The Top 11 Email Marketing Software For Online Stores

Email marketing continues to drive phenomenal results for businesses across the spectrum—ecommerce, in particular—despite overly confident declarations of its death.

You own your email list, making it one of the best ways to reach customers at a time when search engines and social media platforms are throttling opportunities for organic search and referral traffic. It’s no wonder the marketing world is falling back in love with email marketing.

There’s no shortage of email marketing services to choose from. Below, we’ll look at the various options offered by some of the best, to help you decide which service is right for your business.

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Choosing the right email marketing tool for your store

Every email marketing service is a little different, though most offer a lot of the same basic features. Still, it can be hard to differentiate all of the available options and figure out which one is best for your needs.

There are a few basic features every ecommerce business needs from an email service provider:

• Ready-made templates that can be customized to suit your needs
• Audience-segmentation features for sending targeted emails based on customer profiles
• Smart automation for scaling your email marketing efforts without constant monitoring
• Opt-in forms that can be embedded on your website or integrated with your Shopify store
• Detailed analytics for gauging how an email marketing campaign performs
• High email deliverability rates so you know messages will reach your subscribers’ inboxes

Each solution approaches these features a little differently—how they do so can factor into your ultimate decision.

You’ll also want to make sure the service you choose can handle your intended volume. If you plan to send 5,000 emails a day to 200,000 subscribers, you don’t want a service that caps off below those numbers. And, of course, you’ll want to pick a service that falls within your price range. Fortunately, many of the email marketing services we rounded up offer free versions or trials, letting you sample the value of each.

The best email marketing software in 2021

Here are 11 of the best email marketing services for ecommerce stores. We’ll look at the following criteria to help you assess your options and make the best choice.

• Difficulty 🛠: Whether the service is intuitive and simple to use, with easily set-up campaigns
• Cost 💰: How much you should expect to pay
• Unique feature 💡: What makes this platform stand out?
• Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: Ranking according to peer reviews

Browse the following list of email marketing services to find the best one for your business.

Shopify Email

Difficulty 🛠: Beginner
Cost (out of 3 💰): Free
Unique feature 💡: Native to Shopify, ecommerce focused
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4/5 (869 reviews)

Shopify Email is an easy-to-use email solution to help you connect with subscribers and build long lasting customer relationships. Its clean and minimalist app removes the hassle found in apps like MailChimp or GetResponse, and it’s perfect for merchants who want powerful email functionality with little effort.

Excellent app, fast, and easy to use. Easy to feature one of your products or customize your own campaign. Automatically adds your email subscribers. I have used others and this is hands down my favorite. Saves me tons of time!

Shopify Email lets you:

• Send branded emails to subscribers in a few clicks, directly from your Shopify admin
• Save time with pre-built templates that automatically incorporate your logo, product images, descriptions, prices, and URLs from your store
• Customize your emails by editing text, buttons, images, and more to make it your own
• Import customer lists into Shopify
• Segment emails to personalize each message and get it to the right person
• Track results including click-through and open rates, products added to carts, and purchases in real-time

With Shopify Email, you get 2,500 emails free each month and pay $1 for every 1,000 emails you send after that. There are no monthly commitments, and you’ll have access to all the features.

Sendinblue

Difficulty 🛠: Easy
Cost (out of 3 💰): Free
Unique feature 💡: Advanced features, low cost
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4/5 (50 reviews)

Sendinblue is an email marketing service aimed at small to medium-sized businesses. With powerful CRM and automation features that streamline redundant tasks, it’s become a complete digital marketing hub for Shopify stores.

Key features include a library of templates you can use to create beautiful email newsletters that engage subscribers. It also lets you build subscription forms quickly and offers pre-built automation flows for welcome sequences, abandoned cart emails, and more.

Sendinblue also offers powerful features for Shopify merchants. For example, you can connect your customer list and purchase data to your Sendinblue account. With that information, you can segment and target groups of customers based on their purchase history and other details.

You’ll also be able to reach customers through multiple channels like SMS through the Shopify plugin, which businesses often use for order and shipment confirmation.

ActiveCampaign

Difficulty 🛠: Easy
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰
Unique feature 💡: Sophisticated workflows and CRM capabilities
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.4/5 (295 reviews)

ActiveCampaign is a popular email marketing service trusted by over 145,000 businesses around the world. Whether you’re an established brand or just starting out, ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation is like having another employee on your team.

Once you integrate ActiveCampaign with Shopify, you can access a library of 500+ pre-built automations to launch campaigns, like abandoned cart emails or a welcome series, or design a landing page in minutes. ActiveCampaign also has over 850 pre-built integrations so you can connect all your business tools.

ActiveCampaign pulls directly from your Shopify data to send personalized emails that drive sales. Use one of ActiveCampaigns 125 email templates and deliver 1:1 messages to customers based on past interactions with your brand. This email marketing platform also offers merchants SMS marketing capabilities, as well as integrations with Google Analytics and Facebook Audiences.

You can start with ActiveCampaign today with a free 14-day trial. If you like it, you can upgrade to the Lite Plan, which starts at $9 per month.

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.

Klaviyo

Difficulty 🛠: Normal
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Built for ecommerce
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.2/5 (1,339 reviews)

Klaviyo is one of the few email marketing services designed specifically for ecommerce. It’s also the leading platform in the Shopify ecosystem, with over 50,000 stores using Klaviyo to send personalized emails, SMS messages, sign-up forms, and more.

