Email Marketing Strategies for Shopify Store Owners

Whoever said that email marketing is dead doesn’t know a thing or two about creating powerful emails that convert!

I have seen many Shopify store owners who wrongly assume that email marketing is a thing of the past. Quite the contrary, effective and well-thought-out email marketing campaigns are the best marketing strategies that increase your conversion rates.

Like most other marketing tools and strategies, though, how you execute your Shopify email marketing campaign delivers results!

I’ve used email marketing for my Shopify store and other online businesses, so I can attest to its ability to build customer loyalty, maintain customer relationships, and generate new leads. Whether these are your marketing goals or you want to increase your sales, email campaigns are the way to go!

In this guide, I will share the best strategies for your Shopify email campaigns. Learn the tips and strategies to give you the highest ROI for your Shopify store.

 

Key Takeaways

• Shopify email marketing is one of the most effective and high-converting strategies for store owners.
• Building a strong email list and segmenting customers can improve your email marketing performance.
• Personalization in email marketing also offers many benefits, such as offering personalized discounts and recommending products based on the customer’s purchase history.
• Utilize analytics to track the results of your email campaign and identify areas for improvement. Split testing is also recommended for the best results.

 

Why Invest in Email Marketing?

Despite the advent of advanced marketing tools and strategies, email marketing remains the cornerstone of an online business’s digital marketing strategy.

Unlike social media marketing, for example, email marketing campaigns provide unparalleled reach and personalization that help establish a stronger connection with existing and potential customers.

The direct nature of email marketing is where its power lies. Email is a personal and intimate form of communication, especially if people opt-in to your email subscriber list.

The fact that they voluntarily signed up to your email list shows some level of interest in your content or products and services. Thus, you can leverage and nurture this to convert these leads into customers.

Next, email marketing is highly versatile. You can craft your email messaging to fit your specific email marketing campaign goals.

For example, you can send post purchase emails as a confirmation message or to thank customers for ordering, upsell emails, or give them discounts for their birthdays or specific holidays. The goal is to vary and offer something new to keep customers engaged.

For Shopify store owners, email marketing is an excellent tool for personalizing communication with customers. You can create unique customer segments and send emails that fit their buying behaviors or shopping preferences.

 

Impact of Email Marketing on eCommerce

Before you learn how to create email campaigns for your Shopify store, it’s crucial to understand why it’s worth your while.

Email marketing is only one of few marketing strategies that can deliver actual results when done right. Despite the misconception that email is dead, the number of email users is growing year after year.

As of 2024, there are 4.5 billion estimated email users worldwide, and this number is forecasted to grow to 4.8 billion by 2027.

Here is the more interesting fact: email users no longer use emails to contact friends or family. Ecommerce buyers prefer email to connect with brands (up to 60%).

And among the billions of email users, 88% check their emails daily.

Mobile access to emails makes email marketing more accessible to potential customers. Up to 72% of email users check their emails through a mobile device.

Thus, you can send emails to your subscribers, and they can access them anytime, anywhere. This statistic applies to Gen Z and millennials.

As for the effectiveness of email marketing for your ecommerce business, Omnisend reports that for every dollar you spend on email marketing campaigns, you can earn an ROI of $40.

This is because 60% of consumers who received a promotional email on their account ended up making a purchase.

This result can also improve if you create customer segments when setting up your email campaigns for your Shopify store, as reported by 51% of marketers and store owners surveyed by Instapage.

 

10 Best Email Marketing Strategies for Your Shopify Store

Are you ready to launch your Shopify email marketing campaign? Follow these tips and strategies for the most effective email marketing strategies that get results.

 

1. Build a Strong Email List

The success of your Shopify email marketing plan relies heavily on your email list. If you don’t build a targeted email list, your emails might reach many people but won’t give you conversions.

The first step in building a strong email list is creating opt-in opportunities within your Shopify store website, such as adding sign-up or pop-up forms.

You must offer your visitors something of value to convince them to provide their email addresses to add to your email list. This could be an eBook or a discount code.

