Campaign Monitor Review, Pricing & Features

Campaign Monitor is one of the best overall email marketing solutions ideal for B2C small to medium size businesses.

What is Campaign Monitor?

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform used by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide. In general, Campaign Monitor is used by small to medium size B2C businesses.

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Table of Contents

• What is Campaign Monitor?
• Campaign Monitor Review Summary
• Campaign Monitor Pricing & Cost
• Campaign Monitor Features
  • Data Integration and Storage
  • Segmentation
  • Email Builder
  • A/B Testing
  • Drip Campaigns
  • Deliverability
  • Analytics and Reporting
  • Integrations
• Campaign Monitor Alternatives & Competitors
• Is Campaign Monitor Right For You?

Campaign Monitor Review Summary

Campaign Monitor was founded by Dave Greiner in 2004. Today, Campaign Monitor is used by over 250,000 businesses worldwide. In general, Campaign Monitor is used by small to medium size B2C businesses.

Campaign Monitor includes the core set of email marketing features such as data integration & storage, segmentation, and an email builder. During our testing, we found Campaign Monitor’s features to be well organized, easy to use, and competitive with similarly-priced solutions.

However, Campaign Monitor has a few feature limitations you should consider before you purchase this product. You can only create up to 50 custom data fields in Campaign Monitor. Also, A/B testing is limited to 2 email variations, and does not include multivariate testing.

Campaign Monitor starts at $9 per month for up to 500 contacts – monthly cost increases based on your number of contacts. Campaign Monitor offers a free plan that allows you to send a campaign to up to five subscribers. This free plan is a good way to test the platform and start collecting subscribers. However, there are other solutions, like Mailchimp and Moosend, with better free plans that allow you to send emails to more subscribers.

Campaign Monitor Pricing & Cost

Campaign Monitor starts at $9, and increases depending on your number of contacts. Campaign Monitor includes unlimited email sends.

Campaign Monitor Features

Below, we'll discuss Campaign Monitor’s key features. We include product screenshots to give you a sense of this solution’s interface and usability.

Data Integration and Storage

You can use Campaign Monitor to collect and store up to 50 data points on your customers. This data is key to segmentation, personalizing content, and implementing trigger emails. Below, we explore Campaign Monitor’s data fields and offer an overview of importing customers and data.

Data Fields

Contact information that you collect and store in Campaign Monitor is organized into data fields. You use these data fields to segment your lists in order to send targeted communications.

Campaign Monitor requires two default data fields for each contact – name and email address. However, you can add up to 50 custom data fields to capture additional information that is relevant to your business. Commonly-used custom data fields include:

Importing Customers and Data into Campaign Monitor

You can import data through a variety of ways in Campaign Monitor. Below, we highlight some of the primary methods of data collection.

Segmentation

Campaign Monitor’s platform includes segmentation tools that you can use to create segments of customers using the data that’s stored in the system. Using segments is a best practice to increase the relevancy of your emails, and save cost by reducing send volume.

You can define the segment conditions to include or exclude portions of your list. Here are some of the segmentation conditions found in Campaign Monitor:

You can create complex segments in Campaign Monitor using any and all logic. Specific operators included in Campaign Monitor’s application are:

Email Builder

Campaign Monitor includes a drag-and-drop email editor and over 90 pre-designed email templates. You can add different design element blocks to your emails such as text, images, buttons, and headers. Changing the layout and formatting of your emails is simple in Campaign Monitor as well. There are various options available to customize color, font, spacing, and alignment.

Campaign Monitor’s email testing capabilities are more than sufficient for most small businesses. The Link Review feature checks if any links you included in your emails are broken. You can send yourself test emails to check how emails will appear in your email client. Also, all Campaign Monitor plans include a basic preview tool that show how your email will appear on desktop and mobile devices.

If you purchase Campaign Monitor’s Unlimited and Premier monthly plans, you will access more robust previewing capabilities. You can test how your emails appear on the most popular email clients and web browsers. This table shows which types of clients and devices you can preview emails for.

A/B Testing

Campaign Monitor has an A/B testing tool that you can use to optimize your emails. You can create up to two versions of an email, and send each version to a portion of your customers. In the table below, we highlight the major components of Campaign Monitor’s A/B testing.

Campaign Monitor is serviceable for most small businesses. However, it does not allow you to test as many email variations as more robust solutions. Also, Campaign Monitor does not include multivariate testing.

Drip Campaigns

Campaign Monitor allows you to create drip campaigns, or Automated Journeys, that send a series of automated messages to contacts. Campaign Monitor includes a drag-and-drop builder to create your Automated Journeys.

Campaign Monitor includes 5 triggers that start an Automated Journey. These triggers are:

You can add three types of steps in an Automated Journey: delay, email, and condition. You can add up to 250 steps in a journey.

Deliverability

You should choose an email system that gets a high percentage of your emails into recipient inboxes. In the email world, this is known as deliverability.

There are several best practices that email systems should follow to increase your deliverability. As you can see below, it follows the best practices.

Analytics and Reporting

Campaign Monitor includes an analytics dashboard to help you monitor the performance of your campaigns. Here are some of the metrics you can track in Campaign Monitor.

Integrations

Campaign Monitor directly integrates with over 250 different third-party platforms. Below are some of Campaign Monitor’s integrations.

Campaign Monitor Alternatives & Competitors

Campaign Monitor competes with a variety of email marketing and marketing automation solutions that offer similar functionality. The most direct Campaign Monitor competitors are Mailchimp and Moosend. The best choice for you will depend on your budget and feature preferences.

Campaign Monitor's top competitors are:

Is Campaign Monitor Right For You?

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform used by more than 250,000 businesses worldwide. This solution is typically used by small to medium size B2C businesses.

If you're interested, you can try Campaign Monitor today.