Optimizing email marketing campaigns is necessary, especially with 100 to 120 emails hitting the average user daily. While writing good copy is essential, email marketing software is pivotal to your eCommerce business. It provides the platform to optimize your messages, send them at the right time, and get the click-through rates you want.
The best eCommerce email marketing software offers advanced features for automation, segmentation, personalization, integration, reporting, and detailed analytics. Then, you’ll pay attention to the email templates, drag-and-drop editor, usability, automation tools, and overall usability.
Any eCommerce email marketing software you pick should integrate seamlessly into your omnichannel marketing strategy. Hence, we’ve chosen the most prominent email marketing services for eCommerce businesses. Let’s go through their features and prices to know which is best to start your eCommerce business.
The Best E-commerce Email Marketing Software
A 2020 survey revealed a $45 to $1 return on investment in email marketing. Hence, you can appreciate the competition among email marketing services.
The result has been better featured for email campaigns. Some offer more email marketing solutions in their free version to attract online business owners. Moreover, small businesses will want as many key features as possible in the free version.
With that in mind, here is the best eCommerce email marketing software:
- MailChimp: The best all-in-one marketing software for eCommerce.
- Klaviyo: The best email marketing software for integrations with eCommerce platforms.
- Salesforce: The best email marketing software for customer relationship management (CRM).
Let’s review each email marketing service and outline its most prominent features. Then, you can decide which email marketing solution fits your eCommerce store.
MailChimp: Best Overall
MailChimp is a powerful email marketing tool with all the features you’d expect for everyday marketing. It has tools to build automated workflows in your campaigns. Most importantly, it is easy to use and doesn’t require hiring email marketing professionals.
Is MailChimp the right email marketing tool for you? Here are its prominent features to help you decide:
Prominent Features
MailChimp shines with the following key features:
- Email marketing automation
- AI and analytics
- Segmentation
- Integrations
The AI tools are the most recent addition to MailChimp’s features and bring new capabilities. Some consider it a game-changer as the email marketing service adds generative AI that blends ChatGPT and Google Bard AI. Nonetheless, the platform already had email marketing tools that placed it among the best.
MailChimp’s segmentation tools can help you target customers most likely to purchase. You can also use its survey tools to segment customers based on their responses. If you want pre-built segmentation email templates, the email marketing service has them to get you started.
The marketing automation tools include the journey builder, transaction emails, and retargeting ads. You can also use the campaign manager to monitor your marketing channels as part of an omnichannel strategy. That can be useful when developing a robust email marketing strategy.
E-commerce businesses can do the following with email marketing automation tools:
- Welcome new contacts that complete the signup forms.
- Encourage feedback or reviews after a purchase.
- Celebrate birthdays
- Retarget abandoned carts.
- Send notifications for orders.
Finally, this email marketing software offers integration with Shopify and other essential platforms. You can integrate online stores with live chat, Stripe, WordPress, SMS marketing, and other third-party tools. Remember the drag-and-drop builder, landing pages, and other basic marketing tools essential for email marketing success.
Klaviyo: The best email marketing software for integrations with eCommerce platforms
Klaviyo is the leading email marketing service on Shopify, thanks to its advanced features for eCommerce stores. It is a brilliant email marketing service for sign up forms, personalized messages, SMS marketing, A/B testing, etc. Another brilliant thing is that it is suitable for small businesses and scalable for larger online stores.
This robust email marketing platform offers pre-built email templates for any scenario. It boasted $14 billion for its customers via behavior-based automation. Let’s review the features of the email marketing platform.
Prominent Features
Klaviyo, as an email marketing service, offers the following features:
- Over 60 pre-built marketing automation templates
- Over 80 customizable email templates
- Over 300 integrations with third-party apps and eCommerce platforms
- KPI tracker and analytics for email campaigns
- Sign up forms and others for capturing data
The customizable email templates allow you to add dynamic content based on browsing behavior, coupons, and product preferences. Then, the automation section works off channel engagement, profile, events, and even predictive analysis to automate the emails. The drag and drop editor is at the center to help you customize the email templates or build new ones.
Klaviyo offers segmentation to help eCommerce sellers personalize messages even more. Third-party integration is the biggest strength of this email marketing service.
