Decision paralysis can strike any business when it comes to finding the best marketing tools for Shopify stores. There are so many options available that are very similar, so how can you tell which are the best?
Of course, some of the tools you’ll need will depend on your niche and how your company is set up. But overall, these 7 tools are ones we at Optily recommend for the following types of marketing:
- Ad spend optimization
- SEO
- Email marketing
- Lead generation
- Lead capture
- Live chat and support
- Bonus: Project management
We’ll go through an overview of each tool, what we like about it, and how much it costs. But if you just want the list of tools to save some time, click the image below to skip to the end.
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Ad spend optimization: Optily
When it comes to managing spend across the Meta and Google properties, Optily is the best automated ad spend technology available.
Unlike some of the other solutions on the market, Optily splits your various Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, Display, and YouTube ads by where they fall in your marketing funnel. It then optimizes campaigns across the platforms to push more spend to where it will have the highest impact.
These calculations happen almost instantly and all you need to do is click “Apply” when you use the recommendations. Once you’re consistently seeing your ROAS increasing, you can activate the “Auto Apply” feature, which will automatically optimize your ads daily.
Price: $99/month after a 14-day free trial
Search Engine Optimization: Semrush
Yes, there are free options to help you get by like Keyword Planner or Yoast for WordPress. But the wealth of information and granularity you get from Semrush is just amazing.
We’ve been using it here at Optily for some time now and we’re loving the various features. From competitors’ comparisons to regular audits of your on-page SEO, it’s the whole package.
They also have plenty of resources on how to conduct SEO audits on your website and how to get the most out of each report on Semrush Academy. This makes it a really accessible tool for those who are newer to SEO and looking to keep things in-house.
Price: Free for basic features, then $120/month for the full version.
Email marketing: Klaviyo
When it comes to direct communication with your customers, Klaviyo is a great solution. It centralizes your customer data and lets you easily segment your customers. This enables you to easily craft more personalized, but still automated email campaigns.
Klaviyo has tons of templates to help you quickly get started with email marketing. It goes beyond just email marketing and enables you to leverage SMS and push notifications too. Like Semrush, Klaviyo Academy is available for those who want to learn more about email and SMS marketing.
Recent Optily Radio guest and founder of the expert Shopify development agency Milk Bottle Labs, Keith Matthews, recommends Klaviyo to all their customers. However, he does stress the importance of having it set up properly by a professional or agency.
Price: free for 250 contacts and 500 email sends, then $20/month for up to 500 contacts.
Lead generation: Hubspot
It’s hard to talk about outbound marketing, customer relationship management tools, or sales without mentioning Hubspot. They’ve simply got a fantastic all-around solution for scaling businesses.
Hubspot Academy too is a great place to learn about using the platform, along various niches of digital marketing.
By using this amazing inbound marketing platform you’ll save so much time by making sure you’re going after the people most interested in making a purchase.
Price: Free CRM, marketing, sales, and customer support tools. Marketing Hub starts at $45/mo with higher tiers for more features.
Lead capture: Justuno
Getting people to your site is what pure marketing is supposed to do, but lead capture and retention is a very important follow-up. Even the best marketing campaigns can’t sell your stuff if your landing pages aren’t optimized.
Justuno, an Optily partner, helps with A/B testing and conversion rate optimization. They provide tools like pop-ups, spin-to-sins, and personlized on-site messaging that can help get customers over th finish line. They also offer a whole host of lead capture tools, so you can at least earn an email from those who don’t end up checking out.
Price: $41/month after a 14-day free trial.
Live chat and support: Gorgias
Marketing and UX extend to virtually all touchpoints with your customers, so your support team plays a big role in conversions and customer loyalty. Gorgias has an amazing suite of tools that empower eCommerce businesses to turn their customer service into a profit center.
By automating as much as you can for your support agents, you free them up to handle customer queries that need the human touch. It enables you to connect all your communication channels into one platform, so your agents are working with 18 different tabs to try and keep track of every website chat, Instagram comment, and email inquiry.
We had Mia Bobak from Gorgias on Optily Radio earlier this year, so check out this clip of the interview where she describes how customer support done right can be used to improve conversions:
Price: $60/month after the 7-day free trial, with higher tiers for more support tickets.
For listeners of the podcast, Mia and the team at Gorgias also have a special promotional offer of a free 2-month trial!
Project Management: Basecamp
Yeah, we know Project Management isn’t strictly a marketing category, but with so many moving pieces and parts to your business, it’s definitely worth looking into. We’ve been down the road of spreadsheet overload and endless email threads, so we know what many businesses start off with. While it’s easy enough to get comfortable in the chaos, it’s much cleaner and more efficient to use a software like Basecamp.
By pulling together all aspects of your business into Basecamp, all your employees can see where everything is at and who is responsible for what. Things ladder into each other much smoother. Also, it reduces the amount of repetitive work, reminders, and lost bits of information that happen when there isn’t a centralized system.
Again we’ll quote Keith Matthews of Milk Bottle Labs, who’s had major success with Basecamp among his team and clients.
30-second Rundown Summary
To recap the main takeaways from our experts both at Optily and from our podcast, Optily Radio, here are the 7 best marketing tools for Shopify that we recommend:
- Ad spend optimization: Optily
- SEO: Semrush
- Email marketing: Klaviyo
- Lead generation: Hubspot
- Lead capture: Justuno
- Live chat and support: Gorgias
- Project management: Basecamp
When faced with so many pieces of software that all seem to do the same thing, it’s hard to know where to start. We know you don’t have time to test out tons of solutions while working hard to scale your business, so we hope these tools give you a good head start.
Let us know on social media what other tools you’d recommend to fellow store owners at @OptilyGlobal on all the major platforms!
