Skip links

Best Email Marketing Software for SA Businesses

Cover: Best email marketing software for South African Businesses

When it comes to email marketing services, there are a number of different companies out there. Some are great all-around services, and some are particularly great for South African businesses. Email marketing remains one of the optimal ways to reach customers on a regular basis – so all of them can add value to your business. But what is the best email marketing software for South African Businesses?

 

A spreadsheet filled with email addresses is not enough to create a successful email marketing campaign. The tools you use to compose, send and track the emails you do create are vital. There are a number of different platforms available to help you with email marketing. 

 

There are three main email marketing platforms available that work best within the South African space. In order to assess which platform is best for your business, it is important to consider them side-by-side. Each one has its own pros and cons and it can seem overwhelming to try and balance these for each. 

Pricing Comparison for the best email marketing software for South African Businesses

The cost of running an email marketing campaign is often cheaper than running a traditional marketing campaign. That said, all businesses need to take cost and value into account when choosing an email marketing platform. 

Mailchimp Pricing

Mailchimp logo

The Mailchimp email marketing platform is one of the most well-known. It offers a variety of pricing options which helps its versatility and ability to service businesses of all shapes and sizes. In fact businesses such as non-profit organisations benefit from a 15% discount. 

  • Free: R0 per month
  • Essentials: starting at R190 per month
  • Standard: starting at R280per month
  • Premium: starting at R5500 per month

For each of these, if you use more than the plan you are on, Mailchimp charges you an ‘overage’ fee. 

Klaviyo Pricing

Klaviyo logo

  • Free: R0 per month

The free plan offers up to

  • 250 contacts
  • 500 email sends
  • Email support 

 

However, their pricing model works on a per-contact basis which means it is flexible for your business needs. For up to 1000 contacts the pricing starts at $30 (approximately R500) per month. After around 145000 contacts (approximately $1700 or R28000 per month) they do specialised quoting. 

SendinBlue Pricing Send in Blue logo

  • Free: R0 per month
  • Lite: starting at R405 ($25) per month
  • Premium: starting at R1055 ($65) per month

Again these prices range and these are the starting prices. The SendInBlue free option however offers a lot compared to its competitors. With the SendInBlue free package you can have unlimited contacts and send up to 300 emails per day. This option could be possibly the most affordable for small businesses and startups. 

Features Comparison for the best email marketing software for South African Businesses

While pricing is an important aspect of your decision, it is not the only factor involved. What you are getting is of equal importance. And let’s face it, how many emails you can send is not the only feature most businesses are looking for. Each email marketing platform offers a variety of services to their clients that make email marketing a much easier process. Some of these features include (among some others) 

  • Customer data & Data science 
  • Segmentation 
  • Automation 
  • Reporting 

Mailchimp Features

Audience Management

Mailchimp makes use of your contacts’ data and uses a Tag management system. This allows businesses to understand more about their audience. Additionally, it helps provide a more personalised email experience to your customers by identifying commonalities and differences. 

Segmentation 

Based on the data collected from your subscribers Mailchimp segments contacts. These segments can range from the contact’s location, how they signed up, whether they engage with certain campaigns, their purchase history and more. By segmenting your audience you are able to engage with these segments based on their similarities and further advance your audience segmentation through nested conditions. 

Automation

These days, automation is a necessity for businesses using email marketing. Mailchimp as an email marketing platform provides businesses with a ‘Customer Journey Builder’. This allows them to automate communications such as:

  • Welcome communication automation
  • Date-based communication automation
  • Behaviour-based communication automation
  • As well as RSS to email automation

Other automated emails that are offered from Mailchimp are abandoned cart emails, order notifications, product recommendations and more. These are based on their segmentation and allow businesses to send more personalised and relevant emails to their customers. 

Reporting

Understanding what happens with your email campaigns (along with all your other marketing campaigns) is imperative to its success. With Mailchimp, you are able to view reports (with industry-specific benchmarks included) to help you better understand your audience. Reports can include growth reports, revenue reports, and engagement reports. Mailchimp also allows businesses compare (by the inclusion of benchmarks) metrics such as open rates, unsubscribe rates and clicks. 

Klaviyo Features

Audience Management

Klaviyo is a highly integrated and easy-to-use tool in terms of audience management and customer relationship management. It allows you to use data from a variety of platforms and sources and is able to centralise customer data. It is also a great platform because it can help businesses see and understand the customer’s behaviour. Additionally, by utilising the Klaviyo centralised customer data system, you are able to create a more personalised email experience for your customers. 

Klaviyo also boasts artificial intelligence technology that can help your business grow. 

Segmentation 

Klaviyo’s advanced audience management system allows you to send relevant, targeted emails to customers. This is also based on the customer data such as their engagements and behaviours which allows you to ensure that your customers receive a personalised experience. Additionally, these email segments are automatically updated and leverage the contact’s activity to send behaviour-based emails. This is key to generating better results. 

Klaviyo is a great tool as not only can you create segments, but you can also label campaigns, different lists and email flows with their tag system. This allows businesses to create more targeted campaigns, and gain better results. 

Automation

Having a buyer’s journey outlined from beginning to end is an important part of creating an ideal customer experience. Klaviyo makes this process easy. It is able to automate emails based on specific criteria with the goal of helping users through the buyer’s journey in a quick and efficient manner. This can have a huge impact on your ability to re-engage customers and ultimately improve your abandon cart strategy. 

Additionally, Klaviyo utilises the data collected from customers to help personalise the experience, and engender brand loyalty.

Reporting

Klaviyo uses analytics to go beyond basic metrics. The platform is able to help businesses understand the revenue from campaigns, identify trends as well as compare performance to previous campaigns. 

SendinBlue Features

Audience Management

Much like Mailchimp and Klaviyo, SendinBlue has audience management tools. It incorporates subscriber tools such as forms, as well as opt-in options, and Captcha verification. Additionally, SendinBlue takes some of the pain out of forms as it can prepopulate certain forms with user information. You can import contact data from various sources although this process can be tricky. Although once your data is loaded or captured, it can be segmented and personalised according to a variety of fields. 

Segmentation 

SendInBlue has the standard segmentation features that most email platforms use. You can use filters to create segments based on different fields and data from your contacts. From these segments, you can set up mailing lists based on demographics, behaviours and the various criteria which can help you in your efforts to personalise the buyer journey for the user. 

Automation

The SendInBlue email marketing platform makes automation easy. You are able to set up different mailing lists and automated email flows based on lead types, demographics and your various segments. SendInBlue has an impressive workflow editor that allows you to automate campaigns in very clever ways. You are able to trigger campaigns based on contact data, engagement, web activity and purchases they have made. Some of their automation options include the ability to test an automated flow before it is launched, running transactional emails in automated ways as well as scheduling email campaigns for optimal times. 

Reporting

SendInBlue uses the standard metrics and can give you the majority of the reports you may need. It includes tools such as click-maps, geo-tracking and integration into Google Analytics. You are also able to access and assess your conversion data to help you understand whether your campaigns are working correctly. 

 

Conclusion 

Each email marketing platform has its own unique tools and capabilities. It is important to consider not just the pricing but also the different features and offerings that the platform provides. Each business is different so what would suit one business is different to another. 

Or, contact us to get in touch with our team of email marketing experts to get tailored recommendations on the right platform for your business – and help set up the optimal campaigns to drive your success.  

Contact Us