Shopify Email Marketing: How to Create Successful Email Campaigns

Shopify email marketing will yield you more returns than any other marketing channel out there. True now, as it was two decades ago – email has been the OG of the marketing world.

The numbers say so, too. Email marketing gives you an ROI of $40 for every dollar spent.

At its core, it is not about just sending Shopify marketing emails. It entails a strategic approach to building relationships with customers and engaging them throughout their buying journey. Those who nail this email marketing strategy in Shopify succeed.

In this comprehensive guide, we will help you understand email marketing better and lay out the basics, like how to do best email marketing for Shopify and, ultimately, how to create email marketing campaigns on Shopify and launch them.

Let’s dive right in.

What is Shopify email marketing?

Shopify email marketing is a marketing channel used by e-commerce store owners to send email campaigns to their customers. It involves sending personalized, relevant content like promotions, new product announcements, and transactional updates.

The goal of Shopify email marketing is to engage with customers, drive sales, enhance brand awareness, and build long-term customer relationships.

To get the most out of your email marketing efforts, you can leverage the Shopify platform’s tools and integrations with email marketing platforms to manage and automate the Shopify email campaigns efficiently.

Why do you need email marketing for Shopify?

Shopify email marketing is a reliable communication channel to engage your customers with personalized communication and target them with tailored offers and updates.

While there are more marketing channels like social media, email marketing still reigns supreme and sees a better conversion rate. And this is not without a reason.

Here are 7 reasons why you should use email marketing for Shopify.

• Direct and personal – personalize and target
• Amazing ROI
• It’s ubiquitous
• Longer shelf life
• Great for every stage of the journey
• Measurable success

Direct and personal

Emails you send through email marketing land straight in the customer’s inbox. It is about as direct as it gets.

With emails, you are having a one-to-one conversation with the customers, as opposed to broadcasting messages on social media and waiting for customers to find the message.

This direct delivery of emails ensures that the message is more likely to be seen and read by the intended recipient.

Amazing ROI

There is a solid reason behind the high ROI of email marketing we have seen earlier.

While its low cost being the obvious reason, marketing emails for Shopify can be personalized and targeted to specific audience segments.

It results in higher conversion rates compared to other marketing channels.

It’s ubiquitous

Emails are considered the currency of the web world. Everybody has one.

This widespread adoption ensures that marketers can reach a broad and diverse audience – almost everybody.

The wide accessibility means that your email marketing can reach a vast and diverse audience, spanning different demographics and geographies.

Longer shelf life

Unlike social media posts, emails are not lost in the sea of new content and ads. It stays in the recipient’s inbox until they are read, deleted, or archived – increasing the chance of interaction.

Also, recipients who may not open a Shopify marketing email immediately upon receiving it can come back to it later, giving you multiple opportunities to catch their attention.

Great for every stage of the journey

To keep your customers engaged, sending emails for every step of their journey with your brand is imperative.

Due to the email marketing’s reach, you can send email marketing campaigns in Shopify for a variety of marketing purposes – from nurturing leads to engaging existing customers with offers and updates to re-engaging inactive customers.

Measurable outcomes

What good is it if you can’t measure the success of your email marketing?

The success of your email campaigns can be accurately tracked and measured using Shopify email marketing analytics and metrics.

You should measure key performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gain insight into user behavior and your email marketing campaign’s effectiveness.

This way, you can try different email marketing strategies in Shopify and gauge their effectiveness based on the metrics.

Types of Shopify email marketing campaigns

You can’t send the same type of marketing emails in Shopify throughout the customer’s journey. Each stage of the sales funnel the customer lies in demands a different one.

For instance, you can’t send a referral email to a new customer.

Here are the types of email marketing campaigns you can send:

These campaigns for email marketing are aimed at achieving a unique objective and engaging the customer.

6 High-converting Shopify Email Campaigns to Send

Two things determine the impact of your email marketing in Shopify: timing and relevancy. These two go hand in hand.

To get it right, you have to know what type of emails to send and when to send it.

Let’s learn both by seeing the effective Shopify email campaign examples.

Welcome emails

Shopify welcome emails are the first interaction you have with your customer – the first impression you create.

Send the after a customer makes the first purchase or sign up for your emails.

Most impressively, welcome emails have the highest open rate out of all marketing emails you will see here. It implies that customers expect your welcome message and are interested in what you have to say in it.

So, craft an engaging one.

Here is an example of a welcome email template.

Abandoned cart emails

Shopify abandoned cart emails hold the key to facing every Shopify owner’s nightmare – abandoned carts.

We know it is difficult to move the needle, but –

Abandoned carts are common but not a lost cause. You can recover them by sending Shopify cart reminder emails to the customers and prompt them to finish the purchase.

And, the Shopify abandoned cart emails outperform other cart recovery methods. It boasts an open rate of 30%, and out of them, 11% leads to cart recovery.

Here is an example of a Shopify abandoned cart email template.

Post-purchase emails

Shopify post-purchase email is any email you send after a customer purchases a product. Its purpose is to nurture and retain customers through constant communication.

Some of the post-purchase emails are transactional in nature – like order confirmation emails and shipping information emails. Other emails are thank you emails, feedback request emails, educational emails, and cross-sell emails.

Here is an example of a post-purchase Shopify order confirmation email.

Promotional emails

Promotional emails are the staple of email marketing. This is where you showcase your new products and discounts, recommend products, and enhance brand awareness.

