Cold Email Marketing Software

Best Cold Email Marketing Software

Are you looking forward to boosting your email marketing campaign through cold emails? Then, you need a reliable email marketing platform to engage your new audience and convert it. Discover ten of the best cold email marketing software services currently available on the market, their features and prices.

Professionally Reviewed by: Karen McCandless

Written By Henry Walden - Digital Marketing Expert

Updated: 09/01/2021

#1 Pick - Best Cold Email Marketing Software for You:

Prospect.io- the best tool for lead management and list building features

Finding the best cold email marketing software for your needs is no easy task, with so many options out there. To make your job easier, we’ve analyzed some of the best tools of this kind by taking into account their features, price, and customer support options. Read on and discover 10 of the best cold email platforms currently available.

Short on time? Here are the top 5 cold email marketing software:

 Unique featurePriceVisit now
1. Prospect.io
Read Full Review
30-day money-back guarantee.$ 99/monthProspect.io
2. MailShakeBuilt-in phone dialer$59 or $99/monthMailShake
Software
Features
Price
  • Mobile responsive email
$20/m
  • Marketing Automation
$15/m
  • Sms marketing tools
$25/m

How to choose the best cold email marketing software

There is a wide variety of cold email marketing software options out there and making the best purchase means doing a bit of prior research. Your ideal tool needs to provide a set of essential features such as segmentation capabilities and strong automations. A good cold email marketing platform also helps you reach out to leads easier and deliver emails at the best time to boost your open rates.  

Payment plans are other features you should consider, naturally, as you probably have a budget in mind before you purchase this type of service. When you compare pricing plans, you shouldn’t only be looking at their value, but also at the package each platform provides.  

The level of user-friendliness is another good criterion to take into account. The best cold email marketing software should be one that doesn't require time or effort to be used. An intuitive interface, as well as training resources or reliable customer support services, are also important. 

cold email marketing software

What makes a cold email marketing software solution a great one? 

Nowadays, there is such an impressive array of cold email marketing platforms that it’s almost impossible to say which one is the best. Depending on your company’s needs and your technical expertise, some options will be better for you than others. For example, if you’re an experienced marketer, ease of use might not be the most important feature the platform should have. What you might need, instead, are good analytics and in-depth reports

 The price is also an important criterion that could make a service better than others. Of course, it should be judged based on what each software provides. A great email platform will support your entire contacts list and allow you to enjoy good deliverability, without costing an arm and a leg. 

The level of automation is another key feature. To be able to truly enjoy the benefits of cold email marketing, you need a platform that allows you to automate most of your email marketing work and make sure your messages are delivered in time and their results can easily be tracked. 

Why Is Choosing The Best cold email marketing software is Important? 

For many companies, email marketing is still the chore of their marketing strategy. This is an efficient way to reach out to leads and convert them without spending too much energy or money. Cold email marketing is cost-effective, but it can only bring the expected results if you use reliable cold email marketing software.

This tool will allow you to establish and nurture relationships with your prospects through targeted emails. A good cold email platform provides sufficient segmentation tools to help you understand your audience better and write persuasive messages accordingly. To boost your open rates and replies, this tool will provide you with a variety of automation features such as auto-responders, spam test features, or automated workflows that will streamline your communication. 

All in all, choosing the best cold email marketing platform is important in order to achieve the expected results (convert your leads into customers) and spend less time sending those emails and tracking their results. 

 What features should I look for in a cold email marketing tool?

  • Integration: if an email marketing campaign platform provides good integration capabilities, it allows you to easily connect other accounts and marketing tools to your account to share and migrate information from one service to another. 
  • Lead management: if you are looking for the best cold email marketing software for your cold emails, you need a tool that provides good lead management capabilities. These features will allow you to find leads easier from different channels, obtain, and verify their contact addresses before creating campaigns. 
  • Reporting: it’s essential to get a cold email marketing platform that offers good reporting features. By this, we refer to reports that are easy to generate, in little time and easy to understand even for someone who’s new to email marketing. 
  • Segmentation: before you decide to send out cold emails to contacts who haven’t received any previous messages from you, it’s important to try to understand and target these contacts as well as you can. Segmentation tools will help you segment or divide your list into several categories. 
  •  Automation: the main purpose of getting one of these tools is to be able to automate your cold email campaigns and send a large number of emails to a large number of people at predefined times. 
  • A/B testing: to understand where your cold email campaigns are going, you need an email marketing platform that offers good testing possibilities. This is how you will be able to experiment with different email templates and change different variables to improve your results. 
  • Customer service: last but not least, customer support is also important. Once you choose a platform, you also need to know that there is someone who can help you out while you’re using its services if you have any problems.

