Benchmark Email Review Hitting the mark?

Benchmark Email is generally easy to use, with a stripped-back interface that’s clean and simple. Features are well organized and easy to find, and the Help button is easily accessed from any screen.

However, we did find the tool buggy at times, and at times needed a refresh or a log out to get things working again. A few things could also be streamlined so that users don’t have to repeat certain actions (e.g. saving a universal mailing address so users don’t have to manually add it into every email).

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. 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.

However, Benchmark doesn’t really offer any unique content blocks to make your emails stand out visually, which is something we’ve seen in most other ESPs. We also found the undo/redo buttons to be a little glitchy.

Only simple personalisation is available (e.g. first name, email address). It’s not possible to add conditional content (e.g. if/then/else logic).

• Marketing emails
• Transactional emails
• SMS
• Web push
• Mobile push
• Live chat / conversations

Supports 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. While the Brand Kit lets you upload logo and colors, this is really only useful if you’re using the AI tool to generate designs. It doesn’t automatically brand new templates with these elements, and it doesn’t seem possible to set universal styles. What’s a little confusing is that the “global styles” feature only defines fonts and colors on an email per email basis.

Automation Lite is available on all plans and allows you to send basic trigger-based emails (including engagement-driven campaigns based on opens and clicks). If however you’re looking to set up more sophisticated automation based on webpage visits or abandoned carts, you’ll need to upgrade to Benchmark’s Pro plan.

They have some ready-to-go templates to help you get these campaigns up and running quickly, but the actions are limited to sending automated emails, updating contact details, or moving subscribers between lists. There’s no way to do more complex tasks like sending product recommendations or scoring leads, for example. It’s also not possible to split test automations or trigger CRM actions.

Segmentation based on contact fields with and/or criteria is available, although there’s no tagging feature. ‘Contact rating’ is a useful feature that automatically scores contacts based on engagement levels. Another is their ‘clean list’ option, which allows you to remove bounces or those who haven’t opened your last few campaigns.

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.

Benchmark allows you to create pop-ups and other basic forms with relative ease, thanks to its visual editor. You can also add a limited number of your own database fields, although it’s a shame that this can’t be directly done within the form editor (instead, you need to do it in the Contact Management section).

However, we’d love to see some form templates to start with, as the editor doesn’t give you a lot of flexibility beyond changing colors and fonts, and adding images. It’s also not possible to A/B test forms.

• Email and subject line copy
• Email design
• Product recommendations
• Send time optimization
• Segments and workflows
• Win probability

Benchmark offers a handful of AI tools, including its “Smart Content” tool (which helps to craft email copy) and its AI-powered email designer. There’s also “Smart Send” which ensures that emails are only sent to engaged contacts, and can help improve your deliverability.

• Paid newsletters
• Ads / paid recommendations
• Memberships
• Sell digital products
• Online courses

Benchmark doesn’t offer any monetization channels – only integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify so that you can sync lists and insert store products into your email.

Benchmark covers the essentials of authentication, supporting SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, with clear guides to help users configure records correctly. The platform automatically suppresses bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints, though it does not provide direct feedback loop data.

While there’s no dedicated deliverability dashboard, support is available via chat, phone, and email. Benchmark also includes built-in list cleaning tools and enforces a strict no-purchased-lists policy. They also offer guidance on warming up new addresses.

SPF and DKIM are available. If you can’t authenticate your domain (e.g. if you’re using a free Gmail or Yahoo account), your ‘from’ email address will be rewritten and sent from an authenticated Benchmark Email domain. While this may help with deliverability, it’s not necessarily ideal from a branding perspective, which is why it’s a good idea to always authenticate your email address.

Email reports give you the open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe rate (although it’s not possible to filter out bot clicks or Apple MPP opens, which could affect the accuracy of your data). They also have a click heat-map, and geolocation tracking.

Automations, survey, polls, and complaints reports are also available, but ecommerce/sales reporting isn’t. Custom reports aren’t possible, either.

The platform and help center are available in 9 languages, and live support is available for these languages too. But there was little in the way of supporting localized email campaigns (e.g. automated translations or email sending based on country).

It’s pretty rare for an email marketing service to offer a complete range of spam and design testing services, but Benchmark certainly do! You can use their Spam Check feature to score your emails and identify potentially problematic areas. They also provide design testing services to see how your emails will display across different email clients and devices, although this requires credits to be purchased.

Although tracking links use Benchmark’s own domain by default (trk169.benchurl.com), you can add your company domain name during setup to replace this.

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.

There’s not a whole lot in the way of migration support, unless you’re an Enterprise user (in which case, you’ll get access to their managed account setup service). There aren’t a lot of ESP migration tools either – just an integration with Zoho to import contacts.

The knowledge base is great due to its large library of videos, webinars and even several free ebooks on different topics. 24/7 support is available in English. The online support was fast and mostly useful, although they struggled with getting back to me on things they couldn’t answer straight away.