BigCommerce email marketing integration: sync your store and start sending in minutes

Your store already knows who your best customers are. It knows who bought twice, who spent the most, and who left a full cart at the last step of checkout. The problem is that this data usually sits in your ecommerce platform while your email tool works from a spreadsheet someone exported three weeks ago.

The new BigCommerce email marketing integration with Elastic Email closes that gap. Install it from the BigCommerce Marketplace, connect your Elastic Email account, and your customer and subscriber data flows into your contact lists automatically. No exports, no CSV cleanup, and no manual re-uploads.

TL;DR

• Where to get it: BigCommerce admin panel → Apps > Marketplace → search "Elastic Email".
• Setup: single-click install, five steps, no developer needed.
• What syncs: email, first name, last name, custom fields, and updates flow through automatically when data changes in BigCommerce.
• Consent handling: choose to sync only marketing subscribers (added as Active) or all contacts (non-subscribers added as Transactional).
• What you can automate: abandoned cart, any purchase, specific product purchase, and purchase from a category.
• New segmentation: build segments on order count and total spent.

Why connect BigCommerce to Elastic Email?

Manual list management is a hidden cost of ecommerce email marketing. Every export is a snapshot that starts going stale the moment you download it, and every re-upload is a chance to overwrite a status, duplicate a contact, or accidentally email someone who unsubscribed last month.

Connecting the two platforms directly changes the shape of the work:

• Customer and subscriber data syncs automatically from your store into the Elastic Email lists you choose.
• Contacts arrive tagged with a BigCommerce source, so you can always filter, report on, or segment by where a contact came from.
• Subscription status is managed for you, based on the consent your customers actually gave at checkout. Subscribed contacts will be added with Active status, whereas non-subscribed contacts will be added as Transactional contacts.
• Purchase behavior, like order count and total spent, makes contacts ready for segmentation.

In short: your store stays the source of truth, and your email marketing stays current without anyone maintaining it.

How to connect Elastic Email with BigCommerce

The app is built on BigCommerce's single-click install model, so most of the flow happens inside the BigCommerce interface you already know. Only the authorization step opens the Elastic Email screen, and it appears in a modal window rather than sending you off to another tab.

1. Find the application. Log in to your BigCommerce administrative panel, go to Apps > Marketplace, and search for "Elastic Email".
2. Install the application. Click Get this App, then Install.
3. Accept permissions. Review the list of required permissions, like access to carts, orders, site content, and customer information, and click Confirm.
4. Connect your account. In the modal window that appears, log in to your Elastic Email account, or register a new one if you don't have one yet.
5. Configure synchronization. After authentication, you'll land in the integration settings, where you select your recipient lists and map your fields.

That's the whole installation. What follows is configuration, and it's worth taking two minutes over, because these choices determine what your segments and automations can do later.

Choosing your contact lists

The first configuration step is deciding where your store data should land. You have two options:

• Select from existing lists. Choose one or more contact lists that already exist in your Elastic Email account.
• Create a new list. Create a fresh contact list directly from the BigCommerce interface. It's created in your Elastic Email account automatically.

If you're already running campaigns in Elastic Email, a dedicated store list is usually the cleaner choice. It keeps your BigCommerce audience separate from contacts you collected elsewhere, which makes performance comparisons far more honest.

Mapping your contact fields

Next comes field mapping. Every Elastic Email account has predefined fields such as email, first name, and last name, and you can add an unlimited number of custom fields on top of those. This step is where you tell the integration which BigCommerce field corresponds to which Elastic Email field.

Map first name to first name, last name to last name, and point any additional store data at the custom fields you want it to populate. Anything you map here becomes available for personalization and segmentation, so it pays to be deliberate. A field you skip today is a merge tag you can't use in next quarter's campaign.

Two fields are handled for you and won't appear on the mapping screen: order count and total spent. These are added to every contact by default, because they power the segmentation described below.

Deciding what to sync: subscribers or all contacts

Not every customer in your store has agreed to receive marketing email, and the integration treats that distinction seriously. During setup, you choose between two sync modes:

• Only marketing subscribers - contacts who accepted marketing consent in your store. These are added to your Elastic Email account with Active status, ready for campaigns.
• All contacts - including customers who did not accept marketing consent. Those non-subscribers are added as Transactional contacts, which keeps them available for transactional messages without dropping them into your marketing audience.

There's one detail worth knowing if you're syncing into a list that already has history: when a subscribed contact already exists in your account, the sync won't downgrade an Engaged status, but it will override other statuses. Your most valuable contacts keep their standing.

Segmentation: order count and total spent

Because order count and total spent sync with every contact, you can build segments on real purchase behavior rather than guesses. Two new conditions are available in the segmentation tool, and they open up the kind of targeting ecommerce marketers ask for constantly:

• Customers with X purchases - separate one-time buyers from repeat customers, and treat them differently. A first-time buyer needs a reason to come back, but a five-time buyer needs to feel recognized.
• Customers who spent at least $X - identify your high-value audience for early access, loyalty perks, or a higher-touch flow.

Combine those with your mapped fields, and you can get specific fast: repeat customers in a particular region, high spenders who haven't ordered recently, or first-time buyers of a specific product line.

Important information before you launch

Updates flow through automatically. When you change a customer's information in BigCommerce, anything other than the email address that identifies them, that change is reflected in Elastic Email. You maintain data in one place.

Consent remains your responsibility. You decide which data you bring into your Elastic Email account, and under Elastic Email's Terms of Use and anti-spam policy, it's your responsibility to make sure you don't send marketing email to customers who haven't explicitly consented to receive it. The "only marketing subscribers" sync option exists precisely to make the compliant path the easy one. If you're unsure about your store's consent history, start there.

Get started

If you already run a BigCommerce store, the fastest path is to open your admin panel, head to Apps > Marketplace, and search for Elastic Email. Five steps later, your customers are syncing, and you can spend your time on the campaigns instead of the spreadsheets.