It’s a universally known secret that the key to eCommerce success is building a solid relationship with the customers. Therefore, businesses must put organic practices to build a bond with their customers.
Gone are the days when tracking was done manually to greet and treat customers at the end of every stage of their purchase journey. Instead, email Automation Tools have emerged to help you reach the right customers throughout their journey.
From thanking a customer after their first purchase to sending a re-engagement email to win back lost customers, Retainful will help you in building a solid bond with the customers.
With premium plans starting at $19/month, Retainful offers lots to your eCommerce store. We’ll take a closer look at the features and see how they can help you strengthen the relationship with your customers.
Retainful Email Marketing
Retainful is an Email marketing automation platform available for WooCommerce and Shopify stores. You can automate Abandoned cart & post-purchase email campaigns, prevent cart abandonment, acquire new customers & drive repeated sales with Retainful.
A quick trip back in time – Retainful began as an Abandoned cart recovery tool and has now evolved into a complete Email marketing automation tool.
You might ask, is Retainful just like all the other marketing automation platforms available on WooCommerce and Shopify?
YES, it is an email marketing automation platform!
And NO, it is not like other email marketing platforms available in the market.
Have you ever seen an email marketing tool that can automate your email campaigns, offer discounts, use popups and run referral programs?
Retainful does all of it, and that’s what makes it unique.
So, Is Retainful The Right Tool For My eCommerce Store?
As much as we want to say yes to that question, we also want to point out some flaws we noticed, which we’ll discuss in the following sections.
We want you to consider all the factors – features, pros & cons- before deciding.
Features
Retainful comes with many features that can help you deliver a personalized experience to customers through constant engagement.
Automated email Campaigns
You can create multiple automated email campaigns using Retainful and engage with customers throughout their journey. Pre-built email templates, pre-built automation workflows and its Drag & Drop email editor will help you edit your emails and launch a campaign within minutes. You can automate campaigns like,Â
Abandoned Cart Recovery emails
Cart abandonment can impact your revenue, which is why recovering abandoned carts is crucial. You can send automated cart recovery emails using Retainful and convert lost sales into revenue.
Retainful also lets you add dynamic coupon codes to your emails to help you encourage customers to recover their cart.
Order Follow-Up emails
Engaging with customers even after they complete a purchase is crucial. Have them talk about you, or they’ll switch to a new store.
Sending automated order follow-up emails will help you keep them in a loop. You can ask for feedback, educate them on the product they purchased, & recommend products with an order follow-up email.
Thank You emails
A simple thanks can work wonders. Send automated emails thanking customers for their purchases. You can add a Next order coupon to your thank you email & drive repeated sales in your store.
Winback emails
You can send automated re-engagement emails using Retainful & bring back lost customers to your store. You can also send a discount coupon via win-back emails & re-ignite their interest to return & start purchasing again.
Welcome emails
Welcome and thank your customers with a beautiful after they complete their first purchase, create the best first impression by offering a first-purchase discount & make them return for more.
Referral Program
Customers trust recommendations from their friends. Turn your existing customers into brand advocates, generate positive word of mouth & acquire new customers via Referrals.
You can reward both the Referrer and the Referral with various discount rewards like percentage discounts, fixed price discounts & free shipping discounts.
You can send Referral email notifications to both the Referrer and Referral.
Retainful lets you promote your referral program in various ways. For example, you can display a chat-like widget on your website to make it easier for the customers to discover it. And also, you can show a popup with a referral link on your thank you page after a customer completes his purchase.
Check all the analytics right from the details of the Referral members to the total revenue earned through referrals on a clean dashboard.
Next order coupons
Retaining existing customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Send Next order coupons via thank you emails & encourage customers to return for more.
These are single-use coupon codes, and once redeemed, customers cannot use them again. Thanking customers for their purchase and offering a Next order coupon will help you retain customers.
Like Referrals, you can offer three types of discounts to your customers using Retainful – Percentage, Fixed price & Free shipping.
You can set an expiry date for Next order coupons, send emails to remind customers of the discount, and create FOMO.
Popups
Grab customers’ attention with attractive popups. Collect email addresses to build your email list, prevent them from abandoning their cart & more.
Cart abandonment can cause a massive impact on your sales. But, even though it is hard to stop, you can prevent it from happening using Exit-intent popups.
These popups work on exit-intent technology, i.e., a popup will be triggered when the cursor is moved closer to the exit button or clicked.
Email marketing is not possible if you don’t have a definitive email list. Instead, use an add-to-cart email collection popup to collect customer email addresses and engage with them later using Retainful.
Popups in Retainful are only limited to WooCommerce and are only available on premium versions. That’s a bit of a downside.
Automation workflows
Thanks to the pre-built automation workflows of Retainful, you can launch your email campaign within minutes. Every email campaign has its pre-built automation workflow to help you reach customers on time.
If you want to add some changes to the pre-built workflows or create a new automation workflow, you can easily do it using the Customer journey builder.
Visualize your customer’s journey and build custom email paths to convert customers using the customer journey builder. You can add Triggers, Wait, action, Emails, Conditional splits, & Coupons.
Not just the workflows, Retainful has ready-made email templates so you can send professional-looking emails to customers easily.
Wait, so the templates are available? What if I want to customize or personalize them?
Well, Retainful comes with visual Drag & drop email editor. You can customize the pre-built email templates to suit your brand style. Or options are available within the email editor to help you design an email from scratch.
You can add images, gifs, logos, discount coupons, social sharing buttons, order details & more using the Drag & drop email editor.
