The Best Email Marketing Service Providers for eCommerce
Email has certainly evolved over time, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is that it is the core of every eCommerce business.
From basic newsletter blasting and automations to more advanced AI-powered marketing and personalization, email marketing is the central channel.
By 2022 over 347.3 billion daily emails will be sent per day throughout the world [Statista, 2020]. Email also continues to have a massive return on investment, where $1 spent on email marketing can generate an average return of $42 [DMA, 2019].
It’s no surprise that with email marketing on the rise, dozens of Email Service Providers (ESP) have sprung up to serve the market needs, typically with a unique differentiator.
The one thing that I think is most important for you, is that it was built with eCommerce in mind, because that makes your automations and campaigns that much more powerful, and easy to implement. For a full guide on what email marketing automation you need, check out this article by ShopPad.
And, to add to the convolution of the industry, it's worth mentioning there are other types of tools, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRMs) and Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that may encompass email marketing in their tools.
As a store owner, your time and resources are limited. And choosing the right email marketing provider is a big decision. You should expect to dedicate at least 5 hours to researching, vetting, demo’ing, and selecting the right provider for you. And I’ve seen this go up to 40+ hours of time for larger eCommerce merchants.
To help cut down that time, and get you closer to the end goal - making money with email marketing - we’re sharing our list of best email marketing service providers specifically for eCommerce businesses.
Starting store vs Mid-Market vs Enterprise
We breakdown better fit solutions based on the size of your store from a revenue standpoint, as your revenue will indicate about how many contacts you have, and how many hours of resource time you can dedicate to the tool.
Your needs change as you grow… Whether you’re a brand new store - sub $1 mil revenue, in growth mode, mid-market ($5-$100 mil), or enterprise level.
A few key differences I’ve noticed are:
- Small stores just need anything and they need it for cheap.
- Mid-stage stores are looking more towards optimization, squeezing the juice from their more successful campaigns, growing the list, and keeping engagement high. Often they benefit from native integrations, such as with loyalty tools or other channel tools (SMS, Messenger, etc.)
- Enterprise stores typically need integrations, the data needs to be piped into lots of places, their working on segmenting users and really want to use the CRM or CDP aspects to the fullest - meaning they want to analyze their customers and use the strength of a large list to segment, automate, and send. Smart segments and Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML) become important here.
At all stages of your store, the bottom line with email is revenue, whether that is in the form of increasing:
- Average order value (AOV)
- Lifetime value (LTV)
- Or conversion rate
CRM vs. CDP vs. ESP: Which is What?
With so many different tools (and acronyms), choosing one can be a daunting and difficult task.
Although each platform offers different functionalities, the main goal is to choose one that integrates seamlessly with your eCommerce platform to pull metrics such as purchase data, customer tags, as well as shopping behavior. These metrics provide valuable insight to your business at large and will ultimately determine the performance and growth of your email marketing campaigns.
Let’s briefly explore the difference between these three technologies.
What is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
A CRM is used to track new leads, sales, manage contacts, and support and sales teams. By effectively managing all communication and interactions with customers and potential customers throughout their life cycle, businesses are able to streamline their processes, as well as improve profitability.
The real value in a CRM is in the flexibility of the data you can bring in for each contact. CRMs make it easier to manipulate customer data, create automations and segments, and view customer journey’s.
In all honesty, most ESPs are CRMs at some level, since you can see the email address and some basic customer information. You could even say that Shopify has a CRM in their “customers” tab in the backend. But you’ll notice limitations with the simpler ESPs at some point and will generally want to sacrifice some ease of use for customization, as you grow.
What is a Customer Data Platform (CDP)?
A CDP creates unified customer profiles with data gathered across online and offline channels. By collecting primary data, they can streamline customer experiences and messaging across platforms, as well as understand customer behavior.
The main difference here is that this may be used across product and marketing, and typically requires a network of integrations and possibly manual APIs.
Put more simply, you could say a CDP is a more advanced CRM, but is typically removed from the act of marketing - taking action with the information.
