26 Best Email Marketing Tools For Selling Online in 2020
I’m sure you haven’t seen a “one-size-fits-all” suit, have you? The same goes for email marketing tools. You should find the one that works best for your eCommerce business’s unique shape and size.
In this blog post, you’ll discover 26 best email marketing tools and services that will help you set up trigger-based emails, run A/B tests, track results, and other email marketing must-haves.
To make things a bit easier, I grouped the tools into five categories based on their sophistication, effectiveness, and approach.
Ready? Dive right in.
Find The Best Email Marketing Tool For Your Business
1. Email List Builders
2. Email Newsletter Apps & Autoresponders
3. Drip Email Marketing Tools
4. Integrated Marketing Automation Tools
5. Email Testing Tools
6. Email Tracking & Monitoring Tools
I. Email List Builders
Plunging into the world of email marketing is always a good idea. However, before you can send out your first newsletter, you must first collect email addresses.
Let me give you a heads-up: buying emails won’t work. Purchasing email lists decreases deliverability, ruins your reputation, and, in most cases, drives people mad. Therefore, there’s a high chance that your message will be immediately sent to the email cemetery, also called the “spam” box.
What should you do instead? Use list building tools to grow your opt-in email list and avoid getting caught in the spam filters.
Below are a few tools for you to consider.
(By the way, in the next chapter, we will discuss the ways to grow your mailing list in more detail.)
1. OptinMonster Lead Generation Software
OptinMonster lead generation software will help you flawlessly create different types of signup forms and thus collect your leads without spending your precious time for exporting and importing CSV files.
New leads, captured through these opt-in popups, can then be segmented into groups and funneled right into automated campaigns or autoresponder systems.
Price starts at $108 a year — not much, considering that some email services like Keap, cost as much as $60 a month. Moreover, even a single paying customer is likely enough for the tool to pay for itself.
As for the drawbacks, it’s sometimes hard to create popups that match the website’s look and feel. I’d appreciate it if there were more templates and customizable ways to edit the form field.
But I hope the new update will soon bring these sought-after options.
2. Optin Architect List Building App
Optin Architect is another powerful list building software that allows you to create gorgeous lead capture forms in a few minutes and build your email list 10x faster.
Eye-catching responsive templates, various types of opt-in forms, and a couple of advanced features, like animation and popup delay, will skyrocket your conversions and take your email marketing to the next level.
Like with OptinMonster, there are very few design templates, which are almost identical, so it’s not always easy to make your signup forms match your brand style. Plus, they are not entirely customizable. For example, you cannot edit individual elements or add your own images.
As for the pricing, it’s quite flexible. You can monthly ($27), annually (save 70%), or buy a lifetime license ($297).
There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial available, which means you cannot take a sneak peek inside the software — not for a single minute.
3. Sumo Email Capture Tool
But here’s my favorite: Sumo, an entirely free lead capturing tool.
It gives you the power to create awesome countdown popups, popups that appear on a click, or forms that appear when customers are about to click away. Everything is done in a non-intrusive way as if a friend gives you a hand with some back-breaking task.
The app supports mobile beautifully and easily integrates into WordPress. The only thing you need to do is to install a plugin or paste a few lines of HTML code.
If you need advanced features, like VIP support, live customization, integration with Keap, HubSpot, or SalesForce marketing automation services, there is a single PRO plan that costs $39 a month.
What you may not like about this email marketing tool is that it may shut down your website if your customers’ Macs, iPhones, and iPads are not updated to the latest version. Keeping pace with modern technologies is not always as easy as it seems for Sumo.
4. MailMunch Email List Builder
MailMunch is one of the fastest-growing lead generation services, offering a complete, user-friendly product at a competitive price point.
This powerful drag-and-drop landing page builder can help build high-converting squeeze pages within minutes.
The repertoire of tools also includes form building, list management, email broadcasting, and scheduling.
MailMunch’s pricing tier includes a free plan and two paid options (Essential — $6.99/mo, and PRO — $13.99/mo). There is also an addon that allows agencies and teams to manage multiple eCommerce sites. Plus, there is a Whitelabel option that is ideal for agencies looking for custom branding and convenient user management tools.
