Originally established in 2004, Benchmark Email has evolved into a leading email marketing solution, serving over 150,000 users. This comprehensive review delves into its features, advantages, disadvantages, and pricing to help you determine if it’s the right fit for your business.
Summary of Benchmark Email Software Review
Benchmark Email marketing software is an excellent choice for small to medium-sized businesses looking for an intuitive email solution.
- Creating your first email newsletter is remarkably straightforward.
- They offer a generous free plan, and their paid plans deliver substantial value.
- New users will appreciate the clean interface and helpful support articles.
- While automations aren’t overly complex, their autoresponders and triggered emails effectively meet most needs.
- Customer support is known for being personal and highly responsive.
As Benchmark Email promises, it’s quick to start and easy to use – an ideal platform for businesses primarily focused on newsletters and promotional campaigns.
Benchmark Email’s Most Important Features
While many marketers use Benchmark Email for newsletters, its capabilities extend to triggered campaigns, list building, welcome emails, and more. Here are the most important features of Benchmark Email marketing software:
- Drag and Drop Editor: An exceptionally easy-to-use, intuitive block-based design tool with instant email previews.
- Email Templates: Access over 200 templates, intelligently categorized and available in multiple languages.
- Marketing Automation: Benchmark excels in automations for sending emails and managing contacts, featuring a smart visual builder.
- A/B Testing: Optimize your campaigns by testing subject lines, copy, calls to action (CTAs), and send times.
- Landing Page Builder: A convenient addition, offering a simple landing page builder with diverse content options, though fewer templates.
- Integrations: Connect with over 1500 popular technologies and applications.
- Customer Support: Responsive and helpful support available via phone, email, and live chat.
Benchmark Email: A Detailed Review
When you sign up for Benchmark Email, the promise is to send your first email in under 15 minutes. While the exact speed may vary, the onboarding process is remarkably user-friendly. Upon opening Benchmark for the first time, you’re greeted by a helpful getting-started dashboard.
Intelligent wizard prompts guide you through every step, making it easy to begin building your first email campaign immediately.
Benchmark Email Marketing: Sending Emails
Benchmark is a dedicated email marketing tool, allowing you to create various types of campaigns:
- Newsletters
- RSS/blog emails
- Autoresponders
- Recurring emails
- Date-triggered emails
- Automated email campaigns
Its email editor is straightforward and easy to use. To experience Benchmark firsthand, you can sign up for their free plan.
Email Templates
When creating a new email, you select a template and dive right into the design process. Benchmark offers 221 free email templates, ensuring a suitable starting point for any campaign. Templates can be filtered by type, occasion, or industry.
Hovering over a template provides a quick, detailed preview. A unique feature is the availability of templates specifically designed for tools like eBay, Etsy, and SurveyMonkey, which become instantly accessible once connected to Benchmark.
For those preferring custom designs, a code editor allows you to import any HTML layout. Additionally, Benchmark provides templates in multiple foreign languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Benchmark Email Editor
Once a template or layout is selected, you enter the email editor. A notable feature is the in-place editing functionality, allowing you to see exactly how your email will appear as you make changes to text and images.
The drag-and-drop editor is the primary method for designing marketing emails in Benchmark. It cleverly utilizes pre-made blocks, such as ‘image card’ or ‘image groups’, which can be dragged from the left side of the screen directly into your email. This streamlines the design process by pre-combining elements, simplifying layout creation.
The drag-and-drop editor is efficient and user-friendly, particularly beneficial for beginners as it reduces the number of design steps required, allowing focus on content creation.
The editor provides a single canvas for editing and previewing your entire email, enabling easy movement or deletion of blocks. The duplicate block function is especially handy, allowing you to copy existing blocks and quickly update their content.
Spam Check and Send Tests
One of the most valuable features in the Benchmark Email editor is the pre-send and spam checks, located in the “test” menu at the bottom. These tools ensure your email is deliverable and visually appealing.
You can send test emails to up to five contacts for review. The spam check assigns a spam score and offers recommendations to reduce the likelihood of your email being flagged. For example, if an email has low-contrast colors, Benchmark will point out potential issues affecting your spam rating.
Inbox Checker and Previews
Email previews are available for desktop, mobile, and plain text formats. The Inbox Checker demonstrates how your email campaign will appear across various email clients.
The Inbox Checker is powered by Litmus, a renowned email testing service. While these tests typically involve a small additional cost, approximately $14 for 100 tests, you can sign up for a paid plan to receive 100 free Inbox Checkers. Additionally, paid annual plans often come with a 15% discount and free list verification.