CDPs are more commonly used by enterprise retail and eCommerce businesses because their capabilities of gathering consumer data points across multiple channels / sources helps unify what is often a fragmented view of the customer profile. However, a CDP does not convert this data automatically into marketing campaigns.
What is an Email Service Provider (ESP)?
An ESP creates marketing campaigns in the forms of emails. These providers offer email design tools for newsletters and automations, as well as segmentation, personalization, triggers, email optimization tools and more.
Although CRMs and CDPs are nice-to-haves for exploring customer touchpoints, they are not needed for every eCommerce business. But you absolutely must have an ESP that sends emails, as well as starts the most basic version of your CRM by collecting and storing customer data.
We divided this article into 4 sections based on stage of your store:
- Small eCommerce Stores
- Growth Stage eCommerce Stores
- Mid-Market and Enterprise eCommerce Stores
- Abandoned Cart and Retention Related Tools
The Best Email Service Providers for Small eCommerce Stores
So you’ve just started out, maybe you are on Shopify, and you’re looking for something that does the trick, but will keep your app costs relatively low.
As a small business, you’re going to need a tool that provides contact management, a strong email editor and automated email responders to keep in touch with your growing database.
Although there are dozens of ESPs for startups and small businesses, we wanted to focus on four that also excelled at providing:
- An easy interface for first time users or novice players
- Pre-built templates and campaigns geared towards eCommerce
- Ex. Abandon cart sequence
- Seamless integration with your eCommerce platform
I’m sure you have too many things to do and not enough time. Between wearing the email marketing hat, you’re also juggling logistics, customer service, and supply chain management.
Opting for a tool that can be easily set up within a few hours with as little distraction as possible will be key here.
Let’s take a look at four starting tools that will save you time and come in at the low end of the market ( keeping your costs low):
And I do also believe many of the tools in the “scale” section, a little bit lower, could be a great fit for you too. They are simply in a different section because they offer a bit more “upper mobility” than these three.
Seguno
In-App Email Marketing Platform
As a small business, you might not have time or the patience to log in into various apps and keep multiple passwords. Seguno is made with the simple small business in mind, but also has a good deal of automation components, and dynamic discount codes. If you need basic functionality and don’t have the time to invest heavily in email, this may be a good fit.
Features
- Built directly into the Shopify app and can be managed from desktop or mobile
- One-click automations
- Unique coupon codes
- Basic segmentation and reporting
Pricing
Seguno is free for businesses who have 250 or less subscribers, while its month-to-month plan begins at $10USD per month for up to 1000 subscribers. Offers billing through Shopify.
Mailchimp
All-in-One Marketing Platform
As a leader in the email marketing provider market, Mailchimp was once the most popular app for email marketing.
In March 2019, Mailchimp announced that it had removed its Mailchimp for Shopify integration from Shopify’s marketplace. With hundreds of Shopify users already using the app, many began migrating their lists to alternative providers. Others relied on third-party apps like Zapier, Automate.io and ShopSync to link both apps together.
Mailchimp continues to be a contender for the eCommerce community including Shopify for a variety of reasons.
Features
- Flexible template library
- User-friendly drag and drop builder
- Advanced reporting and analytics
- Small business marketing tools like snail postcards, landing pages, and social media advertising.
Opting for a tool that provides an all-in-one marketing platform can lend small businesses the opportunity to grow regardless of their resources or budget.
Pricing
Mailchimp is free for up to 2,000 contacts and includes segmentation, behavioral retargeting, as well as 7 different marketing channels like Facebook and Instagram advertising, postcards, social posting and more.
For a detailed explanation, check out this extremely detailed article from SendX called "MailChimp Pricing".
Sendlane
Automated Platform Based on Real-Time Data
For more advanced segmentation and personalization, Sendlane can allow you to keep tabs on your entire customer’s journey.