All in all, this is an excellent email marketing tool, and it works perfectly with many eCommerce platforms. However, their email templates leave something to be desired. Some of the themes look quite outdated for people looking for good, pre-built options.
The good news is that you can customize your emails. However, you’ll have to do the legwork yourself to make them look nice.
II. Email Newsletter Apps & Autoresponders
Small eCommerce business owners rarely have an opportunity to purchase sophisticated email automation software, as it’s quite expensive. And they actually don’t need any.
The two basic email marketing needs are (1) sending newsletters weekly or biweekly and (2) responding to new clients immediately (and, if possible, automatically).
Ideally, this email marketing tool should come with many beautiful email templates that can be easily customized.
And, of course, no coding. No coding at all.
There are a few options for you:
1. GetResponse Marketing Software For Small Businesses
GetResponse is a perfect email marketing tool for medium and small businesses.
With GetResponse, you will be able to create custom landing pages and host webinars.
But what is most remarkable about this email marketing software is that it comes with 500+ awesome-looking and mobile-friendly email templates. Plus, there are many time- and energy-saving features, such as autoresponders and other automation tools with A/B testing capability built-in.
The vast number of newsletter templates will allow you to create professional-looking emails in minutes.
A/B testing is crucial to the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. You can test your subject lines, sender names, body content, and even the send time of day.
If coding is not in your wheelhouse, sign-up for GetResponse. You won’t have to customize your templates from top to bottom to fit your brand.
While the software is not as feature-rich as Aweber, GetResponse has a relatively low learning curve. Its setup process is easy, even for non-techies. And the price, starting at $15 a month, is approachable and affordable for all types of business.
2. Convert Kit Email Marketing Tools For Online Creators
ConvertKit is a simple email marketing software, especially popular among bloggers.
Why? The software solves the problem of promoting content and keeping in touch with those who want to hear from you.
You can quickly create simple autoresponder sequences, tag customers based on their actions while reading your newsletters, and then send out the content they are interested in.
ConvertKit is suitable for those who have outgrown Mailchimp (or who are sick of paying double for this overhyped brand) but do not yet need all the bells and whistles that come with such high-end solutions as Keap.
A few words about ConvertKit’s pricing: though this advanced email marketing tool has everything an average blogger may need, it is on the higher end of the price spectrum.
With GetResponse, you can manage the same amount of subscribers for the price that is twice as low. ConvertKit charges $79 for managing 5K subscribers, while GetResponse only costs $45.
3. Aweber Email Marketing Tool For Small Businesses
Aweber is a great newsletter tool for small and medium-sized businesses primarily focused on nurturing subscribers with email campaigns.
It comes with 150+ templates and hundreds of stock photos, which simplifies the proсess of creating newsletters. The latest design includes an email draft preview to test the look of your email before sending it out to your subscribers.
If you send a welcome email to every new subscriber, you need to set up an auto-responder sequence.
Some of the best email marketing services like Mailchimp may seem easier and cheaper to use, but they do not offer the marketing capabilities that Aweber offers.
For just $29 a month, you are free to send an unlimited number of emails to up to 2.5K subscribers. This email blast software is only $4 more expensive than GetResponse ($29 for 2.5K subscribers) but way cheaper than ConvertKit, which costs $49 a month for roughly the same number of subscribers.
4. Constant Contact Email Marketing Software
Constant Contact is a straight-forward email marketing platform for entry-level users. Although it is nowhere near as simple as Mad Mimi, it offers far more features. Beautiful design templates, a free stock image gallery, and a powerful HTML editor for smooth customization create an enjoyable experience for those not into coding.
What I liked most about this email marketing tool is the drag-and-drop functionality & easy navigation. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to send well-designed emails. Though the overall service is mediocre and the user interface is a bit outdated, it gets the job done.
ConstantContact offers personalized coaching to help you tackle questions you may have — all for the same bundled fee. Keap, on the other hand, requires customers to pay an extra $99 for similar training. Plus, you’ll have access to email, live chat, and phone support.
Besides regular email marketing tools such as sending emails and tracking, it has unique features like event registration tools, feedback forms, and surveys. Very brave of them to compete with goliaths such as Eventbrite and SurveyMonkey, eh? It never hurts to try, after all.
