How To Do Shopify Email Marketing Right
Shopify email marketing is an underrated tool for ecommerce brands who want to increase sales, build customer loyalty, and generate repeat business.
With the right strategies and tools, you can create emails that resonate with your audience and drive growth.
Here’s how you get started.
1. Setting Up Your Shopify Email Marketing
Choosing an Email Marketing Platform
While Shopify offers its own email marketing service, there are far more robust platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Omnisend to use for your emails.
Shopify’s service is extremely basic, and it’s much more worthwhile to use a specialized tool for your emails, so you can benefit from advanced features like savvier automation, segmentation, and analytics, as well as highly targeted and personalized email campaigns.
Integrating Your Platform with Shopify
Once you’ve chosen an email marketing platform, integrate it with your Shopify store. This integration will allow you to sync customer data, track purchases, and automate workflows based on customer behavior.
2. Building Your Email List
Signup Forms and Pop-Ups
This has always been the hardest part of Shopify email marketing: building your list.
With your email platform, you can add signup forms and pop-ups on your Shopify store to encourage visitors to subscribe.
Offer incentives like discounts, free shipping, or valuable content (like free ebooks if your niche is heavily based on imparting information like gardening, supplements, health etc) to entice visitors to join your list.
You can also promote these resources through blog posts, social media, and paid ads to expand your reach.
Pro Tip: Use a double opt-in to ensure your subscribers genuinely want your emails — it boosts list quality and protects your sender reputation.
This not only helps with compliance and deliverability, but also improves the quality of the people on your list.
3. Designing Effective Email Campaigns
Email Templates
Choose or create email templates that align with your brand vibe. Keep your design clean and optimize for mobile-first – the majority of people view their emails on mobile.
Compelling Subject Lines
Your subject line is the first thing recipients see — so it needs to strike the right balance between being attention-grabbing and trustworthy. Avoid clickbait, or you’ll quickly lose credibility and open rates.
Use action-oriented language, like “buy it here today”, personalize with the recipient’s name.
Creating a sense of urgency or curiosity works best to grab attention.
Engaging Content
Your email content should serve 1 of 3 purposes:
1. Provide value to the recipient.
2. Generate sales
3. Develop your community
You can find more on this on other posts in our blog section.
Personalization
To go a step further with the relevancy of your emails, use customer data to personalize them. Address recipients by their first name, recommend products based on their past purchases, and tailor your messaging to their interests and behaviors.
To learn more about this, you need to understand segmentation…
4. Segmentation and Targeting
Segmenting Your List
Segmentation is basically chopping up your whole email list into smaller groups based on specific criteria, like purchase history, location, engagement levels, interests, and much, MUCH more – especially when you’re using Klaviyo.
This allows you to send more targeted, relevant emails — which can significantly boost conversion rates and overall revenue.
Creating Targeted Campaigns
Once you’ve identified your most valuable segments, use them to create targeted campaigns.
Think about how you’d talk to each segment differently, like existing customers who’ve bought 3+ times, theres no point educating them on what your product does, they already know.
Instead, send that content to people who’ve never tried your products.
Segmentation is easy. It’s really, really easy, you don’t need to overcomplicate it.
Before you start writing, think about WHO you’re writing to.
You wouldn’t talk to your grandparents the same way you talk to your friends would you?
You use different language, talk about different topics, maybe you even use a different tone of voice or even pitch.
Writing emails is the same. Think WHO before WHAT.
It’ll make your life way easier.
5. Automating Your Email Marketing
From the very start, you want to have at least your Welcome and Abandoned Checkout flow in place.
These 2 flows will convert the most sales out of every other flow you build.
For a full guide on what flows to use in your business, check out this post.
6. Analyzing and Optimizing Your Campaigns
From the very start, you want to have at least your Welcome and Abandoned Checkout flow in place.
These 2 flows will convert the most sales out of every other flow you build.
For a full guide on what flows to use in your business, check out this post.
Key Metrics to Track
Monitor key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates to gauge the performance of your campaigns.
Use these insights to understand what’s working and what’s not. If you want to download our reporting template, sign up to our email list here.
Segmentation is easy. It’s really, really easy, you don’t need to overcomplicate it.
Before you start writing, think about WHO you’re writing to.
You wouldn’t talk to your grandparents the same way you talk to your friends would you?
You use different language, talk about different topics, maybe you even use a different tone of voice or even pitch.
Writing emails is the same. Think WHO before WHAT. It’ll make your life way easier.
A/B Testing
Only ever test ONE thing at a time. Like subject lines, content, images, and CTAs.
Iterate from there to see what performs best for your list.
Email marketing is an ongoing process of testing and optimization, so be sure to continuously analyze your results, gather feedback, and refine your strategies.
Segmentation is easy. It’s really, really easy, you don’t need to overcomplicate it.
Before you start writing, think about WHO you’re writing to. You wouldn’t talk to your grandparents the same way you talk to your friends would you?
You use different language, talk about different topics, maybe you even use a different tone of voice or even pitch.
Writing emails is the same. Think WHO before WHAT. It’ll make your life way easier.
7. Best Practices for Shopify Email Marketing
From the very start, you want to have at least your Welcome and Abandoned Checkout flow in place.
These 2 flows will convert the most sales out of every other flow you build.
For a full guide on what flows to use in your business, check out this post.
Consistency
Maintain a consistent email schedule to stay top-of-mind with your subscribers. Whether it’s a weekly newsletter or monthly product updates, consistency builds trust and keeps your audience engaged. Otherwise, they’ll go cold, and you risk losing them.
Compliance
Ensure your email marketing practices comply with laws and regulations, such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. This includes obtaining explicit consent, and providing an easy way to unsubscribe.
Providing Value
This is the hallmark of a health list. If you’re providing value, you make money. It’s that simple. Whether through exclusive discounts, informative content, or entertaining stories, offer something worthwhile to keep people interested.