Websand

Websand is an email marketing and marketing automation platform for online retailers and other businesses that sell to a customer list, based at Proto, Abbots Hill in Gateshead, United Kingdom. It sends email campaigns and triggered automations, and its core idea is that email marketing is "a data-driven exercise": the platform pulls in customer and transaction data, shows each customer's value, and turns that into segments and automated messages. The homepage says Websand has "helped 100's of businesses send millions of emails over the past 10 years." Shopify merchants can sign up through their Shopify store, and everyone else can start a 7-day free trial or book a call with the team.

The problems it is built to solve

The homepage lists the problems Websand says it usually fixes. The first is being "lost in lists": too many lists that no longer make sense. The second is time lost wrangling spreadsheets to build a target audience. The third is having plans but no path to putting automation into a customer journey. The fourth is missed opportunities, meaning not knowing who the most valuable customers are, what they are worth or when they last bought. Each feature of the platform maps to one of these.

What a sender gets

Dashboards and customer insight. Websand's dashboards are built to show both the value of the customer base and the performance of email marketing. The homepage says it shows the audience by the lifetime value of each customer, how often they buy and how long it has been since their last purchase. Bringing transaction data into Websand is what powers those visuals, and the pitch is "No more drowning in complicated spreadsheets."

Dynamic segmentation. Instead of lists, Websand works with segments built from the profile or behavior of the audience. It has eight preset segmentation options meant to help a merchant "organise your data once and for all", so the same segments feed every campaign and automation rather than being rebuilt for each send.

Drag and drop email. Campaigns are built in a drag and drop editor, with "No need for costly HTML" and no time-consuming image resizing. The platform menu lists sending email campaigns and a getting-started guide as separate topics, and one Shopify customer's review on the homepage reads simply "Love love love the email builder."

Automation. Websand describes its automation as a way to connect a message to an audience: design the message, create an automation campaign that ties it to a segment, switch it on, and the marketing runs "triggered based on the behaviour of your customers." The homepage calls these "easy to setup single-step automations" and offers a call with the team for anyone who needs help setting them up. The Zapier post gives an example of the chain: a new subscriber enters an email address on a website, Zapier passes it to Websand, and the data change triggers a Websand automation that sends the promised lead magnet.

Importing. Importing data is a documented feature, alongside the integrations below, so an existing customer list and its purchase history can be brought in at the start.

Integrations and API

The integrations menu lists Shopify, Zapier, Eventbrite, Magento, WooCommerce, WordPress and SendGrid, plus Websand's own Subscriber API and Transaction API. The homepage mentions an "open REST API" for custom integrations and connections to "1000's of your favourite systems through Zapier".

Zapier gets a long post on the site. It explains that Websand only receives data through Zapier, so every zap is an incoming action: a zap can add new subscribers, add new transactions or add new bookings, and each option can also update existing data. The post's examples are a new Shopify customer creating a Websand record, a Typeform signup creating a contact after the form has explained GDPR consent, and conference leads entered into HubSpot CRM being added to Websand as new deals or contacts. It suggests Zapier filters as a way to pass across only customers who have accepted marketing, and notes that Zapier integration options are reached from the integrations menu inside a Websand account.

GDPR

GDPR has its own entry in the platform menu. The Zapier post calls filtering by marketing consent "a great way to help manage your GDPR marketing compliance" and promises to get customers "crystal clear on GDPR" on a call.

Plans, trial and support

The site offers a 7-day free trial and has a pricing page linked from the menu and footer. Its most distinctive policy concerns onboarding: "Unlike other email marketing platforms, it's our policy to talk to you before you get started. This allows us to help you get everything setup properly, migrate your data, answer any questions" and set the merchant up for success. Websand also says it can support a merchant to do it themselves "or we can manage the full thing for you", so a managed service is on offer next to the software. A knowledge base covers the platform, and the site publishes guides on customer retention, email deliverability, segmentation, loyalty marketing and data-driven marketing.

A testimonial from Jon Hutchings, head of e-commerce at a clothing retailer, says "The whole experience from end-to-end is more personal. Websand quickly understood our brand and the support we receive is second to none," and adds that having someone on the end of the phone, email or SMS makes a huge difference. Other named customers include Shopify stores such as Another Level Wigs, Calabroau and ICEGripper, publishers and event organizers Matta Media and North East Times, and the travel company Nirvana Europe.

Who it suits and who it does not

Websand suits small and mid-sized online retailers, especially on Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento, who want to see which customers are worth the most and send email based on that, and who would rather talk to a person than learn a platform alone. The managed option suits a shop without a marketing team. Event organizers and publishers can use the Eventbrite connection and the bookings data that Zapier can pass in.

It is a focused email tool: automations are described as single-step, and the site describes no SMS or multichannel sending of its own. Businesses that want to set up alone without a call may find the talk-first policy slower than a self-serve signup.