First let's discuss why a newsletter campaign is important to your Ecommerce Marketing campaigns. The most basic reason is because it works and increases sales. That's why you run your online store, right? On average, we see a 300% increase in sales on the day a Newsletter Marketing Campaign goes out. Considering this will happen 1-2 times per month it can account for 10% or greater in monthly sales volume.

Other reasons:

  • Newsletters keep your brand, product or service fresh in your customer's mind
  • Many people aren't ready to buy yet, but they want signup for when they will be ready
  • Newsletters are easily shared and forwarded to friends and family, especially if there's some killer offers

How Often Should I send my Newsletter?

Consider these rules of thumb:

  • Anything less often than every 2nd month is not often enough. People begin to forget about you, your site and your brand.
  • Everything more often than once a week is likely to be too often unless you have specifically asked for your clients permission or you are running a dailydeals style website..

Default Magento Newsletter

Magento Logo

The Good

  • It's FREE
  • It comes with Magento
  • It's a starting point!
  • It can be extended with tools and extensions
  • Difficult to integrate with 3rd parties like Facebook

The Bad

  • It's very simplistic
  • It doesn't have any statistics or tracking abilities

Link to the extension: NA

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor Logo

The Good

  • They're based in Sydney, Australia - we should be biased right?
  • They do make an awesome product that is pretty much on-par with Mailchimp
  • There is a Magento Extension available

The Bad

  • The magento extension is outdated and there are reports it's not compatible with Magento V1.6 onwards
  • They're pricing model is still slightly more expensive than Mailchimp

Link to Pricing: MailChimp Pricing

Link to the extension: CampaignMonitor Magento Extension

MailChimp

Mailchimp Logo

The Good

  • The Magento extension is up-to-date and well supported
  • You can't beat their "Free Forever" plan - ie: up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 mails out a month for free.
  • Great, easy to use statistics and analytics
  • Receive notifications for subscribes and unsubscribes - read more
  • Easy integration into your Facebook pages - read more

The Bad

  • The extension is not a 2 minute install and requires some additional snippets to your templates
  • You need to think about how to structure your groups, if you want them

Link to Pricing: MailChimp Pricing

Link to the extension: Mailchimp Magento Extension