If you want to invest in an affordable yet effective email marketing tool for your Shopify store, then, this guide on how to execute the Mailerlite Shopify plugin is for you. Using an email marketing tool is perhaps one of the easiest ways to optimize customer engagement and increase sales revenue in your e-commerce stores.
Using the Mailerlite platform comes with a great advantage because whilst it is simple and effective to use, it is quite affordable – making it a great option for eCommerce businesses on a budget. Yet, affordability is not all the tool is prized for. The Mailerlite platform is still packed with numerous features to enhance your campaigns and workflows such as marketing automation and superior tracking features.
Furthermore, the Mailerlite tool offers great customer history segmentation – allowing you to track all your store activities – with an individual subscriber or collectively. So below, we’ve shared a detailed guide on how to seamlessly integrate the Mailerlite Shopify plugin with your Shopify store.
Key Mailerlite Features
As mentioned above, the Mailerlite tool is packed with a selection of email marketing tools. But for the lack of sophisticated automations, Mailerlite is still effective at enhancing customer engagement. Some of the key features you will enjoy from the tool include contact syncing, attribute mapping, opt-in forms, and site tracking.
Contact Syncing
As soon as the Mailerlite Shopify integration process is complete, your store’s contact list will be synched to the Mailerlite list. Before this happens, you will get the chance to pick ether you want all customers to be synced or only those that accept marketing.
Furthermore, the synched contact list will be connected to pre-built segments that feature customers who accept marketing, first-time customers, customers with zero purchases, and so forth. After the syncing, the lists are updated 24/7 with every subscriber activity on your site – ensuring you always have access to accurate data.
In addition to the contact syncing feature, Mailerlite offers an advanced seamless product importing feature as well. This feature allows you to automatically import products for your Shopify store to your drag & drop newsletter builder without having to do so manually.
Attribute Mapping
The Mailerlite tool is also designed to give you insight into customer behavior – allowing you to tailor the right campaigns. The tool supports Boolean attribute mapping to give you precise data based on yes and no answers.
Single/Double Opt-in confirmation
To make the integration user friendly anywhere, the Mailerlite tool offers a double opt-in process in its subscriber management interface. The potential subscriber will need to sign up on the site’s form and confirm via email sent to their inbox. However, each form comes with an ON/OFF option separately.
Furthermore, for more customization, the Mailerlite tool allows you to edit the double opt-in email and double opt-in thank you page. The double opt-in email and thank you page are editable using a drag and drop editor similar to the one you use for newsletters. Whilst it is impossible to resend a confirmation link, you can manually add a subscriber by clicking on the subscribe button in your potential customer’s profile.
Tracking
When it comes to tracking, Mailerlite has impeccable site tracking features. In addition to the basic activity tracking, the tool offers additional advanced tracking features. The e-commerce sales tracking allows you to analyze how your campaigns affect sales and how you can improve your content.
Furthermore, the platform’s advanced sales tracking feature allows you to see what types of products and content draw in more revenue and tailor your campaigns based on this data. You can simply add this feature to your process by enabling tracking in the schedule step.
When the integration is enabled, the checkbox for this feature is checked by default. The tracking can be done through the subscriber tab, dashboard, campaign, and automation reports. In addition to the sales tracking, the Mailerlite platform allows you to employ automation triggers based on purchases.
With this feature, you can send your customers target messaging and offer that are triggered by their recent purchases. Along with the sales tracking feature, the automation triggers come in default when you execute the integration. However, if you don’t care for them, you can easily disable each feature by simply ticking on the checkboxes.
How To Set Up The Integration
The Mailerlite Shopify integration process is extremely easy and quick to execute. To connect the two, simply follow the steps below;
- Go to the Shopify app store and install the Shopify plugin
- Navigate to the Apps section and select Mailerlite
- Enter your Mailerlite API key (you can access it from your Mailerlite account)
- Chose your subscriber group where you want to save Shopify customers and then click connect
- In the activated integration, you will enjoy default sales tracking, product importing, automation triggers based on purchase features.
Alternatively, you can opt for other apps such as Zapier to execute your integration. However, these apps, unlike the native integration, allow you to only pick certain triggers. The only advantage is that they are cheaper. So, they work for businesses that only want certain solutions and not the whole package.
Comparison With Other Shopify Integrations
Mailerlite offers the best value when it comes to email marketing tools for e-commerce stores – especially Shopify. The platform offers three common pricing plans which cost between $29 per month for the basic one and $299 per month for the advanced plan – with the basic option covering up to 2,500 subscribers and the advanced plan covering up to 10,000 subscribers. That’s a pretty good value for an email marketing tool!
However, as mentioned above, this is not all the platform offers. Sure, Mailerlite doesn’t have the most advanced automation, but, it has strong suits in areas such as customer segmentation, pop-up forms, adding products to emails, and even, its impressive sales tracking features. Nonetheless, the Mailerlite Shopify integration still lacks in the area of automation. With the tool, you can employ automation such as segmentation based on repeat customers and so forth.
Yet, you will not enjoy deeper trigger features such as page visits. Additionally, unlike many other platforms, the integration set up uses API keys rather than a simple URL. Mailerlite also has alternatives such as Constant Contact. When compared to Mailerlite, Constant Contact is a little bit more costly. The lowest you can pay for Constant Contact is only $20 per month. This is a little bit cheaper than Mailerlite, right?
Well, this is not exactly the case because, with this cost, you will only get 500 subscribers as opposed to Mailerlite’s 2500 subscribers. However, Constant Contact also comes with unique features. These include survey, social campaigns, and even drag and drop editor that you can easily add in products and coupon codes. One can say that Constant Contact boasts the best event management features.
However, just like Mailerlite, it is not the best option when it comes to advanced automations – which is a little bit of a disappointment when compared to the pricing. Similar to Mailerlite, Sendinblue offers a feature-rich yet, affordable option. It especially does a great job at multi-channel marketing whilst marinating an impressively low cost. You can send out up to 40,000 emails a month with as low as $25.
Furthermore, the platform is packed with excellent communication features such as SMS campaigns, email campaigns, landing pages, Facebook ads, and even live chat. These messages can range anywhere from marketing content to payment confirmation or shipping notifications.
Additionally, the platform allows you to set up more advanced segments such as including certain campaigns only to a certain group of customers based on their behavior. Nonetheless, it still lacks a bit with workflows such as adding products to your emails or smoother product listing in order confirmations.
Conclusion
For a business looking for a simple and adequate email marketing plugin, the Mailerlite Shopify is a good choice. With Mailerlite, you don’t have to dig into your pocket, but, your investment still bears great value. It is especially a good choice for beginners and startup ecommerce businesses.
Whilst the Constant Contact platform is not necessarily a worthy contender when it comes to the cost, it has its strong suites elsewhere. The platform still offers a simple automation interface just like Mailerlite; however, it is ideal for businesses that want to enjoy more event management features such as selling tickets or services.
Sendinblue on the other end has a powerful communication feature design, with its SMS and email functions; it offers an efficient and consistent way to engage customers. Furthermore, its ultra-affordable plans make it perfect for any business size. However, it lacks quite a bit for businesses looking for advanced workflow features and so, it may not be the best choice in this case.