5. Inwise Marketing Cloud Tool
Inwise is an intuitive email marketing software for sending newsletters.
Inwise’s fully responsive email templates automatically adjust to any screen, be it a tablet, PC, or mobile phone. The software helps you create impressive messages your customers simply cannot ignore. Additional features include personalized emails, A/B testing, and landing pages.
If you have a small business with less than 500 customers, Inwise’s forever free plan will fit you perfectly. You’ll be able to send 5K emails per month, but won’t be able to schedule your campaigns, launch SMS campaigns, use embedded images, and create more than 1 landing page or sign up form.
6. Sender
Sender is a rising star in the email marketing market. This tool provides very smart email automation with an easy email design builder. Sender has all features you need to achieve the desired results from email marketing.
- Smart email automation for abandoned carts, birthday emails, welcome emails, and more.
- Drag&drop design builder to create stunning emails.
- Free email templates library.
- Advance email campaigns for newsletters, promotional emails.
- Subscribers management & segmentation.
- Sign up forms & pop-ups to collect emails on your website.
And you know what?
Plan with all these features starts from $9/month + 24/7 support.
Also, Sender offers a free forever plan for 2.500 contacts and 15.000 emails/month with all features included.
Email Autoresponders That Work Perfectly With X-Cart:
Mandrill Integration is a free app for sending triggered emails to your eCommerce shoppers.
Price: Free
Unisender integration with X-Cart will allow you to send professional emails and SMS messages and configure automatic series.
Price: Free
III. Drip Email Tools
Drip email is an extended version of autoresponders and, at the same time, a more sophisticated (and probably more efficient!) way of onboarding your customers. It will allow you to send marketing and transactional emails to your target audience and grow your revenue.
Ever tried to sign up for a free trial? Then you should already know the way drip emails work:
- Any drip campaign usually starts with a simple ‘Hello’ message.
- Then you send some instructions and use cases.
- And when the user is “hot” enough to purchase the product, there comes a sales email, usually the last one in the email sequence.
Have a look at these drip email marketing tools you can use to pass along your eCommerce news and updates.
1. Active Campaign Email Marketing Tool
ActiveCampaign is one of the most affordable email marketing tools for small to medium-sized businesses. Its pricing starts at $9/mo, and there is a 14-day free trial.
What I love about this tool is the ability to breezily create drip emails. Unlike other automation services that may cost you an arm and a leg, this one is the most cost-effective. Plus, it is super user-friendly and fast to learn.
Active Campaign is a perfect tool for sending triggered emails and autoresponders.
Price: Free
With Active Campaign, you can quickly add logic to your trigger-based email sequences and send messages to your customers based on their interests, behavior, the country they live in, site interactions, and more.
You will be able to send automated emails to abandoned cart users to remind them about the items they’ve forgotten in their carts.
ActiveCampaign is packed with features and functionality such as:
- A formidable number of stock images you can use in your email marketing campaigns;
- Image web hosting to store your pictures and logos;
- Real-time analytics so you can track email performance on the fly.
And if you have trouble setting up the tool, go through some of their extensive instructional videos and support FAQs.
2. Drip Ecommerce Marketing Engine
Drip email marketing software, as the name implies, is also built with marketing automation in mind.
It’s a perfect tool for streamlining your email workflow, especially if you have a SaaS product.
Due to the intuitive interface, there’s almost no learning curve. Lots of powerful features, made to turn all your complex automation problems simple, are ready and waiting for you just around the corner.
Drip is a great tool, here to make sure none of your customers are left without your love & attention.
Price: Free
To get started, you need to upload all your user info and events to Drip. Then, enjoy automated if-then-else workflows, lead scoring, user tags, and a lot more.
Though it doesn’t offer social media integration or sales landing pages (hope to see these features soon!), the app features lead generation technologies, many ready-made templates, and drag and drop layout for easy email customization. However, none of these additional features will beat automation.
This email marketing tool works perfectly both for small and medium-sized enterprises. There’s a 100% free account that gives you access to all the essential features. There are also a couple of paid options for advanced users looking for progressive solutions.
