It can sometimes be difficult to get leads on Shopify when you first open your store, but with the right tools and marketing decisions, you can get a lot of business!
One of the most effective ways to market your Shopify business is through email marketing. It’s the perfect way to make better conversions, get more sales and to even get old customers to buy your products again.
Email marketing doesn’t need to cost a small fortune either – it’s affordable yet effective, especially since you have a bunch of automation options available to you depending on the actions that your customers take while they are on your site.
With that being said, not all email marketing platforms are made equally. There are some that are definitely going to be a better choice for Shopify than some others may be.
There are services that will allow you to make direct integrations, will let you send emails triggered by the actions that your customers take and will even allow you to see any data for your store right from the software.
Okay, so let’s get into it – what services are the best for email marketing a Shopify store? We’ve tried and tested all of the big names out there and brought you this list of spectacular services so you can make an informed decision for your business.
10 Fantastic Email Marketing Services For Your Shopify Business
Before we get into the summaries, here’s a brief breakdown of the services that we are going to cover in this article.
1. Omnisend – Ideal for Ecommerce Sites
2. GetResponse – Includes a lot of automations and features to take advantage of
3. ActiveCampaign – CRM system and integrated workflow
4. Klaviyo – Lots of workflow options
5. Drip – Can create automated tasks based on actions that customers take
6. Sendinblue – Wide variety of features and minimal cost
7. Mailchimp – Free plan and comes with many analytics options
8. MailerLite – Simple to use and cost effective
9. Privy – Ideal for ecommerce sites
10. SmartrMail – Features smart technology, saving you a lot of work in the long run
Things You Should Have In A Good Email Marketing Tool For Shopify
Now, we know that you’re ready for us to explore the different marketing tools out there, but hold your horses. Here are a few things that you need to know about what a good email marketing tool is in order to help you to make the right choice.
It Should Have Forms That Work With Shopify
It’s really important that any email marketing service you choose has forms that are compatible with Shopify. They should automatically sync up so that any customer information comes straight through to your email marketing software. You shouldn’t have to go out of your way to do things like putting code on your site in order to get the forms to work.
Automatic Syncing Of Contacts
You are going to need your customer information and their purchase history in order to make a successful email marketing campaign. As such, any of this data should automatically sync up with your email marketing software.
In most cases the software will import all of your information and customer information through, and it will automatically set up a customer’s subscription status without you needing to manually review it.
Segments
Your email marketing tool should allow you to make segments of your different customers depending on the things that they have previously purchased.
There are some tools that are much more in depth than others in this respect, allowing you to track in detail the kinds of products that customers have looked at but haven’t yet purchased so you can customize your marketing based on that information.
Certain tools will even do the work for you, making segments based on the customer’s history when you import your contacts.
Automatically Activated Campaigns
If you are getting an email marketing tool, this is something you most certainly should not be skipping. When your customers do something on your site, your email marketing tool should send out automatic emails to them.
For instance, if they put items into their cart then the tool should send out an email to remind them to go through with their purchase. Likewise, emails should be sent to confirm their orders, to give them promotions and to recommend products that they may like based on previous purchases.
This will help tremendously with your sales funnel.
Reporting And Analytics
When a certain campaign is done, your email marketing tool should give you a report to tell you the amount of money that you made based on a specific kind of email. This will allow you to analyze what is and isn’t working so you can make more strategic marketing decisions in the future.
Any email marketing tool should have this, though there is one tool on this list that doesn’t have the feature to date – though it’s something that they are aiming to integrate.
Email Editing Tool
Finally, any good email marketing tool should come with an email editor that’s simple to use. It should be highly visual, allowing you to drag and drop different elements onto the email. It will help to make them look a lot better and more engaging for your customers.
As such, we’ve looked for email marketing platforms that have all of these things. The tools listed below are the ones that meet all of the above criteria.
First though, did you know that Shpify has an integrated email marketing app? Here’s everything you need to know about it.