Features
- Beacon: Integrated website and event tracking to help track subscribers’ online activity and help micro-target and segment your audience
- AI-optimized send timing to track open habits of current subscribers and deliver emails at the best times to individual contacts
- Deep integration with 1400 apps such as lead capture and membership platforms
- Custom pop-ups
- Multivariate testing
Pricing
Sendlane provides a 14 day free trial, while their most basic plan Growth offers all features for up to 5,000 contacts at $79USD/month.
Pathfinder
Emails "Done for you"
This tool literally writes your emails for you, using your product feed, images, brand voice, and a few questions you answer for them. Great for a small store or small team that perhaps isn't so focused or experienced in email marketing.
Features
- Abandon Cart Sequences automatically created for you.
- Suggestions for new campaigns or sequences.
- Advanced store profiling.
- Automatic campaign A/B split testing.
- Advanced segmentation
Pricing
Starts at $38/month (billed annually, or $45/month billed monthly), for 1,000 contacts, and going up from there. Right now, when you sign up, you can get an extended 60 day free trial (subject to change in the future, check their site for any changes/updates).
The Best Email Service Providers to Scale Your eCommerce Store
As your business scales and your email marketing list grows, your data will understandably become more complex, you’re going to want to start segmenting, and you may need some advanced automation.
Opting for a platform that provides powerful segmentation will be key here, as you’ll begin to build unique newsletters and automations based on your audience and behavioral data.
Here are some key features to look out for when choosing the best ESP to scale your business:
- Simple migration services or support in order to transition from one ESP to another
- Dynamic and advanced segmentation that is updated automatically
- Predictive analytics and advanced reporting
- Omni-channel marketing functionalities or integrations
Although there are a variety of tools that can help you scale your email marketing game, here are our top suggestions:
- Klaviyo
- Drip
- Omnisend
- CM Commerce
- AiTrillion
Klaviyo
Data-Driven Email Platform
A leader in ESP for eCommerce due to its advanced customer data capabilities and deep integrations, Klaviyo is a top tool for both small and large stores. Klaviyo considers itself primarily a data science company with email as its main marketing channel.
Features
- Real-time behavior analysis through integration with leading eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento and more
- Predictive data and advanced reporting
- Advanced and dynamic segmentation
- Flexible template library
- User-friendly drag and drop building for newsletters and automations
- Facebook and Instagram integration to deliver personalized social media ads
- SMS marketing for targeted and personalized automation messages
Pricing
Klaviyo offers free plans to businesses with a list of up to 250 contacts and 500 email sends. At 3000 subscribers, you can expect to pay $80 per month with your subscription changing every 1000 subscribers.
Drip
Dedicated eCommerce CRM (eCRM) Platform
As a dedicated eCommerce CRM or eCRM platform, as they’ve dubbed it, Drip provides the tools to collect advanced customer data and build personalized email workflows.
Features
- Collect advanced data such as buying behavior and site engagement
- Personalized and optimized email marketing workflows through advanced tagging, tracking events and custom fields
- Integration with Facebook ads
- Integration with multiple sales and project management tools
- Advanced reporting and lead scoring to identify your most valuable customers
By building automations with unique data, businesses are able to build more personalized shopping experiences not only through email, but through Facebook, Instagram and other channels.
Pricing
Drip offers its full suite as a free trial for 14 days. After this trial period, businesses pay $49 per month for up to 2,500 subscribers. Once reaching 3,000 subscribers, the monthly plan increases to $122 per month.
Omnisend
Omni-Channel Automation Platform
A leader in omni-channel automation, Omnisend offers a user-friendly interface for small businesses, as well as advanced tools to customize and personalize your automations.
Features:
- Flexible template library
- User-friendly drag and drop building for newsletters and automations
- Advanced segmentation
- Built in functionality for SMS, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Push Notifications and Facebook and Google Ads
Its “Campaign Booster” feature allows businesses to engage with those who did not open your email campaigns by redelivering your email with a new subject line. This gives a second chance to reach subscribers who are most likely to engage and helps boost sales.
Pricing
Omnisend provides a lifetime free plan for businesses looking to send 15,000 email per month without SMS marketing, automations, audience segmentation or omni-channel marketing.