Klaviyo provides an impressive set of features:

• Over 100 pre-built integrations with tools like Facebook, ShipStation, and Smile
• Free and flexible account options: Klaviyo is free forever until you have more than 250 contacts, then you can pay month-to-month based on the size of your contact list
• Pre-built forms, templates, and automations to get your campaigns running in minutes
• Ability to send personalized product recommendations and dynamic content based on past interactions with your brand
• Dynamic forms you can A/B test to optimize copy and improve lead form conversions
• Growth-focused reporting with email and SMS performance analytics you can see at a glance

As an ecommerce-first email provider, Klaviyo also supports paid social campaigns. You can quickly sync data to build Lookalike Audiences for Facebook and Instagrams ads to find more relevant customers for your business. Klaviyo users also get access to insider tips and support from the Klaviyo Community Forum.

Klaviyo is free for up to 250 contacts. Then the price is $20 per month, with no contracts or lock-ins.

Omnisend

Difficulty 🛠: Normal
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Rich in ecommerce features and multichannel automation
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.7/5 (3,921 reviews)

Omnisend is a top-rated email marketing automation platform on Shopify, used by over 50,000 merchants. It features pre-built automation workflows and intuitive, no-code editing that make it easy to set up advanced email campaigns.

Omnisend comes with beautiful, stoppable automated emails for:

• Cart abandonment
• Product abandonment
• New subscribers (welcome emails)
• Customers likely to churn (win-back and reactivation emails)
• Customer feedback and product reviews

All messages, subject lines, and workflow settings are ready-made, so you can start running campaigns right away.

Omnisend features also include a drag-and-drop email builder, dynamic coupon codes, automatic product picker, and fully customizable pop-ups. You also get access to push notifications and robust segmentation to send messages across SMS, and you can use the built-in audience sync for Google and Facebook ads.

Omnisend also offers thorough analytics, campaign metrics, and unsubscribe tracking. These help you analyze campaign performance with personalized benchmarks compared against industry brands. You also can see product analytics and where customers are in your funnels.

After a 14-day free trial with Omnisend, you decide whether to keep the paid features, upgrade, or continue using the free plan (of up to 15,000 emails per month).

Drip

Difficulty 🛠: Normal
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Behavioral automation triggers
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.6/5 (50 reviews)

With Drip, you get access to a world-class email and SMS marketing platform that ensures simplified A/B testing, smart segmentation tools, and powerful reporting to help you build effective drip campaigns. Key features include drag-and-drop design tools, pre-made mobile responsive email templates, autoresponders, and a one-click integration with Shopify.

To top it off, Drip provides marketers with tailored campaign recommendations for your store. You’ll never have to wonder what campaign to build next—Drip will tell you what will make the biggest impact on your sales and marketing.

Start with Drip on a 14-day free trial. Then upgrade to a paid plan starting at $19 per month. Prices increase based on the number of subscribers in your account.

SmartrMail

Difficulty 🛠: Easy
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Backed by machine learning technology
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.9/5 (398 reviews)

SmartrMail is an easy-to-use, affordable, and powerful email marketing tool. Launched in 2016, its founders began SmartrMail because they were looking for an email marketing platform to market their online art marketplace and couldn’t find one.

They built SmartrMail with lots of automation tools for building email campaigns, including abandoned cart, welcome series, and thank you messages, with a goal in mind of making it quick and easy to send beautiful, well-designed emails for your ecommerce store.

Today, SmartrMail has a growing library of email templates to choose from. Or you can create your own with its WYSIWYG and full HTML editor. It also can help you decide which products to recommend to customers, using your Shopify data, to improve sales and customer retention.

If you have fewer than 1,000 subscribers, you can send up to 5,000 emails per month on the free plan. Paid plans start at $19 per month.

Constant Contact

Difficulty 🛠: Beginner
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰💰💰
Unique feature 💡: Event management features
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 3.9/5 (23 reviews)

Constant Contact was one of the first email marketing vendors, dating back to 1995. In this time, it’s developed a very easy-to-use and beginner-friendly platform to help everyone from ecommerce stores to bloggers improve their email marketing strategy.

With this email marketing service, you can easily organize and build your email list, manage templates, and more. It offers over 1 GB of storage for your files, plus an email tracking system and built-in social media sharing tool .

If you’re new to email marketing, you can take advantage of Constant Contact’s library of training and webinars to learn the email automation basics. Merchants enjoy a 60-day free trial of Constant Contact before pricing starts at $20 per month.

Campaign Monitor

Difficulty 🛠: Normal
Cost (out of 3 💰): 💰
Unique feature 💡: Easy HTML email builder
Shopify App Store rating ⭐️: 4.6/5 (1,044 reviews)

When it comes to all-around features, ease of use, and value, Campaign Monitor is one of the premier email marketing services. Its drag-and-drop editor and email templates prioritize beautiful design, or you can build your own custom emails in HTML from the ground up.

Campaign Monitor is one of the few platforms placing emphasis on transactional emails, in addition to marketing emails, helping you squeeze more value out of every email you send. Its unique visual journey designer makes it simple to keep all of those campaigns organized.

Campaign Monitor is free to install. Paid plans start at $9 per month, based on number of subscribers.

Finding the best tool for your ecommerce platform

New and capable email and online marketing tools for small businesses and startups pop up every day, extending well beyond those on this list. Your goal should be not only to find a solution that’s more than just a great email marketing service. You also need a solution that’s the best email software for you, working for your business and your customers, and helping you drive more engagements, more sales, and more loyalty.

Hopefully this roundup has given you an idea of where to start. Now it’s time to take full advantage of those free trials and test the waters so you can start putting email marketing to work for your business.

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