From standing out in a crowded marketplace to effectively engaging customers and driving sales, the obstacles can seem overwhelming. However, the right set of marketing tools can make a big difference.
For e-commerce businesses hosted on the BigCommerce platform, integrating essential tools can simplify operations, improve marketing strategies, and boost customer engagement and sales.
By using the right tools, eCommerce merchants can create a strong and efficient marketing stack. This not only improves marketing efforts but also makes day-to-day operations easier, leading to increased customer engagement and sales. The following sections will dive into each tool, providing simple and practical tips for effective integration and use.
What should the marketing stack of an ecommerce store hosted on BigCommerce look like?
1. Email Marketing:
Building a robust email marketing strategy is essential for engaging with customers, promoting new products, and nurturing leads. Tools like SmartrMail integrate seamlessly with BigCommerce to automate email campaigns and personalize communication.
2. Social Media:
Leveraging social media platforms is critical for brand visibility and customer engagement. BigCommerce integrates with tools like ‘Social Boost’ to manage and schedule posts across multiple platforms efficiently.
3. Marketing Automation:
Automating repetitive tasks can save time and improve efficiency. Platforms like SmartrMail offer marketing automation features that can be integrated with BigCommerce to streamline workflows and enhance customer interactions.
4. Customer Reviews:
Positive customer reviews can significantly influence purchasing decisions. Tools like Yotpo or Trustpilot integrate with BigCommerce to collect and showcase customer reviews, building trust and credibility.
5. Customer Service:
Providing excellent customer service is vital for retaining customers and resolving issues promptly. Integrate tools like Gorgias or Zendesk with BigCommerce to manage customer inquiries and support tickets effectively.
6. Analytics:
Understanding customer behavior and tracking marketing performance is crucial for making data-driven decisions. Google Analytics and BigCommerce’s native analytics tools provide valuable insights into sales, traffic, and customer interactions.
7. SEO/Content Marketing:
Optimizing your store for search engines and creating valuable content can drive organic traffic. Tools like FavSEO or Ahrefs help with SEO strategy, while platforms like WordPress or BigCommerce’s built-in blogging feature assist with content marketing.
8. Referral Marketing:
Encouraging customers to refer others can be a powerful growth strategy. Integrate referral marketing tools like Smile.io or Refersion with BigCommerce to incentivize and track customer referrals.
9. Supply Chain Management/Inventory Management:
Efficiently managing inventory and supply chain operations ensures that products are available when customers want them. Tools like ShipStation or TradeGecko integrate with BigCommerce to streamline inventory management and order fulfillment.
By integrating these essential marketing tools, eCommerce merchants on BigCommerce can create a comprehensive and efficient marketing stack. This approach not only enhances marketing strategies but also streamlines operations, leading to increased customer engagement and sales. The following sections will delve deeper into each tool, providing actionable insights and best practices for effective integration and utilization.
12 Must-have ecommerce marketing tools for your BigCommerce store
1. SmartrMail
SmartrMail is a powerful email marketing tool designed to help eCommerce businesses increase sales and improve customer engagement. Specifically built with online stores in mind, SmartrMail integrates seamlessly with popular eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce. It offers a range of features that simplify email marketing, making it easy to create, automate, and optimize email campaigns.
From automated product recommendations and advanced segmentation to abandoned cart recovery and detailed analytics, SmartrMail simplifies email marketing and helps online stores boost sales and customer engagement. With easy-to-use templates, automation workflows, and customizable pop-ups, SmartrMail empowers merchants to create effective email campaigns that drive results.
Best Features of SmartrMail
1.Easy Integration
SmartrMail is designed to integrate smoothly with leading eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce, Shopify, and WooCommerce. This seamless integration ensures that your store’s data is automatically synced with SmartrMail, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.
2. Automated Product Recommendations
One of SmartrMail’s standout features is its ability to generate automated product recommendations using advanced AI technology. This feature analyzes customer behavior, purchase history, and browsing patterns to suggest products that are most likely to interest each individual customer.
3. Abandoned Cart Recovery
Shopping cart abandonment is a common challenge for eCommerce businesses, with many potential sales lost at the last minute. SmartrMail addresses this issue with its automated abandoned cart recovery feature. When a customer adds items to their cart but fails to complete the purchase, SmartrMail automatically sends a series of reminder emails to encourage them to return and finalize their order.
