Shopify expands into email marketing

Shopify continues to expand beyond its core e-commerce platform with a new product called Shopify Email.

Shopify's chief product officer Craig Miller and director of product for marketing technology Michael Perry gave me a quick demo of the product yesterday; Miller argued that they've created "the first email product designed for e-commerce."

That means it's integrated with a merchant's store on Shopify, allowing them to easily pull their brand assets into their emails, along with product content and listings. They also can see whether those emails actually lead to customers to add products to their carts/purchase them. And they can create customer segments based on the data in Shopify.

"What we're really proud of here is, we become the expert for them," Perry said. "Most people we've surveyed don't understand the value of segmentation, so we've taken the liberty of assembling the right list to add value for them."

Shopify Email is currently available as an early access test for a limited group of merchants, ahead of a broader rollout next year. Miller said it will be free for these initial merchants, with general pricing to be announced later.

Other recent additions to Shopify's product lineup include hardware for brick-and-mortar stores and digital ad tools.

"The common thread among all of [our new products] is to help brands sell directly to their customers," Miller said. "There's been a lot of talk lately about direct-to-consumer, but that's something we've doing for a decade and a half without calling it that."

Shopify quietly acquired Handshake, an e-commerce platform for B2B wholesale purchasing