E-mail marketing is growing. It’s a $3 billion per year industry and the ROI for every dollar spent is around $42 making it the most affordable and effective marketing tool for e-commerce businesses, big and small. But when e-mail marketing started out, businesses were sending the same emails to everyone on their contact list. It was much later that the idea of customer segmentation crept in resulting in impressive ROIs. Sending custom emails to different subscriber segments can increase revenues three times while halving the unsubscribe rates!
There are email marketing tools in the market to help e-commerce businesses segment and automate their customer lists. So you have Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Omnisend, Drip, and many more tools offering different features, price points, and ideal use cases. Let’s go about some popular email marketing tools for e-commerce stores and see the best that suits your business needs.
1. Mailchimp
You might be asking when Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo are free to send emails why opt for email marketing tools like Mailchimp for e-commerce stores? Mailchimp allows you to send emails to hundreds and thousands of recipients all at once. You can create and manage mailing lists and newsletters
Mailchimp Pros & Cons
-
In spite of its limited features, its “free forever” plan is the best for small businesses having less than 2,000 subscribers. It allows sending 10,000 emails a month for free.
-
It allows you to automate your email campaigns and collect leads.
-
It also offers hassle-free integration to your e-commerce store or platform. There’s no coding involved and it also allows you to customize templates.
-
You can divide the mailing list into specific groups to tailor the messages to different audiences.
-
It allows tons of integrations, including Google Analytics.
-
Even the basic paid plan is expensive
-
The interface and navigation are not easy to use. These are steep learning curves for beginners.
-
It has a small library of pre-built automation workflows
-
Its marketing automation is not as intuitive as active Campaign or Klaviyo.
Mailchimp Pricing:
It has a free plan for a monthly email send limit of 10,000 (daily limit of 2,000). Users are charged $5/month for additional 500 subscribers. The enterprise-level features are available for $199
2. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is one of the best email marketing software specially created for e-commerce businesses. It has the best features in integrations, reporting, and customer segmentation.
Klaviyo Pros & Cons
-
It is easy to use with its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality
-
It has amazing customer segmentation and email customization capabilities
-
Its analytics tool is powerful to monitor campaign effectiveness.
-
It is slightly pricier when compared to other popular email marketing tools in the market
-
It doesn’t have extensive email design features.
Klaviyo Pricing:
Estimated Total
Free!
Price Includes
Up to 250 contancts
500 email sends
Email support
It offers a free trial of 500 emails to 250 contacts. Prices start at $20 for 500 contacts.
3. Omnisend
It is a popular email marketing tool for beginners. As per its website, it is easy to use and set up and offers a better quality of support when compared to Mailchimp.
Omnisend Pros & Cons
-
It is cheaper when compared to other popular email marketing tools such as Klaviyo or Mailchimp
-
Setting up an email marketing campaign is simple
-
It provides follow-up campaigns and newsletter campaigns
-
It doesn’t have many email templates to choose from
-
It doesn’t offer much customization
-
Its reporting capabilities are less powerful when compared to other email marketing tools.
Omnisend Pricing:
It has a forever-free plan with 500 emails per month to 250 contacts. The paid subscriptions start from $16 for 500 contacts.
4. Drip
Drip is the best e-mail marketing tool for businesses focused on maintaining customer loyalty. Just like any other email software, Drip supports multichannel marketing such as through email, conventional ads on Facebook & Instagram, and SMS marketing.
Drip Pros & Cons
-
It offers a wide range of custom email templates. Some of the significant ones are product recommendation, return to cart, price drop, and discounts.
-
It offers customer segmentation on a deep level. This helps to send targeted emails to customers with better conversion rates.
-
It allows behavior-based automation that triggers at the right time, for instance, welcome email, abandoned cart email, etc. to ensure a better user experience for the e-commerce stores.
-
It integrates with major e-commerce platforms.
-
It is pricier than other email marketing tools
-
The email templates can be better
-
The platform can be intimidating for beginners.
-
The email form builder is limited
-
Lacks conversion rate optimization features.
Drip Pricing:
It offers a 14-day free trial period with all features. The prices start from $19 for 500 contacts. You can also opt for a combination of email and SMS at $22 per month.
Build An Engaging App For Free
5. ActiveCampaign
Active Campaign is a comprehensive customer experience automation tool that offers email marketing and marketing automation. It has in-built CRM tools to reach, nurture, convert, and grow your customer base.
ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons
-
It has smart marketing automation features that help e-commerce businesses to send abandoned cart emails, win-back emails, and so on.
-
It has email templates to include products and product recommendations.
-
It has an in-built CRM module that allows for management and tracking order fulfillment. It also helps you to create tasks and shipment stages and to deal with records.
-
It has a powerful advanced customer segmentation feature.
-
It can be easily integrated with your e-commerce store on platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.
-
Beginners may have to face a high learning curve.
-
It has a lot of advanced features that are not easy to understand. We recommend starting with the 14-day free trial and subsequently switching to the Lite plan to understand the tool.
-
As the number of your contacts grows, the plan pricing also increases which can affect your monthly budget.
ActiveCampaign Pricing:
Users get to try it for free with all the features for 14 days with a 100 contacts limit. The subscription starts at $79 for 5,000 contacts.
6. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is the best email marketing tool for beginners and for those who occasionally send emails to their customers. If you are looking for an all-in-one automation software including a CRM system, this is not the one for you. It is best for small businesses as it is easy to use and offers fantastic options in its basic plan.
Constant Contact Pros & Cons
-
It has the best deliverability rates and they are exceptional in delivering emails to Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo.