Another option is to host giveaways on your social media posts. It’s a great way to generate visibility for your brand on social media while growing your email list.

For example, you can ask the participants to subscribe to your email marketing list to get the chance to win.

Building a strong email marketing list takes time and effort. Implement various strategies and monitor which method delivers the best results.

 

2. Create Customer Segments

Another secret to a successful Shopify email marketing campaign is to segment your customers. Building and segmenting your Shopify email marketing list is pivotal to a successful campaign.

It allows you to differentiate your customers according to their demographics, age, buying behavior, and preferences.

Once you have created various customer segments, you can tailor the messaging when you send emails to get better results. A personalized approach to Shopify email marketing is far more effective than sending generic emails to your subscribers.

In addition, it boosts your email engagement rates since your email template is created for a specific customer group. Therefore, you must analyze your customer data to create winning email marketing strategies for your business.

 

3. Send Welcome Emails

Sending welcome emails is one of the best practices in email marketing. When you add a new subscriber to your list, you can automatically send welcome emails to acknowledge their subscription.

It’s a good practice to create a welcome email series. Instead of bombarding your subscribers with comprehensive information about your brand in a single email, you can boost your email engagement rates by sending out a series of welcome emails.

First, you can create an email to introduce your ecommerce brand and then move on to your products or services, etc.

Each email in the series should be about gradually introducing your brand and managing customer expectations. Sending more than one email also helps to put your brand at the top of your customers’ minds.

Keep your welcome email series to as many as necessary, and don’t overdo it. You don’t want to invade their inboxes too much to the point that they find it annoying.

Learn how to balance the frequency of marketing emails with the quality of content.

 

4. Write Engaging Subject Lines

The email subject line is the first thing your subscribers will see when they receive your email in their inbox. You should make it as engaging and compelling as possible.

When writing a subject line, you should give your potential customers an idea of the email content but keep it interesting. You can experiment with different strategies.

You can try personalization, inciting curiosity, or creating a sense of urgency. The goal is to make your subscribers want to click on the email.

 

5. Make Your Email Layouts Visually Appealing

A visually appealing email layout can make a world of difference in the success of an email campaign. It’s not enough that you have convinced your subscribers to open the email.

If the layout lacks visual appeal, they will click the Back button faster than they can read the contents.

Therefore, you should build a strategy around your email layouts. Use visually appealing images within your brand colors.

Add a clear call-to-action (CTA) within the email to guide your subscribers to your desired action. Also, design your emails to be mobile-friendly since most email users access their accounts through a mobile device.

The better your layout is, the higher the engagement rate and your email campaign success rate.

 

6. Personalize Your Shopify Email Marketing

Personalization is the ultimate tool for unlocking your success with Shopify email marketing. It is a powerful strategy wherein you tailor the messaging to fit a particular individual or individuals within a customer group (which is why customer segmentation is important).

Personalizing your Shopify email campaigns offers users a unique experience while making them feel like you’ve gone the extra mile to consider their needs or preferences.

Here are ideas on how you can personalize your email campaign on Shopify:

• Address your subscribers in the email with their names
• Recommend products based on their purchase history or wishlist items (also known as upsell emails)\
• Offer personalized discounts and offers on special occasions, such as their birthday
• Share valuable and educational content within their interests (based on their past purchases or items on their wishlist)

 

The more relevant your emails are to each customer, the better your engagement and conversion rates will be.

 

7. Reward Loyal Customers

Email marketing is effective because it is intimate and allows you to nurture a relationship with your email list. Therefore, it is also a good opportunity to reward those who’ve shown their loyalty to your Shopify store.

As marketing experts claim, acquiring new customers is more expensive and resource-intensive. Thus, you should dedicate your marketing efforts to keeping your existing customers.

The best option is to build a customer loyalty program wherein you can give points to your customers for every purchase. The points will vary according to the order value.

The higher the order value, the more points they can get. Now, they can use those points toward future purchases, incentivising them to repeat purchases in your online store.