Other SmartrMail Features
1. Ready-to-use Email Automations
Enable key email automations in a few clicks with pre-built series of emails and SMS.
2. Lightning Speed Newsletter Builder
Drag, drop, and add products quickly or let SmartrMail select the best products for you.
3. Beautiful Forms and Pop-ups
Convert visitors into subscribers with customizable pop-ups and forms.
4. Free Custom-designed Email Templates
Get professional email templates tailored to your brand for free.
5. Pro Plan Setup
Have your email and SMS marketing automations designed and set up by specialists.
6. SMS Marketing
Boost sales with high-converting SMS marketing.
Pricing for SmartrMail
Free Plan (15-day free trial)
The Free Plan offers a 15-day free trial, providing 5 emails per contact, 10 free Back in Stock notifications, and chat support.
Annual Plan Options:
Essential Plan
$9.80/month ($117.60 per year, 30% OFF)
Pro Plan
From $69.30/month ($831.60 per year, 30% OFF)
2. Fomo
Fomo is a powerful social proof toolkit app designed to increase conversions by displaying recent orders and product reviews on your storefront in real-time. This creates the online equivalent of a busy store, encouraging prospective customers to make a purchase when they see that others are buying your products.
With over 11,000 active websites using Fomo, it has proven to be an essential tool for eCommerce businesses across various categories, including health, beauty, wellness, style, fashion, business, furniture, and beverages.
Key features:
- Fomo offers extensive customization options to suit your business needs.
- By connecting Google Analytics within the Fomo app, you can monitor goal completions and revenue generated from Fomo notification clicks.
- Fomo provides a library of built-in notification themes and the option to use custom CSS, easily controlled within the app’s theme builder.
- Advanced customization options like language settings, geotargeting, device control, and page rules to optimize user experience.
- Install Fomo quickly with a simple line of code and connect integrations like BigCommerce, Yotpo, and Typeform in minutes.
Pricing for Fomo: Simple and Scalable Plans for Your Business
Starter Plan: $25 per Month
Business Plan: $75 per Month
Pro Plan: $149 per Month
Advanced Plan: $250 per Month
Unlimited Plan: $499 per Month
3. Social Boost
Social Boost is a comprehensive marketing tool for running giveaways, contests, refer-a-friend programs, and more. Currently available for BigCommerce merchants at $99/month (billed annually), it promises to beat any competitor’s price by 10%.
Key Features
- Run unlimited referral programs, instant win campaigns, viral share promotions, giveaways, and sweepstakes.
- Access an expanding list of entry methods and referral schemes.
- Integrated with MailChimp, Aweber, Campaign Monitor, ConstantContact, Yotpo, and Judge.me.
- Automatically create coupons for winners to boost sales opportunities.
- Protect your campaigns with an anti-cheat algorithm.
- Display campaigns anywhere, including your BigCommerce store and blog, with 100% mobile compatibility.
- Select start and end dates or keep campaigns open, ideal for instant win promotions.
Pricing for Social Boost
Basic: €19 per Month
Plus: €49 per Month
Premium: €99 per Month
4. Flockler
Flockler is the premier platform for managing social content, designed to boost engagement and drive sales effortlessly. Businesses can showcase unlimited social content and user-generated content (UGC) on their websites or digital services, significantly enhancing their marketing impact.
With Flockler, you can embed social media feeds from Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and more, on any digital platform to increase site engagement and conversion rates. By selecting specific hashtags, usernames, and pages, you can curate a unique and dynamic feed that combines content from multiple social media channels into one cohesive display.
Key Features
- Flockler allows you to create unlimited Walls, Grids, Carousels, and Slideshows, all customizable to match your brand’s look and feel.
- You can set up rules to gather and display content automatically from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
- Flockler provides powerful moderation tools to control what content is displayed.
- Display content by username, company page, mentions, or hashtags across various social media platforms.
- Pause and reuse live-updating sources for new campaigns without losing previously displayed content.
- Automatically updates content to keep feeds current and engaging.
- No limits on the number of views for the stored content displayed across digital services.
Flockler pricing
Lite: $51 per Month (When paid annually or $60 paid monthly)
Basic: $110 per Month (When paid annually or $129 paid monthly)
Business: $195 per Month (When paid annually or $229 paid monthly)
Pro: $325 per Month (When paid annually or $379 paid monthly)
Premium: $540 per Month (When paid annually or $635 paid monthly)
5. Yotpo
Yotpo is a powerful tool for BigCommerce businesses, helping to generate product and site reviews, photos, videos, Q&A, and other user-generated content to drive traffic, boost conversions, and increase sales.
