Whether you’re planning to launch your very first online business or want to take your existing one to the next level, you shouldn’t overlook the importance of email marketing for reaching your customers regularly and surprising them with personalized offers that are more likely to turn them into returning customers. Fortunately, there is more than one platform that offers such complete services and can be integrated into your online store. Three of the most popular ones are Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Shopify Email. To help you make the right decision, we decided to compare these three platforms so that you can easily make sure you have the right tools at your disposal for sustainable growth.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful tool that allows you to improve your brand’s visibility and make sure your latest products or sales never go unnoticed. You get to stay in constant contact with your customers, build long-lasting relationships with them, and drive conversions. All you have to do is regularly send targeted, customized emails to certain recipients to promote products, share your latest news, or entice them with quality content.
If you’re just getting started with email marketing, you will have to:
-
- Build Your Email List: It’s important to build a community of people interested in your brand around you. You can entice them to subscribe by offering promotions or incentives as part of your sign-up form.
- Segment the Audience: Each subscriber has a unique set of characteristics, so you need to make sure your content varies based on the audience you are targeting. For instance, you can segment email recipients based on their purchase history or their engagement level.
-
- Come Up with Engaging Content: If you want to enjoy a high open rate and actual conversions, you will have to make sure your content is always valuable for the recipient. It can be about announcing a promotion that equals savings for the customer, delivering educational content, or introducing new products that may be the answer to an individual’s needs.
- Track & Analyze Performance: To keep improving your email marketing campaigns, it’s important to continuously take a look at open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Based on the numbers, you can adjust your strategy or try a new approach.
Why It’s Important to Choose the Right Platform
To build successful email marketing campaigns that can contribute to your brand’s growth, you will need the right platform for the job. You should pick carefully to benefit from:
- Ease of use. Especially if you’re not a technical person, it’s important to enjoy the services of a user-friendly platform that allows you to create, send, and monitor campaigns without needing in-depth knowledge.
- Automation features that can help you improve overall engagement and save time. These features allow you to send timely, custom emails based on the actions or behaviors of a certain customer. It can be a welcome email sent when the person subscribes or a cart abandonment reminder for those who don’t complete their purchase.
- Solid analytics & reporting tools. You can’t evaluate accurately the success of your campaigns without benefiting from detailed analytics. They should cover a variety of key metrics in depth.
- Advanced segmentation and personalization. If you want to boost engagement, being able to easily segment your audience and deliver highly personalized campaigns is essential.
- Smooth integration with other tools. The right email marketing platform will have no problem working with the CRM system, e-commerce platform, or social media channels you already use. That makes it easier to handle your marketing efforts.
- Scalability. As your business grows, everything changes, including your email marketing needs. It’s best to pick a platform that already offers the extra emails, the larger list management, or advanced features you may need in the future.
Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Shopify Email?
To help you choose the right email marketing platform for you, we have decided to compare three major contenders: Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Shopify Email. All these choices have something valuable to offer, so it’s important to take into account all aspects.
Pricing Comparison (Email & SMS)
Let’s start with prices, as budgeting your email marketing campaigns is one important step you can’t skip. It’s good to know that all three platforms offer a free plan, but what’s included in that plan varies: Klaviyo offers up to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month, Omnisend the same, and Shopify 10,000 emails per month. Once you use up these free features, you will have to pay $20/month for 500 contacts in the case of Klaviyo, $16/month for 500 contacts in the case of Omnisend, and $1 per 1,000 emails after the free limit is reached for Shopify Email.
As far as SMS pricing is concerned, Klaviyo and Omnisend offer pay-as-you-go plans at $0.0075 and $0.015, respectively, per US SMS. However, this feature is not available for Shopify Email. Additional costs are also important to mention. For Klaviyo, you will have to pay extra for advanced analytics and more contacts, while Omnisend offers free SMS credits as part of its paid plans. For Shopify Email, the costs scale based on the email volume handled.
Key takeaways on pricing:
- Shopify Email is the cheapest option for stores sending under 50,000 emails/month.
-
- Klaviyo is the most expensive but puts at your disposal advanced analytics and segmentation.
- Omnisend ensures a good balance between costs and features, offering free SMS credits in paid plans.
Campaigns: Bulk & Targeted Email Features
Before deciding if Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Shopify Email is the right choice for you, you also need to analyze how easy it is to get that first marketing campaign ready for sending. All three platforms can handle bulk email campaigns. In the case of Klaviyo, they are highly customizable, Omnisend allows you to use drag & drop to set your campaign while Shopify Email is built into Shopify.
