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Thinking about automating some of your online store’s marketing-related tasks? In this post, I’ve compiled the best ecommerce marketing automation tools to help small and mid-sized businesses get rid of tedious, repetitive tasks and augment critical functions.
As an ecommerce business owner, you know firsthand just how much work it takes to make your business work. Without automation, it’s likely that you’re wasting precious time doing tasks that software can easily take off your hands.
In this post, I’ve rounded up some of the best ecommerce marketing automation tools available. These tools handle most of the heavy lifting required to successfully market an ecommerce business — creating landing pages, setting up email marketing campaigns, acquiring customers, and much more.
First things first, let’s answer a fundamental question:
What is ecommerce marketing automation?
Ecommerce marketing automation streamlines repetitive tasks — think: email follow-ups, abandoned cart reminders, lead nurturing, and the like — using software to create timely, targeted interactions with customers.
Automating critical workflows helps ecommerce businesses stay in touch with leads and customers at the right moment and boost sales without manual effort.
There are many ways ecommerce stores can use marketing automation. For instance:
- After a customer signs up, they receive a series of emails introducing the brand, showcasing top products, and offering a first-purchase discount.
- When a customer adds items to their shopping cart and leaves the ecommerce store without buying anything, automated emails are triggered to remind them to complete their order (often including a relevant discount).
- When a customer places an order, they receive personalized thank-you emails, product care tips, or related product recommendations.
- If a customer has been inactive for some time, automated re-engagement campaigns targeted towards them with special offers can bring them back to the site.
Benefits of using marketing automation tools in ecommerce
There are tons of benefits to using marketing automation tools in your ecommerce store. Here are a few:
- Personalized customer experiences at scale: With automation tools, you can personalize customer journeys based on individual behaviors and preferences with zero manual effort. For example, if a customer abandons their shopping cart, an automated abandoned cart email can remind them to check out within minutes — you can even set it up to offer a discount or highlight the product’s value. This timely, tailored communication helps recover sales that might otherwise be lost while still delivering stellar customer experiences.
- Improved customer retention: Retaining existing customers is often cheaper than acquiring new ones, and automation tools help you keep existing customers engaged. Using platforms like MailChimp, you can set up automated sequences that re-engage customers at key moments, such as post-purchase follow-ups or reactivation campaigns. These tools make it easier to segment your audience and deliver messages that keep your brand top-of-mind.
- Making data-driven decisions: With automation tools, you get real-time data and insights that help you fine-tune your ecommerce business strategy. For instance, tools like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign track email open rates, purchase behaviors, and site interactions. You can then analyze this data to see what’s working and make decisions that boost your store’s sales.
- Enhance customer support: While automation tools can’t yet replace your Support team, they can augment customer service by answering routine queries quickly. Chatbots and automated responses can handle FAQs, order updates, and even refund requests. This approach saves your team time and provides customers with fast, accurate responses so your team can focus on more complex support requests.
- Increased sales: Product recommendations are a tried-and-true strategy to boost sales. Amazon’s automated recommendation system is one of the most well-known examples, but tools like Omnisend make it easy for smaller e-commerce brands to use similar tactics. Automation tools make it easier for you to trigger product recommendations based on customers’ past purchase behavior.
- Improved efficiency: Automating repetitive tasks like email marketing, customer segmentation, post-purchase workflows, and the like, frees up your resources so you can focus on strategy and growth initiatives. The result? Ecommerce businesses that scale without proportional increases in workload.
The best ecommerce marketing automation tools
Here’s the top ecommerce marketing automation software at a glance. Read on for an in-depth review of each tool:
- EngageBay
- Omnisend
- HubSpot
- Retainful
- ActiveCampaign
- SalesHandy
- ConvertKit
- MailChimp
- GoZen Growth
- Outfunnel
1. EngageBay
EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales and service CRM solution for growing businesses to acquire, engage and nurture web visitors to happy customers. It offers a complete marketing automation solution for small businesses to automate their process for building and retaining audiences.
