Email marketing seems to be the most effective marketing tool of all time. It is universal and useful for any type of business. Understandably, lots of ecommerce email marketing platforms have emerged in recent years, so it can be hard to find the best ecommerce email platform. But this article is a step-by-step guide for you to pick up an ideal email marketing software for your business.
Email is incredibly effective for all ecommerce brands—but only if you are using the best email marketing software. Here is our breakdown of the best email marketing software available on the market, updated for 2021.
Email marketing is a cornerstone for any company and you will see how when it comes to repeat customers and increased revenue. People always prefer emails from their favorite brands over other means of communication, so why not use this opportunity to reach them? You need email marketing software that helps you carry out an effective email strategy—one that resonates with your customer base and aligns with your overall business model. In this guide, we’ll look at the best email marketing software for ecommerce brands.
We’ll take a look at some of the best options available and help you decide which is best for your business. As a retailer, email remains one of the most effective ways to reach potential and existing customers on a regular basis. There are several different kinds of software available, each with its own unique benefits.
What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is the tool marketers and business owners use to create, send, optimize, and report on their email campaigns. Email service providers like Shopify Email provide businesses with the ability to send and receive emails for marketing, sales, and customer support purposes.
AWeber
AWeber is another considerable email service provider and was one of the first email marketing tools to enter the market. Like MailChimp, one of its main strengths is the number of integrations it offers with eCommerce platforms.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with access to top-quality support and a wealth of training materials, AWeber is a solid choice. It integrates with BigCommerce, Magento, and Shopify along with a host of other eCommerce-related apps and CRM platforms.
Pricing: Plans start at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers. For a subscriber base above 25,000, custom plans are available, and they offer a 30-day free trial.
Active Campaign
Active Campaign provides a multi-faceted platform. Dynamic campaign content helps maintain relevant content to your segmented lists. They offer unlimited personalization. Every custom field you create automatically becomes a new personalization tag.
It has fifteen tools including on-site and SMS messaging, CRM tools, extensive site, and email analytics.
Pricing: They have a sliding scale tool to display the pricing based on volume. However, the beginning level or “Lite” plan starts at $69 per month. They offer free migration from another platform.
HubSpot
Hubspot’s email marketing tools are part of their much larger Marketing Hub plan, which includes everything from lead analytics to blog content management. It’s an intuitive platform, with all the features you would expect, and is ideal for those looking for a full suite of tools, not just an email marketing solution.
Pricing: Basic plans start at $200/month, and contracts must be pre-paid for a year. Enterprise plans start at $2,400/month. The free plan does not include email marketing. They offer a free demo.
Keap
Much like Active Campaign, Keap is a full-fledged solution for managing all aspects of your email marketing campaigns. Designed for smaller businesses, it includes features for segmentation, tracking, and automation. There are also hundreds of integrations with CRM systems, eCommerce platforms, and third-party software providers. They offer a 10-minute, webinar or one-hour live demo.
Keap’s features benefit online retailers, such as product promotion templates, payment integrations, and re-engagement campaign automation.
Pricing: Basic plans start at $85/month but increase to $174/month if you add the “eCommerce” and “Sales pipeline” features. There is also a one-time $299 fee “for new user training not included in the monthly quote.”
Privy
Difficulty 🛠: Easy
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Ecommerce focused, packed with lead generation tools
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.6/5 (24,585 reviews)
Privy is the highest rated sales and email marketing app in the Shopify App Store. It’s used by over 400,000 merchants in 180 countries and has driven over $4 billion in sales.
Privy expands the boundaries of what email marketing solutions can do. Its suite of products include automation tools for email marketing, but also conversion and SMS.
With Privy, you get access to intent-driven pop-ups and banners, spin-to-win wheels, and embedded forms for email collection. All mobile friendly and customizable without any code.
Privy also provides features including:
- Support for custom storefronts
- Automated campaigns based on exit intent, cart abandonment, cart value, and website behavior
- Automated A/B testing to understand how to impact conversion rates
- Autoresponders and reminder messages to turn sign-ups into sales
- Ability to run cross-sell emails with Add to Cart buttons
- Lets you automate your email marketing with newsletters, abandoned carts, and purchase follow-up and customer winback emails
Privy is free for up to 100 contacts with unlimited pop-ups, dozens of targeting rules, and A/B testing. Paid plans start at $15 per month for all conversion and email tools.
Mailerlite
Difficulty 🛠: Beginner
Cost (out of 3 💰): Free
Unique feature 💡: Easy and affordable
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 3.5/5 (80 reviews)
MailerLite is a user-friendly email marketing platform. It lets you send emails your customers can’t help but click. Not only is it easy to use, it offers professional-class automation and integrations for fast-growing ecommerce businesses.
MailerLite also offers award-winning 24/7 support staffed by real people. You’ll never be left waiting for an email response when trying to set up a campaign.