Shopify’s Integrated Email Marketing Tool
Shopify has had its own email marketing tool since November 2019. It’s completely free, regardless of what plan you have. With it, you can send 2500 emails a month for no extra cost. If you send more emails than this though it’s a charge of $1 per 1000 emails above the limit.
This seems like a bargain right? Not so fast. This platform is good for many things, but email marketing is not one of them. If you want to make great looking websites then Shopify is the way to go, but for email marketing you will want something a little more specialized.
There isn’t much to sing and dance about when it comes to their email builder, as you will only have one or two very simple templates that you can use. There aren’t many choices when it comes to customization either, so you’ll be rather limited in terms of your creativity here.
One thing that is useful is that you can add products to the email without much effort, though many other email marketing tools will also allow you to do this so it’s somewhat redundant since you can get more features with the other tools.
Shopify’s built in tool also comes with automated emails like abandoned checkout emails. You can’t set up any other automations though – you’ll need a different email marketing tool for that.
Now that’s out of the way, here are the other tools that you should definitely think about investing in.
The Perfect Tools For The Ultimate Email Marketing Campaign
Omnisend
If you have an ecommerce business on Shopify, then you really can’t go wrong with Omnisend. This service is a provider for numerous channels, not just shopify. It’s well deserving of our top pick for an email marketing tool for shopify.
It comes with a bunch of different automation tools that you can use that you can cater to each point of the customer journey. You can set automations based on browse abandonment, card abandonment, order confirmations and so much more.
There are also a lot of other things that you can have inserted into your emails, such as scratch cards and gift boxes, among a whole bunch of other sweet incentives.
Email isn’t the only thing that you can do with this tool either. You can also send text messages, give people push notifications for things like deals, and you can even set it up with messages on WhatsApp and Facebook.
The pricing plans can sometimes be known to change, but to start with you will get 500 emails a month and a maximum of 250 contacts without paying a penny. Each upgrade costs a little more money, with a maximum of 60,000 emails a month and 5,000 subscriber contacts on their premium package.
Things We Loved
So, what do we love about Omnisense? Well, it integrates seamlessly with Shopify, for starters. It’s possible to use the tool to make sign up forms that will connect automatically with your Shopify store (With the caveat that you aren’t using templates from a third party.
If you aren’t using a Shopify own made template then you are going to have to put some code on the site to get them to work together).
In addition to this, it’s also possible to put products right onto the email editor from your store to send out to customers. There are a lot of other features that drive sales too, for instance scratch cards and gift boxes, and wheel of fortune incentives.
You won’t find these kinds of features with many other email marketing tools, making them pretty unique. You can even get unlimited subscribers on the free plan too, though it must be noted that it’s only possible to contact a maximum of 250 of them using the free plan – you’ll need to upgrade for more.
Things That Could Be Better
It’s possible to integrate a number of features into the email editor from your store, like product listings, product pickers and featured products. While this is great, it would be nice to have other things like the gift box and the product recommender integrated too.
There are also 20 email templates that look very modern and sleek, but it would be great to have more templates to use. In addition to this, in the past there was a higher sending allowance on the old free plan, so it’s a shame that this is something they chose to change.
Recommended Users
So, who would be best suited to using this email marketing tool? Well, it’s a fantastic choice if you want a multi channel platform where everything in your marketing efforts can be handled from one place, then Omnisend is the platform for you. It’s also ideal if you’d like the chance to put a bunch of other cool features onto the emails that you send.
GetResponse
This is a pretty powerful email marketing tool as far as we’re concerned! It’s not just an email marketing service either – it also offers webinars, a CRM and landing pages.
When it comes to email marketing for Shopify, this is certainly one of the best tools out there. It comes with Deep Data integration, which will allow you to sync all of the data about your orders, customers and products, allow for improved tagging and segmentation and as with all other great email marketing tools, you can also set up automated campaigns with the tool.
The cheapest package that you can get comes with a maximum of 1000 subscribers and you can send unlimited emails. There are only 3 packages, and the most expensive on the other hand will allow you to send 10,000 subscribers and again, unlimited emails.
