There are hundreds, if not thousands, of marketing tools available online, and they vary in price and ease of use. If you are a small business owner, the cost of these tools alone can be overwhelming, and choosing the right one for your marketing efforts can feel like a daunting task. Below is a list of the types of marketing tools you need, organized by marketing category. All of the tools covered here are the best in their field, and most are inexpensive or free.

Types of Marketing Tools

The types of marketing tools you need fall into the following categories:

1. Email and SMS Marketing
2. Social Media Marketing
3. Content Marketing
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5. Lead generation and conversion
6. Live Chat
7. Analysis and Tracking
8. Influencer and Affiliate Marketing
9. Customer Loyalty and Rewards Program

You may need one or all of the above categories. It depends on your goals and overall digital marketing strategy. For tools that don’t have a free option, most offer a 7-day or 14-day free trial so you can test it out before you commit.

Email and SMS Marketing

Email marketing tools help you create email campaigns, send email blasts or newsletters, organize your email list, and track and analyze the results of your email campaigns. These tools support your email marketing strategy by providing a hub for your email campaigns, such as automated sequences (e.g., cart abandonment emails), one-time customer notifications, or follow-up emails.

There are a number of email marketing services out there with a variety of marketing automation features, some of which we recommend include:

1. Shopify Email

Shopify Email lets you create branded emails in minutes using a drag-and-drop editor. Use pre-built automation templates to send emails to your customers at the optimal time and segment your list. Create, send, and track campaigns from within your Shopify admin panel.

Pricing : Free through Shopify stores.

Platform : Shopify store.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular marketing automation platform that offers SMS and email marketing services to help you better manage and communicate with your customers. Unlike Shopify Email, it is not an ecommerce-specific platform, but it does offer a variety of templates and customization options to help you design and send email campaigns. Mailchimp has an easy-to-use interface, and you can create emails using a drag-and-drop editor. You can also set up automated emails, such as birthday wishes or follow-up messages, based on customer behavior and preferences.

The best part is that Mailchimp integrates with Shopify via the Shopify app, which makes it easy to reconnect with customers who use Shopify, Shopify Plus, and Shopify POS.

Pricing : Free for up to 500 contacts and up to 1,000 transfers per month. Paid plans start at $13 for 500 contacts and 5,000 transfers per month.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface, Mailchimp Shopify app.

3. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is another email and SMS marketing platform known for its seamless integration with Shopify and user-friendly features. One of Klaviyo’s strengths is its segmentation capabilities. You can segment your lists based on cart abandonment or specific behaviors that users browse without purchasing. Klaviyo is designed to fit into your ecommerce workflow and offers email automation templates such as restock campaigns, cross-selling emails, product reviews, and customer re-engagement emails. Klaviyo is also known for its near-perfect customer support.

Pricing : Free for up to 250 contacts. Paid plans start at $30 per month for 501 or more contacts.

Platform : Standalone SaaS, Klaviyo Shopify app.

4. Automizely

Automizely is considered a great marketing tool because of its beginner-friendly interface and comprehensive features, and users often praise its excellent customer service. Customers have access to hundreds of customizable templates, and it also offers features like email automation, segmentation, A/B testing, and SMS marketing tools. Automizely also integrates with Shopify stores and offers free features like popups, conversion tools, coupons, and campaign analytics.

Pricing : Free for up to 3,000 total sends to 300 contacts. Paid plans start at $11 per month for 600 contacts and unlimited email sending.

Platform : Automizely Shopify app.

Social Media Marketing

Social media tools allow you to post to multiple channels simultaneously, saving you the time it takes to write and post to each channel individually. These tools make it easy to create multichannel content calendars for a variety of platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

These tools track social media metrics across multiple platforms, saving you time manually documenting the performance of your posts in spreadsheets. The right social media marketing tool makes it easier to create and execute paid social posts, and helps customers shop directly from your social feeds on your website.

5. Buffer

Buffer lets you schedule and share content across popular social media channels. It also helps you automate repetitive tasks, such as triggering a series of lead generation messages when a customer likes a social post or collecting feedback from customer responses. It also includes a variety of analytics, performance metrics, and collaboration features to help you effectively manage your social media content and keep it timely and relevant.

Pricing : There's a free plan that lets you schedule up to 3 social channels and 10 posts at a time, while paid plans start at $5 per month per channel and include unlimited posts in your queue.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

6. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is another popular social media management platform that provides businesses with a single dashboard to manage multiple accounts. You can manage multiple social media accounts from one place, including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Hootsuite is known for its content scheduling feature. You can plan and schedule content across your social accounts for different times and dates. This helps you maintain a consistent online presence without having to sit in front of your computer 24/7. Hootsuite also offers comprehensive analytics, team collaboration, and social media listening features to help you identify trends in real time and engage with your audience.

Pricing: All plans are free to try for 30 days, while paid plans start at $99 per month and include 10 social accounts, content curation and management features, and more.

Platform: Standalone SaaS web interface.

7. AdRoll

AdRoll is an advertising platform that helps you launch targeted advertising campaigns quickly and effectively. AdRoll allows you to retarget customers across a variety of devices and platforms, including the web, mobile apps, email, Facebook, and Instagram. It’s ideal for those looking to boost their social media marketing strategy with paid advertising.

