Many e-commerce store owners struggle to find the best email marketing app for Shopify that scales along with the business and is efficient in email campaign management.
Especially if you are just starting out, it can be daunting to choose the right Shopify email marketing app while there is a sea of options in front of you.
These apps offer everything from advanced automation to detailed email marketing analytics for Shopify.
In this blog, we attempt to save you from the paradox of choice and help you choose the best Shopify email marketing app that fits your needs. We listed the 10 best email marketing apps for Shopify and picked apart their features – analyzing and comparing them.
Launch your email campaigns in minutes with Retainful’s beginner-friendly interface and automation. It’s easy to start.
Why do you need a Shopify email marketing app?
You need a Shopify email marketing app to do your marketing at scale and streamline your marketing efforts.
Over the years, an email marketing app has evolved to do more than just send emails. Modern apps come with a suite of features designed to address the growing demands of your business.
By using an email marketing app for Shopify, you eliminate the need to manually send emails to every customer. You just have to set up the email automation, and your Shopify email marketing campaign will run on its own.
Here are 5 more reasons why you should have a Shopify email marketing app by your side.
Limited functionalities of Shopify Email
While Shopify Email provides basic tools for email marketing, these often lack the advanced capabilities needed to do email marketing efficiently and get more conversions with minimum effort.
A dedicated email marketing tool for Shopify offers enhanced functionalities like advanced email segmentation, automation, email customization, and detailed Shopify email marketing analytics, which are not typically available in Shopify’s default setup.
Email Automation
Shopify email automation tools make it handy to have timely and consistent communication with your customers and free up your valuable time to do other important tasks.
In a Shopify email marketing platform, emails are triggered automatically and delivered to the inboxes of targeted customers. This allows you to communicate with the customers at every stage of their journey easily.
Scalability
As your business grows, the volume of customer interactions and the complexity of email marketing also increase. A good email marketing app for Shopify will handle the expanding customer base and increasing marketing needs.
Whether you’re expanding your product line, entering new markets, or experiencing a surge in customer acquisition, the best email marketing app for Shopify adapts seamlessly.
Personalization and targeted marketing at scale
Shopify email marketing services enable store owners to tailor their communication based on customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history, ensuring that each message resonates personally with its recipient.
Turning generic email blasts into powerful, personalized email marketing leads to higher engagement rates, increased customer loyalty, and improved conversion rates.
Cost-effective solution
Most top Shopify email marketing apps offer scalable pricing models based on the size of your Shopify email list or the volume of your email activity. This means you can start with a lower-cost plan and only scale up as your business grows.
Why Shopify Email is not enough?
Shopify Email is a built-in app for Shopify stores that allows users to create, send, and track email marketing campaigns.
If you are just getting started with email marketing in Shopify and your business is small-scale, you can try Shopify Email for starters.
Here are the reasons why Shopify Email is not enough to do successful Shopify email marketing.
Limited email automation capabilities
Shopify Email offers basic automation, but it falls short compared to dedicated email marketing apps that provide advanced workflows, triggers, and conditional logic.
Shopify Email provides basic automation, such as sending a welcome email when someone subscribes. However, it cannot handle multi-step workflows that involve several conditional branches and actions.
You can’t make visually appealing emails.
Shopify Email provides a limited selection of templates, which might not meet your business’s unique branding needs.
It also lacks advanced design tools that allow for intricate customization of Shopify marketing email elements.
How to choose the best app for Shopify email marketing?
Choosing the best email marketing app for Shopify requires careful consideration of several key factors to ensure it aligns with your business needs and goals.
Here are some pointers to help you choose the right email marketing app for Shopify:
- Ease of use
The best Shopify email marketing software should have a user-friendly interface, making it easy for you and your team to create, manage, and monitor campaigns without a steep learning curve. - Shopify integration
Look for an app that integrates seamlessly with Shopify, ensuring smooth synchronization of customer data in real time.
Shopify email marketing integration ensures that your email marketing campaigns are always informed by the most current data, such as recent purchases, customer browsing behavior, and shopping preferences. - Growth adaptability
The app should be able to scale with your business, handling increased volume and complexity as your Shopify store grows.
