The 7 Best Email Marketing Automation Tools (and How to Use Them)

Email marketing used to mean writing a newsletter, selecting a pool of addresses, hitting send, and hoping unsubscribers don’t pile up.

Now the best-performing emails are never sent manually. They are triggered from real user behavior and adapt to the specific context of each reader with the help of email marketing automation tools.

An AI agent for digital marketing paired with automation rules and customer data can make that possible. They monitor the state of the database, match behavior against defined conditions, and push the right content through the delivery system.

Instead of blasting a generic list, the AI agent checks context in real time and fires off messages that feel like natural responses.

How does email marketing automation work?

Email automation follows a sequence of steps that take user behavior and send out tailored messages through delivery platforms. At its core, a trigger event runs through automation logic, applies personalization, and then lands in the recipient’s inbox.

For any automation setup to be effective, it needs to do three things: 

1. Run without constant manual input
2. React to signals from users in real time
3. Adapt the content so the message feels relevant

Building IRL-level engagement through predictive email logic, paired with chatbot marketing capabilities, creates a seamless omnichannel experience. To make that possible, modern automation pipelines rely on several layers working together, each with its own role in shaping the final message.

Trigger rules

Automation begins with clear triggers. These are the conditions that set everything in motion, such as a new signup, a recent purchase, a click on a campaign link, or even long stretches of inactivity. Without these rules, no workflow has context or direction.

Automation layer

This is the engine room of email marketing automation tools. Here, rules connect to workflows that can range from a single welcome email to branching follow-up journeys shaped by user behavior. Once defined, these flows operate on their own, executing reliably in the background.

Personalization

Tailoring content is where automation becomes powerful. Using data points like purchase history, cart activity, or lifecycle stage, the system adjusts messages to feel relevant to each recipient. With machine learning applied, personalization grows sharper over time.

Delivery platform

The final step is execution. Delivery platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or ActiveCampaign handle the logistics of getting messages into inboxes. They manage sending at scale making sure the crafted automation actually reaches its audience.

Key Benefits of Email Marketing Automation

Most teams already know email is powerful, but running campaigns by hand eventually hits a wall. The benefits of automation come from removing the parts that slow marketers down and make results inconsistent.

Time saving

Zapier’s survey of SMBs found that marketers save around 25 hours a week when common tasks like scheduling and list management are automated.

“Send fatigue” shows up in marketing teams as exports, list pulls, resends, calendar babysitting start taking priorities over running campaigns. Automation removes that cycle once rules and workflows are live, so ongoing messages keep moving without day-to-day intervention.

Increased engagement

Litmus reported in 2024 that behavior-triggered campaigns earn 4x higher open rates and almost 10x higher click-throughs than standard newsletters. 

Engagement rises when emails line up with intent. An abandoned cart message, a signup follow-up, or a product update tied to past browsing all feel like natural continuations of a user’s journey. Those touchpoints get attention because they arrive with context.

Improved ROI

ActiveCampaign’s 13 Hours Back Each Week reports that marketers reclaim an average of 13 hours per week (almost one-third of a 40-hour workweek), and save roughly $4,739 per month in operational costs. 

Industry surveys still put email’s ROI in the tens of dollars per dollar spent, so even a small bump in efficiency compounds fast. 

For teams running at scale, enterprise chatbots work in tandem with email — deflecting low-priority conversations and boosting ROI across support and engagement.

Better customer experience

When customers open their inbox, here’s what three different emails may look like side by side:

• Generic email blast (bad): Our September Newsletter — irrelevant to most people, feels like spam.
  
  
• Behavior-driven (good): Aryan, your profile is almost ready — add your first friend — personalized to a recent signup, gives a clear next step.
  
  
• Funny/engaging (great): Aryan, your grandma just poked you 👀 — context-aware and impossible to ignore.

When comparing them in an inbox, the difference jumps out. One feels like advertising, the others feel like conversations. Automation with personalization allows emails to be highly relevant and truly speak to the customer.

Examples of Email Marketing Automation

Let’s walk through some common email campaigns that used to eat up manual effort. In each case, automation takes over the repetitive setup, and AI adds the intelligence that saves money and lifts results.

Welcome email sequences

When someone signs up, the welcome sequence is their first impression. It’s where the user confirms they’re in the right place and guides them toward the next action.

The trigger is the signup itself. Automation handles the timing, making sure the message fires instantly without someone manually exporting lists.

