Omnisend

Omnisend is an omni-channel marketing automation platform, built for eCommerce, operating on your most only email, but also SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp, pop-ups, segmentation, and dynamic Facebook and Google ad integrations. This makes it a truly all-in-one marketing automation solution.

There's a serious benefit to having all the solutions under one roof, and that's inter-channel communication. With Omnisend you can setup campaigns that trigger notifications on different channels, and rest assured that they are well timed and improving the customer experience.

When you piecemeal multiple apps together, it's much harder to do this. You may set up triggers that hit at the same time, I've seen situations in which SMS is giving 10% off and push notifications is giving 20% off. That is much less likely to be an issue when you're creating the automation from one central place.

Certainly the reason to go with Omnisend is when you want to simplify an omnichannel marketing strategy, especially if you're a solo head of marketing, but really for a marketing team of any size.

Some really slick features that you should care about are:

• You don't have to have an email address as the central part of a user's identity
• Meaning, if you only want people to opt in through SMS, that is fine. Some other tools require an email address to create the user's identity, but not Omnisend.
• They have easy plug-and-play automation sequences to get you up and running across multiple channels in record time.

Certainly the reason to go with Omnisend is when you want to simplify an omnichannel marketing strategy, especially if you're a solo head of marketing, but really for a marketing team of any size.

Some really slick features that you should care about are:

• You don't have to have an email address as the central part of a user's identity
• Meaning, if you only want people to opt in through SMS, that is fine. Some other tools require an email address to create the user's identity, but not Omnisend.
• They have easy plug-and-play automation sequences to get you up and running across multiple channels in record time.

Typically the head of marketing is setting up and running with your email service provider practically every single day. If you're just starting out, then it's going to be on you to setup and manage your abandon cart sequences, automations, and growth process.

Expect heavy setup costs with any marketing automation platform. You need to get all of your sequences in place, tie in your branding, setup your dynamic discounts, and really build an entire strategy around your goals, channels that resonate best with your audience, and a roadmap for continuing to test and improve every single message at every single stage of the customer journey. You also will have a bit of integration work to deal with, and you may have to migrate your sequences from your old Email Service Provider.

All in all, it could take between 8 and 40 hours to really get everything locked and loaded, and then you should expect to spend 1-2 hours minimum each week in creating campaigns, tweaking content, adjusting based on seasonality or new promotions, etc.

Omnisend's strength comes in when you have enough resources to utilize all of the channel tools to their fullest. This doesn't mean you need a full-fledged team, Omnisend makes the execution much easier than the alternative piecemeal solution, but you should at least have a dedicated in-house marketer who has experience with marketing automation and can write good copy for each channel, and think strategically about how to merge the channels together into a cohesive customer journey.

Now, this tool can work at any stage of a store, and I would personally recommend anyone that is serious about the growth of their business to invest in their omnichannel strategy early on... That being said, small stores, low growth stores, or if you're starting on a very slim budget or with no marketing expertise... This might be a little more than you need right now. I'd still recommend you push yourself to try it out, but I'm thinking of that product or operations centric founder that has a small team and no real marketers on it, that person isn't going to get the most out of Omnisend.

And if you are currently comfortable with your email service provider, things are going well, and you have all the automations and sequences setup right now, with no real problems... Then I wouldn't press you to move over without some sort of dying problem or opportunity that you see.

Other than that, I feel like this tool can be a great fit for any established and growing eCommerce store, all the way up to Shopify Plus and even more enterprise stores.