So you’ve decided to harness the power of email marketing to improve sales and get more repeat business.

Great move, because email consistently ranks as one of the best channels for engaging and nurturing eCommerce customers.

Today’s customers expect good communication from the brands they do business with, both in the pre-purchase and post-purchase stages of the buying journey. Guess what most D2C and eCommerce brands use to connect with these audiences? Email.

Email is also:

• The primary customer retention channel for 80% SMBs
• The marketing tool with the highest ROI (gives an average return of $42 for every $1 spent)
• The ideal fix for abandoned purchases (can help retailers recover 79% of lost sales)

Given the amazing benefits of email, there’s no shortage of email marketing tools to choose from. But it can definitely be overwhelming to compare and find the best one for your business.

This guide will list the criteria for choosing the right email marketing software for eCommerce. By the time you finish reading, you’ll be clear on the steps to buying software for your email campaigns.

10 factors to consider when choosing an email marketing software

Before you review and evaluate your options, it’s good to familiarize yourself with the criteria of a good email marketing tool. Here are 10 critical factors of email marketing software that matter for eCommerce businesses.

1. Ease of use

Simplicity is the name of the game when it comes to eCommerce software. And your email marketing tool shouldn’t be an exception. Look for a tool that's intuitive and simple to use, like the email marketing software from AfterShip Marketing.

AfterShip provides a drag-and-drop editor that lets you quickly build email marketing campaigns. There’s nothing technical about it; just pick elements like product list block and countdown timer and drop them into your campaign. A preview function helps you see campaign elements in real-time so you can adjust them according to your preferences.

2. Content creation

Another aspect to consider is the resources available for content creation. Ideally, the tool should provide you with a good variety of pre-designed and easily customizable templates. Pay close attention to design customizations—you want email software that lets you brand your marketing messages.

You also want the ability to personalize your email campaigns. The software should offer dynamic content blocks for order details, product recommendations, and other elements. That way, you can provide a memorable experience to your customers.

For example, AfterShip lets you display attractive product recommendations in your emails. You can use these to recommend best-selling items or display recently viewed products. The dynamic content block is designed to help you boost sales and recover carts.

3. Sending limits

It’s also important to ensure the tool will let you send emails to all subscribers on your list. For instance, if you currently have 5,000 subscribers, you’ll want an email marketing solution with a higher upper limit or—ideally—no limit at all.

AfterShip lets you send unlimited emails on each of its plans (more on this later). In addition, it gives you the flexibility to scale the number of contacts up or down as needed.

4. Audience segmentation

Smart eCommerce marketers segment their email lists. They know that different customers have different preferences for communication. Segmentation allows them to send relevant, customized, personalized messages that boost their revenue.

Consider an email marketing solution that gives you easy but powerful ways to segment your audience. For example, AfterShip lets you create audience segments seamlessly based on multiple filters such as customer type, subscription status, etc. This lets you put unique content in front of different customers to drive sales.

If you’re using Shopify or Shopify Plus, you can also add tags to organize your contacts list in AfterShip. Tags can be linked to people’s interests, preferences, purchase frequency, and other attributes.

5. eCommerce functionality

Does your preferred email marketing software have workflows to make your life easier? For example, can you insert products from your online store in a few clicks? Remember, eCommerce businesses have specific needs, so it’s essential to choose a tool that can facilitate your business.

AfterShip was designed with eCommerce in mind. With AfterShip, you get workflows like automated price drop emails to maximize sales and re-engage customers. It’s also easy to plug products, collections, and offers into your messages, as well as A/B test content variables to identify winning content for your campaigns.

6. Automation

Sending emails to different customers manually can be a tedious process. With this in mind, be sure the email marketing tool you choose offers a variety of automation. This lets you create a sequence of emails that get sent (or ‘triggered’) automatically when specific criteria are met. Examples of triggers are newsletter signups or certain product purchases.

AfterShip offers a variety of automated email sequences to help you maximize conversions. You can use it for:

• New subscriber offers
• Cart abandonment emails
• Back-in-stock emails
• Products upsell and cross-sell
• Thank you and win-back emails
  

These emails are an excellent way to deliver tailored experiences since they’re based on data about customers’ behaviors and actions. Plus, they free up your time to focus on more important tasks, such as expanding your sales channels. What’s more, emails sent using AfterShip have a 99% average deliverability rate, so you can be sure your emails will reach customers’ inboxes.

7. Regulatory compliance

You’re probably already aware that you must abide by the law when it comes to collecting and using customer data. Therefore, you should ensure the email marketing solution you choose allows you to comply with standards and regulations.

If you’re considering AfterShip, you’d be glad to know that it:

• Has ISO 27001 certification – follows rigorous standards for safeguarding privacy.
• Is GDPR compliant – protects data and privacy of European customers.
• Is SOC 2 compliant – offers high data security and integrity.

8. Analytics

With email marketing practices constantly evolving, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse. More than anything, an email marketing tool should tell you how your campaigns are performing and if there is any room for improvement.

AfterShip lets you monitor the health of your email strategy through key metrics like open rate, unsubscribes, purchases, and conversion rate. You can then tweak your engagement strategies accordingly and use KPI data to optimize future campaigns better.

9. Integrations

While researching email marketing solutions, don’t forget to check out the integrations they offer for third-party business apps. For example, you may want to integrate your email software with your website platform, your landing page builder, and your CRM.

AfterShip connects with other applications easily, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. Users can also sync data between AfterShip’s own apps, which include a landing page builder, SMS software, referral program tool, and more.

10. Cost-effectiveness

Email marketing tool cost is another factor that should influence your purchasing decision.

While some tools are free up to a certain list size, they often lack the features required to build an enticing campaign or sequence.

The best email marketing tools let you start small and offer many vital features. For example, AfterShip offers conversion tools, newsletter and automated emails, campaign analytics, and much more on its Essentials plan.

You can also invest in a high-tier plan as you scale up or shift back to Essentials from an advanced package as you prune your email list. Moreover, you can staff members to the software for $10 per user per month.

Do email marketing right with AfterShip

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to connect and build relationships with your customers. But pursuing it successfully requires finding the right tool to create engaging pre- and post-purchase campaigns. AfterShip Marketing provides all the features fast-growing retailers need to generate high ROI from email marketing.

With powerful automation capabilities, you can send personalized emails at scale without worrying about committing errors. You can also target your campaigns to specific groups of customers, such as repeat buyers or VIP customers. AfterShip makes it easy to build and manage your campaigns, and we also provide analytics to help you measure and improve consistently.