Compared to much more expensive email marketing alternatives, which offer tons of unnecessary features, Drip is a bit simpler. But, be sure, this email service will pay for itself.
3. Mailchimp Integrated Marketing Platform For Small Businesses
Owning almost half the market, Mailchimp is sure to be one of the best email marketing services, popular mostly among freelancers and small side businesses. It has a 100% free plan, which can be used for managing small marketing campaigns.
Mailchimp’s Integration with X-Cart allows you to send drip emails to your users and create personalized messages.
Price: Free
Moreover, it has a very shallow learning curve — a well-thought design makes the user interface rather intuitive and insanely easy-to-use.
But what is the most awesome about Mailchimp is the automation feature. Mailchimp allows you to easily set up autoresponders, schedule email campaigns, send drip emails based on user activity (or inactivity!), and more. To start using automation tools, you will have to upgrade to a Standard plan, which costs $14.99 a month.
As for additional features, Mailchimp has a fantastic drag-and-drop campaign builder that will let you easily create branded email newsletters and customize everything from fonts to spacing. And there is customer service support by phone for those who are on Premium Plan.
The main disadvantage is that Mailchimp forces users to double opt-in to join your list, which reduces email bounces but can ultimately shrink your mailing list. Plus, it’s rather pricey if compared to GetResponse.
Additional Resources: Mailchimp Tutorial: How to Use Mailchimp for Email Marketing
4. Keap CRM & Marketing Automation
Keap is more than a simple email marketing software for small business owners.
Apart from sending newsletters, it can help you manage the sales process, capture new leads, track your users’ info, and, as a result, save more time. It can also be used as a task manager and remind you about the appointments you have for the day, and the contacts you need to follow up with.
You can connect your Keap and OptinMonster accounts to segment your users based on their behavior. If your goal is to grow your business using automation, this email marketing tool is the way to go.
That said, the software is rather pricey. Its cheapest plan starts at $79 a month. On top of that, you will have to pay an extra $99, a required one-time fee for expert coaching. A personal coach will teach you using their platform the right way, which means that Keap is not as easy to learn as the other software.
The advanced functionality of Keap is sure to bring you new marketing opportunities, but it may take days to set it up to fit your business needs. If you are just starting, Keap is definitely not what you are looking for. However, comparing this email marketing software to Mailchimp or Aweber is like comparing a Lamborghini to a Honda Civic.
5. BombBomb Video Email Tool
Text-only emails are as old as dirt. If you feel like spicing up your email marketing with video and images, BombBomb is the right tool for you.
Video-powered drip emails are what this industry-leading email marketing service can do best. BombBomb adds a personal touch to all your emails (even to the triggered ones!) and makes your customers feel as if they are engaged in a trust-based dialogue with a real person.
Like Mailchimp and Constant Contact, BombBomb is built for long-term email engagement, not just responsive messaging. You can easily schedule reminders, send mass emails, and automate your email marketing campaigns.
Everyone sends emails, but very few dare to connect with video, which makes the onboarding experience much quicker and easier. With BombBomb, your emails will no longer look like a clinical, business-only message from some stranger on the internet. Start sending messages that convert by adding a personalized video with BombBomb.
Other Drip Email Tools That Work With X-Cart:
Klaviyo is a great tool for sending personalized emails tailored to each customer.
Price: Free
iContact is an amazing email marketing integration that allows users to create, send, and track email newsletters, surveys, autoresponders, and more.
Price: $49
IV. Integrated Marketing Automation Tools
Marketing automation is a SERIOUS strategy. It requires the most setup, a formidable investment, and a good bit of thinking. But don’t be scared; automation has proved to be the most effective form of email marketing, and it is well worth the trouble.
Marketing automation reminds me of drip campaigns (see above), but actually, they’re quite different. Whereas drip email blasts are just a sequence of timed messages, marketing automation is all about the buyer’s journey. It’s way more sophisticated, as you get into your customer’s shoes, leading them through their buying cycle one step at a time. Each message depends on what action the user made in response to in the previous email.
Let’s have a look at the most popular marketing automation tools available on the market.
1. Contactually CRM
This marketing automation program, while not perfect, allows you to gather as much information as possible to guide your messaging and segment your audience into buckets with tags.
