Campaign Monitor review 2024: Best features and pitfalls

Campaign Monitor is a simple email marketing platform that makes creating and sending emails easy. 

With over 30 billion emails sent in 2022, Campaign Monitor has proven to be a trusted and reliable tool for thousands of marketers. It simplifies engaging with subscribers with a user-friendly interface and basic—but essential—marketing automation features.

While Campaign Monitor lacks the advanced capabilities that ecommerce brands desire, it has a few exciting features. 

These features include an automatic broken link detector and custom email templates. Yes, you read that right. The tool requests details about your brand and automatically creates up to three templates that are custom to your brand. 

So is Campaign Monitor the right email marketing platform for your business? 

In this post, we aim to answer that question by reviewing every feature in detail and providing a comprehensive overview of how Campaign Monitor can help your business grow. 

Are you ready? 

Let’s get started.

Is the tool right for me?

Campaign Monitor has been in the market for a while. So, who should consider Campaign Monitor for their business? 

Here is a quick overview.

In this detailed Campaign Monitor review, you’ll be exposed to all that the tool offers, and its drawbacks so you can make the right choice.

And if you feel that Campaign Monitor is not the right tool for you, don’t worry. We have discussed the top three alternatives to help you make an informed decision.  

Let’s keep reading.

Campaign Monitor screenshots

An in-depth review

Here’s how Campaign Monitor compares to other popular email marketing platforms of similar standards:

Ease of getting started ★★★★☆

Campaign Monitor has a clean and intuitive user interface that even beginners can use without hassle. 

The signup process flows smoothly and straightforwardly. We appreciated the minimal technicality involved. Everything you need to set up your account is easy to locate.

As a test run, you can create an account for free and send a campaign to 5 subscribers. 

Although our first impression of Campaign Monitor’s UX was good, navigation got a bit clunky as we continued exploring the tool.  

For example, we had to take help from the Help Center to find essential functions like signup forms and list segmentation.

Here are some unique features of Campaign Monitor

• The Link Review feature: This identifies outdated or broken hyperlinks in your emails.
• The email newsletter builder tool Canvas: This works on styles, not templates. It lets you pick a style that matches your brand.
• The Inbox Preview feature: This lets you see how your email will appear for different email clients and devices.

Building an email campaign ★★★★☆

Campaign Monitor makes creating email campaigns easy.

The platform provides over 120 professionally-designed email templates you can customize to match your brand. These templates are responsive, ensuring your emails look great on different devices.

The drag-and-drop editor allows you to design visually appealing emails without previous coding knowledge.

With the drag-and-drop editor, you can add and arrange various content elements such as

• Text blocks
• Images
• Buttons
• Emojis

You can also add social media links to your emails, making sharing on Facebook and Twitter easy. This feature is unique to Campaign Monitor. We’ve not found it in other email marketing tools of similar authority.

The email builder allows you to lock sections of the template so that your team only updates what you want them to. This ensures that your brand style and business-critical information all stay intact. 

Another impressive functionality mentioned earlier is that Campaign Monitor builds three email templates for you automatically using your brand style from the store.

The email builder lets you import your HTML templates if you prefer more advanced customization options.

Campaign Monitor lets you personalize your emails by inserting dynamic content based on subscriber data. You can tailor emails to specific audience segments, increasing engagement and relevance.

Although the email builder is intuitive and clean, it has limited features. The builder isn’t very suitable for ecommerce businesses. It lacks ecommerce-specific capabilities readily available in other leading platforms, including Mailchimp or Omnisend. 

Campaign Monitor’s email builder lacks

• A dynamic recommender
• Product listing elements
• Quizzes and more 

To top it off, advanced features like countdown timers and time-zone sending are only available on higher-tier plans.

Marketing automation ★★★☆☆

Campaign Monitor offers some essential marketing automation features. They include

• Reminders
• Welcome emails
• Birthday messages
• Abandoned cart emails
• And more.

You may also create personalized workflows based on customer behavior, such as

• Email clicks
• Purchases
• Website visits

Campaign Monitor’s marketing automation features lack some significant capabilities. 

