Retainful

Over the years, we’ve tried many different ways to grow our email list and boost those all-important open rates. After growing our list by 600%, we like to think we know a thing or two about email marketing.

We’ve already shared plenty of tips on how to build a successful email list, but one thing is absolutely essential: access to the right tools.

With that said, in this Retainful review we’ll take a closer look at this popular WooCommerce email marketing plugin. Retainful claims to help users recover abandoned shopping carts, get more sales, win back disengaged customers, and send transactional emails with ease.

Does Retainful live up to the hype, and is it the right email automation plugin for you? Let’s find out, in this detailed Retainful review.

Retainful Review: Why Use It in WordPress?

Retainful is a popular email marketing plugin for WooCommerce. With this plugin, you can create abandoned cart reminders, run targeted campaigns, automatically send transactional emails, and build a a mailing list.

In short, it aims to help you succeed at every stage in the email marketing lifecycle – from getting new subscribers, right through to converting them into loyal repeat customers.

To help you nurture leads and customers, Retainful comes with a drag and drop email editor, plus a ton of ready-made templates.

It also has a popup builder and an automation workflow builder.

After setting up your campaigns, you can track their success using Retainful’s built-in analytics. This way, you can see exactly what’s working without having to use a separate analytics solution such as Google Analytics.

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then you can sign up for the free Retainful plan and send up to 500 emails per month.

Want to send more than 500 messages? Then you’ll need to invest in a premium plan. These plans also come with additional templates and let you add multiple signup forms and popups to your WordPress site.

Retainful: Is It the Right WooCommerce Email Marketing Plugin for You?

Want to recover abandoned carts, keep customers engaged, and boost your sales?

With the right email marketing automation plugin, you can nurture leads and convert subscribers into paying customers. A good marketing plugin can then turn these first-time buyers into loyal customers, and boost your store’s average Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

With that said, let’s see if Retainful can help you design, launch, and run successful email marketing campaigns.

1. Easy to Setup and Use

It’s easy to get started with Retainful. No matter what plan you choose, you can install and activate the Retainful plugin from WordPress.org.

You can then follow the onscreen instructions to add your app ID and app secret to WordPress. This creates a connection between your WordPress blog and the online Retainful dashboard.

With that done, you’re ready to create newsletters and email marketing campaigns in the Retainful dashboard.

To help you out, this plugin comes with a library of ready-made templates and a drag and drop editor. Simply choose your design and then add your own website logo, images, messaging, and any other content in the user-friendly editor.

Going further, Retainful has popup, sign up form, and automation templates.

You can use these templates out-of-the-box, or customize them in the various Retainful editors.

As you can see, Retainful lets you create all kinds of campaigns and time-saving automation workflows, without having to hire a WordPress developer or write a single line of code.

2. Drag-and-Drop Editor

As already mentioned, Retainful comes with a user-friendly drag and drop editor. This means you can create beautiful email marketing campaigns and newsletters without having to outsource your development.

You can simply drag various ready-made blocks from the left-hand menu, and then customize them using the settings in the right-hand menu.

You can also add sections, which are mini templates containing frequently-used layouts and blocks. In this way, you can quickly and easily create advanced layouts.

3. Create Email Newsletters

With this plugin, you can easily design beautiful email newsletters using a drag-and-drop editor.

Even better, Retainful comes with a ton of ready-made newsletter templates including product launch, product recommendations, feedback request, and a back-in-stock template.

4. Send Personalized Emails

People tend to respond more positively to personalized messages, compared to general email blasts. To start, Retainful has a range of shortcodes that can add information such as the person’s name, order date, order status, and payment method.

Going further, Retainful can generate coupon codes and add them to your emails.

For example, you can convert new subscribers into paying customers by sending them a coupon code for their first order.

Beyond that, you can use segmentation to target customers based on factors such as their geographical location, the number of items currently in their shopping cart, and the date when they joined your mailing list.

5. Grow Your Email List

Want to grow your email list? We recommend adding a newsletter sign-up form to your site.

With that said, Retainful comes with an embed form that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area. It also has a ‘subscribe newsletter’ template, so you don’t have to create your signup form from scratch.

When you’re happy with how the form is set up, you can add it to your site using an embed tag that Retainful creates automatically.

6. Double Opt-Ins

Retainful can help you comply with GDPR and other important privacy laws by adding a double opt-in to your sign-up forms, popups, and embedded forms. After activating this feature, anyone who signs up will get an email asking them to confirm their subscription.

In addition to helping you follow privacy laws, this ensures your list only contains valid email addresses. That said, you won’t waste your email quota by sending messages to invalid addresses, or people who don’t want to be part of your email list.