Small businesses that operate stores on eCommerce platforms will appreciate Klaviyo. The email marketing solution seamlessly integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Big Commerce, Shopify Plus, Square Online, and Wix. Besides eCommerce platforms, it can integrate with over 300 third-party apps, from analytics to stores.
The API also helps tech-savvy users build more integrations. Is it the right email marketing software for you? Let’s look at the last option before you decide.
Salesforce: Best email marketing software for customer relationship management (CRM)
Salesforce is more than an email marketing software. It brings a robust contact management platform via its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution. In other words, it is a customer relationship management platform (CRM).
Although not highly optimized for eCommerce integration, Salesforce offers several advantages over other email marketing software. It provides tools for lead management and sales predictions. Hence, it might be your best choice when launching a paid advertising campaign.
Prominent Features
Salesforce stands out among other email marketing services with the following features:
- Email studio
- Automated reporting
- Journey Builder
- AI-driven personalization tools
- AI-powered intelligence and analytics
These features are available in Salesforce’s marketing cloud. The email studio is the most basic, offering a drag-and-drop editor with editable email templates. You can also scale the messages with third-party data from your website or online store.
The journey builder helps you maintain constant contact via multiple touchpoints. It is essential for email campaigns. Users who want to play around more can do so with AI-powered intelligence and analytics.
Salesforce’s Intelligence Reports for Engagement tool tracks performance for email campaigns. You can also visualize the data in a way that suits you, even in advanced email marketing campaigns. Set the KPIs, and the email marketing software will do the rest.
Factors to Consider When Choosing an Ecommerce Email Marketing Software
Let’s consider a few factors when sifting through email marketing services. They ultimately determine the success of your email marketing campaigns, as they hinge on the tools' versatility.
With that in mind, here are the factors to consider when choosing eCommerce email marketing software:
Automation
Imagine the stress of typing hundreds of emails and setting reminders to send them to your customers. Reaching everyone on your contact list manually can be a nightmare.
The solution is email marketing automation tools to take the load off your shoulders. You can prepare email templates and leave the updating and dispatch to the eCommerce email marketing software. In addition, some allow users to create pre built automation flow for online stores.
You can set triggers for different scenarios or based on customer behavior, like a click on a product page. Notwithstanding, it is up to you to create these automated emails.
Segmentation
How would you feel about receiving an email offer for an item in the United States when you are in the United Kingdom? Our best guess is that you’ll immediately close the message. Segmentation helps eCommerce businesses break down shoppers on their contact list by criteria.
You can break your existing customers and prospects into age, location, occupation, etc. Segmentation is the prerequisite for personalized email marketing campaigns.
Personalization
Personalized email marketing campaigns have a higher chance of success than sending a generalized message. In a recent survey of over 550 consumers, 71% admitted that personalization would influence their decision to open and read emails. That is a revealing detail and an anchor for launching successful email marketing campaigns.
Hence, finding email marketing services that provide tools to personalize messages is crucial. Add this to automation, and you’ll be on your way to increasing the conversion rate for your store.
Integration
We’ll assume you already have a store on an eCommerce platform or operate your website. Data-driven decisions and marketing campaigns have taken center stage. However, it is one thing to generate data and another to process it into useful information.
Integration helps eCommerce email marketing software interact with and extract customer data from eCommerce stores. It is how they know a customer who made a purchase and send a “Thank You” email. That looks simple, but it can be crucial to building customer loyalty.
Choose an email marketing service that offers seamless integrations with your preferred eCommerce platforms or website.
Advanced Features
These refer to extras that can boost your email marketing outreach. It could be SMS marketing, landing pages, web push notifications, lead management, etc.
Analytics is another factor that can influence your decision when picking the best eCommerce email marketing software. You can set up Google Analytics for your website, but you need something that analyzes your email marketing campaigns.
The Best Email Marketing Software for E-Commerce Sellers: Final Thoughts
When choosing email marketing software, you must consider the size of your business and your campaign and management goals. Some email marketing platforms are best suited for large companies. Nevertheless, some offer a free version to help small businesses start with essential features.
MailChimp, Klaviyo, and Salesforce are prominent email marketing software providers. You can review their features like the drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, automation, segmentation, etc. Then, you’ll find the right email marketing software for your eCommerce business.
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