Benchmark Email Marketing Automation Tools
Benchmark offers two tiers of marketing automation: Automation Lite and Automation Pro. Automation Lite is included with all plans and facilitates basic trigger-based emails.
Three types of triggers in Automation Lite:
- List triggers: Send an email when a contact subscribes to a list.
- Timed emails: Schedule emails for specific dates like birthdays or anniversaries.
- Drip campaigns: Create sequences for follow-ups, membership renewals, or marketing campaigns.
Timing is crucial in automations. You can set email delivery delays and specify days of the week or time zones to ensure messages are sent at the optimal moment. Automation Lite serves as an excellent starting point for simple email marketing automation. For more advanced control and options, Benchmark Email’s Automation Pro is recommended.
With Automation Pro, you can:
- Tailor your subscriber’s experience based on their website and email behavior.
- Target contacts from multiple lists or segments within a single automation.
- Monitor customer interactions and conversions throughout their journey, making adjustments for improvement.
Benchmark offers a variety of handy automation templates.
Automation Pro provides 11 pre-built automation templates, ranging from abandoned cart campaigns to retargeting initiatives.
An example is the ‘Promote and Target Opens, Clicks and Website Engagement’ template.
Benchmark provides clear explanations for what its automation templates achieve, outlining expectations, operational details, prerequisites, and often including explanatory videos. This significantly reduces setup time.
After loading a template, you enter the automation builder, which features a sleek, intuitive, and easy-to-navigate interface.
This automation begins when a contact joins a list, immediately sending the first email. Following a delay, contacts are sorted based on their opens, clicks, and website visits, and then added to different email lists according to their behavior.
The visual automation builder is delightful. It allows you to trigger emails, add contacts to different lists, send SMS messages, and more. While other automation-focused email software, like ActiveCampaign, offer more complex dynamic email flows, Benchmark keeps its approach simple and focused. But how do contacts get onto your list in the first place?
Lead Generation in Benchmark
Benchmark Email integrates several lead generation and email capture tools. These are valuable bonus features, especially if you don’t already utilize a dedicated form builder or landing page solution.
Benchmark Email Opt-in Forms
Benchmark offers embedded forms, pop-ups, and compatibility with third-party form integrations.
The embedded form builder provides options to customize the title, image, and styling, and allows you to add as many fields as needed. By default, the form sends a standard welcome email, or you can set up automated triggered follow-up or nurture emails. Simply select the contact list as a trigger in an automation, and add your desired follow-up sequence.
Designing a pop-up is similar, with additional global settings to control its appearance and how it captures visitor attention.
The form builder is intuitive. A suggested improvement for Benchmark would be to add more form templates, mirroring the extensive collection available for emails. For advanced custom forms, integration with third-party applications remains an option.
Benchmark Landing Page Builder
True to its design philosophy, Benchmark‘s landing page builder is user-friendly. You begin by choosing from three layouts or seven templates.
The landing page builder features a drag-and-drop editor, enabling you to construct designs using various layouts and content blocks. Even with a limited number of templates, the editing experience is competitive with other landing page tools.
You can add elements such as:
- Columns
- Images
- Videos
- Text
- Buttons
- Navigation bars
- Forms
- Social media widgets
Toggle between desktop and mobile views to ensure your landing page renders perfectly across all devices.
Track your landing page performance using integrations with Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Facebook Pixel.
Landing pages can be hosted on your own domain, maintaining consistent branding with your website.
List Management
Importing contact lists into Benchmark Email is a straightforward process. When uploading a CSV, Benchmark prompts you to select which fields to import.
Benchmark automatically checks contacts, identifying email addresses as Invalid, Risky (high bounce probability), or Unresponsive. This feature is crucial for maintaining a clean email list and high engagement rates.
For efficient contact management, you can create segments based on any contact data you possess. Additionally, targeted lists can be built based on interactions like opens and clicks.
The list view displays contact email addresses, names, and engagement ratings. The search bar allows comprehensive searching by all fields and criteria.
The list clean-up tool enables you to add contacts to a suppression list, preventing emails from being sent to unsubscribed, bounced, or inactive contacts.
Reporting and Analytics
To effectively measure and refine your email campaigns, access to results is essential. Benchmark provides standard email statistics, including open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates.
A notable reporting feature is the geolocation graph, which breaks down email opens by country.
For in-depth analysis of individual link performance within an email, a dedicated link performance stats overview is available. Benchmark also offers an hourly performance graph and an email heatmap, visually indicating engagement hotspots.
