Benchmark Email Review Hitting the mark?

Benchmark Email is very easy to use, with a stripped-back interface that’s clean and simple. Getting familiar with the system takes no time at all.

The drag-and-drop editor is fast and pretty intuitive, although you’ll come across a few instances where things don’t quite work as you’d expect – or as you’d like. For instance, some elements can be edited directly within the email (for example, body text), whereas simple things like button text need to be edited in a separate area. Still, there are some very handy features, such as a built-in image editor that allows you to crop, resize and add filters to images.

Only simple personalisation is available, no if/then/else logic.

Classic newsletters, autoresponders, recurring, once-off (date-based), RSS to email, A/B testing, surveys, automation workflows.

There’s a good choice of templates available, and they’re all responsive. You can preview the mobile version of all emails from within the editor.

Automation Lite is available on all plans and allows you to send basic trigger-based emails. If however you’re looking to set up more sophisticated automation based on email clicks, webpage visits or abandoned cart follow-up, you’ll need to upgrade to Benchmark’s Pro plan. They also have some nice, ready-to-go templates to help you get these campaigns up and running quickly. It’s great if you’re looking to build targeted campaigns based on contact behaviour, but the automation is limited to sending emails and adding contacts to lists – there’s no way to do more complex tasks like sending emails with dynamic content, for example.

Segmentation based on contact fields with and/or criteria is available. On the paid plans you can also create ‘targeted lists’ based on email opens or URLs clicked within the email. However, you can only create segments within lists, not across them, which may be limiting for some. And you can only delete a subscriber from either one or all lists. There’s nothing in between. One useful feature though is their ‘clean list’ option, which allows you to remove bounces or those who haven’t opened your last few campaigns.

The forms are done well, allowing you to create pop-ups and other basic forms with relative ease. You can also add a limited number of your own database fields, and integrate with tools like Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and Unbounce.

Deliverability has proven to be a challenge for Benchmark. They scored especially badly when trying to reach Outlook emails (and most recently, Gmail emails too). In the latest round they placed last out of fifteen providers. Alternatives like MailerLite and ActiveCampaign performed much better.

The reports are good, giving you the open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe rate (all data is exportable too). They also have an hourly performance graph, email heat-map, Google Analytics integration, geo-tracking and social tracking. There was no client or ecommerce tracking though.

A relatively good 9 languages within the tool. Chat support is available for 6 languages.

They do have these available within the editor. Spam testing is free, while design testing needs to be purchased. We did have issues where our emails passed the spam tests though, and all were delivered as spam. This also happened with all emails from Benchmark’s marketing team too, which is a little concerning. Find out how to avoid spam filters here.

Pretty standard bounce management, flagging contacts as ‘confirmed bounces’ once they hard bounce three times. Note that these count towards your active contact count as long as they are not deleted or set to ‘unsubscribed’.

This is not available.

Benchmark only offer a tiny 10MB of image storage, meaning that the average user will have to pay an additional $5 per month to increase it to unlimited.

SPF and DKIM are available.

Although tracking links use Benchmark’s own domain by default (trk169.benchurl.com), you can contact support to request to use your own domain name.

Benchmark have sub-accounts available on their paid plans. It lacks some of the customization depth that other tools have, though.

Quite a lot of integration available, including social media, CRMs and most other popular products. You also have all the in-app Zapier templates.

Benchmark offers a landing page builder on its Pro plan. There are 6 simple templates available, and editing them is much like editing an email template.

The knowledge base is great due to its large library of videos, webinars and even several free ebooks on different topics. The online support was fast and mostly useful, although they struggled with getting back to me on things they couldn’t answer straight away.