Course Selling & Marketing

The Best Email Marketing Tools for Online Courses

7 min
The Best Email Marketing Tools for Online Courses

As one of the best B2C and B2B communication channels, email can do wonders for your online course business.

It’s true; email marketing covers multiple areas of business needs. Over 80 percent of small businesses already rely on email as their primary customer acquisition and retention channel.

Apart from lead generation, email marketing helps to increase brand awareness. It also allows you to keep in touch with your subscribers, increasing their engagement with your company, and informing them about important news, product updates, and special offers which can help boost your course sales!

To make it work though, and run a successful email marketing campaign, you will need an effective email marketing tool.

Let’s find out what an email marketing tool is and what it can do for your business.

What is an email marketing tool?

An email marketing tool is a software or application that helps marketers build, design, send, and optimize emails, measure email metrics, and get detailed reports on their email campaigns.

With an email marketing tool, it becomes easier to manage your email list but also create, test, and customize the emails to meet the needs of your target audience while monitoring the performance of your email campaigns.

Key Features

What should you look for in any email marketing software? The following features are the most important ones to consider when choosing one:

Apart from determining the functionality of each platform through these marketing features, you also need to consider the ease of use, pricing, and quality of customer support each platform offers.

Best Email Marketing Software to Choose From

When it comes to choosing an email marketing tool, there are many options. To make things easier, look into the different capabilities each one offers and match them with your business needs and requirements.

In this article, we will go through 5 different beginner-friendly email marketing tools, looking into and comparing their key features to help you decide which one works for you.

#1 MailerLite

mailerlite-logo

Our top recommended choice – MailerLite, is a robust email marketing tool that is suitable for any business regardless of size. MailerLite is packed with several powerful email marketing features you can use to power up your promotional efforts, increase conversions, grow your audience, and improve customer relationships.

First off, it comes with email automation, newsletter editors with drag-and-drop functionality, and provides the ability to create customized transactional emails. On top of that, it offers a website builder, and the opportunity to build a blog that can get you more traffic and engagement from site visitors.

The tool also comes with landing pages, signup forms, an iPad Subscribe App to get you more subscribers, email support, and an email verifier to boost deliverability rates. You can use MailerLite to sell digital products, connect your online store or academy, or set up paid subscriptions.
MailerLite is best for freelancers, non-profit organizations, and eCommerce businesses.

MailerLite has a free plan with a subscriber limit of 1,000 and the number of emails you can send per month is 12,000.

💁 To get more information on its pricing, click here.

“Even though I’m still using the free version of MailerLite (for now), they don’t skimp on their customer support” – Trisha N.
“MailerLite is truly something unique – a different approach to both mail service and customer service” – Jamie A.

#2 MailChimp

MailChimp is amongst the most popular email marketing services in the market. The platform comes with a smooth and intuitive user interface and a drag-and-drop email builder that makes it really easy to work with. It also has ready-made email templates and offers the possibility to create personalized emails for multiple audiences.

Spam filter diagnostics, social media integration, audience management, and automation features also come with it. As an all-in-one integrated email marketing solution, MailChimp has everything you need and is ideal for small business owners, making it possible to convert leads across multiple marketing channels. It is best for startups, coaching and consulting businesses, professional education, and career development services. Combine this with a good and reliable organization app, and your workflows can be as smooth as silk.

MailChimp comes with a free plan that allows you to send 1,000 emails monthly and serves up to 500 subscribers. It has three paid plans and pricing starts from $12.32 per month.

💁 More information on MailChimp’s pricing plans here.

“Personalized and ideal emails for successful marketing campaigns” – Bonnie García Miller
“Great tool for building and growing large community of users, through emails” – Somanna B.

#3 Active Campaign

Active Campaign is another integrated email marketing solution that can double as a small business CRM and sales software. The platform allows you to send email newsletters, segment your audience, and personalize your messaging for greater appeal. With its robust email sequence builder and email editor, Active Campaign offers the ability to create drip campaigns and send automated welcome emails to your subscribers.