For more detailed statistics, integration with tools like Google Analytics allows for a deeper performance review.
Other useful reports included in the Benchmark dashboard are:
- Automation reports
- A/B test reports
- Complaint reports
- Survey and poll reports
For landing pages, you receive statistics on:
- Visitors
- Conversions
- Conversion rates
Direct sign-up numbers are not immediately visible in a dedicated report but can be determined by cross-referencing the email list for which contacts signed up.
The presentation of these KPIs and statistics facilitates easy interpretation and action. Most data can be exported into CSV or XLS files for custom analysis.
Integrations
Benchmark performs strongly compared to other email marketing services regarding integrations. It boasts over 1500 integrations with CRM, e-commerce, form builders, lead generation, and web builders. Popular integrations include Google, Facebook, Zapier, Shopify, WordPress, Paypal, and Zendesk.
Your API key, needed for other applications to access your data, can be found in your Account > Settings > Integrations > API Key. If a desired integration is not available, Benchmark‘s support team can assist in establishing the connection.
Benchmark Customer Support
Benchmark‘s customer support is known for its responsiveness and friendliness. They offer phone support for the UK, US, and an international hotline.
Even with a free plan, Benchmark encourages users to contact them for setup assistance. Support is available 24/7 via email, live chat, or phone call.
A comprehensive library of ebooks, webinars, and videos covering various topics is also available. Reviews on platforms like G2 and Trustpilot consistently highlight positive user experiences with their support.
Benchmark Email Pricing and Plans
Benchmark offers Free, Lite, Pro, and Enterprise plans. You can start with the Free plan and upgrade as your needs grow. The Lite plan begins at $9.99 USD and scales with the number of contacts.
The Enterprise plan is available for users with more than 25,000 contacts, while custom pricing quotes can be requested for over 2 million contacts.
Benchmark Email Discount
A special offer for Benchmark Email users includes a 15% discount on the annual plan when you sign up for a paid plan. This deal also provides free list verification for your contact list and 100 free Inbox Checkers, powered by Litmus.
Benchmark Email Pros and Cons
What We Like Most
- Benchmark features a robust free plan, allowing up to 500 contacts and 3500 emails per month.
- Access to over 1500 integrations, with the flexibility to create custom connections.
- A vast collection of email templates suitable for any industry.
- Exceptional ease in creating email campaigns.
- Powerful options for list cleaning and maintenance.
Areas for Improvement
- Extra media storage is offered as a paid add-on.
- A wider variety of templates for pop-up forms would enhance usability.
Benchmark Email Verdict: Is it the right newsletter service for you?
Benchmark Email stands out as an excellent tool for emerging businesses and agencies, offering flexible templates and intuitive dashboards. Here’s our scoring breakdown for Benchmark Email:
Ease of Use: 5 / 5
Value for Money: 4 / 5
Email editor and templates: 4.5 / 5
Functionalities: 4 / 5
Email Automation: 4 / 5
Customer service: 4.8 / 5
Total score: 4.4 / 5
Benchmark Email consistently scores high in user interface, template quality, and customer support. Overall, it’s a superb tool for sending straightforward email newsletters, making it exceptionally easy for beginners to start and manage their campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Benchmark Email Alternatives
While this review provides an in-depth look at Benchmark Email, it’s helpful to consider its competitors. If you’re exploring email marketing software alternatives or wish to compare Benchmark Email against other platforms, here are some leading options:
Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) offers an excellent free plan and remains one of the most affordable email software options, even on its paid tiers. Its email editor is highly intuitive, making newsletter creation an enjoyable process.
MailerLite
MailerLite is a straightforward, effective email newsletter software. It features an impressive free plan and is generally more cost-effective than competitors like Constant Contact and AWeber. It simplifies contact list management and includes advanced features like A/B testing and a basic website builder. Users can easily create responsive emails or switch to a plain text editor for simpler messages.
GetResponse
GetResponse is a widely recognized email marketing platform. Similar to Benchmark, it offers a free plan to get started. It excels in creating email campaigns and sign-up forms. GetResponse provides a more robust automation feature set than Benchmark, allowing for targeted campaigns and detailed performance measurement. While the free plan does not offer unlimited subscribers, all features are accessible.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is renowned for having some of the market’s best automation features. While it doesn’t offer services like Benchmark‘s inbox checker, its strengths lie in drip campaigns, advanced segmentation, and premium support. However, these advanced capabilities come with a higher price point. ActiveCampaign delivers a complete email marketing experience with unlimited emails for paid plans. Users can sign up for a free account, import contact lists, and begin sending emails.