Its Standard plan that includes SMS marketing, automations and audience segmentation starts at $16 per month for up to 500 subscribers. While its enterprise plan is the only package that offers Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and a dedicated account manager.
CM Commerce
Platform for Email and Social Proof
In 2019, Campaign Monitor acquired Conversio to deliver an all-in-one advanced marketing solution known as CM Commerce. CM Commerce provides a range of tools and functionalities for businesses looking to merge their apps under one roof.
Features
- Advanced email marketing
- Supercharged receipts for upsell and cross-sell marketing
- Visual product reviews for user-generated content and social proof
- Integration with loyalty programs like Smilo.io and Loyalty Lion
- Integration with retargeting apps like Shoelace
Pricing
CM Commerce’s Starter plan begins at $9 per month to send 5,000 emails to 500 people, but does not offer browse abandonment email, social proof or integration with Facebook ads at that price point. For lists of 501-1000 subscribers, businesses can sign up for their Growth plan at $49 per month for unlimited emails, as well as all core features such as social proof and deep integrations.
AiTrillion
AI-Powered Omni-Channel Platform
AiTrillion is unique because it really does combine nearly all aspects of eCommerce tools into one. We’re talking loyalty, automation, pop-ups, chatbots, product recommendation tools, and AI tools.
Features
- Advanced email marketing
- Loyalty rewards programs
- Product reviews
- Chat bot integrations
- Push notifications
- Announcement bars
- Smart pop-ups
- Shopify POS integration
- Advanced reporting and predictive analytics
With 8 major tool categories under one roof, this tool can be considered quite a beast.
Pricing
AiTrillion offers a starting plan of $29 per month for up to 500 contacts and unlimited email sending, as well as loyalty rewards, push notifications, product reviews and live chat. The platform also offers fair pricing for scalability by charging $140 per month for up to 10,000 contacts.
The Best Email Service Providers for Mid-Market to Enterprise eCommerce Stores
If you’re looking for an email provider that meets mid-market to enterprise needs, you’ll probably be migrating from an existing ESP that you’ve outgrown.
With complex management, logistics and customer data, you’ll need a platform that integrates seamlessly with your eCommerce provider and perhaps your CRM and other automated systems.
You’ll also need a tool that uses advanced segmentation, artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics to better digest data across multiple channels and develop new, cohesive strategies.
Some other key features to look out for:
- Dynamic content and personalization
- Advanced reporting and insights
- Advanced A/B testing
- Omni-channel integrations
There are many enterprise competitors that offer the data and support for mid-market and enterprise businesses, but our top 4 are:
Dynamic Yield
End-to-End Personalization Platform
Built for enterprise businesses such as Urban Outfitters and Ikea, Dynamic Yield offers an all-in-one platform for personalizing all web, mobile, app, email and advertising not only for B2C businesses, but also B2B, Gaming, Media, Travel and more.
Features
- Personalized product recommendations from machine learning engine or custom criteria
- Consumer data packaged into an eCommerce marketing stack that can be rapidly implemented without developers or IT services.
- Server-side and client-side A/B tests to optimize algorithms, architectures and rebrands.
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
Enalito
Retail Lifecycle Automation
For enterprises wanting to deliver richer and more personalized customer experiences based on trends and KPIs, Enalito offers retailers and brands the opportunity for cross-channel marketing.
Features
Dynamic customer segments, AI-powered product recommendations
- Real-time retargeting, cross-sells and up-sells
- Omnichannel marketing
- Inventory optimization
- Combination of AI, predictive analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing
- Integration with leading eCommerce platforms, as well as major marketing tools such as Mailchimp, Dotmailer, Sengrip and more.
By providing brands with key data, Enalito is able to develop more effective, automated strategies that highlight their strengths and build upon their weaknesses.
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
Vue.ai
Retail AI-Powered Automation
Vue.ai was mostly built for retailers to individualize each shopper’s journey in real-time by understanding their unique style profiles.
Features
- Uses image recognition and data science to extract product attributes from images of the catalog, analyze user behavior and help drive conversions and lower cost.
