A successful ecommerce store relies on more than just great products—it also relies on ensuring people know about them. Marketing drives brand awareness, propels customer engagement, and converts browsers into buyers.
Ecommerce marketing tools are key to making these efforts work. You can reach prospective and existing customers by sharing interesting content on social media, sending personalized texts, and delivering persuasive emails. This article covers the various types of ecommerce marketing tools—from ecommerce platforms to SEO software—and offers insights on specific tools you can consider.
What are ecommerce marketing tools?
Ecommerce marketing tools are software solutions that help you showcase your products, attract, engage, and retain customers, and track the success of your marketing campaigns. These tools can schedule social media posts, customize email communications, and understand customer preferences through data analysis.
Types of ecommerce marketing tools
- Ecommerce platforms
- Email marketing and SMS messaging
- Social media management
- Analytics
- Content and SEO
- Customer relationship management
- Conversion rate optimization
If you understand the range of ecommerce marketing software available, then it can help you determine which to invest in. Here are the main types to consider:
Ecommerce platforms
Ecommerce platforms let you set up, manage, and scale your online stores. These tools, including Shopify, integrate various functionalities, from product listings to checkout processes, and feature elements like inventory management, payment gateway integration, customer service widgets, marketing tools, and analytics to monitor store performance.
All of these can help an ecommerce business operate efficiently, improve customer experience, and drive more sales.
Email marketing and SMS messaging
Email marketing and SMS marketing tools enable an ecommerce business to send personalized, targeted communications directly to customers’ inboxes and mobile devices. These tools typically offer marketing automation, segmentation, and analytics features, letting businesses craft email marketing campaigns or SMS blasts that resonate with different audience cohorts.
When used effectively, they can boost engagement and customer retention for an online store, leading to more successful launches, promotions, and sales.
Social media management
A social media management tool helps ecommerce businesses curate content, schedule posts, and interact with customers across multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard. They include analytics reporting, automated publishing, and customer interaction tracking, making it easier to maintain a consistent and active social media presence.
Using a social management tool, an ecommerce business can boost its social media marketing efforts, gain valuable insights into customer preferences, and increase its brand visibility and reputation across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
Analytics
An ecommerce analytics tool collects data and provides insights into customer behavior and the performance of marketing campaigns. Analytics tools generally offer real-time data tracking, customer segmentation, conversion tracking, and behavior analysis, enabling online businesses to fine-tune their strategies.
Harnessing the power of analytics, your business can optimize marketing campaigns, improve customer targeting, and make data-driven decisions to boost return on investment (ROI).
Content and SEO
Content and SEO tools help ecommerce businesses optimize online content to rank higher in search engine results. These tools provide features for keyword research, on-page SEO analysis, link building, and performance tracking, letting you target relevant search queries and attract organic traffic.
Effective search engine optimization strategies can increase product visibility and attract a larger audience.
Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools help ecommerce businesses store, manage, and analyze customer data to build more meaningful relationships and foster customer loyalty. These systems often feature contact management, interaction tracking, and lead management, enabling a 360-degree view of the customer journey.
Tapping into a CRM, your ecommerce business can gain a better understanding of its customers, and group them by shared interests or shopping habits to send tailor-made email nudges that feel personal, not pushy.
Conversion rate optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) platforms are specialized ecommerce tools designed to increase the percentage of visitors who take a desired action on an ecommerce website, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. These tools offer features like A/B testing, heat mapping (visual representations of website interaction), and user feedback collection to help you better understand user behavior and refine the online shopping experience.
Leveraging CRO tools can lead to higher conversion rates, better customer retention, and increased revenue.
Top ecommerce marketing tools
- Shopify
- Mailchimp
- Klaviyo
- Hootsuite
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
- ActiveCampaign
- Brevo
- Optimizely
The online retailer toolbox is brimming with sales and customer engagement solutions. Here are the top ecommerce marketing tools for your business, based on customer reviews:
Shopify
Shopify empowers budding entrepreneurs and established brands by providing a comprehensive commerce platform that supports growth at every stage. It’s a one-stop shop for creating an online store, offering a drag-and-drop store builder, customizable templates, and a vast app store for added functionality.
