I can’t even remember how many years ago I started using email for newsletters and marketing. It was definitely way before it was cool, I think. And every year, I’ve seen the same types of statistics: The number of marketing emails is getting higher while the open and click rates are slowly sinking.

Don’t get discouraged about your email marketing; help is on the way. You can choose from any number of free or bargain email and communication tools to help you stand out from the other zillion emails in the recipients’ mailboxes to get your message out.

Way back when I was searching for a low-cost email service, I have to admit the MailChimp monkey turned me off. Sure, it’s cute. But I didn’t want cute. I wanted something professional. So I passed MailChimp by to choose Constant Contact.

Constant Contact is a great choice for do-it-yourself newsletters. It has a wide variety of templates, and its tracking is robust and reliable. What’s more, I love its tips and newsletters, all designed to help you do a better job of standing out in people’s email boxes.

But one of the most important things you can do to improve your newsletter is to test different sending times and subject lines. MailChimp makes it easy, with built-in A/B testing, while Constant Contact makes you create your own groups then download and upload and blah, blah, blah. Too much work. So I switched.

As it says on its website, MailChimp has “more email marketing tools than you can shake a banana at.” Yeah, it’s corny. But I’m willing to switch to corny for more capabilities. In addition, MailChimp integrates into some of my other tools, such as Sparkbooth, my website and Facebook. It could also integrate with Salesforce if I wanted to capture all my newsletter subscribers as leads.

MailChimp made Beth’s Top Relationship Tools list!