MailerLite provides key features for Shopify merchants, including:
- A CRM to store all customer data from Shopify
- Automatic customer segment creation based on Shopify data, including first time customers, high-spending customers, and more
- Ability to track revenue and see how emails impact sales
- Easy product detail importing from Shopify, including images lines and text integrated into MailerLite’s drag-and-drop email editor
- Free landing page builder and pop-ups to grow your contact list and feature new products in your store
The best part? MailerLite is free to use. If you have a smaller budget and are completely new to email marketing, MailerLite is a good choice for you.
Moosend – Best for AI-Powered Ecommerce Sales
- STARTS AT $0
- AI-POWERED ECOMMERCE
- UNLIMITED EMAILS
- REPORTING & ANALYTICS
Moosend offers an email marketing solution no matter if you’re a complete beginner or if you’re a seasoned pro.
From their easy drag-and-drop email builder, to their easy segmentation tool, to their accurate real-time analytics, they have all the features you need to nail your email marketing campaigns.
Our favorite thing about Moosend is their ecommerce AI. It leverages machine learning and collaborative filtering to target customers with products they might like based on the shopping habits of similar customers.
You’ll also be able to easily cross sell based on customer shopping habits, and keep track of how often they buy certain products (e.g. perishables) so you can regularly promote the products they need to them when they need it.
I haven’t seen any other email marketing service do this. But it has the potential to really help out the newer ecommerce business looking to level up their targeting and segmentation game.
Moosend also does the basics of email marketing very well. Their advanced personalization features allows you to create emails unique for your target customer. Their segmentation tool allows you to spit your audience by purchasing behavior, cart abandoned products, and more.
They don’t offer that many themes with just 40 responsive themes to choose from. However, they’re all highly customizable and eye-catching.
Pricing starts free with their premium plans starting at $8 per month. More detailed information is below:
Free — $0/month
- Unlimited emails
- Signup and subscription forms
- Reporting and analytics
- No credit card required
Pro — $8/month
- Landing pages
- Transactional emails
- Phone support
- SMTP server
- 5 team members
Enterprise — Custom pricing
- Custom reporting
- Dedicated account manager
- SSO & SAML
- On-boarding and migration
- 10 team members
- Service-level agreement
Omnisend – Best Omnichannel Email Marketing Platform
- PRICE STARTS AT $0
- TAILOR-MADE FOR ECOMMERCE BUSINESSES
- PRE-BUILT AUTOMATIONS
- CROSS-CHANNEL SALES TRACKING
Omnisend is an easy-to-use email marketing solution that’s tailor-made for ecommerce sites. They offer multiple features such as automated email and SMS messaging in order to convert leads into customers.
They do this by going a step further than most, combining text messages, web browser push notifications, email marketing, Google Customer Match, and Facebook ad retargeting to ensure your connect with the most customers as possible.
All of their channels allow for segmented campaigns. That means you’ll be able to target exactly the customer you need to for your product or services.
They also have pre-built automations for actions your customer might take such as cart abandonment emails/messages, along with welcome emails/messages.
Their library of themed drag-and-drop templates makes creating gorgeous, on-brand emails simple.
Their annual plans and prices are based on how many contacts you have. Below are what it’ll look like based on 500 contacts:
Free — $0
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Omnisend-branded email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
Standard — $16 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
Pro — $99 per month
- Up to 15,000 emails / month
- $80 in free SMS credits / month
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
Enterprise — Custom pricing
- Unlimited emails
- Free SMS credits
- Email campaigns
- Signup forms, boxes, and pop ups
- Reports
- SMS campaigns and automation
- Audience segmentation
- 24/7 email and chat support
- Web push notifications
- Facebook custom audiences
- Google Customer Match
- Priority support
- Advanced reporting
- Email migration
- Dedicated account manager
- Deliverability support
- Custom IP address
Remember: This is based on a contact list of 500. If you have more, the prices will go up.
I highly recommend at least the Standard plan. Having unbranded emails alone is worth the cost and you’ll also get access to their email and SMS automation tools. The 24/7 email and chat support is a must-have too.
Benefits Of Using An eCommerce Email Marketing Software
- It is one of the cheapest & quickest ways to promote your eCommerce store.
- Email marketing is the best way to build a strong brand reputation.
- You can build stronger customer relations too.
- If you have new products, you can send an email blast for the product launch.
- Almost all the email marketing software for eCommerce offers email automation. With the help of this, you can set email campaigns and reap sales & conversions over time.
- The email marketing software is also capable of sending trigger-based transactional emails like successful purchase, order confirmation, order delivery, etc.
- It is the most convenient and fruitful way to conduct seasonal promotional campaigns for your eCommerce business.
Conclusion
Sending a newsletter to your customers is one of the most effective ways to keep in touch with them. The newsletter allows you to convey your latest offers, product news, promotions, announcements and tells customers you are here for them. Since every marketer wants more subscribers, it also increases your credibility if you have a vast list of followers.
Compare the best email marketing software to find the right tool for your business. Shopify offers email marketing services that you can use to reach and grow your audience. with automated workflows, one-click integrations, 24/7 support, and more, it’s easy to set up and run a successful email marketing campaign.