Going further, Retainful can add an opt-in checkbox to the WooCommerce checkout page. This lets customers opt in or out of getting marketing emails from you.

7. Improve Your Email Deliverability Rates

When you send emails, you’ll want to make sure they arrive safely in the subscriber’s inbox and not in the spam folder.

Thankfully, Retainful lets you set up an email-sending domain. This makes the emails look like they’re coming directly from your store, and not Retainful. That way, your emails are less likely to get flagged as spam, and also appear more professional.

Retainful can also stop sending messages to an email address following multiple bounces or spam complaints.

By cleaning your email list in this way, you can spend your email quota more wisely. It may also improve the accuracy of important metrics such as your CTRs.

8. Capture Leads With Popups

When used correctly, popups can grab the visitor’s attention and nudge them into making a purchase. In this way, they can help you generate leads and grow an email list.

Rather than using a separate popup plugin, you can create targeted popups using Retainful. It has a popup builder and a few ready-made templates to help you get started.

Typically, these popups trigger in response to visitor behavior, to help them appear at exactly the right moment. In particular, Retainful can display a popup when a visitor first arrives at your website.

Alternatively, Retainful has exit-intent technology so it can show the popup when a customer is about to leave your online store.

You can also display a popup immediately after the customer clicks the ‘Add to Cart’ button. By collecting the customer’s email address in advance, you can target them with abandoned cart emails if they don’t complete the checkout process.

9. Segment Your Email Lists

With Retainful, you can segment your email list based on factors such as who they are, what they buy, and how they interact with your emails.

This is the first step towards creating powerful targeted campaigns. For example, you might create an ‘Inactive’ segment and then target those people with win-back campaigns and limited-time offers.

Meanwhile, you might send review requests, product recommendations, and early access offers to your ‘Active’ segment.

Even better, you can segment your list using Retainful’s predefined segmentation templates. This includes segments such as abandoned carts, inactive customers, new customers, and active subscribers.

Alternatively, you can use these templates as a starting point, or even create your own segment rules from scratch.

10. Pre-Built Workflow Templates

To save you time and effort, Retainful comes with pre-built automation workflows. These have pre-defined triggers, multiple emails, coupon blocks, and timed delays.

That said, you can simply customize these ready-made emails with your own branding and messaging, and they’re ready to go.

These pre-built workflows include a series of cart recovery emails, welcome emails, and a product review request email that Retainful will send to every customer who makes a purchase.

It also has a ‘thank you’ workflow that it’ll send every time someone places an order. Even better, this workflow includes an automatically-generated coupon.

This is a great template to make your customers feel valued, while driving repeat sales.

11. Support For Conditional Splits

When designing your automation workflows, you might use conditional splits.

Retainful supports powerful AND / OR conditions, so you can create all kinds of advanced and flexible splits.

This allows you to design branching customer journeys, based on the user’s previous actions in the workflow.

12. Smart Sending and Scheduling

With Retainful, you can either send your emails straight away or schedule them for later.

Retainful also has a smart sending feature that will schedule your campaigns based on the customer’s time zone. This can often result in more engagement and better conversion rates.

You can also control how often customers get emails. For example, you might limit them to one email every 24 hours.

This setting applies to all your campaigns and automated workflows, so it’s a great way to avoid overwhelming or annoying subscribers. In particular, this can reduce your unsubscribe rates.

13. Auto-Generate Coupon Codes

By delivering the right coupon at the perfect moment, you can often re-engage subscribers, boost sales, and encourage long-term loyalty.

Rather than using a separate coupon code plugin, Retainful can generate unique free shipping, percentage or amount-based discount codes. You can then add these codes to your emails.

Even better, you can include these coupons in your automation workflows.

For example, Retainful can steadily offer bigger and bigger discounts, depending on when the customer last opened your marketing emails. This gives you the best chance of re-engaging these inactive subscribers.

14. Recover Abandoned WooCommerce Carts

According to our eCommerce statistics, around 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. By reminding people about the items in their shopping cart, you can often encourage them to complete their purchase.

To help you out, Retainful captures the customer’s email address when they enter the checkout process. If they don’t finish their order, then you can send a WooCommerce abandoned cart email to this address.

When designing your emails, you can add a one-click recovery link.

This link will take the customer directly to their WooCommerce cart page so they can complete their purchase with ease.

Retainful can also display the abandoned items in the email, to show customers exactly what they left behind.

Some customers might need an extra push. With that said, you can create a series of reminder emails. It fact, Retainful comes with a pre-built cart recovery workflow that will message the customer after an hour, after a day, and after 2 days.

