With nearly 4.5 billion email users worldwide in 2025, email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing channels. AI-powered email campaigns are revolutionizing the industry, enabling businesses to create highly personalized content, send emails at optimal times, and improve targeting. In fact, Martech’s Constantine von Hoffman reports that 32% of marketing organizations have fully embraced AI, leveraging machine learning to analyze customer behavior and automate responses.
“There is a lot of talk about AI’s impact on digital marketing, but you need data to know if that talk is accurate. While there is a lot of data about it available, much is two or more years old. The speed of AI evolution since ChatGPT was unveiled in 2021 means those statistics are only good for showing how much things have changed,” Hoffman writes.
This level of customization that AI provides for email marketing supports user engagement, leading to a 13% increase in click-through rates and a 41% increase in revenues for AI-driven email campaigns.
The financial impact of AI in marketing is substantial. The Digital Marketing Institute reports that the global market revenues expected to reach $36 billion by 2024.
“The adoption of Artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing has exploded. Leading marketers use AI tools to boost productivity, streamline content creation process, and drive personalization across channels. The technology is having an impact on many marketing processes such as email marketing, SEO, social media marketing, and PPC resulting in marketers needing to keep on top of AI developments but also hone skills in the area of AI to stay relevant, up-to-date and productive,” the authors write.
AI-driven automation helps brands scale email campaigns with ease, reducing drudgery and improving accuracy. With these advancements, email marketing still returns high dividends, with different studies showing an average ROI of $36 to $40 per dollar invested. Through the use of AI, businesses can maximize engagement, conversion rates, and profitability overall, making email marketing a smarter, more data-driven strategy in today’s digital landscape.
Cold emailing is one of the best ways to reach new clients, but it’s not just about sending messages—it’s about making the right connections. Using a tool like Instantly makes your outreach more effective. It offers features that help you find the right leads, personalize your emails, and track engagement.
With different cold email outreach tools out there, how do you choose the right one? In this guide, you’ll learn about some important features a cold email software should have and our top five picks for 2025.
How to Choose the Right Cold Email Software for Your Business
Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, selecting the right cold email tool can make a difference in the success of your outreach campaign. Below are some features to look out for when selecting a cold email software:
Deliverability & Inbox Placement
When choosing a cold email software for your business, look for software with built-in warm-up features and a track record of high deliverability rates. This feature is important because it will show you which emails are being delivered as spam or are bouncing back.
Automation & Personalization
Sending emails to leads individually can be time-consuming; no one wants to receive a message that feels like it was copied and pasted. So, a good cold email software should be able to schedule emails to send automatically and add personal touches like the recipient’s name or company.
Analytics & Reporting
An analytics and reporting feature gives you an idea of which campaigns are working and which ones need improvement. A good cold email software should show you important details like how many people opened your emails, how many replied, and how many messages bounced back.
Our Top Five Cold Email Software for 2025
To help you make an informed decision, here’s our top five cold email software for 2025:
- Instantly
Instantly.ai is a user-friendly cold email tool that helps you send multiple emails without stress. It offers unlimited email accounts and warm-ups. With these features, you can send outreaches to many people without worrying about your emails ending up in spam folders. Instantly also has an advanced analytic dashboard that lets you see how well your emails are performing.
- Mailshake
Mailshake is a B2B cold email software that’s great for small and medium sized businesses looking to send cold emails. It offers a team collaboration feature that makes it easy to collaborate with your team members by sharing analytics data and email templates. Although there’s no free trial, it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Lemlist
Lemlist is a cold outreach tool that’s designed to help businesses personalize their email outreach. It offers a simple three-step process for creating and sending email campaigns. Sadly, for some features, like the email warm-up, you’ll have to pay an extra fee.
- Woodpecker
Woodpecker is a user-friendly cold email outreach tool that helps businesses send personalized emails automatically. It is best for sales teams, marketers, and agencies who want to send and manage their email campaigns easily.
- Reply.io
Reply.io is a cold email tool that helps you craft more engaging emails with AI-powered suggestions to help increase your response rate. Besides emails, Reply.io allows you to connect with prospects through LinkedIn and phone calls. This makes it easier to get responses from prospects.
Conclusion
When choosing the right cold email tool, there are some features you should look out for, especially if you want to have more meetings and increase revenue. With options like Instantly, you’re sure to find one that fits your needs.
- When choosing a cold email outreach tool, focus on deliverability, automation, personalization, and analytics to improve outreach success.
- A good cold email software should have built-in email warm-up features and a strong track record of high deliverability rates to prevent emails from landing in spam folders.
- The top cold email software to try out are Instantly, Mailshake, Lemlist, Woodpecker, and Reply.io.