Shopify launches email marketing tool after breaking up with Mailchimp

Shopify has entered the email marketing game, and it’s a move that could make life easier for small Australian businesses, according to one e-commerce specialist. 

The popular Canadian e-commerce platform has been moving towards launching its own email marketing tool for some time, having broken up with Mailchimp back in March and rolling out a series of changes to its partnership program and API. 

Shopify Email will initially be available to select merchants, before becoming more widely available next year. The tool will be available first for free for English-language customers, although according to Adweek, the company has not yet made a “concrete decision” on pricing. 

The email marketing tool will form part of the Shopify Marketing suite of tools and give businesses the ability to run and track campaigns without leaving the Shopify platform, as well as send emails from their existing domain name. 

This will be one of the most powerful features of Shopify Email, according to Scott Kilmartin, an e-commerce and retail architect at RIVETING. 

“Being able to email from inside the platform and track from one dashboard simplifies things for small businesses and drop-shippers,” Kilmartin tells SmartCompany.

“Also, having the email come from the company domain name instead of email platform really helps build trust and reduce confusion with consumers.

“Shopify are making life easier, and likely cheaper, for their merchants.”

Source: Shopify.

Merchants using Shopify Email will have access to custom templates and ready-made brand assets, and will be able to monitor email open and click-through rates, how many items shoppers are adding to their carts, and how many they are buying. 

Automatic segmentation tools will also give businesses the ability to target shoppers based on their location, purchasing history and even abandoned shopping carts. 

Kilmartin says this new tool from Shopify has been on the cards for some time and he predicts the company will continue down the path of bringing more third-party services in house, in a similar way to how Amazon learnt from FedEx and UPS and then launched its own logistics offering. 

“At the high end on the Shopify Plus platform, I think we can expect to see Shopify bring out a muscled up product like Klaviyo — the most powerful of the e-commerce marketing tools — in the not too distant future,” he says.

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