Some Features:
- Workflow automation
- Easy to use visual builder for landing pages, lead forms, email templates etc.,
- Drip Campaigns – Email broadcast, email sequence, bulk emails
- Automated & predictive lead score
- Customer segmentation & personalization
- Advance prospect Tracking ( contact source, behaviour and more )
Pricing:
EngageBay comes with free and paid plans. The paid plan starts from $14.99 per user per month
Pros:
- Affordable all-in-one marketing, sales and customer service automation platform
- Created mainly for SMBs
- simplified pricing plans with a free plan
- User-friendly and instant customer support
Cons:
- Can offer more templates
- Need some optimization in contact management
- Need improvement on social post automation
2. Omnisend
Omnisend is a another great solution for small to mid-size e-commerce companies with high growth potential. It is easy to use and includes everything you need to expand sales, no matter the scale of your business. Send targeted emails and push messages, improve conversion, grow revenue, and provide personalized customer experiences for every journey.
Some Features:
- Personalizing emails
- Email & Page builder with drag and drop editor
- Dynamic discount code with unique coupons
- Automation splits
- Customer behavior analytics
- Popups & Forms
Pricing:
Omnisend offers free plan, its paid plan starts from $16
Pros:
- Pre-built automation workflows
- Easy integration with Shopify
- Ease of reporting and analytics
Cons:
- Setting up a contact list little bit time consuming
- Price little bit high for scaling business
- Restrictions to customize the template
3. Hubspot
Hubspot’s marketing automation software is engineered to maximize messages, automation, and scale – empowering companies to grow their business based on lead acquisition and satisfaction.
Some Features:
- Live Chat
- Prospect tracking and analyzing
- Lead scoring and personalized campaign management
- Email drip campaigns
Pricing:
Hubspot offers basic features at free plan. Paid plan starts at $50/month
Pros:
- Easy to integrate
- Easy to use the visual editor
- Powerful segmentation
Cons:
- Expensive
- Lack of A/B testing
- Pay for additional technical support
4. Retainful
When you run an e-commerce store and looking for an automation tool? Then Retainful is the best option. This is an end-to-end email marketing automation tool that can help you recover Abandoned carts, send Next order coupons & drive repeated sales in your store.
Some Features:
- Automated follow-up emails (Thank, Welcome & Win-back customers)
- Setup referral program to increase WOM sales
- Pre-built automation workflows & Email templates
- Customer journey builder & Analytics
- Drag & Drop email editor
Pricing:
Retainful offers the free-forever option. Paid plan starts at $19/month
Pros:
- Opt for Eommmerce store owners
- Easy to use
- Good customer support
Cons:
- Built for eCommerce store owners
- Can include more templates
5. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign’s email automation software helps small businesses and ecommerce companies create customized campaigns around their goals, whether it’s more sales, repeat purchases, or customer loyalty.
Some Features:
- Powerful prospect segmentation & personalization
- Campaign scheduling & Management
- Engagement Tracking
- Landing Pages/Web Forms
- Lead Capture Distribution
Pricing:
ActiveCampaign price starts from $15/month
Pros:
- Easy to use automation builder
- Integrated sales and marketing platform
- Easy to migrate from existing software you used
Cons:
- The learning curve is a little bit difficult for beginners
- The price will grow higher when number of contacts increase
6. SalesHandy
SalesHandy is another easy to use and simple Email Marketing Automation tool. Which helps you to build sustainable relationships with your customers. Its intuitive platform will help you to go from setting up your first campaign to analyzing your results and optimizing the rest of your workflow.
Some Features:
- Email Tracking for Gmail & Outlook
- Auto Followups
- Prospect finder for cold outreach
- A/B testing for better conversion
Pricing:
They offer price in two different manner
For Cold Emaiingl – starts at $25/month
For Email Tracking – starts at $9/month
Pros:
- Free to use email tacking tool
- Simple and easy to use
Cons:
- There is no free option in cold emailing
7. Kit
Kit (previously ConvertKit) is an email marketing platform for podcasters, YouTubers, and other digital creators. The service is used by more than 10,000 creators who collectively send over 100 million emails each month to their subscribers.
