Email marketing plays a large role in the success of any Ecommerce website, and Magento users have a wide selection of services to pick from.
This flexibility of choice is provided by Magento’s open source software that allows developers to build upon an ever-growing library of third party extensions for online merchants to make use of.
With so many different email service providers (ESP) in the Magento marketplace, the real question is which one of them is best for you?
Benefits of Email Marketing
But first, when looking for the right email marketing service to use with your website, it’s important to understand what effective email marketing can do for you.
When employed correctly, your email marketing campaigns will:
· Boost Customer Acquisition
· Raise Brand Awareness
· Establish Trust in your Business
· Build Customer Loyalty
· Increase Conversion Opportunities
Benefits like these are too significant for any serious online business to ignore, and they’re why multiple different ESPs have developed their own email marketing extensions for you to choose between. So, without further ado, let’s look over some of the most popular email marketing extensions available on Magento and their main features.
1. Listrak Retail Solutions
Listrak’s solution includes email marketing for your Magento store, and offers an added range of customizable marketing options to broaden the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. This service can also integrate your mobile and social marketing channels to provide wider analytical coverage of customer information.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 5/5
Cost: Listrak does not have pricing information available on their website, but Listrak users have reported services starting at $500/month, and higher. To receive a quote for service prices, you can see iContact’s service pricing scale here.
Listrak Features
Combined Digital Marketing Platform
Provides all-in-one access to customer and campaign information taken from multiple customer data sources, so you can better build and track effective marketing campaigns.
Advanced Retail Segmentation
Tracks customer data to create relevant email campaigns that are targeted to your customer’s purchase history and online behavior.
Adjustable Lightbox Solution
With this feature you can engage new customers, and prevent welcome messages from appearing to customers who have already subscribed to your email list.
Automated Recurring Messages
Create a single template email from which variations are automatically created and sent, reducing the time it takes to produce new versions of your marketing campaigns.
Lifecycle Messages
Automated timed messages are sent to past customers to re-engage them with your store and encourage continued buying.
Integrated Product Recommender
Shares targeted content across all consumer channels to offer customers product alerts and recommendations via website, social, mobile, and email marketing.
Back in Stock Alerts
Automatically notifies customers when the product they desire is available, and sends personalized emails if the product is delayed or discontinued.
Shopping Cart and Browsing Abandonment
Contacts customers who browsed and left pages, or did not fulfill a shopping cart purchase, with a timed personalized message to remind them of products.
Summary
Listrak is one of the pricier services on this list, but contains much more than email marketing tools alone. This solution is especially well-suited for larger businesses who want to combine and control their multiple marketing channels from one intuitive platform.
2. Bronto
With its highly ranked email marketing service, SMS and social messaging, and advanced webstore reporting, Bronto stands as a favorite affordable ESP for many Magento users.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 4.4/5
Cost: Pricing for Bronto is available on a for quote basis only. You can reach a representative from Bronto’s contact page here.
Bronto Features
RFM Metrics
Recency, Frequency, and Monetary-Value metrics regarding purchase history are used to send specially targeted emails to customers.
Order Import and Conversion Tracking
Ability to import past purchase information, with entire order history and product details, to provide relative information for creating effective marketing campaigns.
Support for Multiple Stores
Bronto allows you to adjust the map data and configuration settings between each webstore you manage.
Automatic News-Letter and Contact Import
Collected customer information and contacts who opt-in for marketing emails on your Magento website are automatically imported to Bronto so you can better organize customer data.
Cart Abandonment Reminders
Sends customers a timed message if they leave items unpurchased in their shopping cart for a period of time.
Automatic Coupon Codes
Option to automatically include coupons in transactional and reminder messages, with the added ability to integrate coupons into a customer’s shopping session.
Product Recommendations
Inserts product recommendations based on customer order data into your reminder, transactional, and review request emails.
Wish List Reminders
Sends timed emails to customers who have yet to purchase the items placed in their wish list.
Compatible with Other Bronto Extensions
Easily integrate Bronto’s pop-up and coupon manager apps to provide advanced customization options.
Summary
Bronto is an ideal email marketing service for midsize-to-large businesses due to its functions that are targeted to larger enterprises, such as the ability to control multiple webstores from the same account, and is celebrated for its user-friendly interface and attentive support staff.
3. MailChimp
MailChimp is a dedicated email marketing service used by over 12 million Ecommerce businesses, and provides free service to small and newly developing webstores.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 4.5/5
Cost: Free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers and send under 12,000 emails per month. Unlimited email plans start at $10/month for 500 subscribers, with prices rising the more subscribers you have. You can determine your price for service by entering your number of subscribers on MailChimp’s pricing page.
MailChimp Features
Personalized Recommendations
Generate unique email messages containing product recommendations that are based on each customer’s previous purchase history.
Cart Abandonment Reminders
When customers leave your webstore with unpurchased products still in their cart, a timed email will be sent to remind them of the items they left behind.
Preset Customer Lifecycle Automation Workflows
Engage customers with personalized email autoresponders that are triggered by special events (customer birthdays, lack of activity over time, abandoned cart reminders, follow-up recommendations after purchases, etcetera).
