Squarespace Email Campaigns Review 2024 – Crucial Tips

Squarespace Email Campaigns Offers Convenience – but Is That Enough?

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At first glance, the Email Campaigns add-on sounds like an efficient way to market your website. If you already have a Squarespace site, you can link Email Campaigns to your account and handle most of your marketing needs in one place. What’s not to like, right?

As a digital agency owner, I know how important efficiency and convenience are to small business owners and entrepreneurs. However, I’ve found that when it comes to something as important as email marketing, relying on an add-on rather than a dedicated service can be problematic. Deliverability is questionable, while key features like automation, segmentation, and testing are often inadequate.

So is Squarespace Email Campaigns worth the investment?

If you’re a happy Squarespace customer, you’ll find a lot to like about the email add-on. Since the tool connects to your website, you can easily plug e-commerce products and blog posts into your email campaigns, and even set up single-step automations to save time and amplify growth. But this platform won’t work for every business owner.

If you use the Squarespace website builder, you can try Email Campaigns for free, but it’s limited to three campaigns. After that, you’ll need to pay. The Start plan, or cheapest plan, has such limited features – only three campaigns per month and no automations – that it really isn’t worth the investment. Instead, I tested the second-tier Core plan – double the price of the Start plan – to determine if Squarespace Email Campaigns has the necessary features and functionality to market a website or whether a dedicated email marketing service would be a smarter choice.

Squarespace’s Email Marketing Features Are as Basic as It Gets

With your Squarespace account, you already have access to marketing tools like a website builder, Facebook Ads, Instagram Shopping, and pop-up forms. So when you purchase the email add-on, you get exactly that: email-specific features like campaigns, automations, and subscriber management.

If you’re new to email marketing, this seems okay. But as an email marketing platform overall, Squarespace’s feature list is surprisingly short.

It doesn’t include key elements like subscriber segments to help you send more targeted emails or advanced automations to encourage streamlined marketing. All Squarespace email plans lack spam testing to improve deliverability and A/B testing so you can see what works best for your audience. That means no matter how much you pay, you won’t get these standard tools.

Email Campaigns

When it comes to emailing your subscribers, you can choose from about 70 premade templates. They’re divided into goal-focused categories like Announce a Sale or Share an Update so you can quickly find one that meets your needs. Since the email designs have the same feel as Squarespace’s website layouts, it’s easy to find one that matches your brand’s look. This is one of the main selling points for Squarespace Email Campaigns – your emails will look just like your website – but most other email marketing services have the ability to pull branding from your site.

Once you find a template you like, you can add your own text, images, and links. You can also use the drag-and-drop editor to make simple changes like moving or adding sections. While you can create your own layout, I don’t recommend it. I found the drag-and-drop editor challenging to use and not very beginner-friendly (more on that below).

Automated Emails

When you want to automate your email campaigns, you can choose from five presets – available with the Core plan and other, higher-priced plans. The automated coupons, product recommendations, and thank-you notes would be great for e-commerce marketing. And if you’re introducing your brand to new subscribers, you can send a welcome email and automated check-ins to keep in touch with them.

Although Squarespace email automations might meet your basic needs, they lack advanced functionality. For example, I wasn’t able to create multi-step automations (drip campaigns) that would help me nurture my list over time. In addition, you can only choose from a few simple automation triggers like After subscription or After a purchase, which seriously limits when and how you can send automations.

Will Squarespace’s email automations be enough for you? After testing out other email marketing platforms, I’d say that Squarespace is insufficient if you think marketing automation will become an important part of your business. To give you an idea of what else is out there, with ActiveCampaign’s cheapest plan1 – which costs less than Squarespace’s Core plan – you get over 500 premade automations. That gives you tons of options to test out different ways of engaging, nurturing, and converting your audience, and it’s advanced features like this that meant it scored highly with 4.8* out of 5 in our ActiveCampaign review.

List Management

To keep track of subscribers, Squarespace Email Campaigns comes with a simple customer relationship management tool (CRM) with profiles for your contacts. While I appreciated that I could tag contacts, make notes on their profiles, and create unlimited subscriber lists, I was disappointed with the lack of auto-tagging and segmentation.

When you’re just starting to build your list, basic features like manual tagging might seem like more than enough. But once you have a bigger list or are ready to automate more of your marketing, you’ll want to apply tags automatically or create segments with specific subscriber types.

Is it worth considering another email marketing service with better list management? I think so, especially if you want to send targeted emails to specific contact groups rather than blasting the same message to everyone on your list. That’s one of the reasons I like Sendinblue so much. Even the Sendinblue free plan1 has advanced segmentation so you can send the right emails to the right people at the right time.

Once you begin to advance your email marketing skills, you’ll want a dedicated service that supports you with features like this, and Squarespace Email Campaigns just doesn’t offer you that.

Nice Design with a Challenging Interface

Although the Squarespace interface has a clean, minimal design that suggests simplicity, I didn’t find Email Campaigns particularly easy to use. Instead, a lot of the functionality I expected was hidden or missing. Here are a few of the issues I encountered:

• Drag-and-Drop Editor: The template editing tools only appear when you click in the right place (if you can find it!) so it’s difficult to understand your options. I’d prefer a true drag-and-drop editor that features all of the options on a single panel, allowing you to select and place elements wherever you want.
• Email Subscriber Pop-ups: I was able to add contacts to my list in just a few minutes, but I struggled figuring out how to create a form to get more subscribers. I eventually found the form builder in a completely different part of Squarespace, disconnected from Email Campaigns.
• Importing Branding: One of the biggest perks of Squarespace Email Campaigns is that you can link email marketing to your website. I expected to be able to import my branding into my email campaigns, which most email marketing services allow. Instead, I had to choose my brand colors manually and couldn’t save them for future campaigns.