Best Cold Email Marketing Software - Full Analysis 

If you’re short on time, you don’t need to spend hours looking for the most efficient cold email marketing platforms. We put together a list of 10 reliable services that provide a robust package of features and accessible pricing plans. We carefully analyzed their segmentation, automation, and lead-management tools to make sure they’re suitable for cold email campaigns. 

1. Prospect.io - the best tool to find new prospects 

Prospect.io is a European-based company that helps companies worldwide improve their sales strategy. The company’s headquarters are in Belgium. Additional offices are located in Colorado, US and Montreal, Canada. Prospect.io was founded in 2015. Nowadays, the platform is used by 6,000 customers from 1,300 companies

Best for

  • Small to medium-sized businesses

Price

  • Starts at 99$/month for 1000 consumer credits

Comments

  • Handy browser extension
  • Multiple useful integrations
  • 30-days money-back guarantee 
  • Powerful automations
  • Excellent lead retrieval 
  • Good customer support 
  • Some features, such as the list cleaning can be hard to use 

Editor’s note: This platform has some excellent automations. The Chrome extension is easy to install and use. We also like the multiple integrations with tools such as Zapier or Pipe Drive.

Bottom line: 

Prospect.io is more than an email marketing tool. It is a complex platform that can help you boost your sales productivity. Prospect.io helps you identify the ideal prospects online, verify their email address, and easily reach out to them. 

The tool has powerful automations and allows you to easily create email sequences. To boost your productivity, it also allows you to mix the sequences with different tasks and handle calls in external tools. The stats in their web-app are easy to obtain and understand. 

Read Prospect.io Full Review 

2. Mailshake - Great choice for sales teams 

Mailshake is an intuitive, yet powerful email outreach platform. This software is currently helping approximately 46,000 marketers and sales professionals make the most out of their email marketing strategy. 

Best for

  • Small or medium companies businesses

Price

  • $59 Email outreach plan
  • $99 Sales Engagement plan 

Comments

  • Excellent reporting tools
  • Pre-set automatic follow-up emails
  • Handy outreach templates
  • Intuitive interface
  • Useful built-in phone dialer
  • Numerous integrations
  • Not compatible with Google sheets 

Editor’s note: We like the fact that, unlike other email marketing tools, Mailshake also allows you to send your cold emails from Gmail addresses. Moreover, it’s very easy to import or export your contacts. 

Bottom line: 

Mailshake boasts a series of excellent features; the built-in phone dialer is a very handy tool that can help you reach out to your contacts quickly. The integration with Zapier, Pipedrive, Hubspot CRM, or other tools is also very useful, especially for sales teams. 

The flexible API, link building, lead generation tools, pre-set workflows, pre-written outreach templates are other strong points. Moreover, Mailshake provides an intuitive interface, fast email support, and an easy way to track clicks, open rates, and replies. 

Read Full Mailshake Review -comming soon...

3. Constant Contact - one of the most versatile cold email automation tools

Constant Contact was founded in 1998 by Randy Parker. The offices of this company are located in the USA, in Waltham, MA. This platform offers all the essential features a company needs to support efficient cold email marketing campaigns. 

Best for

  • Agencies, small companies 

Price

  • 60-days free trial
  • $20 for the basic plan

Comments

  • User-friendly dashboard 
  • Engagement tracking features 
  • Good customer support features 
  • Multiple list segmentation criteria
  • Useful integrations with social media 
  • Numerous learning materials 
  • The templates can be improved 

Editor’s note: We appreciate this tool’s versatile contact management features that will allow you to gather contacts easier for your cold email strategy. 

Bottom line: 

With Constant Contact, you can gather emails from different sources relatively easily. You can simply import them from an existing spreadsheet or text file, or you can transfer this information from your Outlook, Gmail, or other email accounts. 

The tool also provides good integration with different platforms such as Salesforce. Constant Contact also offers the possibility to use templates (more than 400) while building a cold email campaign, and the CTAs are easy to add, depending on your purpose: surveys, coupons, or social media campaigns. 

Read Constant Contact Full Review 

4. ActiveCampaign - ideal for targeted email marketing campaigns 

ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based software platform founded in 2003. The company is located in Chicago, Illinois, and nowadays has a team of more than 800 employees located in different places worldwide. This platform’s clients are also based in more than 160 countries.

Best for

  • eCommerce, small companies 

Price

  • The basic plan costs $9 

Comments

  • Useful segmentation criteria
  • More than 100 templates
  • Powerful automation recipes
  • Free migration
  • Reliable customer support options 
  • Efficient split testing 
  • Attribution features 
  • The platform may be slow sometimes 

Editor’s note: ActiveCampaign is very easy to use, even if you’re a mere beginner. We also like the user-friendly lead management tools. 