Automatically Tracks Customer Data
MailChimp automatically separates customers by segmenting conditions, allowing you to categorize, target, and manage customer groups based on factors such as sign-up date, purchase history, and demographic information.
Summary
MailChimp is a fantastic option for budding enterprises focused on growth due to its effective email marketing tools and generous pricing plans that only increase with the success of your business.
4. Remarkety
Remarkety maintains high status in the Magento marketplace for its easy-to-use software, excellent extension integration, helpful support team, and consistent delivery of results.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 4.8/5
Cost: Remarkety offers sliding scale subscription plans that increase with your number of subscribers, the lowest costing $25/month. You can see Remarkety’s full range of subscriptions here.
Remarkety Features
Drag-and-Drop Email Editor
Remarkety presents pre-designed email templates that can be further modified through a drag-and-drop editor so you can create custom email designs for each campaign you run.
Email Tracking and Reporting
Tracks and reports relevant customer information such as deliverability rate of emails, which emails are being successfully engaged with, and the amount that customers spend.
Customer Behavior Segmentation
Tracks customer behavior and automatically categorizes them into groups to assist in creating effectively targeted marketing campaigns.
Product Recommendations
Targeted messages are embedded in emails to suggest products related to customer behavior and purchase history.
Personalized Customer Coupons
Integrate coupons into your emails that are catered to each individual customer’s order history.
Rewards and Loyalty Programs
Supports incentive programs for existing customers to encourage greater conversions.
Cart Abandonment Reminders
Reminds customers who have left unpurchased items in their cart by notifying them of abandoned products with a timed message.
Lifecycle Messages
Remarkety will send timed automated messages to recapture the attention of past customers and entice them to return.
Analytics and Performance Reporting
Provides a dashboard with relevant campaign and email effectiveness data to help you make informed marketing decisions.
Summary
Remarkety is an excellent tool for businesses of any size that want to target their existing customer base with successful new email campaigns. The automated integration and use of customer’s previous purchase information, easy-to-use guided interface, and real-time recommendations for campaign improvement make this ESP especially popular.
5. iContact
This extension synchronizes your Magento subscribers with iContact’s email management system, and can further integrate with your business’ social media channels. A wide range of service choices are offered to best accommodate the needs and size of each webstore iContact caters to.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 5/5
Cost: Pricing for iContact starts at $14/month (with an $11.90 annual pre-pay), and rises depending on number of your email subscribers and the service type you choose. You can see iContact’s service pricing scale here.
iContact Features
Two-Way Integration Between Magento and iContact
Automatically adds new subscribers of your Magento store to your iContact mailing list, with the option to automatically remove un-subscribers of your Magento store from your iContact mailing list as well.
Drag-and-Drop Email Editing
Customize email templates with an easy to use drag-and-drop designer to personalize your marketing campaigns to your brand identity.
Autoresponders
Timed messages are automatically sent to customers after their subscription date to interest and engage them with your business.
Social Media Integration
Allows sharing and posting to social media channels through the iContact platform.
Behavioral Targeting
Sends effective personalized messages to customers based on their unique purchases and online behavior.
Customer Data Reporting
Make informed email campaign adjustments with customer data reports that show you what parts of your campaign are working, and which parts aren’t.
Live Customer Support
Access to iContact’s professional email marketing advisors who can help you grow your email marketing campaigns and increase conversions.
Summary
iContact can work wonders for the email marketing campaigns of both small and large businesses with its multi-channel social media integration, accommodating support, and affordable range of pricing plans.
6. dotmailer
dotmailer is a feature rich ESP that presents an intuitive and flexible email marketing platform. Along with its seamless integration into Magento, dotmailer offers readily available customer support and training to ensure you get the most out of your service.
Magento Marketplace Rating: 4.8/5
Cost: dotmailer service subscriptions start at $250/month, and go up to $1,750 depending on desired features and number of contacts. You can see the details of dotmailer’s pricing page here.
dotmailer Features
Data Synchronization
Follows customer history and order data, their wish lists and cart contents, and the browsing behavior of visitors to your webstore.
Drag-and-Drop Editing
Quickly build emails with drag-and-drop templates, along with custom drag-and-drop data acquisition forms and integrated surveys.
Automation Program Builder
Sends automated messages to subscribers such as greetings for first time visitors, birthday emails, mobile push notifications, and more.
Personalized Content
Ability to generate unique coupon codes and upsell messages related to a customer’s cart contents to increase conversions with returning buyers.
Loyalty Campaigns
Rewards and incentives offered to previous customers to encourage additional webstore activity.
Shopping Cart and Browsing Reminders
Timed emails sent to customers reminding them of items browsed, or left in their shopping cart, without being purchased to reignite interest.
Summary
dotmailer’s email marketing solution is aimed toward businesses that have already generated a notable list of email subscribers. The variety of service plans available are appropriately suited to match the varying goals of marketing teams of any size.
Comparison Chart
Conclusion
Regardless of which you choose, each extension shown here has the capability to provide an effective email marketing solution for your online business.
Of course, the best email service for your Magento webstore will vary depending on the needs and size of your business, what you are willing to pay, and the compatibility of an ESP with the extensions currently installed on your Magento website.