AdRoll also supports dynamic advertising, which automatically personalizes content based on a viewer’s past brand interactions. AdRoll’s detailed analytics capabilities allow you to track campaign performance across channels and optimize your advertising strategy.

Pricing : Free to set up, with a minimum budget of $5 per day for display, native, and video ad campaigns. Paid plans start at $40 per month and include features like marketing automation, social advertising integration, and unlimited email sending.

Platform : Paid Marketing for eCommerce Businesses: Integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Wix, PrestaShop.

Content Marketing

Content marketing tools can support every aspect of your content strategy, whether you’re creating a new video, creating an infographic, contributing to a blog, or starting a podcast.

These tools help simplify your tasks and support your marketing plans.

8. Vimeo Create

Vimeo Create is a tool for marketers who need to quickly and easily create amazing videos. It offers thousands of licensed audio tracks, motion graphics, and effects, and lets you easily customize your videos with AI-powered editing tools.

Pricing : Basic membership is free, while Plus membership starts at $7 per month and offers up to 5GB of storage per week (up to 250GB per year).

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface, Vimeo Shopify app

9. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a great research tool for content marketers. It compiles the best performing content from social media, blogs, and news sites into a single dashboard. This allows you to understand trends, track performance, and identify influencers in specific areas.

How to use : Using BuzzSumo is simple. Just type a keyword or topic into the search bar, and the tool will return results that you can filter by time zone, content type, location, and more. Knowing what content is popular with your audience can help you better tailor your strategy to drive engagement and visibility.

Pricing : Free plan offers 10 searches per month. Paid plans start at $79 per month and offer unlimited searches.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

10. Promo

Promo makes it easy to create promotional videos for your business. This online tool lets you create videos for advertisements, marketing campaigns, and social media in minutes.

How to use : Simply choose the type of video and the product you want to promote, and Promo does the rest. Add additional text, media, colors, music, and more, then publish straight to your Shopify store, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.

Pricing : You can create videos for free, but you need to purchase a plan to download them. The starter plan costs $29 per month.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface, Promo Shopify app.

11. Canva

Canva is an online design and branding tool that allows users to easily create stunning visuals. Canva offers a variety of templates and custom designs that can be modified to suit your needs.

From packaging to business cards, product photography and videos, your brand has its own visual language. Canva makes it easy for anyone, whether you have design experience or not, to create bright, engaging visuals for your business.

Pricing : Free option includes a variety of features. Pro option costs $120 per year and offers premium photos and templates, collaboration features, branding kits, and more.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO marketing tools help you optimize your website's organic traffic through online search engines.

This tool helps you conduct keyword research, track webpage performance, monitor backlinks, and understand how to improve your website's organic search performance.

12. Moz

Moz provides tools to analyze your website’s visibility, rankings, and performance in search engines. These tools include features such as keyword research, website audits, link building, competitor analysis, and keyword tracking.

Pricing : Free SEO tools include Keyword Explorer, MozBar, Domain Analysis, and Link Explorer. Moz Standard starts at $99 per month for marketing teams that need weekly keyword rankings, custom reports, competitive research, and more.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

13. Avada SEO

Avada SEO is a Shopify app designed for ecommerce websites that optimizes them for search engines. The app can perform on-page and off-page SEO, including keyword research, meta tags, image optimization, and structured data integration.

Avada lets you automate tasks like SEO audits for products, collections, and blog posts. Merchants love the SEO audit feature because it allows them to quickly and easily find and fix issues like broken links. Overall, Avada is affordable, integrates with other apps, and stays up to date with SEO trends.

Pricing : Free plan allows optimization of up to 50 products. Pro plan starts at $34.95/month for unlimited image optimization.

Platform : Avada Shopify App.

Lead generation and conversion

Lead generation tools help automate lead sourcing and convert new prospects into customers. Without these tools, attracting new customers can be a manual, time-consuming process.

14. HubSpot

HubSpot is a marketing and sales platform designed to help businesses grow. It offers a suite of integrated tools, including a content management system (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM), analytics, and website optimization.

Pricing : HubSpot offers free CRM, marketing, sales, and customer service tools. The Marketing Hub plan starts at $15 per month for 1,000 marketing contacts. The next tier plan starts at $890 per month for up to 2,000 marketing contacts and many more features.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

15. ONE

ONE is an AI-powered marketing suite for Shopify stores. The suite includes features for email, SMS, content creation, pop-ups, upsells, discounts, and more. ONE’s features enable you to manage campaigns, create content for international marketing, and run A/B tests.

ONE also offers a ChatGPT-based AI tool that can generate product descriptions and marketing copy. It integrates with tools like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, SMSBump, and Postscript, allowing you to centrally manage your marketing data in one place.

Pricing : Free for up to 50 active profiles and two active campaigns.

Platform Type : ONE Shopify App.

16. Unbounce

Unbounce is a digital marketing tool that lets you create, publish, and optimize landing pages. You can quickly deploy campaigns to capture leads and increase conversions.