Things We Loved
There are a lot of great things about GetResponse. We enjoy the wide variety of templates that are all ready to use when you want to create automations for your Shopify page.
You can make post purchase emails, abandoned cart campaigns and so much more. If you want to then it’s possible to add suggested products onto the emails, and this is ideal since it’s personalized for each customer based on the things that they have bought or expressed interest in previously.
Things That Could Be Better
Opt in emails are great, but not when they are automatically sent to customers – this can be rather irritating. It’s possible to go and change this in the campaign settings, of course.
Any products and contacts will sync up with the service once a day, which can be problematic since automations may not be initially sent in a timely manner. The service could do with having better support too, since there’s a huge lack of information on the help center about Shopify integration.
Suggested Customers
GetResponse is usually a much better option if you have a large scale store, since the advanced automations take a lot of work from you. A large store will also benefit from the CRM and the segmentation features too. It’s a good idea if you want things such as webinars and landing pages too.
ActiveCampaign
This is yet another fantastic platform for marketing automation that’s ideal for Shopify stores. This is partially thanks to its Deep Data integration with the site.
You’ll get a whole range of different features with ActiveCampaign, such as in depth tagging and segments, email content that can be catered to the client’s specific interests based on previous history on the side, and you can also get highly advanced automated emails.
There are a number of other integration choices too, such as Revenue Conduit and Zapier.
In terms of the pricing, the lowest package allows you to send a maximum of 1000 emails each month, whereas you can send 10,000 emails a month with the highest package they offer. There’s a big difference in the pricing between the two, so there’s an option in the middle that will allow you to send up to 5,000 emails every month.
Things We Loved
It’s incredibly simple to use the deep data integration. If a customer abandons a cart or they purchase something from your store, they’ll get added to ActiveCampaign’s database straight away for future targeting opportunities.
With the software, it’s possible to check the things that contacts have ordered, check the contents of the carts they have abandoned and you can even see how much they have spent with you. This level of data is perfect for a Shopify site, and it’s the kind of thing that you may expect from a dedicated CRM system.
In addition to this, you can also use the workflow based automation editor that ActiveCampaign offers. This will let you create campaigns based on abandoned carts. You can also send emails for upselling, re-purchasing and a wide range of other things too.
To add products to an email, all you need to do is drag and drop them onto the email editor and you’re all good to go. It’s even possible to put a Buy Now option right onto the landing page to further simplify things for interested customers.
Things That Could Be Better
We love the advanced features that this tool offers, but because of the level of advancement, it can sometimes be a little tricky to get used to using the tool, especially in comparison to some of the other tools that we have mentioned on this list.
For starters, in order to personalize things it will be necessary for you to insert some code which can be time consuming and confusing for someone new to email marketing.
Unfortunately this isn’t really a thing that the provider can do much to improve, though it’s something that you really should remember if you are thinking of getting ActiveCampaign, since these features really add to the overall experience of the service.
Suggested Customers
This tool is best suited for large ecommerce sites above all else. It’s perfect for stores that are going to need complicated automations and segmentations in order to create successful, targeted email marketing campaigns.
It’s also really useful to have their CRM tool, especially if you tend to get a lot of returning customers and want to focus your efforts on them.
Klaviyo
For ecommerce sites, Klaviyo is a fantastic tool to try. It works excellently with Shopify stores in specific. In fact, the brand claims that the stores will usually make around $85 for each dollar that they spend on the tool. It’s hard to compare this statement with any other kinds of tools out there, but if it’s true then we’re most definitely going to listen!
Customers that use this tool get a lot of success thanks to the advanced automation workflows and segmentation involved. They’re incredibly easy to use too, ideal even for beginners.
There are currently 4 different pricing options. The free option will allow you to put up to 250 subscribers onto the system and will let you send 500 different emails every month.
Their most premium option is quite expensive, but will allow you to have up to 10,000 subscribers and an unlimited number of emails. Every option that you pay for will let you send unlimited emails.
Things We Loved
It’s super simple to get the tool set up to work with Shopify. In addition to that, there are a number of different email templates available to you that look great and work perfectly.