For starters, there are no pre-built automation workflows. The only pre-built workflow you get is a welcome email. This is unlike other leading tools.

Campaign Monitor also has a minimal list of triggers for automation emails. Currently, you can trigger your automation with the following triggers: 

• Date
• Joining of a list
• Entry or exit of a segment
• Action in your online store (order paid and cart abandoned)

That’s it.

Campaign Monitor would be a better tool if it offered more triggers on email engagement, on-site behavior, and purchasing behavior/revenue.

Signup forms and landing pages ★★★☆☆

You can create signup forms and landing pages with Campaign Monitor.  

Signup forms are, however, very basic. Only text entries are allowed. 

With Campaign Monitor, you must design your signup form from scratch. There are no templates to aid the design process. What you get is a simple form with a few customization options.

These options are changing the font and button color. That’s all.

To distribute, Campaign Monitor lets you embed the signup forms on your website by pasting code.  

There is also an option to add “opt into multiple lists,” which is an impressive feature.

But to monitor signup page performance, you might want to look into a different email marketing platform. Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer analytics for signup forms. 

The tool also doesn’t offer a separate landing page builder. The signup page works as a landing page for collecting leads, just like on Klaviyo.

Subscriber list management

Managing lists on Campaign Monitor is simple. The import tool and mapping are very straightforward. 

It is also possible to segment the list. Finding the segments as well as signup form builder, however, is a bit confusing. You’ll probably need to go through the Help Center to learn how to find those features.

Segmentation ★★★☆☆

Campaign Monitor offers a variety of segmentation options to target specific groups of subscribers. You can segment your list based on essential criteria like name, location, and signup date. 

Additionally, you can create segments using more criteria such as email engagement, but this is available for higher-tier plan users only. However, even on its highest plan, Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer segmentation based on purchase or on-site behavior.

You can also create custom fields to store and segment additional information about your subscribers. Segmenting your email marketing lists based on gender, location, or interests can make your campaigns more tailored.

Many of Campaign Monitor’s competitors offer segmentation features even in their basic plans.

Analytics ★★★☆☆

Campaign Monitor offers a suite of email marketing analytics to gauge the performance of your email campaigns.

You can track essential metrics, including

• Clicks
• Opens
• Devices 
• Location
• Bounces
• Delivery rate
• Unsubscribe rate

You can also run A/B tests on different elements of your emails and track their performance. A/B test subject lines, images, content, and more.

Campaign Monitor also offers a feature called “Pre-send Views.” It lets you preview and assess how your email campaign will appear to recipients before sending it. This feature also provides insights into the potential deliverability of your email campaigns. You can therefore identify and address any issues that might affect the successful delivery of your emails.

Campaign Monitor’s analytics capabilities may be sufficient for basic email campaign tracking. However, they may not meet the needs of ecommerce businesses requiring advanced analytics. 

Ecommerce insights are missing. The platform doesn’t offer vital ecommerce insights such as the revenue generated, add-to-cart rate, cart abandonment rate, etc.

Customer support ★★★★☆

Campaign Monitor offers email support, phone support, and a comprehensive knowledge base. 

Email support is available 24/7 on all plans. However, priority email support is only available on higher-tier projects.

Phone support is only available on the highest-tier plan, and there is no live chat support available.

It does, however, offer a lot of resources.

The Marketing Resources Hub has an impressive collection of blogs, guides, webinars, and videos.

Campaign Monitor’s Email Academy provides courses on email marketing, helping marketers improve their skills. This is a unique and much-welcome feature for email marketers.  

Integrations ★★★★★

Campaign Monitor offers over 100 integrations with a variety of tools. It integrates with

• List building tools like Unbounce and OptinMonster
• CRM tools like Salesforce and Hubspot
• Ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce
• Content Management Systems like WordPress and Newsletter Glue
• Paid Advertising tools like Rungopher and AdRoll

It also offers a robust and well-documented API that allows developers to build custom integrations and extend the platform’s functionality. 

This API allows you to integrate Campaign Monitor with your applications or develop custom solutions tailored to your needs. However, building and maintaining custom solutions requires technical expertise and development resources.