Bottom line: 

You can rely on ActiveCampaign’s clever automations to run your cold email campaigns seamlessly, with minimum intervention. The anti-spam function will help you boost your campaign’s success, and the powerful list segmentation features allow you to send targeted emails for higher open rates. 

With ActiveCampaign, you can easily reach out to leads and track their actions in order to learn their behavior and customize your emails accordingly. You can define your leads’ profile and understand which rank better so that you can focus on those you’re more likely to convert. 

Read ActiveCampaign Full Review 

5. Sendinblue - best for large contacts lists

This powerful marketing platform aims to facilitate relationship building. It is one of the oldest players in its niche, being founded in 2010. The company’s main office is located in Paris, France, and it currently helps more than 100,000 clients worldwide. 

Best for

  • eCommerce businesses, small/medium companies, content creators 

Price

  • Free for up to 9000 emails/month 
  • $25 and $65/month for subscriptions

Comments

  • Customizable templates and sign-up forms
  • Customizable workflows
  • Delivery time optimization 
  • Numerous segmentation criteria
  • Built-in CRM   
  • Numerous educational resources 
  • Integrations with multiple tools 
  • Limited templates number 

Editor’s note: You can literally send thousands of emails each month with Sendinblue, without paying a subscription. With the Premium plan, you can send as many as 120,000 emails per month. 

Bottom line

Sendinblue’s built-in email builder allows you to easily customize your cold email campaigns. The email editor is very intuitive, you simply need to use the drag and drop function to style your emails. You can also rely on one of the existing templates to speed up your work. 

No matter what plan you choose to use, you’ll benefit from an unlimited number of contacts. Moreover, the rich segmentation criteria allow you to easily categorize them based on purchase history, location, or other criteria. 

Read Sendinble Full Review  

6. AWeber - best cold email campaigns reports 

AWeber is one of the most reputable email marketing platforms. Whether you want a reliable tool for cold email campaigns or newsletters, this platform can help you shape and implement an effective strategy. AWeber was founded in the early 2020s and has a team of more than 130 experts. 

Best for

  • Online marketers, small companies, eCommerce

Price

  • 30-days free trial
  • Plans start at $19 per month, the maximum price is $149/month 

Comments

  • Great reporting tools
  • Good integrations
  • Responsive email design 
  • Powerful automation 
  • Handy pre-built campaigns 
  • A wide variety of stock photos 
  • Phone, email or live chat customer support 
  • Some of the templates look outdated

Editor’s note: This tool deserves A+ when it comes to customer support, you can reach their staff by different methods, and it is also an intuitive and straightforward platform. 

Bottom line: 

AWeber can be the best cold email marketing software for beginners. You can easily automate your cold emails using this tool. You can rely on different user actions (opens, clickthroughs) and on a system of automatically-applied tags to understand what emails to send to each segment of your list.

Speaking of which, the segmentation feature is very flexible and straightforward. The analytics tool is one of AWeber’s strongest points; it provides you key statistics, helps you grow and manage your leads list with ease and it is divided into 3 main sections: reports, broadcast, and subscribers. 

Read AWeber Full Review 

7. Moosend - Great integrations with different 3rd parties 

This European-based email marketing software solution is currently one of the most appreciated choices among online marketers and eCommerce businesses. Moosend has been around since 2011 and its international team has been constantly working on improving the platform ever since. 

Best for

  • eCommerce, marketing or travel agencies, publishers

Price

  • Free plan
  • $8/month for the first tier

Comments

  • Powerful integrations
  • User-friendly interface
  • Good customer support 
  • Easy templates creation and customization
  • Responsive emails  
  • Advanced analytics tools
  • 100% access to all the features with any subscription 
  • Segments load slowly according to some users 

Editor’s note: We’re particularly impressed by Moosend’s useful built-in CRM system that allows you to manage your interaction with leads or existing customers with ease. 

Bottom line: 

Besides its useful CRM integration, this tool can also integrate with eCommerce platform or CMS, which makes it a great choice for businesses that have an online shop. From Magento to Woocommerce or Salesforce, API or SMTP integrations, Moosend can easily connect with different platforms. 

In terms of personalization, Moosend helps you design appealing cold emails with the use of its numerous templates. The built-in automations are also quite effective. 

Read Moosend Full Review 

8. GetResponse - Excellent automation features  

GetResponse is one of the reputable email marketing platforms that have been serving companies worldwide for years. This platform was developed 15 years ago and its team of 300 people is scattered on three continents. 