You can use this template out-of-the-box, or fine-tune it to better suit your online store.

If a straightforward reminder doesn’t work, then Retainful can recommend alternative products based on the cart’s contents. For example, it might recommend a similar product that’s on sale, or a different brand that’s more budget-friendly.

15. Built-in Email Analytics

Measuring important metrics helps you find out what’s working and not working. You can then use this insight to improve your future campaigns.

That said, Retainful comes with built-in analytics and will monitor your campaign performance automatically. This includes displaying the open, conversion, and click through rates.

It will also track the total emails sent, and how many people unsubscribe.

Since Retainful integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce, it can also show the number of abandoned carts, recovered carts, recovery rate and live carts. Even better, it will record this information in almost real time, so you can respond to events straight away.

Going further, you can see the revenue generated through Retainful’s revenue attribution. This includes the revenue from each campaign, automation, and recovered cart, plus the total revenue generated.

Finally, if you want to learn more about individual subscribers, then Retainful displays each contact’s name, email address, subscription status, and the date they subscribed.

16. Work Collaboratively

Sometimes you may need to share your email lists, campaign results, and other content with co-workers, clients, and anyone else who needs this information. In that case, you can add other people to your Retainful dashboard.

When adding a team member, simply type in their email address and then choose their access rights such as viewing, managing, editing, or publishing. This lets you control exactly what they can see and do.

17. Import Contacts and Customers

Have you already built a mailing list in a different piece of email management software? In that case, you can import all these contacts into Retainful using a CSV file.

This is also a good way to transfer contact information from your customer relationship management (CRM) app or similar program.

Alternatively, you can import customer information directly from your WooCommerce store, including each person’s order history. This is a great way to build an email list, fast.

18. Community and Professional Support

With its code-free editors, ready-made templates, and pre-programmed automation workflows, Retainful is designed with ease of use in mind.

However, growing a successful online business isn’t easy. With that in mind, you may need some additional help to get the most from Retainful.

To start, we recommend checking out Retainful’s knowledge base. This is a detailed, comprehensive online portal covering all areas of email marketing. Here, you’ll find a ton of information on how to set up an email blast the right way, how to create time-saving automations, and more.

Beyond that, Retainful has a blog where they share expert advice on how to grow your email list faster. The team also recommends some must have WordPress plugins and WooCommerce plugins you may want to use alongside Retainful.

Beyond that, all the Retainful plans come with email support, including their free plan.

Need more help? Then you can access live chat support by upgrading to a Starter or Growth plan. These plans also include onboarding support, so a member of the Retainful team will help you get up and running with this popular email solution.

Retainful Review: Pricing and Plans

If you’re just getting started or have a limited budget, then you can download the Retainful plugin for free from WordPress.org. You can then sign up for a free account and send up to 500 emails per month, to 300 contacts.

However, if you want to send more emails or grow your mailing list, then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.

There are 3 plans to choose from:

• Essential. Starting at $9 per month, you can create as many email campaigns, audience lists, and segments as you want. You can then send up to 10,000 emails per month, and have 1 active sign up form on your WordPress website. Beyond that, you can access the pre-built workflows and create a single automation workflow.
• Starter. For $19 per month, you can send 20,000 emails and create 10 automation workflows. You can also add 10 active forms to your site, and share the Retainful dashboard with 3 users. This makes Starter perfect for small teams that need to work together on their email marketing.
• Growth. Need to send more than 20,000 emails per month? Priced at $49, Growth can send up to 50,000 emails every month. You can also create 25 automation workflows, and add 25 active forms to your website. Beyond that, you’ll get a dedicated onboarding specialist and personalized onboarding support. With that said, this plan is ideal for established websites that already have a large email list, or eCommerce sites that need to send a ton of transactional emails.

Retainful Review: Is It the Right WooCommerce Email Marketing Plugin for You?

To sum up this Retainful review, we’re confident that it’s a great email marketing and automation plugin for WooCommerce. It can help you recover lost sales, keep shoppers coming back for more, and build a loyal customer base.

To help you out, Retfainful comes with a ton of newsletter, marketing, and transactional email templates. All these templates are fully customizable so you can add your own branding and messaging. Retainful also comes with popup and form templates, so you can build your email list with ease.

After creating these marketing materials, Retainful can send them automatically based on the recipient’s timezone, a set schedule, or in response to visitor activity. For example, it can send emails when a customer joins your mailing list, or makes their first purchase.

We hope this Retainful review helped you decide whether it’s the right WooCommerce email marketing and automation plugin for you. Next, you may want to see our guide on how to add web push notifications to your WordPress website, or see our expert pick of the best phone services for small businesses.

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