The 12 best email marketing platforms for events right now

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but it’s undoubtedly still one of the most effective ways to engage with audiences new and old. As an event planner, a solid email strategy should be one of the main marketing and communication tools you have in your inventory. Last year, a Hubspot survey showed 77% of marketers saw an increase in email engagement. And that 37% of brands planned to increase their email marketing budget.

The best way to use email effectively and productively is to choose a great email marketing platform that meets your needs. (You might also hear these platforms get called CRM platforms, which stands for Customer Relationship Management.) 

Read on to learn all about what we think are the 12 best email marketing platforms for events right now:

1. Hubspot 
2. Constant Contact
3. ActiveCampaign 
4. Mailchimp
5. EmailOctopus
6. EasySendy
7. ConvertKit
8. Brevo
9. Aweber
10. Zoho 
11. Customer.io
12. GetResponse

What is an email marketing platform or ‘CRM’ plarform?

Email marketing platforms – or CRM platforms – provide the software you need to streamline the process of sending emails for business purposes. Much more than just a way to send emails, though, they offer really robust solutions that make it easy to (among other things):

• Create beautifully designed emails (without HTML knowledge)
• Run marketing campaigns
• Segment audiences via demographics or other factors
• Automate email comms
• Create subscriber lists
• Integrate with other marketing or project management tools
• Provide in-depth analytics to help guide future email strategies
• Effectively manage your customer relationships – for example, through responding to queries received via email

How do you promote an event through email?

Promoting an event through email should involve a several-stage strategy that involves slowly building up anticipation for the event via interesting updates and content. This might look something like this:

1. Send an initial event announcement message.
2. Send out an early bird booking opportunity (you could do this for certain segments in your mailing list – like regular customers, for example).
3. Send a series of two or three teasers including things like video interviews with key performers/speakers and footage from previous events.
4. Send a reminder email for online event registration.
5. Send a snappy and exciting reminder close to the event date including key information, like a map of its location, transport links and your event programme. 

It’s also important to nurture your email contacts by sending out regular newsletters, and always promptly responding to any queries. (Most email platforms have automation and personalisation features that help you to nurture contacts without too much hassle.)

The best email platforms for events

Below is our take on the best email platforms currently out there for events marketing and communications:

HubSpot

💫Hubspot integrates with Ticket Tailor! 💫

HubSpot is a major player and thought-leader in the digital realm, offering extensive educational resources, software and tools to help with all aspects of online marketing. And it offers a free CRM platform packed with useful, time-saving email features.

Features we love: 

• Notifications for you and your team when someone opens an email.
• Handy email template builder makes it much quicker and easier to design and send out emails.
• Lots of tools designed to help you grow your email subscriber list. 
• A universal inbox gives your whole team a centralised view of every customer interaction.

Pricing: HubSpot’s CRM platform is 100% free to use!

Constant Contact

💫Constant Contact integrates with Ticket Tailor! 💫

Hugely popular in the US, Constant Contact's goal is to help small businesses do more business. And we can’t disagree with that. Like us, Constant Contact, know that there’s more important things to do than spend your precious time figuring out the nitty gritty, whether that’s email marketing or event ticketing! So no matter how experienced you are with digital marketing, they’ll help you get results.

Features we love:

• Hundreds of beautifully designed templates help you get your desired look and feel.
• Easy A/B testing means you can keep improving your email success from open rates to click-through-rates.
• Marketing automation allows you to send timely emails.
• SMS marketing is a new feature, allowing you to expand your reach with text marketing.

Pricing: Plans start from £10/month.

ActiveCampaign

💫ActiveCampaign integrates with Ticket Tailor! 💫

ActiveCampaign uses robust, AI-powered automations to help you hone all aspects of your email marketing strategy. This automation-first approach helps you to create more personalised, impactful email marketing campaigns that tap directly into your audience’s wants, needs and interests. All the better for higher open rates, and a better return on your investment. Nice. 

Features we love:

• Implement ‘Drip Campaigns’ – where you send targeted, personalised email nurture campaigns for every customer.
• Easily swap out subject lines, preview copy, and hero images for each audience segment, for highly targeted emails.
• Organise and segment your email list with automated tags, which make it so much easier to quickly define different audience types.

Pricing: Plans start from $15/month.

Mailchimp

💫Mailchimp integrates with Ticket Tailor! 💫

MailChimp is an industry leader, and for good reason. This robust platform is incredibly user-friendly and comes with lots of features designed to help you get more opens, clicks, and sales.

Features we love: 

• Get real-time analytics and build long-lasting customer relationships with its customer journey tool. 
• AI-generative tools help you create on-brand content in a few clicks.
• Seamlessly integrate SMS campaigns with your email campaigns, with SMS campaigns backed by the same insights, segmentation, and targeting as email.
• Analyse the performance of your email campaigns with reports, funnel visualisations, and industry benchmarking.

Pricing: Free Basic plan available – paid plans start at £15.60/month.

EmailOctopus

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate Ticket Tailor with EmailOctopus.

EmailOctopus definitely delivers on its promise of ‘email marketing made easy’. The platform has a really user-friendly interface, and offers personable and reliable customer support. It’s also cheaper to use than many other leading email platforms while still offering an excellent product.

Features we love:

• Use customisable email templates or create your own with an easy drag-and-drop feature.
• Get data and insights to improve your email strategy.
• Plug OctopusEmail into your favourite apps, including landing page builders and CRMs.
• Welcome new subscribers automatically by creating email sequences that engage them as soon as they join your list.