Contactually gamified the process of staying in touch with your contacts, so you do not feel you are doing endless monotonous tasks. Btw, I love their bucket game! And, judging by the reviews, everyone does.
You do not have to remember when you made your last call or what you wrote in your previous message. It’s all inside this tiny useful tool that pokes you when needed and reminds you to do what you were planning to. A huge time-saver!
What I dislike is the manual process of setting everything up. But when this time-consuming work is over, you can start selling online, while playing a game.
Compared to other email marketing automation tools, like SalesForce, Keap, and Zoho Campaigns, Contactually is super easy to use and helps automate daily sales tasks.
On top of that, you are not forced to pay right away. There’s a free two-week trial that allows you to play with the software a bit and see if it’s right for your business before subscribing to one of the plans.
Pricing starts at $69 per month.
2. Omnisend Ecommerce Marketing Automation
Omnisend is a flexible eCommerce marketing automation platform that uses an omnichannel approach to help growing eCommerce stores improve their marketing efforts. Omnichannel marketing possible allows you to create customized messages and provide a seamless customer experience from the first buyer interaction to the last. The in-depth integration with eCommerce platforms allows Omnisend to collect valuable data about your visitors’ shopping behavior, for more precise personalization and segmentation later on.
Omnisend supports communication via email, SMS, web push notifications, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Viber. No matter what your customers preferred communication channels are, you’ll be connected.
Pricing starts at $16 per month, based on the number of emails you are planning to send to your subscribers.
3. HubSpot Inbound Marketing, Sales, and Service Software
HubSpot is one of the best all-in-one marketing solutions that can help you move your prospects through the sales funnel.
And whether you are looking for a basic CRM, a marketing service provider, or an email marketing software — HubSpot will be right for you. The automated workflows streamline your marketing and sales processes flawlessly.
HubSpot addon for X-Cart offers multiple tools for inbound marketing, such as email automation, social inbox, keyword analysis, and others.
Price: Free
What I don’t really like about HubSpot is that the reports are quite limited, and the price tag is too high for a small company — it’s $40 a month plus a $480 onboarding fee. If you are new to marketing, HubSpot has a lot of barriers to entry, which may not be worth the trouble.
However, if your mind’s made up and you absolutely need a sophisticated sales strategy for your eCommerce business, HubSpot will take all of the pain out of implementation. This email marketing tool puts intelligence into your marketing strategy so that you can concentrate on execution.
4. Marketo Marketing Automation Software
Marketo is a great email marketing tool for the majority of small and medium businesses, and probably one of the best email marketing services currently available.
Besides top-notch automation, it offers lead generation and budgeting tools, real-time personalization, marketing calendars, and a tremendous user community ready to help both online and offline.
Marketo works with X-Cart through Segment integration.
Price: Free
If your eCommerce business has complex sales cycles, Marketo is the best email marketing set-it-and-forget-it software.
As for the drawbacks, — the user interface is rather old-fashioned and not intuitive at all. You’ll have to spend extra money to go through live training. This is probably the only way to learn the software. Otherwise, be prepared to spend adequate time in the first few months learning the basics of the system and researching the Community and Product Docs.
Their pricing is hidden, but you can see their packages and features.
5. SugarMarket Automation Platform
Sugar Market (former SalesFusion) is an email marketing software primarily designed for B2B companies that are committed to increasing revenue by aligning marketing and sales.
A very responsive customer service team, an intuitive interface, and a great email builder makes this email marketing tool easy to set up. Lead scoring, nurture automation, event management, CRM integration, and reporting are the best features to get your email campaigns going.
Compared to the feature-rich Active Campaign, Sugar Market lacks some useful capabilities such as the ability to visually represent your campaign with a flow diagram. Although pricing is likely to be a deterrent, it’s somewhat affordable compared to HubSpot, Pardot, and Marketo.
There’s also a very steep learning curve. Setting up this email platform to fit your exact business needs almost always requires some help from their professional services team at an extra fee.
6. Salesforce Sales and Marketing Platform
Salesforce email marketing software offers the full spectrum of features “any average Joe” might expect from a CRM tool: real-time analytics, automation, geographic performance reports, options for scaling marketing campaigns, and other tools.