In terms of integrations, Campaign Monitor is quite decent. Although, other email marketing platforms like MailChimp offer more integration options.

Compatibility with other marketing channels ★★★☆☆

Campaign Monitor’s primary focus has always been email marketing. However, it has recently introduced SMS marketing as well.

It provides a simple SMS builder to help you create, edit, and send SMS campaigns within minutes. 

There is just one pricing issue: Campaign Monitor doesn’t have a standardized offer for the SMS quotas and pricing plans. You have to contact the sales team to get the price offer for your business. Also, SMS marketing is only available in the USA as of this writing.

Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer web push notifications or other channels.

Campaign Monitor pricing ★★★★☆

Many consider Campaign Monitor’s pricing to be reasonable.

The pricing structure depends on the number of contacts, starting at $9 for up to 500 contacts.

However, the tool will get more expensive as your contact list grows. It is costlier than similar tools with more features. 

What can you get for free? 

Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer any free plans. 

You can create a free account to send an email campaign to up to 5 contacts. 

Paid plans offering

Here is an overview of Campaign Monitor’s monthly pricing.

If you send to more than 50,000 contacts, you’ll have to contact the sales team for custom pricing.

The table below compares Campaign Monitor’s pricing with its competitors.

Compared to its competitors, Campaign Monitor’s prices are definitely on the higher side.

All three Campaign Monitor plans allow you to

• Access the template library and the drag-and-drop builder to create emails
• Create/host a mailing list and send campaigns
• Access analytics on email campaign performance
• Get email support

Is it worth your money? Maybe, if you are a small business with a decent-sized contact list. 

Campaign Monitor may need to be more affordable for businesses with large customer databases. Many other platforms in the market offer more advanced features at a much lower price.

Campaign Monitor competitors

If you find Campaign Monitor expensive or unsuitable, here are some alternatives you could consider.

1. Mailerlite

MailerLite is one of the most affordable email marketing platforms. It offers an excellent free plan. Even the paid plans are cheaper than many others, which makes it a great alternative to Campaign Monitor.

MailerLite is famous for its simplicity and ease of use, making it a suitable option even for beginners.

Unlike Campaign Monitor, MailerLite comes with a built-in landing page editor. It also includes a simple website builder, making creating basic websites without coding easy.

With MailerLite, you can set up automated RSS campaigns that automatically send emails to subscribers whenever you publish new blog posts or content on your website. This helps drive engagement and leads to a higher conversion rate. 

No such feature is available on Campaign Monitor.

2. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a great alternative for small businesses that need time-saving automation, easy list management, and drag-and-drop templates.

The platform offers niche features like logo creation, scheduling social media posts, and selling digital products. These are handy features for small businesses, not available on Campaign Monitor.

The platform also offers hundreds of mobile-friendly customizable templates that fit different screen sizes easily. 

The Brand Email feature is also quite helpful. Enter your website into the search bar, and the platform will create a custom template inspired by your website’s colors and designs. Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer any such feature.

3. Drip

Drip is an excellent choice for ecommerce businesses that have money to spend. 

The main attraction is the visual email automation builder. From an extensive library of pre-made segmentations to dynamic segmentations, Drip offers many top-notch features to its users.

Features like lead scoring, onsite messaging, and customizable email templates make Drip a comprehensive email marketing solution for ecommerce and D2C businesses. 

Campaign Monitor, on the other hand, caters to a broader range of companies and industries. The ecommerce features are lacking.

Drip also offers advanced automation features. It offers powerful workflow automation and tagging capabilities, allowing users to create highly personalized and targeted email campaigns based on user behavior and actions. 

Campaign Monitor also provides automation features, but they are limited compared to Drip.

Campaign Monitor review: Wrap up

Campaign Monitor is a great email marketing platform with many easy-to-use features. It is popular for its email templates’ quality, and ease of use.

Although it has limited advanced features, Campaign Monitor remains an email marketing solution for businesses of all sizes.

It best suits solopreneurs, marketing beginners, and non-profit organizations who want to create basic but beautiful email campaigns.

FAQs

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Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.