So it’s no surprise that businesses continue to use email marketing as an effective marketing tool. But the challenge can be in choosing a platform from the many options. Some platforms focus on specific industries, while others market themselves as more general. In this article, we’ll be reviewing the capabilities of Omnisend, which was built for ecommerce.
What is Omnisend?
Omnisend is an ecommerce-focused marketing automation platform. As its name suggests, it specializes in omnichannel marketing—this means that instead of just offering email marketing, it offers the ability to combine email, SMS, and push notifications. It even supports retargeting on Facebook and Google Ads. Omnisend has intuitive tools for creating emails and forms without any coding, and its pre-built workflows enable customers to get started quickly and easily. As it’s built for ecommerce, Omnisend also has various features that make life easier for merchants—such as its Product Picker feature, which automatically adds products from a linked store, removing the need to manually upload images, descriptions, and prices. It also has a useful Brand Assets feature. Once a store is linked to Omnisend, assets including colors, fonts, and social media links are identified and automatically incorporated to all future emails. This ensures communications are always consistent while saving users significant amounts of time—customer feedback has shown this has reduced the average campaign creation time by 50%. Used by more than 70,000 businesses, Omnisend is one of the most popular automation tools and is among Shopify’s top five apps for email marketing, with a higher customer rating score than Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Privy, and Shopify Email.
Omnisend Features
The software has a long list of features and frequently adds new ones. Unlike some of its competitors, each plan includes every feature, instead of some being restricted to the paid tiers. These features include:
Email, SMS, and web push automationsPopups and landing pagesEmail campaignsSMS campaignsA/B testingCustomer segmentationGoogle customer matchFacebook custom audiencesSales and performance reports Pre-built and custom workflowsEmail and forms template library
Let’s take a closer look at some of these:
Email, SMS, and Web Push Automations
Automations are a powerful tool because they run on autopilot. Instead of manually emailing each new subscriber or sending product update in batches when you have time, automated workflows do it on your behalf. For example:
Reminders can be sent to people who add items to their cart but leave without buyingA welcome series workflow can trigger when someone joins your listDispatch notifications can be sent when a product has shippedAt a set interval after dispatch, a review request can be sent
All of this happens automatically, and Omnisend customers use these automations to great success. Omnisend has pre-built workflows as well as the option to create your own, so you can get started immediately.
Email Campaigns
Omnisend has a clean and intuitive email builder, and your brand assets can be automatically applied. If you have a compatible store, Omnisend’s email builder can import products at the click of a button—complete with image, title, description, and price. The ecommerce-specific features don’t end there though. There’s Product Recommender, which gives personalized recommendations to customers based on their order history. This encourages customers to become repeat buyers, growing your revenue without you needing to do anything. You’re also able to insert unique coupon codes right from inside the email you’re building. There’s strong audience segmentation too, allowing you to send specific messages to particular people based on a variety of factors—from purchase history to location. And if you’re not sure who to message, you can simply compare data with past reports to identify a target audience. In the image below, a message is being sent only to people who have an average spend of more than $100:
SMS Campaigns
Each of Omnisend’s plans includes the ability to send SMS. You can send them as standalone messages or in a workflow, offering seamless communication to your audience. One of Omnisend’s strengths is that it supports SMS to any country code in the world, so you can message your audience wherever they live. This isn’t true for all marketing automation platforms, with some only supporting a small number of countries. SMS is versatile on Omnisend—as with email, you have A/B testing, campaign boosting, and audience segmentation. Its tools for building your audience also work on SMS, including landing pages and popups.
A/B Testing
A/B testing helps you find the most effective messages for your audience, which can help you increase your click rates and sales numbers. Omnisend enables you to test your sender name, subject lines, channels, as well as the content of your messages.
App Market
Omnisend has a thriving App Market, with new integrations added all the time. These integrations make your store bigger and more powerful, and they’re categorized to help you find exactly what you need. There are integrations for:
AdvertisingLanding pagesShipping supportCustomer serviceReceiving reviewsAffiliate marketingLoyalty and reward programs
And much more! Omnisend also integrates with Zapier, giving you even more functionality for automations and compatibility with tools that may not be available on the App Market.
Omnisend Support
It has excellent support options and it works hard to ensure that every customer is able to succeed. Every user has access to real humans for support—something that other email marketing platforms don’t offer on the free plans. Both email and live chat are available on each plan, and the median response time to live chat is under 5 minutes. In addition, Omnisend sends out regular product updates to inform all customers of new features, and it has comprehensive support articles to help you with any question you have. Omnisend’s YouTube channel has a lot of videos to help people with email marketing, automations, and ecommerce, including:
Podcast episodesEmail marketing tipsTips and tricks for using OmnisendAdvice on building an email listAdvice on building a welcome series
Omnisend Free Plan & Pricing
Omnisend has three plans to choose from: Free, Standard, and Pro. Each one has the same features, but the Free plan has lower limits on how many messages you can send each month and how many people you can contact. The Free plan is ideal for smaller businesses or to try Omnisend. It supports up to 250 contacts (with an unlimited list size), 500 emails, 500 push notifications, and 60 SMS each month. Although the Free plan has all the same features as the paid plans, Omnisend’s branding will be on your emails and forms, and you won’t have access to a customer success manager. The Standard plan starts at $16 per month and you’ll be able to send 6,000 emails per month, unlimited push notifications, and reach up to 500 contacts. Omnisend’s branding will no longer be on your emails and forms. The Pro plan offers unlimited emails, unlimited push notifications, and you’ll receive additional SMS credits based on your monthly spend: however much you spend on your plan, you’ll receive the same amount in SMS credits. For example, if you spend $100 on the Pro Plan, you’ll get an extra $100 SMS credits. The Pro plan also comes with priority support, access to a customer success manager, and advanced reporting.
Omnisend Review – Final Thoughts
Omnisend is an intuitive marketing automation platform specifically built for ecommerce. It’s simple to use and packed with features to help you build an email list and grow your store. The email builder is particularly impressive, as it not only makes building emails easy but it also has features to help you sell more items. The ability to automatically import products and to recommend items to customers based on their order history can lead to increased sales with minimal effort. Omnisend makes it easy for new customers to get started, especially with its pre-built workflows and templates. It’s also refreshing to see that even users on the Free plan have access to email and live chat support forever, instead of being limited to reading knowledge base articles. To test Omnisend for yourself, you can try it free today.
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