It’s easy to set up, taking only 3 minutes, and offers a basic free version with premium features available at an additional cost. Yotpo integrates seamlessly with popular platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram, and supports over 150,000 stores worldwide.
Yotpo Key Features
1. Generate More Product Reviews: In-mail forms allow customers to leave reviews directly from email requests, increasing review volume.
2. Increase Conversion Rate: Customizable widgets on product pages can lift conversion rates by 30-120%.
3. Optimize For Mobile: Mobile-friendly features ensure users can leave reviews and interact with content seamlessly on mobile devices.
4. Social Curation: Turn customer Instagram photos into marketing assets to drive traffic and sales.
5. User-Generated Photos: Collect and showcase customer photos for a robust visual marketing strategy.
6. Full Social Integration: Share 5-star reviews on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Pricing for Yotpo: Customizable Plans
Starter: $79 per Month
Pro: $169 per Month
Premium: $699 per Month
6. FavSEO
FavSEO is a comprehensive SEO tool designed for store owners to efficiently manage and optimize their website’s SEO elements. With features such as bulk title and meta description editing, advanced SEO auditing, keyword suggestion tools, and rank tracking, FavSEO simplifies the SEO process.
FavSEO Features
1. Title/Meta Description Editor: Edit titles and meta descriptions for products, categories, and pages in one place, with an SEO score display.
2. SEO Audit: Analyze the SEO score of all products and identify factors causing low scores to optimize them easily.
3. Rank Tracker & Keyword Finder: Discover new keywords and track their positions on Google after connecting with Google Webmaster Tools.
4. Bulk Title Editor: Change titles for hundreds of products with a single click.
5. Sitemap Submitter: Submit sitemaps and find crawling errors to improve website ranking.
6. SEO Score Card: View the overall SEO score of your store’s home page and identify areas for improvement.
Pricing for FavSEO
Standard: $799 per Month
Business: $1299 per Month
7. Gorgias
Gorgias is a premier help desk and live chat solution for online stores, trusted by over 30,000 support agents daily. It centralizes support requests from all channels, allowing businesses to answer faster and transform customer support into a profit center.
Integrated seamlessly with BigCommerce, Gorgias provides a comprehensive customer view on support tickets and enables live chat on your site.
Key Features of Gorgias
1. Ticketing System: Centralize all customer communications from various channels into one helpdesk.
2. Social Media Integration: Respond to comments from Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram posts and ads in one place.
3. Macros: Create template answers for quick responses to common questions.
4. Auto Responder: Automate responses to frequent inquiries like “Where is my order?” using rules and macros.
5. Intent and Sentiment Detection: Use machine learning to detect customer intents and sentiments for efficient ticket routing and automatic replies.
6. Customer Details Display: View customer details and order information next to support tickets for faster resolution.
7. Live Chat: Provide instant responses and engage with customers in real-time.
Pricing for Gorgias
Helpdesk ProPrice: $300 per Month
8. PayHelm
PayHelm is a powerful analytics platform designed to streamline business data management and reporting. By offloading data tasks to PayHelm, businesses can create robust, reliable reports with ease. With a dedicated engineering team, PayHelm offers free custom reports, allowing businesses to access crucial information efficiently.
Key Features of PayHelm
1. Products Reports: Analyze total sales, orders, avg. price, gateway fees, product cost, and profits.
2. Customer Reports: Identify top customers and their purchasing behavior over the past five years.
3. Tax Reports: Break down taxes paid by country or state and trend them over time.
4. Marketing Performance: Evaluate the effectiveness of referral and paid search campaigns.
5. Advanced Filters: Filter data by linked accounts, product options, custom fields, and more.
Pricing for PayHelm: Annual Plans with 20% Off
Free Plan: $0 per Month
Pro: $20 per Month
Business: $40 per Month
Enterprise: $60+ per Month
9. Smile.io
Smile.io is the leading loyalty platform that helps businesses transform first-time customers into lifelong advocates. With over 100,000 businesses leveraging Smile.io, it simplifies the creation and management of loyalty programs designed to scale. Smile.io’s features include points, VIP programs, and referrals that seamlessly integrate to boost repeat sales.
