Most email marketing software has features that assist the user in the process of organizing contacts, creating campaigns, and scheduling communication. In addition, the software usually provides features, such as an "unsubscribe check" that assist in complying with the CAN-SPAM law. Email Marketing software can also provide tracking functions such as how many people have opened an email, how many emails bounced-back, how many people visited the hyperlinks provided in the marketing message, and how many people actually purchased something as a result of the email. Each email service provider has their own take and approach to these different features some of the most common are listed below

The common features are listed below:
* Ability to create and send personalized email using data from a customer database.
* Ability to import customer lists
* Split campaign testing and segmented lists
* Surveys
* Automatic unsubscribe and bounce-back handling
* Ability to authenticate to SMTP and POP servers or send directly with an internal server
* HTML and plain text editor for creating messages
* RSS Feeds
* Reporting features such as bounce-back, opens, and link click reports
* Tracking abilities such as tracking who has opened the email, usually by using a web bug

The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 authorizes a US$11,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient. Therefore, many commercial e-mail marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the Act. A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the Act. To comply with the Act's regulation of commercial e-mail, services typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.

In addition to satisfying legal requirements, e-mail service providers began to help customers establish and manage their own e-mail marketing campaigns. The service providers supply e-mail templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically. They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.

The CAN-SPAM Act was recently updated with some new regulations that went into effect on July 7, 2008.