Ecommerce marketing automation platforms allow ecommerce marketers to automate tasks and workflows to improve efficiency and scale personalized marketing efforts.

In this blog post, we'll review ten of the best ecommerce marketing automation platforms based on features and benefits.

What is ecommerce marketing automation?

Ecommerce marketing automation is the use of tools to automate marketing tasks and workflows for ecommerce stores.

You can use it to automate marketing tasks across a variety of channels. Think email marketing, SMS, social media, paid media, and push notifications. Even traditionally static channels like your website and popup forms can benefit from marketing automation.

The benefits of ecommerce marketing automation

Ecommerce businesses can use marketing automation platforms to achieve their goals more quickly and effectively -- improving their bottom line and the customer experience.

1. Saves you time and money

Ecommerce marketing automation software can help businesses save a ton of time. By automating repetitive tasks, you can focus on more strategic tasks that require human capital.

With automation, you can find the best versions of campaigns without sifting through the data yourself. That can save you hours, or even days, of work per campaign.

2. More effective campaigns

Marketing automation allows your marketing communications to be more fluid. Email campaigns, ads, and landing pages can all change based on customer data to deliver personalized content your customers are most likely to act on.

Depending on your marketing automation software, these tools can respond in real-time to campaign performance. Then, they can deliver the most effective versions of campaigns. Better than what you could do by analyzing data manually.

3. Improves customer experience

Ecommerce marketing automation platforms can also help businesses improve their customer relationships.

By automating marketing communications, customers can get more personalized experiences. This can then lead to improved customer retention and satisfaction.

The 10 best ecommerce marketing automation platforms

The best ecommerce marketing automation platforms offer the ability to personalize marketing communications, automate campaign optimization, and gather insights from data and analytics. And they'll play well with the rest of your marketing software stack.

Here are a few of the top ecommerce marketing automation platforms for you to consider.

1. Emotive: for conversational SMS automation

Emotive is the best ecommerce marketing automation platform for SMS — Hey, can you blame us for mentioning ourselves first? 

Top features:

  • Create SMS campaigns triggered by customer behavior, such as abandoned cart reminders and order confirmation messages

  • Segment contacts to nurture customers with personalized drip campaigns

  • Optimize campaigns with A/B testing

  • Automated two-way SMS conversations for support and order placement right in the SMS thread

  • White glove service to help with strategy, software setup, and replies to your customers

2. Drip: for personalized email marketing at scale

With Drip, you can send highly personalized emails to your customers based on their interactions with your brand.

Top features:

  • Prebuilt workflows to automate standard email flows like your welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back, and more.

  • Perfectly timed personalized messages based on historical customer data and real-time actions.

  • Sync your Drip segments with Facebook Custom Audiences to deliver targeted social media ads

  • Segments update in real time for accurate customer targeting

  • Create dynamic forms and popups that target customers with the right offer based on behavior and other customer data

3. ActiveCampaign: for multiple messaging channels

ActiveCampaign allows you to personalize your marketing communications across messaging channels, including email, text, messaging, chat, and social.

Top features:

  • Send targeted messages across channels based on browsing and shopping behavior

  • Identify engaged prospects to grow your customer base with messages that suit their customer profile

  • Deliver transactional emails to maintain a consistent experience

  • Split test emails to discover which version leads to more engagement and conversions

4. Dotdigital: for automation across marketing channels

Dotdigital is ideal for personalizing marketing efforts across marketing channels, including email, Google and Facebook ads, SMS, and Mobile push notifications.

Top features:

  • Create highly personalized emails and ads

  • Segment customers based on product interests, channel, behavior, and more

  • AI recommends products that customers are likely to be interested in

  • Create tailored landing pages and forms

  • Live chat automates customer support and drives purchases

5. Ortto (formerly Autopilot): for personalization across the customer journey

Ortto lets brands personalize the entire customer journey across channels, including email, popups, SMS, and forms.

Top features:

  • Create dynamic customer journeys that change based on customer data

  • Automate personalized email, SMS, popups, and forms

  • AI suggests subject lines and timing for your email campaigns to boost engagement and conversions

  • Optimize towards your goals with automatic A/B testing

6. Blueshift: for paid and owned channels

Blueshift is powerful for personalizing marketing communications across email, push notifications, SMS, chat, in-app messages, paid media, website content, and even direct mail.

Top features:

  • Integrates across your tech stack to create comprehensive customer profiles

  • Artificial intelligence powers personalization across channels using rich customer data

  • Real-time customer segmentation for relevant marketing campaigns

  • Advanced A/B testing to optimize campaigns for maximum impact

  • Power paid ads with AI to maximize engagement

7. EX.CO: for the website experience

EX.CO is a great tool to deliver personalized website experiences to customers.

Top features:

  • Segment website experiences to show relevant content that resonates with each customer

  • Recommend the right products based on customer data to increase conversions

  • Understand customer preferences better with segments based on unique zero-party data

8. Pure360: for email and website personalization

Pure360 is an AI-powered platform that lets you create personalized experiences through email and on the web.

Top features:

  • Predictive analytics optimizes website experience in real-time to drive conversions

  • Recommend products based on customer history and active browsing behavior

  • Deliver automated email campaigns that match the website experience

  • Personalize content based on customer data, including demographics, preferences, lifecycle stage, and weather forecasts

9. Rebuy: for Shopify shopping carts

Rebuy is a marketing automation tool that reduces abandoned carts and improves average order value (AOV) by leveling up your shopping cart experience.

Top features:

  • Personalize upsell and cross-sell recommendations in the cart

  • Encourage larger orders with gifts earned by passing a cart value threshold

  • Increase AOV by recommending limited-time deals on relevant products post-purchase

  • Recommend products across the buyer's journey, including on your home page, product page, in the cart, and post-purchase

10. Nosto: for personalized omnichannel shopping experiences

Nosto provides personalized shopping experiences on your website, in emails, in-app, and in-store.

Top features:

  • Build segments to personalize content and product recommendations based on factors like category affinity and lifecycle stage

  • Optimize every element of your pages and campaigns for different audience segments

  • Test experiences across pages to see how different combinations of variables work together

  • Take advantage of dynamic product bundles to improve cross-sell conversions

Scale your efforts with the right ecommerce marketing automation tools

There are a ton of ecommerce marketing automation platforms on the market. We recommend mixing and matching, so you get your needs met for each channel effectively. While all-in-one platforms nicely wrap several channels together, they may have the features you need in each channel.

So consider what you need for each channel. Then choose the tools that will create the best experiences for your customers.

As you're considering which tool to adopt for your SMS automation, we'll be here to answer any questions. Emotive's advanced features drive engagement throughout the funnel. It's the best platform if you want to scale your SMS program.

Want to learn more? Sign up for a demo.