A Transformation, Then Sale of Conversio
I was with Conversio from the early days when they were called Receiptful and the CEO was answering the tickets. It’s been exciting to watch them grow and go through changes. They got acquired by Campaign Monitor in August 2019. The CEO had sold a previous start up (WooThemes) to Automattic.
The reason it was called Receiptful was because it upsold customers on the receipt email. It worked sometimes. But I think overall it was annoying for customers. Transactional emails should be just that. Trying to mix transaction and sale in the same email is not a good long term strategy and might even have a detrimental impact on the brand.
Eventually the mission of Receiptful expanded to being a one stop shop to grow your Shopify store with all kinds of widgets to an email provider that deals with abandoned cart, campaigns, automated follow ups, receipts etc.
Given the huge growth in the eCommerce space, it makes sense for Campaign Monitor to acquire Conversio (now CM Commerce) to make its entrance through eCommerce email marketing.
If the decision would be between Conversio/CM Commerce or Mailchimp for your eCommerce store, I’d say you should definitely go for Conversio since it’s built for Shopify (and Mailchimp doesn’t even integrate with Shopify anymore after their spat).
The Gold Standard of Email Marketing
However, if you’re considering the overall world of email marketing software for your Shopify store, then hands down, the best in the market is Klaviyo.
eCommerce messaging is their bread and butter, and they’re very focused on doing that part well. They’re very well funded in fulfilling their mission with the $150 million raised in their latest raising. They’ve got over 19,000 brands on their platform.
In other words, they’ve got the focus, the money, the customers, and the experience.
Conversio on the other hand was bootstrapped, it tried to be everything, it’s much smaller in size, and now it got acquired by a company that’s still learning the ropes of the eCommerce game.
Yes, the Klaviyo Pricing is a bit higher compared to plain vanilla email marketing providers like Mailchimp, especially if you have a lot of subscribers. For 10,000 subscribers, it’s $150 on Klaviyo and $99 on Mailchimp. But you get far more power and revenue per email than you do with most other eCommerce email providers.
However, compared to CM Commerce, Klaviyo is actually cheaper. CM Commerce pricing starts at $150, and goes up to $350.
This is on par with Active Campaign Pricing which starts at $140 and goes up to $500 per month.
Perhaps CM Commerce will take the lead one day with even more powerful tools and features that will help Shopify owners maximize their online revenues. But until that day comes, Klaviyo is still the gold standard for Shopify and the one that I’d recommend for Shopify and eCommerce stores generally.
You can get a free trial to both Klaviyo and CM Commerce to see try it out for yourself.