Many businesses decide to invest in email marketing, but are usually first met by a common initial hurdle.

Researching and deciding the best Email Marketing Service (EMS) that best suits your needs can be confusing, difficult and overwhelming.

With so many options out there and features that can be hard to understand for a newcomer, some business owners throw in the towel before even getting started.

Yet while there are many different solutions out there, choosing one really doesn’t need to be that difficult.

When you gain an understanding of what’s out there, you’ll soon come to see that there are really three different market tiers of these services.

The way I usually explain how to understand which EMS to choose is by understanding these three tiers:

Level 1

level 1 is for those who just want to send once-off emails such as newsletters or very basic time-based sequences. Level one gives you good deliverability with email templates that look good.

Mailchimp is perfect for this and it’s free entry point is what makes it so popular. (also check out email octopus — relatively new but also great).

Level 2

level 2 are midmarket solutions such as convertkit, activecampaign, ontraport, drip, autopilot and quite a few others.

This is where people often get stuck.

You need to realize that the feature set you’re looking for here is the ability to automate, segment and manage your audience in a way the level 1 options don’t. These three features are always the key difference between level 1 and 2.

Level 3

level 3 typically includes enterprise or larger-scale solutions such as maropost or infusionsoft.

Both are fantastic if you have the budget and will utilize them to their full extent, but many small-medium sized businesses simply don’t fit into this category.

Which Tier to Choose?

If you’ve already identified email as a viable channel for your business, my advice is to go straight to the level 2 services and pay a bit more upfront. If you’re aware of the great ROI email can create, it will only be more cost and time intensive to switch from a tier 1 to tier 2 service later on as your operation grows.

In regards to these level 2 services, I usually recommend activecampaign. Not only are it’s automation features very solid, but more importantly it’s segmentation and contact management tools are incredibly flexible. These are important features for anyone getting into email marketing that some alternatives in this same tier don’t provide as well.

But don’t just listen to me. Here is one of my favorite resources you can use to help compare services and decide for yourself.

Looking to invest in email marketing but not sure where to get started? Book a free consultation and I’ll answer any questions you may have about choosing the right EMS, and walk you through email marketing strategies that will dramatically improve the revenue of your business.

‍