Key Features of Smile.io
1. Points: Reward customers for every order to encourage repeat purchases.
2. VIP: Offer exclusive perks and early access to your best customers.
3. Referrals: Incentivize customers to refer friends and earn rewards.
Pricing for Smile.io: Simple pricing, for everyone
Starter: $49 per Month
Growth: $199 per Month
Plus: $999 per Month
10. GA-4, GSC, Google PageSpeed Insights
Google Analytics 4 (GA-4), Google Search Console (GSC), and Google PageSpeed Insights are essential tools for optimizing your BigCommerce store’s performance and visibility. GA-4 offers comprehensive insights into user behavior, helping you make data-driven decisions.
GSC allows you to monitor your site’s presence in Google Search results and fix issues affecting your search performance. Google PageSpeed Insights analyzes your site’s content and provides suggestions to make it faster. Integrating these tools with BigCommerce is seamless, providing a unified platform to track, analyze, and improve your store’s performance.
Key Features
Google Analytics 4 (GA-4):
1. User-Centric Reporting: Understand user behavior across devices and platforms.
2. Event Tracking: Track specific interactions like clicks, purchases, and form submissions.
3. AI-Powered Insights: Get automatic insights and predictions about user behavior.
Google Search Console (GSC):
1. Performance Reports: Track your site’s search traffic, impressions, and click-through rates.
2. Index Coverage: Ensure your pages are correctly indexed by Google.
3. Security Issues: Identify and resolve security issues affecting your site.
Google PageSpeed Insights:
1. Performance Scores: Receive scores for mobile and desktop performance.
2. Optimization Suggestions: Get actionable recommendations to improve site speed.
3. Core Web Vitals: Measure key performance metrics like loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
By integrating GA-4, GSC, and Google PageSpeed Insights with your BigCommerce store, you gain powerful tools to enhance your site’s performance, visibility, and user experience. These integrations provide deep insights, actionable recommendations, and essential monitoring capabilities, ensuring your store operates at its best. rankings, and deliver a superior shopping experience.
11. Feedonomics
Feedonomics is a leading product and data feed management solution that enhances your customers’ shopping experience, driving significant improvements in metrics like Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).
With advanced automation technology, 24/7 global support, and integrations with over 300 channels, Feedonomics provides a comprehensive, full-service feed management system.
Key Features of Feedonomics
1. Expand Your Reach:
List and optimize products across hundreds of marketing channels and marketplaces.
2. Fully Managed Service:
Receive global, 24/7 support to optimize data feeds and go live quickly.
3. Drive Performance on Every Channel:
Set pricing and inventory rules per channel and manage orders from all marketplaces on one dashboard.
4. Quickly Resolve Errors:
Automatically receive data feed error alerts to avoid disapprovals and lost revenue, with solutions for common errors on platforms like Amazon.
Pricing for Feedonomics: Custom Plans
Contact Feedonomics for Pricing Details.
12. ShipStation
ShipStation simplifies the shipping and delivery process, allowing you to handle more orders efficiently while cutting costs. This robust multi-channel platform integrates seamlessly with numerous ecommerce stores and selling channels. It offers discounted shipping rates and automates your fulfillment workflow, saving time and enhancing accuracy.
Key Features of ShipStation
1. Order Syncing and Order Edits: Centralize and manage orders from all channels, with real-time updates for refunds and cancellations.
2. Returns Made Easy: Create a branded returns portal for a seamless customer experience in select regions.
3. Custom Fields: Use custom fields like Fraud Risk and Customer Loyalty to automate shipping rules.
4. Transmit HS Codes: Automatically include HS codes for international orders to streamline global shipping.
5. Discounted Shipping Rates: Access up to 89% off shipping rates from major carriers including USPS, UPS, and DHL Express.
Pricing for ShipStation: Plans for Every Stage of Business
ShippingEasy (Free)
Starter: $9.99 per Month
Bronze: $29.99 per Month
Silver: $59.99 per Month
Gold: $99.99 per Month
Platinum: $149.99 per Month
Enterprise: $299.99 per Month
High-Volume: Quoted
Wrapping it up
Running an e-commerce store, be it on BigCommerce or anywhere else requires the right mix of integrations and add-ons. E-commerce platforms on their own cannot serve everything that an online store requires.
These BigCommerce marketing apps must help you manage your store efficiently and ensure streamlined operations.
