Email newsletter software tools can help your small business create easy and affordable digital publications that also inform, entertain, and receive positive feedback from customers. Here’s how to use email newsletter platforms to launch a digital newsletter of your own.
What is a newsletter?
A newsletter is a written publication that provides communication to readers on a regular basis. Topics can range from business to products, or other areas of shared interest. Today, many newsletters are distributed digitally as e-newsletters.
The purpose of newsletters is to serve as email marketing, but they generally do more than simply push people to buy. Impactful email newsletters pique their readers’ interests, provide industry news, and offer educational tips. Some even feature interactive content. These email campaigns aren’t driven by short-term sales. They’re part of a long-term strategy to build brand loyalty and drive customer retention.
Today’s digital newsletters are powered by email marketing software that either operates by itself or as a part of a larger customer relationship management (CRM) suite. Readers can subscribe to a digital newsletter through sign-up forms on a business’s website or they can be subscribed automatically when they make a purchase from an ecommerce store.
6 features to look for in newsletter software
- List segmentation and personalization capabilities
- Automation and scheduling options
- Analytics and reporting
- Integration with other marketing tools
- Mobile responsiveness and design templates
- Interactive modules
When shopping around for the right email marketing platform for your small business, you may want to prioritize these six features:
1. List segmentation and personalization capabilities
Marketing messages that directly address their recipient are among the most effective tools available to ecommerce store owners. An email marketing service that can deliver custom messages and subject lines to different members of your mailing list shows that your business sees them as individuals.
2. Automation and scheduling options
Tools that allow you to schedule and message individual segments of your audience at different times—such as times that have been shown to have higher email open rates—can help get newsletters to the right people at the right time. Most leading email newsletter platforms have marketing automation tools.
3. Analytics and reporting
These tools track how many people opened your message, when they did, and which links they clicked. Many platforms offer A/B subject line testing, which lets you determine which subject line generates more opened emails and high-intent actions like clicking through to your website’s product pages. You can use the findings to tweak your email marketing strategy and the content in your newsletters.
4. Integration with other marketing tools
The ability to integrate smoothly with other software means you aren’t limited by the marketing tools of a single platform. Many newsletter software platforms now offer advanced features that let you integrate third-party marketing tools and optimization tools.
5. Mobile responsiveness and design templates
Email templates that properly render on all devices—from desktop computers to tablets to mobile phones—make newsletters easy to access, read, and interact with regardless of the device. These allow your message to appear to the reader in a way that makes your company look organized and professional.
6. Interactive modules
Interactive email modules allow readers to engage with your company within the body of an email. Examples include clickable surveys and polls, on-screen calculators, and image sliders. These modules make it so your readers can stay on your newsletter rather than navigate to an outside website to consume your content.
6 popular newsletter software
There are numerous options to choose from when determining the email newsletter platform that best suits your small business’s needs. Here are six to consider.
1. Shopify Email
Shopify Email is designed with ecommerce in mind. Its automated workflows help you compose, schedule, and send both informational and transactional email newsletters to subscribers. It lets you add dynamic content, custom buttons, image sizes, and custom-sized sections to the platform’s existing HTML email templates. Shopify Email is a free add-on to any Shopify subscription plan, and allows you to send 10,000 emails per month. Beyond that, each additional email costs $0.001 to send.
2. MailerLite
MailerLite makes it easy to create digital newsletters with many different features. Its drag-and-drop software allows you to insert just about any type of module into your company’s newsletter, from interactive surveys to social media sharing tools. If your newsletter has fewer than 1,000 subscribers, MailerLite offers one of the most generous free plans in the industry—letting you send up to 12,000 emails per month (or 12 emails to a 1,000-person list). Those who want to send more emails can contact MailerLite for price quotes; the platform’s paid plans start at $9 per month.
3. MailChimp
MailChimp is a longtime player in the email marketing space, providing a suite of customer relationship management (CRM) features. Like MailerLite, MailChimp offers a robust newsletter-creation platform with over 100 customizable templates. MailChimp’s free plan permits you to send 2,500 emails per month and gives you access to many HTML email templates that you can use for your newsletter. MailChimp’s paid plans run between $13 and $350 per month.
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers a robust suite of features, including lead generation landing pages, the ability to A/B test subject lines, HTML newsletter templates, and SMS marketing features through its paid plans. Prices start at $9.99 per month (it doesn’t offer a free plan), with high-volume plans costing several hundred dollars per month.
5. Sendinblue
The Sendinblue platform provides the ability to create email campaigns, run marketing automations, and host live chats on your website. All subscriptions allow you to import as many email contacts as you’d like. This includes a free plan that lets you send up to 300 emails per day. Paid plans offer advanced features like SMS marketing tools, automated scheduling, email list segmentation and personalization. Paid tiers start at $25 per month to more than $1,000 per month for high-volume users.
6. Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor has features including spam testing tools (so your newsletter doesn’t get filtered as spam), real-time reporting analytics, A/B testing for subject lines, and automated transactional emails (which include things like receipts and shipping confirmation, and are generated when a person makes a purchase). Campaign Monitor’s free tier is limited compared to the competition, but it has three competitively priced paid tiers ranging from $9.99 to $149 per month.
Newsletter software FAQ
What is newsletter software?
Newsletter software is an application businesses use to create digital publications that are emailed to subscribers in order to engage and inform them. These are highly formatted emails that have elements including clickable content, high-resolution images, embedded videos, and article-style text.
What’s the best program to create a newsletter?
There are many email creation platforms and many entrepreneurs choose their newsletter platform based on the nature of their business. Shopify Email was built with online stores in mind. Those popular in other industries include MailerLite, MailChimp, Sendinblue, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, and more.
How can I create my own newsletter?
Most small business owners create newsletters using an established, easy-to-use email-building platform like Shopify Email, MailerLite, MailChimp, Sendinblue, and Campaign Monitor.
What features to look for in a newsletter software?
There are many email newsletter software providers, giving small business owners a good reason to shop around. You want to look for digital newsletter software that offers:
- List segmentation and personalization capabilities
- Automation and scheduling options
- Analytics and reporting capabilities
- Integration with other marketing tools
- Mobile responsiveness and design templates
- Interactive modules
What are the four types of newsletters?
Some email newsletters are designed for the general public, while others only circulate within a company. The four principal types of newsletters are:
- Consumer newsletter
- Company newsletter
- Organization newsletter
- Paid newsletter