Growth often means using more tools and platforms for various business functions. A scalable Shopify email marketing solution should integrate smoothly with these new tools, maintaining smooth data synchronization. - Email deliverability
Ensure that the Shopify email marketing tool has a good reputation for high deliverability rates so your emails directly land in the customers’ inboxes and not their spam folders. - Pricing structure
Evaluate if pricing is proportional to the features it offers and if the Shopify email marketing software offers a pay-as-you-grow model.
A more expensive Shopify email marketing tool might provide advanced automation and segmentation features. Check if those features are essential for your business and worth the extra expense.
With insights on how to choose the right email marketing app for Shopify, let’s explore the 10 best apps for Shopify email marketing, its features, and cons.
10 Best Email Marketing Apps for Shopify
The best email marketing apps for Shopify are:
- Retainful
- Mailchimp
- Omnisend
- Constant Contact
- Drip
- Klaviyo
- Brevo
- ActiveCampaign
- Sender
- Adoric
Let’s analyze each Shopify email marketing app in detail.
1. Retainful
Retainful is one of the best email marketing apps for Shopify, tailor-made for ecommerce businesses. It provides a complete solution to all your email marketing needs – from automation and segmentation to all sorts of post-purchase emails that engage customers at each stage of their journey.
At the heart of this best free email marketing app for Shopify is a seamless email automation setup, where you can set up triggers and entry rules to ensure the email reaches the right customer at the right time.
With its pre-built automation workflows and templates, your Shopify email marketing campaigns will be ready to launch in minutes.
Its abandoned cart recovery feature is the best in the market – boasting a high cart recovery rate and recovered sales.
It features targeted sign-up forms and popups that allow you to capture email addresses and grow your email list.
It gets even better with its advanced segmentation feature that allows you to group your customers based on many pre-defined criteria, making it possible to send personalized emails.
What about crafting emails, you may ask. It’s as effortless as it gets with an intuitive drag-and-drop email editor. No coding required.
Why choose this Shopify email marketing app?
Choose Retainful if you need a simple yet elegant solution to all your email marketing needs. It has easy-to-setup email marketing automation for Shopify and segmentation, which does not require any learning curve whatsoever.
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Free plan: 500 Emails
- $9/month: 10,000 Emails
- $19/month: 20,000 Emails
- $49/month: 50,000 Emails
Launch a Retainful-powered email campaign with easy-to-setup automation and pre-designed templates.
2. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the top email marketing software for Shopify and also an all-encompassing digital marketing hub, giving you multichannel campaign support, website-building tools, reports, and Shopify automated email marketing.
This best email marketing platform for Shopify boasts advanced automation and segmentation features like multiple triggers and predictive email marketing analytics for Shopify, though some users might find it not so beginner-friendly and experience a rather slow learning curve.
Apart from being an email marketing tool for Shopify, Mailchimp offers additional marketing automation tools like ad retargeting on social media platforms and Google, extending the reach of your marketing efforts.
One of Mailchimp’s most outstanding features is that you can have a taste of almost all its key features with a free plan.
When it comes to Shopify email marketing integration, it offers 300+ integrations with the most widely used marketing and e-commerce software providers.
Why choose this best email marketing Shopify app?
Mailchimp can be your choice if you want advanced segmentation and targeting for your email marketing campaigns in Shopify. As it offers features beyond email marketing, like CRM, landing pages, and social media management, pick this app if you plan to do advanced email marketing for Shopify.
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Free plan: 1000 Emails
- $4.60/month: 5000 Emails
- $6.87/month: 6000 Emails
- $137.41/month: 150,000 Emails
To know about top Mailchimp alternatives and start a cost-effective email marketing in Shopify, read our blog – The 5 Best Mailchimp Alternatives in 2024.
3. Omnisend
Omnisend is an omni-channel Shopify marketing platform tailored for e-commerce businesses. It provides email marketing automation for Shopify, allowing ecommerce businesses to set up automation workflows and send all types of Shopify automated campaigns.
It allows you to include dynamic content in your Shopify automated emails using customer data and behavior, ensuring each recipient receives a tailored message.
Omnisend stands out in its marketing automation capabilities. This best free email marketing app for Shopify combines multiple channels like email, SMS, and web push notifications into a single workflow, allowing you to send Shopify automated campaigns.
Why choose this Shopify email marketing solution?
Choose Omnisend as your Shopify email marketing platform if you are planning to expand your marketing efforts to SMS, push notifications, and do multi-channel email marketing in Shopify.