AI adds value by shaping the content to the person’s profile. A student who signs up might get a casual tone with quick-start tips, while a corporate lead might see a professional onboarding checklist. Subject lines can even be rewritten on the fly to match the user’s intent.

Example: “Aryan, welcome to Fakebook—here’s how to make your first connection today.”

Abandoned cart reminders

Cart reminders exist to pull people back after they’ve walked away mid-purchase. The trigger is simple: a product added but checkout left unfinished. Automation ensures the reminder lands after a set delay, without manual list pulls or resends.

AI email assistants make these reminders smarter by predicting which shoppers need an incentive and which will convert without one. It can also generate subject lines tuned to the exact product. That prevents over-discounting and keeps margins intact.

Example: “Aryan, your Noise-Canceling Headphones are still waiting in your cart—complete your order today and we’ll ship them free.”

Personalized product recommendations

Personalized product recommendations are triggered by customer behavior—what they’ve browsed, bought, or where they are in their lifecycle. The automation system decides when to send, whether it’s right after a session ends or a few days post-purchase.

AI powers the engine behind these suggestions, scanning patterns to surface items that actually match the customer’s interests.

Instead of blasting out generic “top sellers,” the system delivers products that feel hand-picked, ​​especially when powered by vertical AI agents trained on your industry and customer patterns.

Example: “Because you purchased running shoes last month, here are three hydration packs other runners like you are using.”

Post-purchase follow-ups

Follow-ups keep the relationship alive after a purchase. Automation fires from a completed order event and ensures customers get consistent aftercare: confirmation, thank-you, or feedback requests.

AI changes what happens next. Using tactics found in modern AI customer service, the system can analyze sentiment from past reviews or support tickets to determine the right kind of message.

Happy customers get referral or upsell prompts, while those showing frustration get troubleshooting guides or extended support offers.

Example: “Thanks for your order, Aryan! Since you’ve rated your last purchase five stars, here’s 10% off if you refer a friend.”

Re-engagement campaigns

Re-engagement campaigns target inactivity—subscribers who have stopped opening emails or using the product. Automation watches for those inactivity thresholds and schedules the outreach.

AI enhances this by scoring churn risk and deciding the right approach. Some users get a soft nudge, others a strong discount—smartly delivered by an AI sales agent that adapts to churn signals in real time. That saves money from being spent on lost causes.

Example: “Aryan, it’s been a while since you logged in—here’s a free month to help you get back on track.”

Which email automation software is right for my business?

Finding the best email automation software for a particular use case can be done by asking simple questions such as:

Can I build marketing flows without knowing engineering? Will it personalize beyond just name? How well does it connect to my current stack? How much does it cost?

Depending on the questions a marketer might ask themselves while doing email marketing, the features they are looking for are as follows:

• A visual builder that makes workflows easy to create and adjust.
• Personalization that pulls from real customer data.
• AI help for subject lines, send-time optimization, and recommendations.
• Integrations with CRMs and ad tools so email doesn’t live in a silo.
• Reporting that tracks conversions and ROI instead of vanity opens.
• Pricing and scale that match where the team is today, but also where it’s heading.

Top 7 Email Marketing Automation Software

1. Botpress

Best for: Teams building multi-channel marketing automation that blends AI-powered personalization with workflow logic across email, chat, and customer data.

Botpress is an AI agent platform that lets marketing teams design automated assistants which trigger, personalize, send messages, and follow-ups without manual effort.

Instead of coding workflows, you can visually build flows that connect email and chatbot automation, responding to signals like signups, purchases, re-engagement or cart abandonment.

Botpress doesn’t replace your email platform. It connects to providers like HubSpot or Mailchimp and powers them with intelligent workflows.

Workflows act like decision trees that carry context forward. For example, an abandoned cart follow-up can branch into different incentives depending on past behavior, and product recommendations can change dynamically based on purchase history.

Botpress taps into your CRM or storefront to use real customer history and behavior, turning every campaign into something timely and context-aware.

While most platforms automate a single campaign, Botpress can operate like a marketing teammate — qualifying leads, drafting variants, and running cross-channel programs from one intelligent agent.

Key Features:

• Visual workflow builder for sequencing different email marketing campaigns
• Built-in personalization using CRM and ecommerce data
• AI-powered adjustments that decide incentives and offers based on past behavior
• One-click integrations with HubSpot, Google Drive, Intercom, Slack, and Shopify

2. Hubspot

Best for: Companies that want marketing automation deeply integrated with a full CRM, giving sales and marketing teams a single platform for customer data and outreach.