It also works along with dynamic blocks, and this is useful since it will allow you to get some idea about what the customer is going to see depending on their unique data. You can do A/B testing with the tool too.
There are a lot of pre-built workflows on the site that you can use. Some of them are for welcome and abandoned cart campaigns, while others are designed for following up after a purchase and trying to get a customer back on board after a period of inactivity in your store.
If you would like something more specific then it’s even possible to set up your email workflows on your own without using a template.
The tool also features a CRM function known as ‘Profiles’. This will allow you to witness what your customers have been doing on your site, alongside their spending habits and analytics to suggest what their next purchase may be.
This gives you an in depth look into your customers, allowing you to create more targeted campaigns based on the specific customer, rather than a generic approach.
Things We Think Could Be Improved
This is by far one of the most expensive email marketing platforms on this list. While it is worth it for many of the features it provides, it is not best in terms of service and customer support.
Some people have also said that their accounts have been disabled temporarily for no good reason, and they struggled to send any campaigns. This can be rather frustrating.
Suggested Customers
Klaviyo is usually a good choice for people who are looking to engage in email marketing for their Shopify store. The built in CRM is an especially big selling point, and it’s very good for small, medium and large businesses alike. There’s a package for everyone with Klaviyo, and with so much automation you really can’t go wrong.
Drip
With drip, you can make automations based on even the tiniest of things that your customers do on your page. Whether that’s looking at a product, creating a checkout or deleting it, or if they have placed or cancelled an order.
You can create automations based on specific pieces of data like the amount the customer spends and what they’ve bought and so much more. It’s a fantastic CRM software for Ecommerce, and it’s certainly one that you should think about using for your personal page.
Their priority is improving the communication between the store and the customer, and this is something that the software does well.
You can get the tool to work alongside Facebook Customer Audience too. This means that it will be possible to use it for well targeted Facebook ads too.
The lowest priced plan will allow you to have up to 500 contacts on your system, whereas the most expensive package allows you to send up to 10,000 emails every month. There are five packages total, so you are sure to find something that fits with both your needs and your budget.
Things We Loved
It’s incredibly simple to get to grips with the integration process. There’s no need to mess around with codes or anything either. You can create automations without a hitch using Drip, and there’s also a really neat workflow editor that you are sure to enjoy using.
You can make your automations super simple or you can make them more complicated – it depends what you want to achieve. You can add things like decisions, actions, parallel paths and so many other things. The workflow is super in depth. There are also a range of templates that have already been made that you can access.
You will have the option to make pre made cart abandonment, coupon welcome series and at risk customer campaigns using the workflows already on the system. You can even use the platform to send SMS messages out to any customers that you choose.
You’re also going to get incredibly in depth documentation about the way that the integration works, which is very useful.
Things That Could Be Better
It’s important to ensure that you monitor the number of subscribers that you have. The issue with Drip is that it’s automatically going to upgrade you to the next plan up if you exceed your subscriber limit.
It’s also important to remember that any customers that come over from your Shopify page through syncing are going to be added to your number of contacts. The number of email templates is somewhat lacking too, since there are only 18 of them.
Suggested Customers
Drip is a good choice for people that are looking for highly enhanced segmentation and automation. It’s a tool we’d recommend for anyone needing that advanced customization.
Sendinblue
If you’re on a budget but you’re looking for a high quality email marketing tool, then you should definitely look into using Sendinblue as your provider. There are a bunch of features built into the tool that are ideal for any kind of ecommerce site.
They were initially just a transactional email provider, but today you can use the tool for your multichannel marketing purposes, so you can send both emails and SMS messages using it. You can even use landing pages, Facebook ads, automations, lead scoring and live chat using Sendinblue.
For 9,000 emails a month at a maximum of 300 emails a day, you don’t need to spend a penny with Sendinblue. Their cheapest package allows you to send a maximum of 10,000 emails a month without a daily limit, whereas their most expensive option is 60,000 emails a month.
Even their most expensive option here is incredibly cheap, especially in comparison to some other tools we’ve mentioned on this list.