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Free plan: 500 Emails
- $16/month: 6000 Emails
- $59/month: Unlimited Emails
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email marketing platform for Shopify that offers user-friendly design tools, extensive templates, and robust Shopify email marketing analytics, catering primarily to small and medium-sized businesses.
This Shopify email marketing tool provides features to grow your email list in multiple ways, from website sign-up forms to integrations with social media platforms.
You can also use this best free email marketing app for Shopify as an event management tool, where you can create, promote, manage registrations, and send follow-up emails for events.
Some users consider Constant Contact to be pricier compared to its competitors, especially for businesses that are just starting or have limited budgets.
Why should you choose this best app for Shopify email marketing?
Choose Constant Contact as your email marketing platform for your Shopify store if you want more than email marketing – it also has an event management feature.
Its advanced features and pricing indicate that it would be more suitable for large-scale businesses that plan to do advanced email marketing for Shopify.
Price ties and Email Volume
- $12/month – 500 emails
- $55/month – 1000 emails
- $200/month – 5000 emails
5. Drip
Drip is an email marketing platform for Shopify that excels in creating advanced Shopify email automation workflows. It enables store owners to build personalized customer journeys and send personalized emails easily.
This best Shopify email marketing platform can also act as your email list segmentation tool, allowing efficient management of mailing lists with easy-to-use filters and the ability to save segments dynamically.
However, some users find that there is a learning curve, particularly for those new to email marketing.
When it comes to the pricing structure, there are no free long-term options, only a 14-day free trial, which might limit accessibility for startups with smaller budgets.
Why should you choose this top email marketing app for Shopify?
Choose Drip as your Shopify email marketing tool if you want a sleek platform that handles all your email marketing needs without any fuss.
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Flexible pricing starting with $39/month for unlimited emails.
6. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an email marketing app for Shopify that specializes in creating advanced Shopify email automation workflows.
The standout feature of this email marketing platform for Shopify is its sophisticated segmentation rules and email flows, allowing for in-depth customization and targeted email marketing in Shopify. But may pose a challenge to the beginners of email marketing.
Another feature to be appreciated is the multi-step automation paths, which include both email and SMS options, allowing for continuous and personalized customer engagement.
Why should you choose this best Shopify email marketing software?
Choose Klaviyo for its data-driven Shopify automated campaigns that enable you to send highly targeted emails, making it a good choice for e-commerce businesses planning to do targeted email marketing in Shopify.
Price tiers and email volume:
- Free plan – 500 emails/month
- $45/month – 15,000 emails
7. Brevo
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is a Shopify email marketing software and has evolved to become a comprehensive customer relationship management suite.
Brevo offers a clean interface for creating Shopify email automation workflows, with options to create your own or use one of the pre-built templates.
This best shopify email marketing tool may not be the best fit for beginners due to its comprehensive feature set.
Brevo is an affordable email marketing app for Shopify, especially for small businesses or those who don’t require heavy usage of email marketing tools.
Why should you choose this best email marketing solution for Shopify?
Choose Brevo if you need a cost-effective email marketing solution for Shopify that allows you to send personalized emails, whether you’re a small business looking to maximize engagement or a large enterprise seeking efficient Shopify automated campaigns.
Price tiers and email volume:
- Free plan – 300 emails/month
- $25/month – 20k emails
- $65/month – 20k emails + Push notifications and landing page features.
8. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing service for Shopify that supports communication across multiple channels like email, SMS, and chat,
This best Shopify email marketing app’s automation is highly regarded for its sophistication and flexibility. It allows for creating intricate Shopify email automation workflows based on a wide array of triggers and conditions and sending Shopify automated campaigns.
The word is that this best Shopify email marketing platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it accessible for both new and experienced users.
In addition to Shopify email automation tools, ActiveCampaign offers CRM features for managing customer relationships, lead and contact management, deal tracking, and customer insights.
ActiveCampaign offers a lot of features at competitive pricing, starting as low as $9 a month when billed annually.
Why should you choose this best Shopify email marketing platform?
With advanced Shopify automation workflows, CRM integration, and in-depth reporting, ActiveCampaign is ideal for businesses seeking a powerful email marketing service, and do multi-channel email marketing in Shopify.
Price tiers:
- A free plan is not available.