HubSpot is an entire CRM system with automation layered on top of it, so every campaign can draw from detailed contact records which comes with the deal pipelines, and customer interactions.

HubSpot automations use sales notes, support history, and lifecycle stages to tailor how and when a message is delivered.

Marketers can design sophisticated journeys that branch by purchase intent or engagement score. A prospect might receive educational content while an existing customer is routed into upsell campaigns or loyalty programs.

Reports on Hubspot combine marketing performance with sales outcomes, showing not only which emails were opened, but also which campaigns contributed to pipeline growth and closed revenue.

HubSpot’s broad feature set comes from years of additions. It can handle nearly everything, but the sprawl makes onboarding harder, especially for smaller teams without dedicated operations.

Key Features:

• CRM-driven automation with shared data across teams
• Journeys branching by lifecycle stage and engagement
• Personalization powered by sales and support context
• Enterprise-level analytics linking campaigns to revenue

3. ActiveCampaign

Best for: Marketers who want email automation combined with CRM, so campaigns, segmentation, and lead management all run from the same platform.

ActiveCampaign is an automation-first email platform built around customer data. It gives marketers a visual builder to design campaigns that react instantly to signups or inactivity.

Segmentation is ActiveCampaign’s main strength which can define detailed rules, split audiences by lifecycle stage, and trigger unique flows that nurture subscribers differently depending on their behavior.

Multi-channel support makes campaigns flexible. A new subscriber might enter an onboarding sequence, while cart abandoners receive reminders. The same workflow logic can extend into SMS or app notifications to keep journeys consistent.

Lead scoring ties campaigns to outcomes. Each interaction — such as an opened email or a completed checkout — updates scores in real time, allowing sales teams to focus on the most engaged contacts.

Integrations keep data aligned across your stack. ActiveCampaign connects directly with ecommerce systems and popular CRMs, while also syncing with advertising platforms so reporting can map activity back to conversions and revenue.

Key Features:

• Visual builder with branching workflows
• Detailed segmentation and lifecycle automation
• Lead scoring to prioritize sales-ready contacts
• Native CRM for pipeline and deal management

4. Mailchimp

Best for: Small businesses and startups that want straightforward email automation with strong design tools and built-in analytics.

Mailchimp started as a newsletter platform and evolved into a full marketing suite. Its visual builder lets teams design branded emails and connect them directly to automated customer journeys.

Automation flows cover essentials like onboarding, cart recovery, and follow-ups. Each workflow runs in the background, freeing teams from repetitive scheduling or manual list management.

Personalization is simple but effective. Mailchimp can adapt subject lines, optimize send times, and pull product data from connected stores so campaigns feel timely and relevant.

Performance reporting is a key strength. Marketers can tie opens, clicks, and revenue impact back to specific campaigns, giving a clear picture of ROI without digging through spreadsheets.

Integrations extend reach across ecommerce, CRM, and analytics platforms, keeping email campaigns fueled by the same data used across the rest of the stack.

Key Features:

• Automated campaigns for lifecycle stages and promotions
• AI tools for subject lines and send-time optimization
• Revenue-focused reporting for clear ROI tracking
• Integrations with ecommerce and CRM systems

5. Brevo

Best for: Teams that want a practical, cost-friendly platform combining email automation with transactional sending and lightweight CRM features.

Brevo is a digital marketing and customer relationship management system that operates across email, SMS, chat and other channels.

Brevo focuses on reliable delivery at scale. Beyond marketing campaigns, it powers transactional emails like order confirmations, shipping updates, and password resets, ensuring critical messages arrive quickly and consistently.

Its automation builder connects easily to customer activity. A purchase can trigger follow-up offers, inactivity can prompt a re-engagement flow, and SMS messages can reinforce time-sensitive campaigns.

Brevo stands especially for volume-driven costs. Pricing scales by message volume instead of subscriber count, giving growing businesses predictable costs without punishing large contact lists.

The built-in CRM helps smaller teams centralize contacts, track engagement, and coordinate sales actions directly alongside marketing campaigns. That makes it more of a unified hub than just an email tool.

Key Features:

• Automation for lifecycle and transactional messaging
• High-reliability infrastructure for confirmations and alerts
• Usage-based pricing suited for scaling businesses

6. Omnisend

Best for: Ecommerce brands that need email automation built directly around store activity and customer purchase behavior.