Things We Loved
There are a lot of intuitive ecommerce features built into this tool that you really don’t want to miss out on. It will allow you to create emails with conditional content depending on the status of the customer, i.e. if they have already bought from you before vs if they’ve only browsed the store.
There are also transactional messaging options, which are ideal for allowing you to not only send emails for marketing, but you can also send email and SMS to confirm payments, to summarize orders and send notifications about shipping
You will also get your order data automatically sent to Sendinblue so it’ll be easy to view information on specific customers right through the application. You can use this to create automations and segmentations for future marketing efforts. It’s even possible to integrate products from your store into the email using the highly in depth drag and drop email builder.
Things That Could Be Better
Unfortunately, you’re going to have to play around with some code in order to use some of the tool’s more advanced features such as lists and dynamic content.
This can be a bit problematic for people that have never used it before, and it can take a while to get used to it. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, but the interface is somewhat boring looking too in comparison to many of the other tools mentioned on this list. It does the job and is very effective, but it isn’t without its faults.
Suggested Customers
You may think that this tool would cost a small fortune based on the sheer amount of features available, but it’s one of the cheapest options out there. It’s certainly perfect if you want to create an effective email marketing campaign without breaking the bank.
Mailchimp
If you’ve ever had anything to do with marketing before, you have almost certainly heard of Mailchimp. It’s one of the most popular email marketing tools out there, but how does it work with Shopify?
The tool hasn’t always been compatible with Shopify, since they were trying to come to an agreement with Shopify for many years about the terms of use. There are some theories that the delay was also caused by Mailchimp acquiring a competitor of Shopify.
Thankfully though, they finally work together so you can use Mailchimp for your email marketing with Shopify.
The essentials plan is the main choice for Mailchimp. This usually includes giving you a maximum spending amount equal to 10 times more than your current maximum contact count.
You will also have single step automations, 3 audiences, a CRM that’s built in, landing pages and segmentation. If you have fewer than 2000 contacts in your database then the program is free. If you have up to 10,000 contacts then the cost is still fairly low, making it a somewhat affordable option.
Things We Loved
The free plan of Mailchimp gives you a whole lot of options for your email marketing, making it perfect if you have no more than 2000 subscribers. The ability to send 10,000 emails a month on a free plan is rather generous and ideal for those who are on a budget.
Not only that, but the reporting features are pretty impeccable. You’ll get reports on specific campaigns and how products have performed, a click map, geolocation tracker and the total revenue for the campaign.
If you upgrade to the standard plan or anything higher then you will also get the chance to use the tool’s content optimizer, and this gives you even more options to create click-worthy emails.
You can get a whole bunch of automation templates using the tool, such as abandoned cart, lost customer recovery campaigns and reorder reminders. You will also get retargeting ads and transactional emails in with the package.
Things That Could Be Better
It can sometimes be a little bit challenging to put the Shopify products into the mailchimp email using their email builder. It’s possible to select specific products from your list of items listed on your website, but they won’t always automatically insert into your emails.
In addition to this, the templates that Mailchimp offers aren’t especially great. The designs look a little boring and you don’t have many options either.
In addition to that, it’s easy to spend too much money on their paid plans because they can get rather expensive. If you have a few different lists or audiences it can cost even more money. Multi Step automations will cost you more too.
Suggested Customers
If you have less than 2,000 subscribers in total or you like the idea of some intuitive landing pages, in depth analytics or automations, Mailchimp is the tool for you.
MailerLite
This platform is amazing if you are looking for a high quality email marketing tool that will give you great value for your money. It’s super affordable, but it’s also simple to use and intuitive, with a wide variety of wonderful features including landing pages, marketing automation, surveys, dynamic content and a whole bunch of others.
If you are using Shopify then you will also be pleased to know that there is direct integration, so any customer and product data will automatically sync and automations can be triggered as a result.
With the free plan you will get up to 1000 subscribers in total without spending any money whatsoever. If you get their most expensive plan though you can pay a very reasonable price for up to 10,000 total subscribers.
