreach campaigns apart from the crowd by utilizing one-to-one text capabilities to add a personal touch to every customer engagement.
Hands-on Support: Get access to the entire Patch support team and a personal account manager to help set up and run campaigns.
Built-in Loyalty Program: Patch Loyalty allows you to incentivize specific actions like joining your email/text club, giving reviews, and of course purchasing more.
Easy-to-Use: After our team gets you up to speed – build and optimize campaigns easily with our user-friendly tools.
Get More Reviews: Patch uses automation to generate more customer reviews for your business to social-proof your brand and drastically increase your conversion rates.
Analytics and Reporting: Get a granular view of email and SMS marketing and retention campaigns with Patch’s powerful analytics and reporting dashboards.
Patch offers a free 14-day trial that allows you to use their analytic tools to assess how your business is doing with customer retention.
With this trial, Patch will instantly segment customers into groups such as loyal, at-risk, and lost and give you some key insights into how you can bring customers back.
Once you are ready to get on board, pricing is scaled based on the number of contacts in your database, at just 1 cent per contact. Patch Pro includes unlimited email sends and access to every tool on the platform. Additional rates are added for SMS and MMS campaigns.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software platform that offers solutions for marketing, sales, operations, and content teams. While HubSpot is primarily known for its CRM, users can install an app from their marketplace called SMS for HubSpot to unlock text marketing capabilities on the platform.
HubSpot is an easy-to-use option for companies of all sizes, and they boast an impressively intuitive user interface to back it up.
While they do have free and affordable starter options, the platform’s price escalates very quickly if users want to unlock some of the more powerful features.
Marketing Integrations: Access hundreds of apps, including account-based marketing tools to boost email and SMS campaign effectiveness, via HubSpot’s App Marketplace.
Contact Management: Leverage HubSpot’s easy-to-use CRM that makes tracking contacts easier throughout the lifecycle.
Automation: Eliminate repetitive processes using powerful automation capabilities (only unlocked with higher price plans).
Easy-to-Use: Jump right into the intuitive and user-friendly platform. HubSpot Academy’s supplemental and educational resources can answer additional questions.
HubSpot allows users to the waters with their free starter plans that unlock the core sales, CRM, and marketing tools.
HubSpot offers a wide range of pricing packages. Still, the most popular is the “Professional” plan at $800/month, which includes Account-Based Marketing (ABM) tools, contact scoring, and powerful automation to get started.
The more expensive “Enterprise” plan costs $3,200/month and unlocks features like predictive lead scoring and advanced access controls.
Sendinblue is an all-inclusive marketing automation platform designed specifically for SMBs. The platform offers a wide range of features, including segmentation, chats, a shared inbox, and transactional emails.
Sendinblue’s real-time statistics and optimized send-time algorithms boost a campaign’s customer engagement. But with so many tools to work with, some users find Sendinblue to have a steeper learning curve than other email and SMS marketing platforms.
Advanced Segmentation: Tailor messages by creating attribute-based customer campaigns and allowing their marketing automation to sort users dynamically.
Transactional Emails: Customize and monitor transactional emails using a comprehensive email generator at no additional cost.
Email Templates: Create personalized and responsive emails using one of 40+ pre-designed email templates.
Email & SMS Automation: Harness the full power of the flexible automation tools that allow campaigns to run on autopilot, make real-time updates, and manage segmentation based on customer behavior.
Sendinblue Academy: Learn how to build an effective and engaging marketing strategy to scale any business through Sendinblue’s Academy.
Sendinblue pricing is based on the number of subscribers a business has, so the more customers—the bigger the price tag they will pay.
The “Lite” package is designed for new marketers. It allows customers to send up to 20,000 emails per month (with no daily sending limit), access advanced statistics, and Sendinblue’s email support team.
Their most popular “Premium” package costs users $65/month, and it unlocks marketing automation, Facebook ads, landing pages, and more.
Omnisend is a marketing platform specializing in email and SMS services for eCommerce stores. The platform offers a bunch of features that support its primary functions, including pop-up forms, push notifications, reporting, and segmentation.
Their hands-on support for migration allows customers of other platforms to easily switch over without losing much momentum on their active campaigns.
Their pricing model tends to ramp up quickly as companies grow, and some features like their segmentation still seem to be more in line with beta tools than fully-fleshed out, useful additions to their product suite.
SMS & Email Integration: Simplify automated workflows with Omnisend’s Automations Library. Their pre-built workflows combine automated texts with email and push notifications, giving customers a harmonious experience.
Ecommerce Integrations: Integrate eCommerce tools such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Magneto, etc., with the click of a button.
Platform Migration Assistance: ] Get up and running in 30 minutes with access to import tools, pre-built workflows, and live 24/7 migration support.
Omnisend Academy: Dive into their extensive library of training videos to enhance platform experience and boost engagement.
Omnisend is designed for small businesses and bases its pricing on the number of contacts in a sending list.