Some Features:
- Easy Integration
- Subscriber tagging
- Automated funnels
- Audinece segmentation
- Audience survey
Pricing:
Free upto 300 subscribers with basic features. Plan starts from $15/month
Pros:
- Simple automation rules
- Industry leading integration partners
- No charge for duplicate subscribers
Cons:
- Limited AB testing
- Less template customization
8. MailChimp
As we all already know Mailchimp is the largest marketing automation platform, it helps you grow your business by providing you with all of the tools needed to create, automate and send custom marketing emails in one simple platform.
Some Features:
- Bulk email sending
- Automated email responses
- A/B Testing
- User role and access management
Pricing:
It offers all the basic features for free. Paid plan starts from $9.99/month
Pros:
- Generous freemium plan
- Easy to use
- Clean interface and template editor
- Can import email templates
Cons:
- Subscription plans are high
- Basic email template designs
9. GoZen Growth
GoZen growth is an upcoming email marketing platform that offers a wide range of features at a great price. It helps users create goal-based email marketing campaigns with comparatively high success rates. Engaging user experience is the most significant advantage of this tool.
Some Features:
- Email personalization
- Customizable email templates
- Drag and drop editor
- Available team features
Pricing:
Free plan includes unlimited contacts with 11000 emails per month. The basic paid plan starts from $9 per month.
Pros:
- Advanced features under free plan
- Email list building is easy with pre built popups
Cons:
- New to industry
10. Outfunnel
Outfunnel is one of the finest marketing automation platform in this list. One-click automated email campaigns that you can use in tandem with your existing CRM to generate more leads and sales.
Some Features:
- Automatic lead scoring
- Web tracking on leads
- Email marketing sync with the CRM
- Connect your marketing data with sales data using app connector
Pricing:
Offer free 14 day trial, paid plan starts from $6/month
Pros:
- Syncs CRM data
- Unified lead score
- Task automation
- Great customer service
Cons:
- The learning curve is a bit difficult
- Limited functionality compared to other Software
Ecommerce marketing automation tools use cases
Here’s a breakdown of popular use cases and possible tools to implement marketing automation in your ecommerce store.
- Abandoned cart recovery: Tools like ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Drip, etc., can automatically send a series of emails reminding customers about items they abandoned in their shopping carts. Abandoned cart emails typically include limited-time offers or product reviews to nudge customers to complete their purchases.
- Welcome series: Automated welcome series emails provide an introduction to your products, offer a first-purchase discount, and share the brand story. Tools like Mailchimp and Omnisend make it easy for you to create multi-step email sequences to engage new subscribers and prompt them to make a first purchase.
- Product recommendations: Personalized product recommendations based on browsing or purchase history are proven to increase average order value (AOV). You can integrate MailChimp with your WooCommerce site to push cross-sell and upsell product recommendations.
- Post-purchase follow-up: Sending automated follow-up emails, such as “thank you” messages, instructions, or care tips for purchased products helps build trust and deepen brand awareness amongst existing customers.
- Win-back campaigns: Win-back campaigns (especially those that include personalized offers) help remind dormant customers why they love your products and nudge them to make another purchase.
- Anniversary campaigns: Sending personalized emails on occasions like birthdays or milestone anniversaries along with special offers can strengthen customer relationships and improve loyalty.
- Social media retargeting: You can sync your WooCommerce store with social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to nudge people who visited your store to head back and complete their purchases.
Which ecommerce marketing automation tools will you use?
If you run an ecommerce store, you’ll benefit from using automation software to take repetitive, time-consuming marketing-related tasks off your plate.
In this post, I shared our top picks for the best ecommerce marketing automation tools available. These tools handle everything from acquiring customers to setting up email campaigns, running A/B tests, designing landing pages, and much more.
Feel free to check out multiple ecommerce marketing automation tools and choose the ones that best suit your business’s specific needs!
