Email marketing has reached such advanced stages nowadays that the basic functions of the same can also be performed by certain free software available online. Some software which offer more functionalities than the basic ones also offer free trials after which, if satisfied, you are can buy the software. Such trials usually last for a period of two months or so.

So what are the basic features that these free software offer? The main feature that such software does have is the basic management of the lists of email addresses to which the email is to be sent. Such lists can be imported from some text files or from certain databases on a particular server. If it is a web based software; they can be taken off some web feedback forms and form their own data bases. But the web based software is generally not free and thus your job becomes a bit more tedious if you want it to be done for free.

The task is of designing the emails to which this software can help you to a great extent, but the templates that they offer tend to be quite standardized. But for the basic purposes, they do suffice as you can avail a particular type of template to suit your own specific needs. For example, templates for newsletters, statements about accounts, promotion and description of a product etcetera are available. Some software also offers the facility to enlist the email addresses to which the mails that have been sent have bounced. Thus the merging feature of this free software is quite up-to-date and efficient.

Some of them can also alert you about the responses to the emails that have been received but offer no further automation regarding how these responses are to be dealt with. Such software is available in large numbers on the internet and can be downloaded directly from there without any hassles.

Thus it can be seen that such software can be used only if you have a small list of people to whom the mails are to be sent. Also they do not actually allow you to cut down on your staff as lots of management other than the one offered by the software is required. Even if your budget is limited, it is better to opt for better software by paying some extra money as this free email marketing is not actually free as the name implies as can be seen from the statement above.