The Salesforce app for X-Cart collects data about your customers and automates routine tasks.
Price: Free
Salesforce helps you effectively manage your pipeline, track inbound and outbound emails, and send targeted newsletters to different audience segments.
As for the cons, you need to be tech-savvy to set up the software. Also, support can be a bit of a challenge unless you purchase their Premier Support package. So if you have no experience with marketing automation, I suggest that you choose another tool that is a bit easier to use.
However, if you’re investigating email marketing tools such as HubSpot and Marketo Salesforce is an affordable option with the same benefits.
7. Moosend Email Marketing Automation Software
Moosend is a robust email marketing and marketing automation platform with an easy-to-use interface and a short learning curve. Through Moosend, you can create scalable automation workflows using triggers and conditional steps that lead to specific, actionable results. Alternatively, you can simply dive in straight away by trying out one of the ready-made automation recipes.
Moosend add-on for X-Cart will allow you to run email campaigns, automate certain tasks, and analyze the results of your actions.
Moosend’s platform comes with detailed reporting and analytics that can help you make data-driven decisions that lead straight to conversion, and segmentation and personalization options that will help any business nurture their leads and create automation sequences with content that just makes sense.
Finally, Moosend’s platform offers more than 100 integrations. You won’t have to change your favorite CMS or list validation tool in favor of a new one.
On the downside, Moosend doesn’t offer a CRM option or an SMS marketing option. However, the wide variety of its integrations more than makes up for it.
Pricing starts $8+ per month, based on the number of subscribers. The platform also carries a Free Forever plan of up to 1,000 unique subscribers.
Other Email Automation Tools That Work With X-Cart
Justuno is a powerful conversion marketing app for X-Cart users. It will help build email lists and convert traffic.
Price: Free
Pureclarity Personalization — This AI-based eCommerce personalization platform will help create personalized email marketing campaigns and boost revenue by 26%.
Price: Free
Sailthru addon for X-Cart will take control over email campaigns, including triggered and transactional emails.
Price: Free
Pardot is a marketing automation platform aimed at increasing ROI. Works seamlessly with X-Cart!
Price: Free
Selligent addon for X-Cart allows you to personalize user experience across multiple channels, including email.
Price: Free
Iterable addon for X-Cart will let you interact with your shoppers via email, push, SMS, and in-app channels.
Price: Free
Sendpulse Integration Module that works perfectly with X-Cart to help you interact with your users using AI.
Price: Free
WebEngage addon for X-Cart will help you interact with your customers via push notifications, in-app messages, emails, SMS, and more.
Price: Free
V. Email Testing Tools
Powerful email marketing is more than just sending newsletters once in a while.
It’s important to know what your customers see when they are opening your email, what content and subject line work best, and if there are any problems related to email deliverability.
The following apps will significantly save your time testing and prevent broken emails.
1. Litmus Email Marketing Tool
Litmus is a multi-faceted email marketing software that you can use to test and track your emails before and after sending them to your subscribers.
You’ve probably heard that the perfect email looks good in all email clients. As there are at least 70 email clients — Apple iPad, Outlook, Gmail, to name a few — it’s next to impossible to preview your message across all of them. Litmus makes it possible.
Catching errors is also crucial as it can impact your overall performance. Litmus will quickly double-check your emails for broken links, images, and speed issues.
A very nice option is adding an invisible tracking pixel into your email code. It will show you how and where your email was opened, how much time your recipient spent reading it, and whether they printed, forwarded, or deleted it.
A SPAM test feature will allow you to identify the potential issues preventing your email from getting delivered.
The price starts at $99 a month for the Basic plan.
2. Cakemail Email Platform
Though this email marketing program can do almost everything — from organizing your contacts to creating beautiful newsletters, the best Cakemail’s feature is split and A/B tests.
You can test email name, address, subject line, and content. When the test period is over, your leading content will be sent to the remaining portion of your list. These hacks should help you determine which message performs the best even before the email campaign is sent to all your users.
As in Litmus, Cakemail has a useful “Spam Assassin” feature to help you identify why your messages end up in spam folders.
3. Email on Acid Email Pre-Deployment Checklist
Email on Acid is also a great testing tool that will help you make sure that your emails look flawless across all devices and in every inbox.