Omnisend has three price tiers, starting with a free plan, and the prices increase with more subscribers. Their “Standard” plan, with up to 500 contacts, also adds in emails in addition to the SMS allowance, for $16/month. Upgrade to the “Pro” plan for over 3,000 monthly SMS and unlimited emails for $59/month.
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing platform explicitly focused on helping eCommerce businesses of all sizes to improve their performance with existing customers. Klaviyo is not a complete product suite; instead, the platform elected to target its focus on email and SMS for their core offerings, with supporting features like advanced reporting and segmentation data for their campaigns.
Klaviyo integrates with some of the biggest platforms, including Shopify, Magento, Salesforce, Woocommerce, Facebook, etc., to pull in real-time data and enhance audience insights. Some users find it difficult to adjust and understand all of the on-site user behavior with dozens of built-in workflows.
Dynamic drag & drop builder: Personalize emails with over 50 ready-to-go templates that can be customized with their simple drag & drop builder. No coding experience is needed.
Advanced Reporting: See everything at a glance with dashboards that provide a snapshot of business performance, including analytics and automated reports.
Klayvio offers fully customizable pricing based on the number of contacts users have. If users need more than 250 contacts, 500 email sends, and email support offered in their free plan, use their price calculator tool to get a price based on company needs.
MoonMail is a comprehensive messaging platform designed for small businesses that don’t want to break the bank to run their campaigns. The platform supports messaging campaigns across basically every messaging platform, including email, SMS, voice, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Amazon (ADM), Apple (APNs), Baidu & Firebase (FCM).
The affordable pricing plans make MoonMail a great option for small businesses looking for an affordable and robust SMS and email marketing toolset. The slightly dated interface can be a challenge for customers used to modern SaaS platforms.
Unlimited Subscribers: Store unlimited contacts without paying an extra for this feature.
Liquid Syntax Personalization: Tech-savvy customers can create exhaustively personalized campaigns using Liquid syntax.
Multilingual Support: Seamlessly work with global teams with multilingual live chat support.
The “Lite” plan starts at $44/month with all of the core features unlocked, making it an affordable option for small businesses.
For those who need to access more advanced features, the premium plans start at $186/month. Enterprise clients get a custom quote based on their unique marketing needs.
Sendlane is an email and SMS marketing platform that provides a catered set of revenue, retention, and insight tools for eCommerce. Specific features on the platform include advanced email and SMS capabilities, reporting, and hyper-personalization with their Beacon tool.
Sendlane boasts impressive email delivery rates thanks to a strong focus on handling their ESP services in-house. However, some customers have found their SMS tools much less advanced than their email capabilities, limiting the effectiveness of integrated campaigns.
Hands-on Support: Get help fast with a customer support team that is available around the clock, boasting an average wait time of 30 seconds.
In-house Deliverability: Fully control email deliverability and avoid any unpleasant surprises with Sendlane’s email infrastructure.
User-friendly Interface: Get up and running in minutes with a seamless onboarding process and user-friendly interface.
Sendlane offers a contact-based subscription and allows a free trial with up to 100 contacts.
The premium pricing packages start at $83/month and unlocks access to all their features. Their “Professional” plan includes priority support for larger businesses and is priced at $299/month.
Sendpulse is a full-service customer messaging platform focused on automating marketing and sales campaigns across the entire buyer journey. Even though Sendpulse offers a full suite of products, its primary offerings revolve around email and chat messaging, featuring easy-to-use creator tools and integrations with all major chat platforms.
The platform’s focus on providing robust features for email and chat tools makes creating and launching campaigns relatively easy compared to some other tools on the market. The platform lacks the management of campaigns, with some users complaining about issues surrounding deliverability, email verification, and contact management.
Drag-and-drop Email Editor: Easily create stunning email templates. No technical skills are required.
Campaign Automation: Reduce the time and effort needed to manage email and SMS marketing campaigns with Automation 360 or even add chatbot auto-replies to boost the engagement rates.
Email Verification: Utilize the Email Verifier to check email addresses in bulk with just a few clicks and send out emails to verified lists, dramatically improving your deliverability rates.
Sendpulse offers flexible pricing plans for each service category they provide. Each tier unlocks new features and increases capability limits.
Their recommended “Pro” plan at $7.86/month allows users to send unlimited emails and save an unlimited amount to segmented lists. For companies that want to do it all, the “Enterprise” plan at $10.75/month gives the maximum advantage by removing limitations and restrictions on most features.
Mailify is a full-service marketing platform that provides personalized support to all of its customers. The platform offers a full suite of messaging tools and layers in artificial intelligence to improve the performance of their campaigns.
Mailify is fully invested in providing unmatched, hands-on support, positioning it as the main selling proposition on its homepage. Although, this support may be necessary because users have noted the complexity of the tools makes it very difficult to get the most out of the platform.
Mailify required an account with them to access their pricing plans. Based on user feedback and reviews, the estimates range from $69 to $139.