Omnisend is a marketing automation platform designed specifically for online retailers. It connects natively with storefronts like Shopify and WooCommerce, giving workflows instant access to product data and customer actions.

Omnisend includes prebuilt automations for ecommerce moments. Teams can launch welcome email, cart recovery flows, order confirmations, and post-purchase follow-ups without having to design everything manually.

Personalization runs on live store data. Emails can showcase products based on browsing activity or past orders, shaping each message into something that feels relevant rather than generic.

Performance tracking centers on sales outcomes, letting marketers link automation directly to revenue, increased visibility into which sequences are driving conversions, higher order values, and customer retention.

Key Features:

• Direct integrations with ecommerce platforms
• Prebuilt workflows for store-driven campaigns
• Reporting that links directly to revenue

7. Drip

Best for: Ecommerce teams that want automation designed around nurturing customers across their entire journey, not just firing off single campaigns.

Drip positions itself as a lifecycle marketing engine. Instead of treating automations as isolated events, it helps brands design long-running journeys that evolve as shoppers move from signup to repeat buyer.

A welcome sequence might gradually transition into product education, then shift toward personalized offers as engagement grows. If activity drops, Drip can re-engage customers with targeted campaigns that rebuild interest over time.

The real strength is how it adapts cadence and content. Every click, purchase, or lapse adds context, allowing emails to feel like part of an ongoing relationship rather than disconnected blasts.

Drip also extends these journeys into SMS and ad retargeting, so lifecycle campaigns are reinforced across multiple touchpoints. This consistency makes customer communication feel more intentional and less like a series of separate pushes.

Drip highlights lifetime value, repeat purchase rates, and retention trends, giving marketers insight into the compounding effects of nurturing.

Key Features:

• Automation built around lifecycle journeys
• Workflows that evolve across multiple stages
• Multi-channel reinforcement with SMS and ads
• Analytics tied to retention and lifetime value

Getting Started With Email Marketing Automation

1. Choose the first trigger and outcome

Start small with one event that matters. A single clear trigger paired with a measurable outcome gives your team focus and shows quick results before scaling automation further.

Common triggers and outcomes:

• Signup: welcome series driving first engagement
• Cart created: reminder email increasing checkout completions
• Order completed: post-purchase flow boosting repeat sales
• Inactivity: reactivation campaign improving retention
• Browse abandoned: product reminder encouraging return visits

2. Build the data foundation

Automation only works if the system has something to act on. Just a few reliable fields that keep campaigns relevant. Start with identifiers and simple behavior markers, then expand later.

The data points you begin with can vary a lot, but the most common ones are name, email, signup date, last purchase, cart status, and recent activity. These alone are enough to power welcome flows and basic cart-based re-engagement.

3. Design the automation layer

The automation layer is where workflows actually take shape. AI-first frameworks like Botpress are built from the ground up to coordinate complex AI workflows.

Rather than taping AI onto existing tools, AI agents operate as the orchestration layer above the stack. They link with CRMs and email platforms, then turn customer data into personalized flows that are unique to each email.

A sandbox environment allows teams to test triggers, AI decisions, branches, and reporting choices against the same data fields managed by the email distribution system. This makes experimentation safe while keeping results consistent with the live campaign stack.

4. Pick delivery system

The delivery system is the piece that actually sends emails. The choice depends on team priorities.

5. Pre-launch checklist

Some key checks that can ensure a safe and healthy email sending profile through these automations are as follows.

• Authentication: confirm your email domain is verified so messages land in inboxes.
• Rendering: test in one web client and one mobile client.
• Accessibility: ensure a plain-text fallback and alt text for images.
• Consent: verify that opt-outs and suppression lists function correctly.
• Measurement: click tracked links and check that analytics records them.
• Volume: increase gradually in sections when serving a big mailing list

The first workflow should be measured carefully, then adjusted based on results before new campaigns are added. Growth comes from small, continuous improvements rather than one big launch.

Build Marketing Campaigns that Run Themselves

Email is only one entry point. With Botpress, the same campaign logic can trigger from chat, websites, or SMS without duplication, where a single workflow can adapt across every channel where customers engage.

Botpress also supports broader customer tasks with human-in-the-loop (HITL) options and built-in memory management, making interactions consistent and reliable across touchpoints.

Start building today — it’s free.