- 6 AI-based solutions to personalize the customer journey, automate catalog management and improve fashion merchandising.
- VueModel: An AI-based human model that uses algorithms and image recognition to visualize garments with AI generated models.
Pricing
Request a demo for pricing.
The Best Email Service Providers for Abandon Cart Recovery and Customer Retention
Outside of a dedicated ESP there are a few other tools worth mentioning that solve specific problems. Although several ESPs can do similar functionalities, these tools are worth a mention because they are dedicated to this one aspect of the funnel.
- Privy - Pop up tool with important abandon cart functionality.
- Cartstack - focused 100% on abandon cart/checkout.
- Spently - Optimize your notification emails.
Privy
Conversion Rate Optimization / Email Collection
Originally an on-site popup service, Privy has developed new email marketing capabilities as well as SMS marketing features that help businesses increase customer retention. The reason this is important is because they can increase abandon cart email sends by up to 500% (more sends = more $$$) - it’s the crucial integration of having your pop up tool and your email automation tool be one in the same, because without that, like if you send email addresses from a pop-up tool to your ESP, you lose some tracking components, and therefore lose opportunity.
Features:
- Purchase-based automations such as Autoresponders, Abandoned Carts and Order Follow Ups
- On-site customizable popup forms
- Dynamic coupon creation with Shopify and Bigcommerce
Pricing
Privy offers a full email marketing suite for up to 1000 contacts and access to its pop-up displays for up to 3,000 page views per month at $10 per month. It also offers SMS marketing for up to 100 contacts at $10 per month.
CartStack
Website Abandonment Platform
If you would like to focus exclusively on recovering lost eCommerce sales outside of an ESP, CartStack can help.
Features:
- Exit intent and delayed pop-up displays
- Abandoned cart and browse abandonment email campaigns.
- “Send my cart” email campaigns
- Push notification sequences
- Real-time data capture and enriched contact records to easily capture more email addresses and encourage conversions.
Price:
CartStack offers a free trial until you recover $1000 from their app. Once recovered, CartStack’s plans are built on monthly orders. For a Pro plan that allows for up to 100 orders or less per month with browse abandonment email campaigns, exit intents and send my cart campaigns, you’ll pay $49 per month.
Spently
Transactional Optimization Platform
If you’re not leveraging Shopify’s existing transactional emails, then you should be.
Spently allows businesses, both small and large, to leverage their notification emails within Shopify with marketing components. Most importantly, you can turn your most important emails, tracking notification emails (among others) into marketing collateral for cross-sells and upsells.
Features
- Optimize notifications emails with event-based upsells, personalized discounts and referral components
- Automated follow-up email for Shopify’s native notifications emails
- Integration with Limespot, Kit, and Sufio
While some ESPs help with creating notification emails, Spently focuses specifically on solving the problem from within Shopify and has robust tracking/analytics for understanding the business impact.
Pricing
All plans are based on total monthly orders.
For Shopify businesses who generate 50 orders or less per month, Spently’s Starter plan is completely free.
For businesses generating 500 orders or less per month, Spently’s Essential Starter plan is $99/month and allows for follow-up emails, personalized discounts, referrals and integration with Limespot, Kit and Sufio (which is not available in the Starter plan).
Pricing goes up from there.
Next Steps
Choosing an email service provider is one of the most important decisions you can make in your business. And as your business grows, your needs grow, which could mean what you started with is no longer the best option for you.
It’s important to think critically about your business, as you hire new marketing roles, get more creative with your channel marketing strategy, and just generally expand, and think about what kind of data, segmentation, and sequences, will be best for you.
And remember, having the tool is different than using the tool. If you’re not in your email marketing tool weekly, you’re probably missing key findings, opportunities to optimize, and you may also be clogging your database with useless contacts that should be removed.
After you get email off the ground, or migrate platforms, I strongly consider implementing additional channel tools like Messenger, SMS, and push notifications. And be sure to integrate your email marketing with your loyalty program to build brand advocacy.