Pricing : There is no free option, but you can start a 14-day free trial. The basic Build plan is $99/month for up to 20,000 visitors and one domain. The Experiment plan is $149/month for up to 30,000 visitors and two domains.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

17. Octane AI

Octane AI lets you create powerful, custom quizzes to drive customer engagement and sales with your Shopify store. Its main feature is an AI quiz maker with conditional logic and design options.

Octane AI is effective as a marketing tool by providing a personalized shopping experience. By guiding customers through a quiz, Octane AI can recommend products that fit their needs.

Pricing : There is no free option, but you can start with a 14-day free trial. After that, the Starter plan is $50/month. The next tier is $200/month and includes dynamic quizzes and a dedicated account manager.

Platform : Octane Shopify App.

18. Sales Pop

Sales Pop is a Shopify app designed to increase sales by showing visitors recent sales notifications. It creates urgency and FOMO by showing other customers’ purchases in real time. Other Sales Pop features to drive sales include a countdown timer, inventory countdown, and badges to build trust.

Pricing : Free plan available. Paid Pro plan starts at $4.99/month.

Platform : Sales Popup Shopify app.

Real-time chat tool

Live chat isn’t just about customer support. When talking to a business through Shopify Inbox, 70% of customers have questions about their purchase decisions. Live chat tools facilitate real-time conversations. You can automate responses and track and analyze which messages drive conversions. It’s essential for eliminating questions that prevent customers from making a purchase.

19. Shopify Inbox

Shopify Inbox is a free messaging tool that lets you chat with your customers while they shop. You can manage conversations across your online store chat, the Shop app, Instagram, and Messenger.

Pricing : Free with all Shopify stores.

Platform : Shopify Inbox can be added to any Shopify store.

20. Gorgias

Gorgias centralizes customer support interactions across channels like email, social media, and live chat. The Gorgias Shopify app integrates relevant customer data, like order information, into your platform to help you deliver a better customer experience.

Gorgias uses AI to process fast responses and shows how support interactions impact sales. It’s available for businesses of all sizes, with scalable pricing that lets you pay as you grow.

Pricing : There is no free option, but you can sign up for a 7-day free trial. Paid plans start at $10 per month for 50 tickets. The next tier is $60 per month for 300 tickets, plus $40 for each additional 100 tickets.

Platform : Integrated with Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento.

Analysis and Tracking

To understand the performance of your digital marketing plan elements, you need analytics and tracking tools. These tools identify levers that can increase customer conversions on different web pages.

21. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool that helps you understand your customers and how they interact with your website. With detailed tracking and reporting capabilities, you can make informed decisions about your marketing and customer experience.

Pricing : Google Analytics Standard version is free.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface.

22. Lucky Orange

Lucky Orange is a customer analytics tool that helps you understand your customers’ on-page behavior. It provides tools such as heat maps, session recording, and conversion funnels to identify how visitors use your site and the problems they face. This allows you to make site adjustments to improve the shopping experience and increase conversion rates.

Pricing : The free version of Lucky Orange heat mapping tool includes 500 page views per month and unlimited heat map data and recordings for 30 days. Upgrade to the $10 package for 25,000 page views per month.

Platform : Standalone SaaS, Lucky Orange Shopify app.

Influencer and Affiliate Marketing

Influencer marketing tools help you find and contact the right influencers to promote your products.

Instead of searching for candidates through social media networks, these all-in-one tools allow influencers to reach out to you directly. Meanwhile, affiliate marketing tools help you manage your own affiliate marketing program, streamlining a process that would otherwise be difficult to manage manually.

23. Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs is the easiest way to find creators who can promote your products to new audiences. Use this tool to search through millions of creators and find influencers and affiliate marketing partners that fit your brand. Send products and discounts directly from your Shopify store and track your affiliate earnings through PayPal.

Price : Free.

Platform : Shopify App.

Loyalty and Rewards Program

Loyalty and rewards programs encourage customers to make repeat purchases. Loyalty and rewards tools track purchases and automatically generate rewards when they are earned.

Many of these tools also offer referral programs that provide incentives for customers to bring in new customers.

24. Smile

Smile lets you set up your loyalty and rewards program in minutes. No coding required, and it integrates easily with Shopify POS and other email marketing apps. Smile also offers expert 24/7 support to help with everything from technical questions to best practices.

Pricing : Smile’s free version includes points and referral programs. Paid plans start at $49 per month and include program branding, rewards emails, and one integration.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface, Smile Shopify app.

25. Yotpo

Yotpo is a platform that allows you to create custom loyalty programs. You can set rewards for a variety of actions, such as purchases, referrals, and engagements. Yotpo integrates with Shopify, so you can manage your programs in one place. Yotpo’s analytics help you monitor and evaluate your loyalty program’s return on investment (ROI), average order value (AOV), and customer lifetime value (LTV).

Pricing : Yotpo’s free loyalty and rewards plan includes up to 100 monthly orders, custom rewards, and a referral program. Paid plans starting at $199 per month offer features like points redeemable at checkout and Klaviyo integration.

Platform : Standalone SaaS web interface, Yotpo Shopify app.

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