-
It has a powerful “Check for errors” tool that highlights any mistakes such as missing links.
-
It has an easy import tool to import contact lists from Gmail or Outlook. It also gives the choice to fill out custom fields for the contacts.
-
There aren’t many options and hence it is easy to use.
-
There is a vast range of email types such as classic, newsletters, autoresponders, events, surveys, and coupons.
-
Even though it offers more templates when compared to other tools, the quality is not up to the mark.
-
Unlike other platforms that allow test send times and content variations, ConstantContact doesn’t allow A/B testing.
-
Only Shopify users get the e-commerce automation triggers.
-
There are no behavior or user segmentation triggers. Even the automation options are very basic.
Constant Contact Pricing:
There is an option for a 30-day free trial. After that, users have to pay starting from $20 for 500 contacts.
7. Sendinblue
Sendinblue email marketing tool offers SMS marketing, CRM, marketing automation, and Facebook ads retargeting in addition to email marketing. It offers a comprehensive customer tracking system to map the entire journey from sending emails to their opening and clicking on the link.
Sendinblue Pros & Cons
-
Its automation is easy to understand and use. Also, its drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to customize emails and preview them.
-
It has built-in marketing capabilities
-
Price is competitive when compared to other options. Its free option allows you to store unlimited contacts.
-
The initial account set-up may be complicated for beginners
-
The customer service is inadequate.
-
The emails are marked as spam without opting for their paid dedicated IP.
Sendinblue Pricing:
The free offer allows up to 300 emails per day. It also offers an unlimited contact list, SMS marketing, email template library, and chat. The paid subscription starts at $25 per month.
8. AWeber
AWeber started in 1998 and is one of the oldest email marketing platforms. It is the ideal tool for any e-commerce store needing a simple solution to send out newsletters and use autoresponders to send automated emails.
AWeber Pros & Cons
-
It has a free plan that lets you build unlimited landing pages
-
It offers more than 600 email templates. Also, it integrates with Canva and Smart Designer for you to build your templates from your website.
-
Its drag-and-drop editor helps you build emails and landing pages within minutes
-
There’s good support in the form of how-to-guides and live chats.
-
Its Blog Broadcasts feature allows you to broadcast the blogs to subscribers
-
The automation is basic.
-
It has no dedicated section for segmentation.
-
The email deliverability rates are low
-
Its pricing starts to add up with the number of subscribers.
AWeber Pricing:
AWeber pricing starts from $19 per month ($16.15 if bellied annually). The free plan is limited and doesn’t include features such as email split testing, behavior automation, and purchase tagging. The paid plan price goes up as you keep adding contacts to the list.
9. MailerLite
MailerLite is a great email marketing tool if you are running a small e-commerce store. It is an all-in-one email marketing software offering e-commerce businesses the capability to create, automate, and keep track of email campaigns. It has its own newsletter editor and photo-editing tools that come in handy when creating campaigns.
MailerLite Pros & Cons
-
MailerLite is best for e-commerce businesses with basic or mid-automation needs.
-
It has a free option or even the paid version is cheaper than other popular email marketing tools.
-
It allows time-based sending of emails where you can set a schedule for each time zone at least 24 hours in advance.
-
It has an automatic resend feature to reach out to subscribers who did not open their newsletters.
-
It has a click maps feature to get an insight into how your subscribers interact with your newsletters.
-
You can sell digital products and subscriptions with it.
-
Its reporting is basic and doesn’t offer much detailed analysis
-
It has a limited customer support
MailerLite Pricing:
MailerLite offers free email marketing features for only less than 1,000 subscribers and only 12,000 emails can be sent each month. But it doesn’t give access to any readymade email templates. The priced plan starts at $10 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers and moves up as the number of subscribers increases.
10. GetResponse
GetResponse is an email marketing software that allows users to create a mailing list, send newsletters, automate email marketing, and view and analyze statistics. The latest version of GetResponse is aimed to become an all-in-one e-commerce marketing tool and in addition to email marketing, it offers features such as chats, website building tools, e-commerce features, webinar hosting, landing pages creation, and automated sales funnels.
GetResponse Pros & Cons
-
It has sophisticated tools for email marketing automation
-
It has a flexible approach to data segmentation and management
-
It is comparatively good at split test
-
It has the webinar functionality
-
Its chat feature will help e-commerce stores to improve conversions
-
The landing page facilitates A/B testing
-
It has the best customer service with support in 8 different languages.
-
Its all-in-one approach will appeal to small e-commerce businesses.
-
The basic plan doesn’t offer complete automation
-
The limit for webinar participants is 500
-
The split message test template cannot be changed and is limited to subject lines and content
-
The drag-and-drop editor tool is not up to the mark from a user’s point of view
-
The email automation structure is complex for beginners
GetResponse Pricing:
GetResponse offers a free 30-day trial for up to 500 contacts. The basic plan starts from $13.30 (billed annually) for 1000 subscribers. The higher the number of subscribers or features, the higher the price.
Wrapping Up
These are the top 10 email marketing tools for e-commerce stores. New email marketing software tools with unique features keep popping up every other day. Your focus is to find the one that fulfills your business needs. Of course, there are some specific email marketing apps for Shopify, some for WooCommerce, and some for other platforms. Start with the basic plan and upgrade it once your subscribers increase. Take advantage of the free trials so that you can test the email marketing campaigns before launching them for your business. Select the best one, and with the right strategy, it can offer a great way to improve conversions, boost sales, and get more repeat business for your store.