Key product features include:
- Online store builder. Bring your storefront to life with a drag-and-drop interface and customizable design templates—no coding required.
- Built-in marketing tools. Reach and engage your audience with SEO, social media integration, and email marketing tools backed by powerful analytics to guide your strategies.
- Centralized business operations. Streamline your back office with tools to manage inventory, track payments, and view real-time business insights, all from one place.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing platform designed to help you drive awareness, consideration, and conversions through email. It offers automated email sequences that send emails based on customer behavior (such as abandoned shopping cart emails), AI-driven content creation for efficient and tailored messaging, and detailed audience segmentation to keep messages relevant and targeted.
Mailchimp is ideally suited for small to medium-sized businesses looking to improve their email marketing efforts with advanced marketing automation and analytics capabilities.
Key product features include:
- Ecommerce automation. Automate targeted email campaigns based on specific customer interactions, such as viewing a product or abandoning a shopping cart.
- Generative AI content. Use AI to quickly generate customized email content that fits your brand and marketing objectives.
- Advanced segmentation. Try segmentation features to target your audience more effectively based on purchase history, behavior, and predicted preferences.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an AI-powered marketing automation platform. It helps you personalize customer interactions across channels like email, SMS, and mobile push notifications by leveraging detailed customer data for targeted marketing efforts.
Klaviyo is suited for retail, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, and ecommerce businesses of all sizes that aim to grow their audience and increase customer lifetime value.
Key product features include:
- Customer data platform (CDP). Unify and activate your customer data to deliver personalized experiences and make data-driven decisions.
- AI-driven product recommendations. Analyze customer behavior and preferences to recommend products they love.
- Product review capabilities. Consolidate and analyze your customer reviews in one place to build trust and drive conversions.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management platform that provides content scheduling, publishing, and analysis features across multiple channels. It offers time-saving tools for scheduling posts, AI-driven content creation, and team collaboration. It offers detailed performance analytics to prove ROI and optimize your marketing strategy.
Hootsuite is ideal for businesses and social media managers aiming to increase their reach, engagement, and revenue through social media.
Key product features include:
- Advanced analytics. Compare paid, organic, and web metrics to understand how you drive value at every stage of the customer journey.
- Content scheduling. Design, schedule, and publish posts across all your networks from a single dashboard, using templates and AI for captions and hashtags.
- Social selling. Identify leads, build relationships, and close sales on social media to turn your social media presence into a sales channel.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics offers detailed insights into website and app usage, helping you understand user behavior and optimize digital experiences. It features analytics capabilities, including built-in automation for fast data insights, predictive modeling to forecast user actions, and privacy-safe data handling.
Google Analytics is ideal for businesses of any size that want to leverage data to make decisions and get a comprehensive view of customer interactions.
Key product features include:
- Predictive capabilities. Use machine learning to forecast future customer actions, such as purchases or churn.
- Proactive insights. Automatically identify significant data trends, changes, and growth opportunities within your analytics to make informed decisions quickly.
- Data collection and management. Collect, organize, and manage your data with support for JavaScript libraries, mobile SDKs, and data import from third-party systems.
Hotjar
Hotjar shows your website users’ real-time behavior, offering visual insights and direct feedback to help you understand how people interact with your site. This includes heat maps to visualize clicks and scrolls, recordings of user sessions, and tools to collect user survey data.
Hotjar is ideal for website owners, UX/UI designers, and digital marketers who want to dive deeper into user behavior to optimize website performance and improve user experience.
Key product features include:
- Heat maps. Visualize where users click, move, and scroll on your pages, helping identify what catches attention and what gets ignored.
- Recordings. Watch real user sessions to understand how people navigate your site, spotting usability issues and opportunities for optimization.
- Surveys and feedback. Gather user insights through surveys and feedback tools to make informed decisions about your website’s design and content.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO toolset that provides suggestions to rank higher in search results and attract more traffic to your website. It offers tools for competitive analysis, website audits, keyword research, content discovery, and rank tracking.