Share Blog Content In a Few Clicks

While importing my branding was a bit of a struggle, I liked how easy it was to incorporate blog content from my Squarespace site. After adding a blog content block to an email, you can choose the post you want to share and instantly import the title, image, and link without leaving the Email Campaigns interface.

Promote Products From Your Squarespace Site

Adding products to your emails is also quick and easy. This is great for e-commerce stores since you can promote new products, sales, and offers without spending a ton of time setting up your emails.

Personalize Your Emails

I was glad to see that I could personalize my emails by adding subscribers’ names to the body and subject line. But I was disappointed that Squarespace Email Campaigns doesn’t let you add dynamic content, such as a list of offers based on subscriber preferences. If you’re on one of Squarespace’s e-commerce plans, you’re really going to want those advanced dynamic content options to drive sales and maximize your catalog.

Squarespace Email Campaigns Reports Reveal Very Little

Squarespace Email Campaigns’ analytics are so basic they’re barely usable. You can review deliverability, open rates, and click-through rates for your campaigns as well as which links your subscribers clicked.

These simple analytics, however, do not enable you to compare multiple campaigns, a capability that would prove valuable in determining the most effective strategies for your audience. Additionally, the reports also lack revenue information, thereby failing to provide any meaningful business insights.

These limitations might seem fine for your first few campaigns. But over time, if you expect your email strategy to increase revenue or grow your business, these reports don’t tell you enough. With analytics from an advanced email marketing service like ActiveCampaign, for example, you can compare campaign results, discover the best time to email your contacts, and download or share reports for further analysis – allowing you to leverage what you’ve learned and get more value from your efforts.

Automation Reports Are Similarly Brief

The reports for Squarespace email automations are also quite basic. You can review deliverability, open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribers – but that’s it. Normally, I’d expect more detailed reports with a premium plan. Unfortunately, upgrading to a more expensive Squarespace email plan won’t give you access to different reports – this is all you’ll ever get.

How Can You Track Revenue With Squarespace Email?

It’s possible to track revenue from your Squarespace emails – but only if your website is on a Basic Commerce or Advanced Commerce plan (i.e. the two most expensive options). In the main Squarespace analytics panel, you can see a list of the orders, revenue, and conversion rates from each email. To draw any actionable insights, you’d need to manually combine these results with your email analytics.

Squarespace Has Helpful, Efficient Support – but Be Sure to Check the Hours

When you add Email Campaigns to your Squarespace account, you don’t get any extra support options. Although Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support, I appreciated that I could choose from other options: email ticket support, Twitter DMs, and the FAQ database are all available 24/7. Live chat is available Monday to Friday from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET.

Overall, I found Squarespace support to be fast, friendly, and helpful. Here’s what happened when I tested three support interactions:

1. Live chat: I asked for help importing my subscriber list in Word format. I received a response instantly and got an answer to my question within two minutes.

2. Twitter: I asked the question “How can I keep my emails out of spam folders or the Gmail promotions tab”. The support rep sent me an article with spam-related tips but couldn’t offer much insight about the promotions tab. Altogether, the conversation took about 20 minutes, so it took longer than live chat but was much faster than email.

3. Email ticket: I needed some help personalizing my email campaigns. More than 24 hours after sending the email, I was still waiting for an answer. I checked the FAQ database instead and found step-by-step instructions right away. I only received an email reply five days later, which is an unacceptable amount of time to wait.

Squarespace Email Looks Cheap – but It’s Expensive Compared to Other Options

Pricing for Squarespace Email Campaigns looks pretty reasonable at first. Prices start in the single digits, and you can add unlimited subscribers to any plan.

However, the cheapest plan (Starter) lacks automations and has such limited sending capacity that it isn’t really worth the cost. For example, you’d have to upgrade to the Core or Pro plan if you plan to email your list more than once a week. But once you move up to the Core plan, there’s absolutely no reason to upgrade further unless you need to send extra emails.

Squarespace’s three higher-priced plans are relatively inexpensive for the sending capacity they offer. But because they lack key features like A/B testing and advanced automations, you’re likely to outgrow Squarespace email and want to move to a dedicated email marketing service quickly.

You Can Cancel Squarespace Email Any Time – but You Can’t Get Money Back

Every Squarespace website builder account comes with a free trial of Email Campaigns. There’s no time limit, but it ends once you send three campaigns. When you try it out, you can design email campaigns, build lists, and even play around with (but not send) automations. It’s a good idea to take advantage of the free Email Campaigns trial because once you start paying, there’s no refund. Even though you have to be a Squarespace customer to add Email Campaigns, there’s no 30-day money-back guarantee or option to test the platform’s full list of features.

If you paid for an annual plan but want to close your account halfway through, you’ll have to forfeit the cost of the entire year.

When you’re ready to cancel, you can either end your subscription immediately or turn off auto-renew. If you choose the latter, you can still access your Email Campaigns account until the end of the billing cycle. If you cancel your email plan, however, you lose access right away. Squarespace Emaill Campaigns does allow you to export your list, but it’s important to do so before you cancel. Make sure you export your list of subscribers and non-subscribers so you can upload them to your next email marketing service.