Email marketing automation software is a system that eliminates tedious, repetitive marketing tasks and lets both small and large eCommerce businesses focus on higher-value work. The software itself is quite extensive, comprising a wide range of processes and components.
Due to the great variety of email marketing automation systems on the market, their functionality may differ significantly, but there are still some basic features that are common to nearly all of them.
Basic Features of Each Email Marketing Automation Software:
# Visual styling and ease of use
When choosing an email marketing automation platform, users first pay attention to whether the interface is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate. This matters because a simple, user-friendly interface makes the job easier for everyone. It's important that non-technical users without HTML knowledge can still build emails on their own.
# Automation
Automation is one of the core features of any email marketing automation software. It helps nurture leads, engage existing customers, and send welcome or thank-you messages automatically. To implement this, software vendors rely on autoresponders, which save their customers a significant amount of time and money.
# Segmentation
Segmentation is another essential feature of email marketing systems, allowing for better-targeted campaigns. This function lets users divide subscribers into groups based on criteria such as purchase history, geolocation, click-through behavior, subscription message data, autoresponder feedback, and more.
# Reports & analytics
Reports and analytics are among the key features of an email marketing system, helping businesses understand their audience better and measure campaign effectiveness. Typically, reports track metrics such as click-through rates, response rates, time spent reading an email, trending content, and other engagement data.
As a result, it becomes easier to make data-driven decisions instead of relying on guesswork.
# Cart Recovery
Since the eCommerce industry loses a lot of potential revenue due to abandoned carts, email marketing automation systems are a proven solution for recapturing lost sales. Flexible email templates and fully customized reminder messages let businesses follow up with customers who haven't finished their online purchase.
To provide this functionality, an email marketing automation system needs to retrieve data on abandoned orders. With API2Cart's order.abandonment.list method, it becomes easy to get lists of abandoned orders from stores, along with information about the users who didn't complete their purchase.
# Integrations
An email marketing automation system can deliver its full potential only when it is closely integrated with the other systems online retailers already use. This results in easier workflows, better automation, and greater consistency across systems.
For instance, integrations with other cloud-based software enable data sharing between applications. In eCommerce specifically, integration with shopping carts such as OpenCart is essential for working with rich, up-to-date customer data — which is exactly why queries like "email marketing OpenCart" and "OpenCart email marketing" come up so often among store owners looking to connect the two.
However, connecting with multiple systems involves a lot of technical work, and so does maintaining those integrations over time. In most cases, it's far more efficient to use a ready-made email marketing software API and entrust shopping cart integration to a dedicated provider rather than building and maintaining it in-house. Businesses exploring AI-driven store management may also find it useful to see how running a store with AI without developer involvement can complement email automation workflows.
Shopping Platform Integration for Marketing Automation Systems
Explore how to develop the integration with multiple shopping solutions easily.
A Simple Way to Integrate with Multiple Shopping Carts
API2Cart is a solution that takes over the hardest work related to integrations, allowing you to focus on other core tasks. It makes it possible to connect with more than 70+ shopping carts and marketplaces, including Prestashop, BigCommerce, Hybris, Squarespace, Ecwid, Etsy, OpenCart, and other popular shopping carts and marketplaces — all through a single email marketing software API. If you'd like a broader picture of marketplace options worth connecting to, see this overview of popular eCommerce marketplace services.
API2Cart has a detailed documentation and a set of methods for email marketing automation system:
for sending emails featuring new items, discounts and special prices:
- product.list
- order.list
- customer.list
for notifying on order statuses:
- order.list
- order shipment.list
- order.update webhook
for importing contacts from stores and building segmented lists:
- customer.list
- customer.info
for spotting cart abandoned orders and cart recovery and uncompleted purchases:
- order.abandonment.list method
If you're building or improving a PrestaShop-based integration, this guide to PrestaShop API integration for developers is also a useful reference. Find all supported methods here or in our documentation. If you want to know more about how API2Cart can work for your business, schedule a call with our representative or create a trial account.
