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    Is WooCommerce good for email marketing?

    Guide
    by Lewis Reeves QA & Testing

    WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms going, with perhaps a quarter of all online retailers using it.

    One of the reasons behind its popularity is that it is simply a plugin for WordPress, and was developed by the same people. It undergoes the same regular updates and has a dedicated army of contributors building themes and plugins for it.

    And best of all, it’s free to download and use, although you’ll have to pay for many of the services and payment processing systems if you want a fully functional eCommerce site.

    In its vanilla installation, WooCommerce does have some functionality that will allow you to set up mailing lists and send out messages (just as you can with WordPress). There are also a host of specialist plugins that will add automation and functionality to your emailing, ideal if you are setting up a newsletter.

    All the main email platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Sendinblue, Mailerlite, Drip and Omnisend can be integrated with WooCommerce, too. You can be sure that if your preferred mail handling solution isn’t on this list, it will almost certainly have an integration, and if it doesn’t, you should be able to migrate your database to a new platform with relative ease.

    If your favourite email newsletter platform happens to be MailPoet, you’re really in luck, as WooCommerce acquired the company in 2020, and it’s now a seamlessly integratable plugin that works like clockwork (although not at the expense of its competitors).

    As WooCommerce is all about customer interaction, it’s the perfect platform for gathering email addresses, letting customers opt in and out with ease, and categorising customers based on their purchasing habits, geographic location and demographics – all of which is a gold mine when it comes to focused, effective email marketing.

    It’s all about the method

    So in summary, the answer to the question raised by this article is a resounding yes. Whether you’re already using an email platform, you’re looking to start using one or you want to embark on a more manual, vanilla style email marketing campaign, you won’t have any issues with WooCommerce, any more than you would with WordPress – i.e. none at all.

    Don’t forget that with an eCommerce platform, you’re probably more likely to have a comprehensive mailing list because email is part of the sales process as well as the more regular ways of building your list, like offers, promotions and alerts.

    Whether you create a successful email marketing campaign isn’t ultimately down to the platform, it’s down to how you use it. We’ve written extensively on all aspects of running an email list, with subjects like why it’s important, how to generate ideas, the importance of page speed, when to send emails and UX considerations.

    The final piece of the jigsaw is how your emails look, and how they display on the whole range of operating systems, devices and browsers out there.

    All the major email platforms allow you to use your own custom made HTML email templates, so your messages are branded to your specifications and look great on all devices. It’s one area where some outside expertise can really come in handy, so why not find out more about having your email templates professionally coded?