Salesforce Marketing Cloud, MailChimp, dotmailer, iContact, and Oracle Responsys lead G2 Crowd’s email marketing tools rankings

In a new report released today, five email marketing solutions have won top honors in G2 Crowd’s Winter 2015 rankings of the top email marketing tools.

The Grid, which is created from G2 Crowd’s software review engine, ranks products based on customer satisfaction reported by users as well as vendor market presence determined from social and public data. In this year’s report, G2 Crowd has been able to create three separate Grids to show how various email marketing tools perform when mapped to the size of company using them, which produced some interesting results.

Some of the solutions rated might be considered part of the marketing automation category rather than pure email marketing tools.

“Products can be included in multiple categories if they meet the definition of those categories, as well as have the majority of features defined as category-specific,” said Tim Handorf, President at G2 Crowd. “However, ultimately, the users determine whether a product appears on a Grid because during the review process, we ask the user which categories they use the product for. If 10 or more reviewers state they use it for that category, then the product is included in the Grid.”

While Salesforce Marketing Cloud, MailChimp, dotmailer, iContact, and Oracle Responsys were named leaders overall, the picture changes when you look at the top solutions according to whether the user organization is a small business, mid-market company, or enterprise client.

• For small businesses, dotmailer, MailChimp, and iContact come out as the clear leaders.
• In the mid-market sector, MailChimp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Constant Contact lead the way.
• For enterprise customers, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Oracle Responsys take the top spots.

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I wondered why Constant Contact had such a large variance in satisfaction scores when viewed by company size — the only tool that sways across the satisfaction quadrants based on company categories. On further investigation, it would appear that the number of reviews it has gleaned from customers outside of the mid-market segment may have caused the dramatic shift.

Email marketing tools remain among the most prevalent of all marketing technologies, according to our Fall 2014 State of Marketing Technology report. Of the 16 solutions that made it onto the G2 Crowd Grid, all are SaaS solutions that require almost no implementation time; the longest “average months to go live” belongs to Responsys at 2.5 months, with Salesforce averaging 1.9 months. Outside of those two tools, all others require negligible setup, a fact that no doubt aids their usage and popularity.

Tools appearing for the first time on G2 Crowd’s Email Marketing Tools Grid include Maropost, 10inBox, and GatorMail, while notable products not yet included are Experian CheetahMail, Lyris ListManager LM, and Mad Mimi, all of which may appear in future Grids should they receive enough reviews.