Shopify Email Marketing July 28, 2015 19:00

Good content is still the best way to connect with and engage customers. These can be potential customers that may make a purchase on your Shopify store, or customers who have made a purchase in the past.

While social eCommerce is a good way to make your store and products easily shareable, a well crafted and rich sales pitch is better delivered through emails. That’s why email marketing is still more effective than social media marketing.

Why emails?

Even though social media gets a lot of attention these days, email is still the most effective way to convert new customers according to a McKinsey & Company report.

Email is nearly 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

There are a number of reasons why emails are more effective. One simple reason is that customers are more likely to read your email as nearly 91% of consumers use their email on a daily basis. Another big reason is that your sales pitch can be much better crafted with rich content when it is not limited by 140 characters.

Photo Credit: Maria Elena, CC by 2.0 license

Email campaigns allow you to not just pitch to your customers, but also to build your brand by communicating the tone and personality of your brand and your team. This can be a great way to build longer-term engagement with potential and existing customers.

Emails can also be more targeted than other online streams. Shopify has a number of apps that can help you set up and manage your store’s email marketing.

Manage emails on Shopify

You can start a Shopify email marketing campaign using a number of apps that integrate with email management platforms. An email management platform typically give you a lot of control over your emails, like:

create different subscription lists as your customers may sign up for some things and not others
design rich emails that include a number of style and graphics options
automatically personalize mass emails with unique information about customers like first names
track the number of delivered and opened emails as well as the number of clicks.

MailChimp
One of the simplest-to-use and most popular platforms is MailChimp (we use this one ourselves!). MailChimp integrates with your store via the MailChimp for Shopify app to automatically adds customers to an email list.

In addition, the MailChimp app prompts customers during their checkout process whether they would like to receive marketing materials from your store. This allows you to target customers with better sales or promotions who have already expressed interest in your store’s products.

MailChimp also allows you to automate when emails are sent based on different events like first-time customers, birthday months for discounts and more.

Klaviyo
Klaviyo is another email management platform that integrates with your store via the Klaviyo Email Marketing for Shopify app. The app provides email management with added features like pop-up and slide out email sign-ups, automatic abandoned cart recovery emails, and order follow-up emails.

Watch the video by Klaviyo to see some of the features of the platform and the amount of analytics it provides:

Other Shopify Apps
Other apps like Contactified and Campaignified can be used to manage emails for your Shopify store. Contactified lets you add customers to a Constant Contact email list, while Campaignified integrates with Campaign Monitor to manage your marketing emails.

The Email Popup Box is also a helpful app, as it creates a pop-up prompting store visitors to sign up for emails. The app integrates with a number of email management platforms like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, and others.

Simple campaign ideas

Now that you have an arsenal of Shopify Apps that can get you going for your Shopify email marketing, here are a few simple campaigns that you can run. For each of these, you can create a rich template that can be reused with stylized fonts and graphics:

Follow-up emails
Follow-up emails give you more touch-points with your customers. You can automatically set up emails to thank store visitors for signing up for newsletters or opting in to receive marketing materials, follow-up about their order status and inform them of shipping details, and more.

You can also automate sending emails when customers have items sitting in their carts but have not been purchased yet. Check out our abandoned cart app (Jilt) to send emails for abandoned carts to remind customers and potentially increase sales.

New product launches
People who have visited your store and have given their emails, already trust you with at least some of their information even though they may not have made a purchase. Informing people of new products or updates to existing product lines can be a great way to re-engage potential customers and inform existing customers.

Sales and discounts
Emails are a great way to promote clearance sales or discounts on your store. Add an end date of the discount to create a sense of urgency. These can be done throughout the year on various items and at different discount rates to test out which promotions work best for your store.