Things We Loved
We absolutely loved the fact that this tool will create segments depending on what your customers have done in the past after the contacts have all been synced up to the system. Not only that, but you can even add little popup forms onto your Shopify store using the system – it’s just a matter of selecting the option for it.
Adding products from your store to emails has never been easier. The deliverability rates are fantastic, and how can we forget the sheer amount on offer with the free plan? It’s a great tool that we recommend wholeheartedly!
Things That Could Be better
It would be fantastic to see a couple of extra advanced automations added to the tool. As it stands, you will have to create automations based purely on the segmentations you can get, like repeat customers, first time customers and so on, and you can build automations based around previous products purchased.
You can’t do more advanced automations with it yet, which is a bit of a bummer. It can also be a pain to work with the integration process since it’s not as straightforward as other tools. You are going to need an API key in order to set it all up. It’s not impossible to do, but it’s a lot of extra effort that takes time to set up.
Suggested Customers
This is a great choice if you don’t have a big budget to spend. It’s one of the best email marketing tools for people on a budget, so you should certainly think about using it. The lack of advanced automations is a little disappointing, but it’s certainly good enough for your email marketing efforts.
Privy
If you look on the Shopify App page, then you will actually notice that there’s a fairly high rating for Privy – 4.6 stars and 18 thousand of the reviews are 5 stars. This is pretty impressive, and is a testament to the quality of service that you will get with the tool.
The pricing is free if you have up to 100 subscribers, but you will need to upgrade if you need more. Even their most expensive package isn’t too bad in terms of price, and for that you will get up to 5000 subscribers. You can also pay an extra $10 for up to 100 SMS contacts if you so wish.
Things We Loved
You will get the ability to send unlimited emails with this tool, making it perfect if there are a couple of emails that you want to send each month to a few contacts.
You’ll get a number of great email templates that are simple to navigate, and you will also get additional features like pop ups and coupons since the tool is designed for ecommerce.
Things That Could Be better
You won’t get a whole lot with the free plan of Privy – just 100 contacts a month isn’t always enough. It’s not possible to send any newsletters with the free plans.
For what you get, there are definitely better options on this list that will give you more for less money, such as Omnisend.
It’s only possible to have a few autoresponders running at the same time, and you can’t create any more in depth automation workflows either, limiting your marketing options.
Suggested Customers
If you want a simple email marketing tool that works with ecommerce businesses, then you’re in luck with Privy. You won’t get as many features as you’d get with other tools on this list, but it does the basics.
SmartrMail
Finally we have SmartrMail. This option is ideal for ecommerce stores, and is great for you if you have a Shopify store in specific.
The company claims that people using the tool have managed to earn an extra $81,602,159 in sales just from using SmartrMail. Pretty impressive, right?
Their plans range from 1000 to 10,000 contacts, and each plan will come with 12 emails for each subscriber and a maximum of 10 automations.
Things We Loved
It’s really easy to use the integration process if you are signing up right through Shopify. It’s precisely for this reason that it’s such a good tool for beginners to the world of email marketing.
When you sign up for the service, you’ll get an email design that’s automatically set up to fit with your branding and the way that your store looks. It’s a fantastic time saver that many users appreciate.
You can save it to use later on too. It’ll adapt to your customers based on machine learning, so you wil have personalized marketing for each customer and you can set emails to send at a particular time.
The smart segments are pretty cool too and they’re set up without you even needing to do anything. If you are confused then you can also use live chat.
Things That Could Be Better
There’s no drag and drop system with this tool, and it can be difficult to navigate because of this. It’s also not super easy to set up the automations.
Suggested Customers
This tool is simple to use and most of the work is done for you, making it perfect for beginners to email marketing or small businesses that want something low maintenance.
Hi, my name is Mark Matthews, and I help to run several businesses through managing their mailing services.
I have a clear and good understanding of what a company or person should consider when choosing between options. I also have a lot of experience when it comes to managing businesses in general, from the best organizational and scheduling apps to use, to teaching owners how to create engaging emails.