- $29/month – 1000 marketing contacts
- $49/month – 1000 marketing contacts + Facebook ads + Popups
9. Sender
Sender is a user-friendly email marketing app for Shopify known for its simplified email marketing features.
The key selling point of this best free email marketing app for Shopify is its competitive pricing. It provides a free tier, and its paid plans are budget-friendly, making it an attractive option to do Shopify email marketing for small businesses.
The simplicity of this top email marketing app for Shopify contributes to a gentle learning curve. Many users have found it straightforward to get started with Sender.
Like other apps, it also provides email marketing automation for Shopify with pre-built workflows. It also provides a drag-and-drop email editor and a custom HTML editor.
Why should you choose this best email marketing Shopify app?
Choose Sender if you need a straightforward, cost-effective email marketing solution for Shopify to send targeted email campaigns. It’s perfect for those prioritizing ease of use and need an affordable email marketing app for Shopify.
Price tiers and email volume:
- Free plan – 15k emails/month
- $15/month – 30k emails/month
10. Adoric
Adoric is an email marketing tool for Shopify with an emphasis on user-friendly design. Its key features include customizable email templates, intuitive drag-and-drop builders, and segmentation for sending personalized campaigns.
The best email marketing app for Shopify enables audience targeting and segmentation based on factors like visitor types and traffic sources and helps you to do targeted email marketing in Shopify.
Adoric also provides different types of efficient email collection, such as lightbox popups, slide-in scroll boxes, multi-step messages, inline forms, and more.
Why should you choose this best Shopify email marketing app?
Choose Adoric if you need a versatile, user-friendly email marketing app for Shopify and to create engaging and visually appealing pop-ups, forms, and personalized messages.
Price tiers:
- 14-day free trial is available.
- $9.99/month – Included all features
Allow email automation to assist you from now on. Use Retainful and send all kinds of personalized emails in minutes.
Wrapping up!!
Each of the 10 best email marketing apps for Shopify we’ve explored offers unique features and benefits, catering to different needs and goals.
Every app stands out in a unique way – some are simple and easy to use, some boast advanced automation features, and some have a plan and affordable pricing structure. Your priorities, like whether you want to do multi-channel email marketing in Shopify, hold the key to selecting the best email marketing app for Shopify.
By carefully considering your marketing needs, you can leverage these tools to effectively engage with your customers, drive sales, and grow your Shopify business.
Step 1: Search for the email marketing app you’ve chosen.
Step 2: Click on the app and then select ‘Add app’ to install it on your Shopify store.
Step 3: After installation, you’ll typically be prompted to set up the app.
This can involve connecting your existing email list, setting up your sender email address, and configuring other settings specific to the app.
The best email marketing app for small businesses would be Retainful because of its affordable price structure and easy-to-use automation and segmentation features.
You can use a Shopify email marketing app’s automation features to set up different types of email campaigns. For setting up automation, define the triggers for each automated email. For example, an abandoned cart email might be sent a few hours after a cart is left unchecked. Customize the timing and conditions for each trigger based on your audience and objectives.
The best way to start email marketing in Shopify is to choose a compatible email marketing app, build your email list with sign-up forms, segment your audience for targeted campaigns, and create engaging branded emails.
Retainful email marketing app is specifically tailored to ecommerce businesses and offers e-commerce-specific features like abandoned cart recovery, next-order coupons, and email automation campaigns sent for every step of the customer journey.
You can get more email subscribers on Shopify by encouraging customers and visitors to sign up.
Here are some strategies to do that:
1. Optimize sign-up forms
2. Add an option to subscribe to your emails during the checkout process.
3. Promote your newsletter on your social media channels.
4. Implement exit-intent pop-ups that appear when a visitor is about to leave your site
Retainful can be a good alternative to Mailchimp as it offers a beginner-friendly easy-to-setup automation and segmentation features. Ecommerce-specific features like abandoned cart recovery is also a major plus.
You can automatically send post-purchase emails like order-confirmation using a Shopify email marketing app. Once you setup the subject line, to and from address, and email content, the emails will be automatically triggered and sent to customers who have made the purchase.
Shopify introduced its own email marketing tool, Shopify Email, which is integrated into the Shopify admin. It offers some free usage – like sending a limited number of emails, but additional usage beyond the free limit incurs charges.
When looking for the most cost-effective email marketing service for Shopify, it’s important to consider not just the price but the value you get for that price.
