What does your app do? How did you develop this idea / from which gap in the market did your idea originate?

Omnisend is an easy-to-use email marketing software for small and medium-sized online stores. It helps to build subscriber databases, create newsletters, and track sales. Also, our tool has very handy features such as a cart recovery, a newsletter booster, welcome emails, etc. that contribute to more frequent interaction with customers and sales.

We were originally a digital marketing agency when we began. At that time, we noticed that eCommerce email marketing needed differentiating from generic email marketing. We noticed big players such as Amazon.com and Argos.co.uk have automated, highly targeted and personalised email marketing from which they benefit greatly. Meanwhile, small enterprises lack skills and resources to implement data-driven automated solutions, and there were no alternatives out there.

So, two years ago we came up with an idea to offer the market an easy-to-use, data driven email marketing tool - Omnisend.

How easy is it to install?

To install Omnisend, no more than two minutes are needed. You just have to click on GET and everything happens automatically. Omnisend synchronizes all your store’s data by itself.

We present Omnisend as easy-to-use tool. The kind of businesses we focuse on rarely have entire IT departments dedicated to installing difficult solutions, so we created a simple solution.

We have also added integrations with complementary Shopify apps for additional ways to gather contacts, do segmentation, etc.

What type of store typically uses your app?

Our users are small and medium online stores. Some of the features, such as cart recovery, work best for online stores that sell books, accessories, clothes - in other words, goods that we as consumers buy spontaneously to pamper ourselves.

Is there a case study you can share with us about your app?

Monabello.com sells smartphones and various kinds of related accessories. It has been a client of Omnisend since it was launched back in June 2014.

Starting from a free plan, in April 2015 Monabello added the Cart Recovery and Welcome Series features. The number of orders executed through their email marketing channel over the last three months has increased by 33%. Revenue has increased on average by 31%.

Of this, Cart Recovery has brought 24% growth for all orders through the email marketing channel and 21% in revenue, while Welcome emails, which offer a discount to new subscribers, resulted in increases of ~8% in orders and 10.7% in revenue.

Monabello.com can track its campaigns as well as automated emails: opens, click, sales (number of orders and income), devices, etc. We are happy this online store makes full use of all possibilities of the tool.

If you could give one piece of advice to a merchant on Shopify, what would it be?

My advice undoubtedly concerns email marketing. Make an effort to turn first-time visitors into subscribers, and then subscribers into buyers. The longer you wait, the less chance you have of making these transitions possible. The pop ups, subscribe forms, and welcome letters always work for this purpose.

What are your favorite eCommerce blogs for keeping on top of best practice and industry news?

I read your blog and strongly recommend it to others. There are lots of them, but Moz, Shopify's blog, Search Engine Land I usually find worth reading at any time.

Omnisend also recently updated its email marketing blog for e-commerce.

What do you think the Next Big Thing in eCommerce will be?

I think that quite soon eCommerce will drop the “e” and become the mainstream of Commerce in general. Physical, traditional shops will be only show-rooms for goods - for fitting, tasting, touching etc.- but orders will be done online.

Thank you Rytis for your insights and offer! Find out more about Omnisend here.