When it comes to creating the content of your emails, all three choices come to your aid with pre-built templates: over 100 in the case of Klaviyo, over 50 in Omnisend’s interface, and a few basic Shopify templates in the case of Shopify Email. If you also want to use dynamic product feeds, all three platforms give you this option. The main difference is that Klaviyo auto-inserts them while Shopify Email pulls them from the store.
Overall, Klaviyo is best to use by large Shopify stores that need deep data insights, Omnisend is most suitable for eCommerce brands looking for automation and multi-channel options while Shopify Email works best for small Shopify stores looking for affordable and simple email marketing.
Key takeaways on campaigns:
-
- Klaviyo and Omnisend offer the most advanced personalization options for Shopify users.
- Shopify Emails is the simplest option, so it’s great for beginners.
Segmentation & Audience Targeting
To boost engagement and conversions, segmentation and audience targeting are essential. All three platforms up for comparison offer basic segmentation, but if you want more than that, you will have to consider either Klaviyo or Omnisend. Klaviyo impresses with AI-driven analytics while Omnisend ensures advanced segmentation through behavioral and purchased-based models. When it comes to data syncing with Shopify, all three platforms can ensure real-time updates.
Key takeaways on segmentation:
-
- Klaviyo has the most powerful segmentation: it’s AI-based and uses predictive data as well as behavioral insights.
- Omnisend is a strong contender for Shopify stores, but it’s less data-rich than Klaviyo.
- Shopify Email ensures only simple filtering based on data such as repeat customers or purchase history.
A/B Testing (Email & SMS)
You can’t decide if your marketing campaigns are as successful as you’d want them to be without A/B testing. The results of such testing can help you optimize email campaigns, improve open rates, and boost conversions. Fortunately, both Klaviyo and Omnisend offer A/B testing, not only for content but also for subject lines and SMSs. Shopify Email is the only one that doesn’t support any type of A/B testing.
Key takeaways on A/B testing:
- Klaviyo and Omnisend offer full A/B testing for email and SMS.
- Shopify Email has no A/B testing which means it’s less useful for optimization.
Automation Flows (Simple & Advanced)
Automation flows are essential for any eCommerce store that wants to engage customers, increase sales, and save time. They are pre-set emails triggered by specific customer actions. Usually, they are used for welcoming new subscribers, recovering abandoned carts, nurturing leads with custom content, or re-engaging inactive customers.
In this department, Klaviyo impresses with over 30 pre-built automation templates and the option to create simple flows through basic drag-and-drop actions. For more advanced flows, it supplies AI-based predictions and deep Shopify integrations. At the same time, Omnisend ensures over 20 pre-built automation templates, the possibility to create simple flows easily, and advanced cross-channel automation for the advanced flows. Shopify Email doesn’t ensure any type of automation and only some basic workflows for welcome and abandoned cart emails via Shopify Flow.
Key takeaways on automation:
- Klaviyo offers the most advanced automation, with AI-driven flows and deep Shopify integration.
- Omnisend is strong for Shopify automation, especially for multi-channel needs (email + SMS).
- Shopify Email lacks real automation flows and relies on Shopify Flow.
SMS Marketing
SMS marketing is a high-converting channel that can help your brand engage customers instantly. It boasts 90%+ open rates as opposed to 20% for emails and ensures a higher ROI with abandoned cart recovery and flash sales.
Shopify doesn’t offer SMS marketing options, so if you’re interested in using this channel, you’ll have to consider Klaviyo or Omnisend. Both can help you create SMS campaigns, offer SMS automation, and support multi-channel marketing – email + SMS + Push. The only difference is that Klaviyo doesn’t support MMS. Omnisend does but only in the US.
Key takeaways on SMS:
-
- Omnisend and Klaviyo are best for SMS marketing, including automation and segmentation.
- Omnisend is the only one supporting MMS, but only in the US.
- Shopify doesn’t support SMS at all.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, picking between Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Shopify Email is a matter of deciding what’s best for your needs. If you’re a small store working with a limited budget, Shopify Email might be the best choice for you. On the other hand, if you will most likely need advanced automation and AI-powered insights, Klaviyo might be better suited to cover all your needs. At the same time, Omnisend is the right choice for you if you value achieving a balance between features and cost.
If you’re still not sure which of these marketing platforms is best for you, don’t worry! We have extensive experience working with all these tools and we are just one email or phone call away. Contact us and we will work together to define the unique needs of your business and then decide if Klaviyo, Omnisend, or Shopify Email delivers the right set of features to fully satisfy those needs. Once we agree on the finer details, we can start fully implementing your email marketing strategy. All that will be left to do is sit back and enjoy the results.