Focusing on helping you create incredible customer experiences, Active Campaign has all the automation tools you need, including eCommerce marketing automation, and more advanced features like webhooks and SMS. It is best for businesses in the software and tech industries, NGOs, and enterprises.

Active Campaign doesn’t offer a free plan but comes with four paid plans and pricing starts at $29 per month.

💁 More information on Active Campaign’s pricing plans here.

“Robust platform for email automations and user-friendly” – Josh P.
“Great value for money with all the features you need” – Lewis C.

#4 Aweber

AWeber is a brilliant choice if you are looking for an email marketing platform to create landing pages that can skyrocket your course sales. What’s great about AWeber is that it allows you to automate the process for the entire marketing funnel making processes easier. It also comes with advanced analytics for further email optimization, and email segmentation that can help you increase your open rates and click-through rates.

Having the ability to cater to every small business’s needs, AWeber delivers on its promise. Its email deliverability makes it possible to rank higher than most email platforms, and its emails have the best chance of reaching Gmail and Outlook accounts. It is best used by businesses in industries like finance, real estate, personal development, mental health, religion, and spirituality.

AWeber comes with a free plan but the number of subscribers is limited to 500 and allows up to 3,000 emails per month. The paid plan starts at $14.99 per month.

💁 More information on Aweber’s pricing plans here.

“Best Email Marketing Service for Cost & Volume” – Trent J.
“AWeber is a good, fully-featured email marketing solution” – Chance M.

#5 ConvertKit

Last but not least – ConvertKit is another powerful tool that can help you build great email campaigns. So, if you are looking for a platform that will allow you to launch your creative projects, this is it. ConvertKit comes with a landing page builder that allows you to create your own lead magnets – sign-up forms, pop-ups, and landing pages within a few minutes. Like every other top-rated email tool, it provides audience segmentation and the ability to personalize your emails to suit your marketing strategy.

Amongst its strongest features is the ability to offer content upgrades, a/b testing, autoresponders, email templates, smart workflows, and a WordPress plugin. Its automation templates can be used for webinars and product launches. It’s best for online creators, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, health and fitness professionals, and music and dance instructors.

ConvertKit comes with a free plan that can send unlimited emails, but the number of contacts is up to 300. The paid plan starts at $15 per month.

💁 More information on ConvertKit’s pricing plans here.

“ConvertKit makes automating email campaigns so easy” – Krystal K.
“For All Of Your Email Marketing Needs” – Kori T.

Connect Your Email Automation Tool With LearnWorlds

Any of these email marketing platforms can be integrated with your LearnWorlds school.

All you need to do is create an account with your chosen email marketing platform and then follow the steps to connect the tool with your school.

Integrating these tools with your LearnWorlds school is a really simple process. Just make sure you choose the right email marketing service that matches your unique business needs.

Of course, if your favorite email marketing tool didn’t make the cut, there are more great tools out there you can connect to LearnWorlds through Zapier such as:

… and many more!

P.S. Also, check out how to sell online courses with Shopify & LearnWorlds.

Ready to Launch Your Next Email Campaign?

Whether your email marketing efforts are successful has a lot to do with the email marketing software you choose, which means you need to do some thorough research before you decide which one is the best for you.

Today, email marketing tools offer many more functionalities than just email. You can find tools that include SMS marketing, automation workflows, push notifications, drag-and-drop email editor, API, SMTP, subject line optimization and customizable email design, real-time reporting, list segmentation, and eCommerce functionalities. So, make sure you choose wisely and align such features with your email marketing strategy.

Here at LearnWorlds, we have chosen the best email service providers to integrate and reviewed them for you. If you want to craft beautiful emails that are customizable, help you warm up your leads, improve your customer journey and sell online courses, then you should invest in any of these email automation tools, and start selling your digital products today.

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Content Creator at LearnWorlds

Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.