Yotpo is a powerful retention marketing platform that works with all businesses ranging from enterprises to SMBs. The platform offers a full suite of solutions, including tools for customer reviews, visual marketing, loyalty, referrals, and SMS marketing.
Yotpo offers very affordable pricing plans compared to its competitors, making it the go-to tool for small business owners. However, the platform may be difficult to set up and challenging to work with for users with little to no prior marketing experience.
Industry-leading SMS Flow Builder: Create custom SMS flows based on real-time customer behavioral data to push them down the funnel.
Robust Segmentation Engine: Yotpo provides powerful segmentation tools to help businesses tailor and personalize their messaging.
One to One Conversations: Maximize engagement with conversational text automation to connect deeper with the target audience.
Yotpo offers a wide range of packaging options, including a free plan to get started with SMS marketing. Each package option builds off the previous one.
The “Prime” plan at $59/month boasts a healthy number of features suitable for most small business needs. For those that want additional testing, API access, and advanced solutions, the “Premium” and “Enterprise” plans can help.
Aside from the obvious platform delivery, a few key factors differentiate the two channels:
SMS and email marketing can be used simultaneously, but the messaging, tone, and information will vary—even if the offer is the same.
SMS marketing is typically used for content that is time-sensitive and urgent, like a flash sale for eCommerce stores. Most people have easy access to mobile devices, and 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of receiving them.
With subscribers easily accessible via text, offering value with every message to subscribers is crucial. People unsubscribe from text messages more quickly than emails.
Email marketing is more prevalent, and the type of content can be more diverse than SMS. There’s no cap on the length of an email, whereas texts must be 160 characters or less.
Email marketing is used to announce company updates, product announcements, and long-form messaging that companies might not want to send via text.
Both email marketing and SMS marketing have their own unique benefits.
Here are the most important ones:
Direct, immediate channel of communication to consumers
Builds quick, live relationships with subscribers
Frequently checked
Offers a new way to stay fresh in the consumer’s mind
Engage target audiences with longer content
Personalize emails with large and interactive images
Drives sales and generates traffic
Widely used and accepted by most consumers
Email and sms messaging marketing are better together because they offer different but complementary benefits.
Email marketing tracks how many people open and click through messages, while SMS marketing provides instant feedback about how many people received and read messages.
By using both email and SMS marketing together, companies can get the most out of each channel and reach a wider audience.
The best way to use email and SMS marketing together will vary depending on specific business and marketing goals. However, a few tips on how to use email and SMS marketing together include:
Sending different types of messages via email and SMS – Weekly newsletters, for instance, can be sent via email, while SMS alerts about flash sales and upcoming events can go out daily.
Offering exclusive deals and discounts – Provide email subscribers with exclusive deals and discounts that are not available to SMS subscribers and vice versa.
Sending a mix of automated and manual messages – Use automated messages, such as triggered alerts or birthday greetings, to supplement manual messages.
Email and SMS marketing software offer several benefits, including the ability to reach a large audience quickly, track results, and create personalized messages.
With the ability to target specific demographics and track open rates and click-throughs, users can create effective campaigns that generate results.
Some other benefits include:
Ability to send both email and SMS messages from a single platform
Create templates for both email and SMS messages to save time
Automate email and SMS marketing campaigns
Integrate with other software to optimize marketing efforts
Email and SMS marketing are two of the most powerful tools available to small businesses in today’s world. In fact, they’re often the only way that many companies can reach their customers.
These are the best tips to maximize the effectiveness of email and SMS campaigns:
Utilize Analytics: Analyze lists, utilize A/B testing to see what converts best with subscribers, and focus on driving conversion rather than just clicks and opens.
Engaging Content: Subscribers will stick around if they get value from a list. Ensure that the content is something subscribers will find interesting, engaging, and valuable.
Personalization: Personalize messages as much as possible to increase the chances that subscribers will open them.
Timing is Everything: Try to time campaigns according to the typical daily or weekly routines of subscribers. Use analytics to determine the behavior of subscribers and plan accordingly.
Keep an Eye on Competition: There’s no harm in seeing what is working for similar companies or competition. Try to emulate what seems to be working well for them and see if it resonates with subscribers.
Test: Always test messages before sending them. This will help to avoid any embarrassing or costly mistakes.
Images: Use images in emails, but try to avoid using too many, as this can often lead to longer load times or be blocked by email providers.
Call-to-Action: Always include a strong CTA. Tell subscribers what you want them to do next, like “Buy Now” or “Order Here.”
This list covers what we think are the 10 best email and SMS marketing platforms on the market – but customer retention is obviously much more than those two channels.
You can waste countless hours and thousands of dollars trying dozens of tools – or you can choose Patch.
Patch is the ultimate customer retention software solution that helps businesses get more out of their existing customers through personalized text messages and email marketing campaigns, dramatically boosting their lifetime value in the process.
Get up and running with world-class, hands-on support guiding you every step of the way, in fact, you can get started right now.
Are you ready to give Patch a try? Get in touch with our team for a free demo.