If you cannot afford a full-fledged customer loyalty program, another option is to send out discounts. For example, suppose a customer likes to purchase products from a particular category.

In that case, you can offer them a discount or code equal to a particular discount amount when they purchase from your Shopify store.

Aside from giving discounts, you can also provide your loyal customers with unique perks and benefits that other customers don’t have access to.

For example, you can give them an early preview of new collections before they are released on the website, or you can offer free webinars. Consider what your customers find valuable and offer them that in exchange for supporting your brand.

 

8. Implement Email Marketing Automation

Email marketing automation also largely impacts the secret to Shopify email marketing success. It is a time-consuming process, and automating it can optimize what your emails can do to boost your business’ conversion.

Store owners can employ an email marketing tool to automate the process, saving time and energy. Email marketing automation also ensures consistency when sending emails to subscribers.

For example, you can use an email marketing service to send post-purchase emails to follow up on customers and maintain a high engagement rate. This practice can encourage repeat purchases from customers.

Email marketing automation is also a wise investment in your marketing budget because it allows you to focus on the main activities that scale your business.

Thus, an automated email marketing tool engages your subscribers regularly so you don’t lose customer relationships.

At the same time, you can customize your automation templates based on specific customers.

You can send automated emails to welcome new subscribers, abandoned cart emails, and other personalized recommendations. Setting up email marketing automation is easy with the right email marketing platform, such as Shopify Email.

 

9. A/B Testing Email Marketing Campaign

The role of A/B testing (also known as split testing) is an excellent way to boost the success rate of your email marketing campaign. Split testing is when you send a variation of the same email to a particular subset of subscribers and another variation to another subset.

The goal of split testing is to measure the results of each test email and campaign format to determine what method achieves better results. You can identify the KPIs for your A/B testing, such as the email open rate, click through rate, and conversion rate.

Split testing on your Shopify email marketing campaigns allows you to choose the best method and deliver results. You can eliminate the guesswork and focus on the subject lines, email composition and layout that converts.

 

10. Utilize Analytics for Email Marketing Campaign Refinement

Aside from split testing, utilizing analytics is another way to refine your email marketing strategies.

Many moving pieces are involved with email marketing, so you must track the results and different areas of your email marketing campaign to measure success. The most important metrics to consider when you track results are click-through, open, engagement, and unsubscribe rates.

You cannot tell if your current strategies are working if you do not track your Shopify email marketing campaign results.

Even if you are having success with your existing email marketing campaign, it is important to improve on it to get better results.

Utilizing metrics can give you data-driven insights into your email marketing campaign so you can determine what strategies to keep and what you must change.

 

Choosing an Email Marketing Platform

An email marketing platform is essential to build your Shopify email marketing campaign for your store. The Shopify App Store is a good place to start when finding Shopify email marketing apps that store owners can integrate into their ecommerce business.

Shopify Email is a leading email marketing software or app business owners can use to create email campaigns. It allows users to create advanced email templates that fit their marketing goals.

You can create branded templates with Shopify Email, which integrates your logo, brand colors, and products into creating email templates. Next, you can search from various email templates that fit your specific email content.

For example, email templates exist for restocking items, abandoned carts, seasonal promotions, new collections, and more.

Shopify Email has built-in copy advice that generates subject lines and copy for your email templates. You can optimize your email marketing campaigns with Shopify Magic.

Finally, Shopify Email is the best email marketing service for Shopify store owners because it can incorporate express checkout buttons within the email templates.

It benefits store owners who want to increase conversion rates because it allows their customers to shop directly from their emails.

Shopify Email allows you to send emails using your domain name, which boosts customer confidence and reinforces your brand credibility. Moreover, Shopify Email suggests the best times to send emails to your customers to maximize open rates and ensure a higher click-through rate.

 

Wrap Up

Strategic Shopify email marketing is a powerful tool for your ecommerce business. Careful planning and execution can boost customer engagement and customer retention.

These benefits can bring you a higher conversion rate. While digital marketing strategies continue to evolve, email marketing will remain a pivotal part of your business success and growth.