Retainful has shortcodes if you want to add customers’ names, addresses, order summary & more. Personalize your email with shortcodes & increase open email rates.
Smart Reporting
How will you know what’s working and what’s not? You cannot simply launch a campaign and be idle until you start getting the results.
You must check how your campaign is performing and what results they’re returning. Keeping a keen eye on them will help you improve or revamp your campaign.
Luckily Retainful comes with intelligent reporting & real-time analytics. Check your campaign results swiftly. Retainful reports will help you build automation campaigns tailored for the right audience.
Not just the basics, you can get in-depth reports on your workflow campaign. For example, see how many customers entered and exited your workflow. This will help you make necessary changes to increase the user-friendliness of your campaign.
Get personal with individual emails, and check individual email KPIs on Retainful. For example, open email rates, click-through rates, and unsubscription rates can be tracked with Retainful. These metrics will help you craft better emails, and you can also check how many emails have been delivered.
Let’s Get To The Truth – Pros & Cons Of Retainful.
More than 12000+ users trust Retainful to automate their emails. Numbers don’t lie. Retainful has many Pros and a suitable marketing platform irrespective of the size of your business.
But we noticed a few flaws, too. So consider those before you go ahead. Alright, let’s get to it.
Pros
Free version – Not many automation tools offer a free version. However, Retainful has a free version with 300 contacts & you can send 500 emails per month.
Contacts – You can reach out to 25000 contacts. That’s not the limit, either, and you can add more touches with an additional price of just $5.
Referral program – You won’t see many marketing automation plugins with a Referral program. Acquire new customers through Referrals and cut down on your customer acquisition costs with Retainful’s Referral program.
Active coupon – You can dynamically add coupons to your emails. Offer three types of discounts via coupons & delight customers.
Following order coupon – Retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. So send coupons for future purchases & encourage customers to return again & again.
Integrations – You can connect Retainful with your favorite email providers like Hubspot, Mailchimp, Klaviyo & many more.
Dedicated onboarding – You can get a personal walkthrough of the Retainful platform from their onboarding specialists.
Pricing – Retainful is neither too expensive nor too cheap; it has competitive pricing compared to other plugins on the market and is flexible. You can pay based on the contacts you want.
Automation – Get the best automation experience with Retainful. Use pre-built automation workflows to get started quickly and send emails on auto-pilot to engage with customers throughout the journey.
Email Editor – Retainful comes with a drag & drop email editor. You can customize your emails, make them look professional & increase your conversion rates.
Reporting – Retainful has a clean, insightful dashboard that displays your campaigns & email performance in real-time. You can also check the revenue earned through the abandoned cart recovery & referral program.
Cons
Broadcast – Retainful doesn’t have an email broadcast feature. Reaching out to multiple customers in one go is impossible, but it’s just for now. Yes, we heard that they’re working on the Broadcast feature & it’ll soon be available on Retainful.
Popups – Popups can be very useful as they serve various purposes, from collecting email addresses to preventing cart abandonment. Retainful has popups, but it is only limited to WooCommerce stores and not Shopify stores. Also, you cannot get the popups to feature in the free version of the plugin, which is a premium feature.
Platform limitation – A major downside of Retainful is that it is only available on WooCommerce & Shopify. If you own a Shopify plus, BigCommerce or Wix platform, you’ll have to wait until they release it on other platforms.
So, these are the Pros and Cons of Retainful.
What do you think? Is it suitable for your business?
Hold on. We’ll also tell you about Retainful’s pricing, and then it’ll be easy for you to make the right decision.
Pricing
What really impressed us was the pricing plans of Retainful. Retainful is the perfect fit for you if you are new to email marketing.
Its Free Forever version has everything you need to start, it offers 300 contacts, and you can send 500 emails monthly using the Free version.
Even the premium plans of Retainful are very affordable, making it the right choice for small and large businesses.
Starter
The Starter plan for Retainful is priced at $19/month, it offers up to 2000 contacts, and you can send unlimited emails. Contacts are not limited, and you can 1000 additional contacts for just $5.
You can create up to 10 automation workflows with the Starter pack, and you’ll get priority email support to guide you.
Features available on the Starter plan are,
Growth Plan
The Growth Plan is priced at $49/month, and you’ll get 5000 contacts ($5 for 1000 additional contacts). Create 25 automation workflows with the Growth plan and get your queries sorted out with Live chat.
In addition to the Starter plan, you’ll get features like,
Professional Plan
You’ll get up to 25000 contacts on the Professional plan. There is no limitation on Automation workflows, and you’ll get a dedicated onboarding specialist to give you a personalized walkthrough of the platform.
You can book an onboarding session with one of their experts and get a walkthrough now.
That’s the pricing plan of Retainful. Quite simple and straightforward, right?
Wait, here comes the best part.
Retainful has a flexible pricing method, too. You can pay only for what you use.
You can see the change in pricing plans based on the contacts selected. If you feel the legacy pricing plans do not meet your contacts requirement, you can customize & choose a plan based on the contacts you need.
If you’re uncertain, you can get started with the Free plan, see how it works, and then upgrade.
Final thoughts
Is Retainful the right marketing platform for your store? Would we recommend it? Absolutely, yes. 12000+ merchants trust Retainful worldwide, so that should tell you something about its performance. No matter the size of your business, Retainful is a great choice. It has the capabilities to meet all your marketing needs and help you stay ahead of your competitors.
Retainful’s best features were Automated email campaigns, Dynamic coupons, Referral programs, and Popups. Manage all your email marketing needs in one platform, Retainful.
Good Luck!
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