Best for

  • Small businesses, agencies 

Price

  • 30-days free trial
  • $15 per month

Comments

  • Easy-to-use email dashboards
  • Handy web push analytics
  • Customized prompts 
  • Advanced automations
  • Webinar function
  • Transparent deliverability stats 
  • Many integrations are only possible with 3rd-party syncing tools 

Editor’s note: You can test all this tool’s features for free for the first month, which is something you don’t typically get with its rivals. 

Bottom line: 

GetResponse can be the best cold email marketing software if you’re looking for a user-friendly tool with advanced automation capabilities for your cold email endeavors. GetResponse offers different ready-made workflows (welcome emails, win back emails, upsell, etc.), as well as pre-built conversion funnels

The flexible segmentation features of this platform will help you manage your list easily. Tags and scores can be implemented fast to segment your contacts list. The website visitor tracking features, polls and surveys, paid ads tool, custom opt-in prompts are other key capabilities. 

Read GetResponse Full Review 

9. ConvertKit - the easiest way to create sequences 

This platform was founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry and David Wheeler. It was designed for content creators, as a practical and intuitive tool that can help them grow their audience. Convertkit currently helps online marketers and bloggers send more than 500 million emails per month. 

Best for

  • Marketers, any type of online content creators

Price

  • Free for a maximum of 1,000 contacts
  • Pricing plans range between $29 - $59  per month

Comments

  • Intuitive editor 
  • Personalized segmentation tools
  • Many integrations
  • Great customer support 
  • Landing page tools
  • Sales funnel automation 
  • The analytics are not very complex 

Editor’s note: We like Convertkit for its ease of use and the fast email sequence creation tool. 

Bottom line: 

With Convertkit, you can easily perform a multitude of bulk actions to tag your list of contacts and personalize it by dividing it into different segments. You can easily track the clicks, open rates or purchase history of those who have become your customers. 

The sign-up forms are quite relevant for your cold email endeavors as they can help you collect email addresses by embedding these customized forms on your blog, for example. Creating email sequences is easy with ConvertKit, and you have different triggers and actions to choose from when designing these flows. 

Read ConvertKit Full Review 

10. MailerLite  - Impressive templates and powerful customization options

This renowned email marketing platform was developed in 2010, although the company has been around since 2005. The European-based team of MailerLite has been working ever since in modernizing and optimizing the service. MailerLite’s office is located in Lithuania office but their international team also has members in the US, Russia, various other countries in Europe and Asia. 

Best for

  • SMEs 

Price

  • Free tier for 1000 contacts 
  • Pricing plans range between $10 and $50

Comments

  • Intuitive email builder 
  • Visually-appealing templates 
  • Powerful automation features 
  • Good value for money 
  • Easy to set triggers and track results 
  • Embedded signup forms
  • The reports could be more comprehensive 

Editor’s note: There are plenty of things to appreciate in this platform. We like the fact that it allows you to personalize your cold emails right from the subject lines and use catchy emojis. 

Bottom line:

It’s pretty easy to use this email platform to design engaging cold emails. There are some beautiful templates you can rely on to save time and you can style them with different other elements such as images. 

There are also several types of campaigns you can implement (regular, A/B split, auto resend, or RSS campaigns) and you can easily change fonts, colors, and size to personalize your emails. When you automate your campaigns, you can rely on a wide range of triggers and you also get useful opt-in forms and easy migration. 

Read Full MailerLite Review

Summary 

Cold emails are not the same thing as spam, although they are unsolicited. Cold emailing can be an effective marketing strategy if you have the necessary tools to automate it. You shouldn’t be afraid that your emails will end up in the spam folder, either. The services we reviewed above provide outstanding segmentation tools that will help you customize your cold emails and increase their open rates

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Are cold emails really efficient?

The short answer is yes. Cold emails can be efficient if this marketing strategy is implemented correctly. What makes the difference between spam and efficient cold email marketing is good targeting, and you can achieve this with cold email automation tools.

2. What are the advantages of cold emails?

There are multiple benefits you can gain with these emails. Unlike a social media post, they’re persistent, and will stay in your audience inbox until clicked on. The inbox is precisely the best place to send a promotional message because people pay good attention to what’s happening there. Moreover, these emails have scalable potential: you could send thousands of them daily.

3. Why should you use a cold email marketing platform?

Reaching out to people you don’t know with a sales pitch is hard work. To make sure your message really reaches them at the best time, and is well-targeted toward their specific needs, you have to use a tool that can automate your work and help you contact a significant number of people simultaneously.

4. Is there a specific feature I should be looking for when purchasing a cold email email marketing platform?

There are important features a good platform should possess in order to support your cold email campaigns successfully. Good segmentation and automation features are some of the key attributes.