In addition to the basic options, such as image previews, link checking, and spam testing, Email On Acid has an incredibly powerful code analysis tool. It displays warnings about unsupported tags or other HTML and CSS features, which can save tons of time and headaches when troubleshooting your HTML design.
The pricing starts at $876 a year, making it quite expensive for small or growing businesses.
VI. Email Tracking & Monitoring Tools
Tracking and monitoring is an essential part of your eCommerce business strategy, and the same goes for emails. You should be able to monitor as many factors as possible, such as:
- why customers dropped off at a particular stage of their journey;
- what made them open your newsletter;
- what distracted them from making a purchase.
The best email marketing platforms can do the tracking for you. But not all of them can do it the right way.
1. Campaign Monitor Email Tracking Tool
The best three things about Campaign Monitor are tracking, testing, and optimizing. It features interactive, easy to review analytics that will help you better understand your customers and plan your strategy according to the test results.
This email marketing software also offers advanced contact management options, so you can easily segment your user lists based on their behavior or actions and then send separate email marketing campaigns.
As for the drawbacks, Campaign Monitor can sometimes be touchy when uploading new users to the mailing list. And there are only a few native integrations with eCommerce software solutions.
The basic plan starts at $9 a month for 2.5K emails, basic email support, core email marketing tools and features, insights analytics suite, and basic marketing automation.
2. Zoho Campaigns Email Marketing Software
Zoho Campaigns is a good email platform designed for small to mid-sized businesses. While you focus on your message, Zoho takes care of your marketing campaigns and conversion rates. It also provides marketing automation tools to make your email marketing a breeze.
Though the user interface is a bit cumbersome, a handy WYSIWYG editor will let you easily customize templates and thus create professional, branded newsletters.
But the most outstanding feature of Zoho Campaigns is its integrated in-depth analytics system. Being able to track your campaign’s performance in real-time, discover which links receive the most clicks, find out where your opens and clicks come from, and get notified about spam complaints is all very helpful when planning your next campaigns.
Pricing plans start at $3 a month for 500 emails, which is rather inexpensive.
3. Square Email Marketing Service
Square is an all-in-one sales tool. Not only can it create perfect emails, but it can also accept payments and even manage inventory on your eCommerce website. This app is certainly the best known for payment processing, but it also features automation and segmentation options, social sharing, beautiful templates, and automated distribution lists.
One of Square’s most useful features is the ability to collect statistics so you can see whether your sales come from new customers or returning shoppers. After sending out an email blast, this smart software compares email recipients with credit card payments to show you the journey the customer made and how it drove actual sales.
The tool classifies people into loyal, casual, and lapsed so that marketers can form campaigns based on how frequently a customer visits the store.
Its pricing starts at $15 a month for 500 customer contacts.
Other Tracking & Monitoring Tools That Work Perfectly With X-Cart
Salesmachine addon for X-Cart will track user activity and analyze user behavior by allowing you to monitor how healthy your customers are at each stage of their buyer journey.
Price: Free
The Bottom Line
Are you still with us? The list of my favorite email marketing tools for small and medium businesses has come to an end. To find out which email marketing software is most useful for your eCommerce website and will ultimately help you sell online, I’d suggest signing up for at least three-four free trials or starter plans and dig them deep and wide.
Asking yourself the right questions can also help you choose the right email marketing platform for your eCommerce business:
- What is the size of your mailing list?
- Are you planning to flood your customers with promos every day (don’t do that!) or send emails once or twice a week?
- Do you require online marketing automation?
- Which integrations are you looking for?
There are a lot of budget-friendly email marketing options for those who are concerned about costs.
I hope this general overview will help you find the tool that perfectly fits your business purposes and integrates seamlessly with your shopping cart. Pick a couple of apps, and I’m sure you’ll discover 10X more features than I have (feel free to write them in the comments below).
What is your favorite email marketing tool?
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Wonder what’s next?
Let’s discuss the ways to grow your email list. Your email marketing will give you a big fat goose egg if you have no user emails, right?
Spoiler: You’ll get to know what digital marketing super freaks, like Barry Feldman or Robbie Richards, think of all that stuff.