Ahrefs is a good choice for SEO professionals, content marketers, enterprises, agencies, SaaS companies, and ecommerce businesses looking to boost online visibility, understand competitors’ strategies, and uncover growth opportunities.
Key product features include:
- Site audits. Audit your website to uncover SEO issues and optimize your site for search engine visibility and user experience.
- Keywords explorer. Find valuable keywords your customers are searching for and analyze their search volume, keyword difficulty, and ranking potential.
- Content explorer. Discover content ideas and link opportunities by exploring what content performs well in your niche and identifying potential backlink sources.
Semrush
Semrush is a digital marketing platform that offers tools for SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC, and social media marketing. It provides insights and tools to grow organic traffic, create engaging content, unveil competitors’ strategies, optimize advertising spend, and manage social media presence effectively.
Marketers looking to boost their online presence, execute successful marketing campaigns, and improve their SEO and digital marketing strategies can benefit from Semrush.
Key product features include:
- SEO tools. Conduct SEO audits, track SERP positions, uncover millions of keywords, and analyze backlink profiles to improve your website’s search engine ranking.
- Market research. Analyze your competitors’ traffic, discover their promotion strategies, and find gaps in keywords and backlinks to gain a competitive edge.
- Advertising. Optimize your PPC campaigns by finding the best keywords, monitoring competitors’ ad strategies, and managing your advertising spending more efficiently.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign provides marketing, sales, and CRM tools designed to improve customer experiences through email marketing, marketing automation, and personalization. Use it to automate complex processes, deliver personalized communications, and engage customers across channels.
ActiveCampaign is beneficial for business owners looking to boost marketing efforts, improve lead nurturing, and boost sales engagement with advanced automation and personalized customer journeys.
Key product features include:
- Marketing automation. Automate your marketing campaigns to deliver personalized emails and content.
- CRM and sales engagement. Use a CRM system to manage leads, score them based on engagement, and automate sales processes to close more deals.
- Ecommerce integration. Connect with ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce to automate marketing campaigns, personalize shopping experiences, and recover abandoned carts.
Brevo
Brevo is a digital marketing and sales platform designed to cultivate lasting customer relationships. It offers a suite of tools for email marketing, SMS campaigns, automation, and sales management—all aimed at improving customer engagement.
Brevo is suitable for businesses looking to create marketing campaigns, communicate with customers through chat, manage sales pipelines efficiently, and send transactional emails.
Key product features include:
- Email marketing. Design and send email campaigns without extensive design skills.
- Sales platform. Keep track of your sales pipeline, leads, and deals with a sales platform to focus on your sales targets and customer management.
- Conversations and engagement tools. Engage with your customers directly using one-on-one chat tools, live chat widgets, and automated chatbots that provide round-the-clock support.
Optimizely
Optimizely is an all-in-one marketing operating system designed to help you create content, launch experiments, and deliver high-quality web experiences. The platform powers the entire marketing lifecycle with content orchestration, experimentation, and monetization capabilities.
It’s particularly suited for businesses looking to harness artificial intelligence to craft web experiences that resonate with customers and maximize ecommerce profitability.
Key product features include:
- Web and feature experimentation. Use experimentation tools to test, learn, and optimize digital experiences, ensuring continuous improvement.
- Customized and configured commerce. Create personalized ecommerce experiences that attract and retain customers.
- Integration capabilities. Integrate with various apps and tools like Google Analytics, Stripe, and Figma.
Ecommerce marketing tools FAQ
What are the benefits of using ecommerce marketing tools?
Ecommerce marketing software can help streamline operations, personalize customer interactions, and improve data-driven decision-making to boost sales and customer retention.
Which platform is best for ecommerce marketing?
The best ecommerce marketing platform depends on your specific needs and goals. However, Shopify is a popular choice for its comprehensive features and scalability.
Is Shopify a CRM or CMS?
Shopify is primarily an ecommerce platform CMS (content management system) with CRM integration capabilities to manage customer relationships as part of its suite of services.