Is email still the best marketing method? Although you see obituaries for it now and then, email is still the winner. With so many social media channels, it’s easy to forget that email is still the most powerful promotional method available to online retailers, whether you’re going off clicks, conversions, or overall ROI. In fact, email had a median ROI of 122% which is four times greater than any other marketing method including social media, direct mail, and paid search.
Ecommerce customers who received multiple abandoned shopping cart emails are 2.4 times more likely to complete the purchase than those who receive only one follow up email.
Experian
Email marketing is vital because it:
- Provides a direct link between businesses and customers
- Allows retailers to ride the growing trend of personalization
- Permits gathering and testing data-driven insights
- Is the best way to segment and target customers with customized offers and promotions.
To leverage the benefits of a quality email campaign requires a robust platform that can handle the segmentation demands of current marketing trends.
7 Email Marketing Tools Driving eCommerce Sales
We’ve selected seven top email marketing platforms proven to work for eCommerce campaigns.
1. MailChimp
MailChimp has over 14 million customers and is popular with small and medium-sized businesses. It gained a reputation for ease-of-use and its focus on eye-catching, beautifully designed email templates, and opt-in forms.
MailChimp also integrates with a wide array of third-party tools, including many eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, to name just a few. Features include trigger-based messaging, spam score checking, and a full array of reporting. You can also preview your messages in various email clients, use geo-targeting and time-zone-based delivery.
Pricing: Free for up to 2000 subscribers, around $5/month for every additional 500 subscribers. They charge $199/month for enterprise-level features.
2. Constant Contact
Constant Contact stands out for its intuitive dashboard and easily-accessible features. It’s user-friendly and comes with support over the phone or live chat. They offer extensive training materials. They include a variety of templates to run surveys, coupons, invitations, and add video. It is also a complete contact management system.
Pricing: Plans begin at either $20/month (for the basic plan) or $45/month (for the “Plus” plan), each for up to 500 subscribers. The monthly price increases incrementally with more subscribers. One month free.
3. Klaviyo
While most platforms are designed to send email, Klaviyo was designed to capture customer data from eCommerce sites and leverage it for personalized email campaigns. They include multiple abandoned cart follow-up sequences to increase conversions and sales.
Klaviyo integrates with all eCommerce web designer customer designed and standard CRM platforms to maximize your lead generation. It offers a complete automated marketing system that includes emails and ads. It is highly customizable for any targeted segmentation.
Pricing: Starts at $25/month for up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.”
Email Still Rules Don’t Miss Out
Email is still the best marketing strategy available to online retailers. And if you’re not leveraging it as much as possible, then you’re missing out on sales and revenue.
The tools on this list provide a set of features that enable you to get the absolute maximum from your campaigns. There are software solutions to meet a range of goals, whether you’re looking for a streamlined way of regularly reaching your customers, or a fully comprehensive package with CRM integrations, artificial intelligence, automation, and more.