Pricing: Free Starter plan available – paid plans start at £8/month.

EasySendy

EasySendy is an advanced email marketing platform with tons of features aimed at helping you improve your conversion rates, and boost customer engagement. It also gives you the option of working with its own in-house team, who can help you run your campaigns. 

Features we love:

• List management and segmentation makes it easy to organise your contacts and send personalised emails.
• Automated marketing services help you streamline your campaigns.
• EasySendy’s team of campaign experts can help with all aspects of your campaigns – including creating engaging content and analysing campaign performance.

Pricing: Free Basic plan available – paid plans start at $19/month.

ConvertKit

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate Ticket Tailor with ConvertKit.

ConvertKit promises “sustainable growth tools for creators”, and is focused around helping you to create beautiful emails, automate your marketing, and grow your audience. We like the fact that its messaging focuses on giving individuals the power to grow their own brand and increase their project’s profitability. This makes it a really attractive platform for smaller-scale event planners or those just starting out in the industry. 

Features we love:

• Gorgeous email designer tool that enables you to create beautiful emails that look great on any device. 
• Content editor helps you create concise email content that’s easy-to-digest and impactful.
• Fun features like an interactive countdown timer help to bring your emails to life and increase engagement.

Pricing: Free Basic plan available – paid plans start at $15/month.

Brevo

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate Ticket Tailor with Brevo.

Brevo is a suite of great value marketing and sales tools – focusing on email, SMS, and chat. We think this platform feels particularly user friendly, with a no-frills interface and easy-to-understand language that helps you whizz through your email marketing checklist. Perfect for those who aren’t yet that familiar with email marketing.

Features we love:

• A really simple drag-and-drop email designer lets you create professional, beautifully designed emails in minutes.
• AI-generated email content and subject lines help you create more engaging emails.
• 99% email delivery rate means emails sent through Brevo are almost guaranteed to avoid landing in your recipients’ spam folders.
• User-friendly analytics help you to easily see how your emails are performing.

Pricing: Free plan available – paid plans start at £6/month.

Aweber

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate Ticket Tailor with Aweber.

Aweber prides itself on its simplicity – an appealing factor for many event planners who want great email marketing functionality without too much fuss. Having said that, there’s nothing Basic about Aweber’s offering, which provides the same level of excellent functionality as other leading email services. 

Features we love:

• Use the awesome design tool Canva to create assets for your emails, without ever leaving your Aweber account. 
• Smart Designer lets you create stunning, branded emails in seconds.
• AI writing assistant helps you overcome writer’s block and create snappy, impactful email copy.
• Tons of keyboard shortcuts make it even quicker and easier to write and design professional emails

Pricing: Free plan available – paid plans start at $12.50/month.

Zoho 

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate Ticket Tailor with Zoho.

The Zoho CRM platform is big on analytics, which makes it easier to create data-backed emails that garner more engagement. We love that this platform has tons of features that make it really easy to monitor the progress and success of your email campaigns. And it’s also packed with cool editing features that allow you to personalise all aspects of your emails. 

Features we love:

• Email status updates give you useful notifications about your emails – like when they’ve been delivered, and whether they’ve been opened and/or read.
• Advanced filters help you to identify email recipients who haven't responded within a certain timeframe.
• Customisable templates make it so much quicker and easier to create great-looking emails. 

Customer.io 

Customer.io is another really user-friendly platform with a seamless interface that’s easy to navigate. It offers robust analytics that are broken into manageable chunks of information, in a visually-appealing way. Which we think makes it much easier to actually use your data when it comes to things like understanding how your email content is performing.

Features we love:

• User-analytics are honed and filtered, with the most important metrics being surfaced so you don’t have to get bogged down in too much data.
• Advanced audience segmentation makes it easy to send highly personalised emails.
• Optimised timing features allow you to send emails at times when they’re most likely to be engaged with. 
• Handy drag-and-drop editor makes building great-looking emails seamlessly.  

GetResponse

You can use the integration tool, Zapier, to integrate GetResponse with Ticket Tailor.

GetResponse is another robust email marketing platform that’s largely powered by AI. It has a very cool ChatGPT-powered email creator, which allows you to make beautiful emails with impactful messaging in minutes. You can also create your own emails from scratch with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

Features we love:

• AI subject-line generator makes it easier to create and test email subject lines that get better open rates.
• Access to 2 million free stock images and GIFs to use across your emails.
• Stylish email templates mean you can knock up professional looking emails without any design knowledge. 
• AI-powered newsletter and auto-respond emails help you to nurture customer relationships. 

Best email marketing platforms – that’s a wrap!

Choosing the right email platform for event planning can make a huge difference when it comes to growing your operation in both size and reputation. With the right tools at your fingertips, you’ll be able to engage your audience, improve their experience of your brand, and – perhaps most importantly – make sure the content you produce is being put in front of the right eyes at the right time. Good luck! 💫

Are your event email needs actually pretty simple?

If you’re head’s spinning at all the marketing jargon in this guide – and you’re simply looking for a simple way to contact your attendees – it’s worth checking out Ticket Tailor’s Broadcasts feature. It doesn’t support email marketing, but it does allow you to easily contact your ticket buyers with important information via automated emails. 

Learn more about emailing your event attendees with Ticket Tailor >

👀Keep reading

• 5 last-minute & super effective marketing tactics for your recurring events
• How to write event email subject lines – 6 tips for a higher open rate
• 10 digital marketing tools to help you grow your event planning business