Creating effective Shopify promotional emails will help you position your brand and spread the word about your new offerings.

Here is an example of a Shopify product launch email template.

Referral emails

If you have gained customers who have made repeat purchases, it is time to turn them into your brand advocates and incentivize them to do so through referral emails.

This is the part of email marketing where your customers will be forming a real connection with your brand.

Here is an example of a Shopify referral email template.

Re-engagement emails

Some customers stay, and some lapse. But you can still get them back into your fold with a Shopify win-back email sent after more than 90 days of inactivity.

Here is an example of a Shopify win-back email template.

How to build a Shopify email list?

You can build a Shopify email list by reaching out to potential customers with a compelling reason to join your list and capturing their email addresses. 

Here are a few Shopify email list growth strategies.

• Offer incentives.

Give potential subscribers a compelling reason to join your list. This could be a discount code, a freebie, an exclusive ebook, or early access to sales.

When implementing these incentives, make sure the offer is clearly communicated on your sign-up forms and landing pages.

• Create opt-in forms.

Opt-in forms are tools through which visitors voluntarily provide their email addresses, usually in exchange for something of value (like a discount, information, or access to exclusive content). 

These can be pop-ups or sidebar forms. Ensure they are noticeable and easy to fill out. 

Strategic places to include your opt-in places are the homepage, blog sections, during checkout, and at the footer of your site.

• Create a high-converting landing page.

Create dedicated landing pages for email sign-ups. These pages can be linked from your social media profiles, paid ads, or guest blog posts. 

The landing page should clearly state the benefits of subscribing to your email list.

• Engage through Content Marketing.

Develop valuable content, such as blog posts, guides, or ebooks, that requires an email sign-up to access. This positions your store as an authority and builds a relationship with your audience.

• Utilize pop-ups on your website.
  Pop-ups leverage the mechanism of showing the right content at the right time. When implemented correctly, it can significantly increase email sign-ups for your Shopify email marketing.  
  Here are some of the ways you can use targeted pop-ups:
  • Welcome pop-ups– Display a pop-up shortly after a visitor lands on your site. 
  • Timed pop-ups – Set pop-ups to appear after a visitor has spent a certain amount of time on your site.
  • Exit-intent pop-ups – These pop-ups trigger when a user shows signs of leaving the website, such as moving the cursor toward the close button.
  • Scroll-triggered pop-ups – These appear after a visitor has scrolled a certain percentage of a page.

• Use lead magnets.

A lead magnet is essentially an incentive that marketers offer to potential buyers in exchange for their email addresses.  

They come in various formats, such as ebooks, discount codes, free trials, webinars, whitepapers, or any exclusive content.

With your Shopify email list at your disposal, we arrive at the next, ultimate step: creating email marketing in Shopify. 

How to create a Shopify email marketing campaign?

To create an email marketing campaign in Shopify, you can use a built-in Shopify Email app or a third-party Shopify email marketing app. With Shopify Email, you can create, send, and track email marketing campaigns within Shopify.

The steps to create an email marketing campaign in Shopify are:

1. Setup Shopify Email
2. Create and import email lists
3. Segment your customers
4. Choosing the Shopify email marketing template
5. Customize the template
6. Test and launch the campaign

Let’s see these steps in detail.

Step 1: Setup Shopify Email

To create a Shopify email marketing campaign, open Shopify Admin and go to ‘Marketing’. Click on ‘Create Campaign’ > Shopify Email.

Things you need to set up email marketing on Shopify:

• An active Shopify account and a plan. You can’t send emails without a payment plan in Shopify.
• The Shopify Email app should be installed on your account.

Step 2: Create and import email lists

Importing your email lists is the first step in creating email marketing on Shopify before starting to create email campaigns.

To import your email list, log in to your Shopify account and sync your contacts with your Shopify store. In the menu, go to ‘Customers’.

You can import all of your customers by uploading a CSV file, or you can add a customer manually by filling out their details.

This is how you can implement the Shopify email campaign setup.

Step 3: Segment your customers

Segments are distinct groups of customers categorized based on criteria like product purchases, average order value, frequency of purchases, and more.

Segmenting your customers allows you to target them with relevant Shopify automated emails personalized by keeping the unique characteristics of those customers in mind.

Personalized emails engage the customers more, and engaged customers will give you conversions.

To create segments, click ‘Segments’ below the Customers option.

You can select the already available segments on Shopify based on the customer data you provided, or you can create your own.

You can create a new segment in two ways – choosing a template or using filters.

By using the template, you can add fields and customize the values based on which you segment your customers.

‘’Filters’ are criteria or conditions used to categorize and segment your customer base into more specific groups.

For example, by using filters you can group the customers in a segment who have purchased a specific product.

After creating a customer segment, new customers who match the criteria will be automatically included in that customer segment.

Now that we are done with the Shopify email campaign setup and determined who the recipients are and grouped them, it is time to design and craft the emails.

Step 4: Choosing the Shopify email marketing template

In this step, you can choose a template based on what type of marketing emails you want to send.

For choosing the email marketing template in Shopify, go to ‘Marketing’ and click ‘Create campaign’.

You will be asked to choose the marketing channel. Under Email, you can choose the Shopify Email app or install email marketing software from the Shopify store.

For now, let’s stick with Shopify Email.

In Shopify Email, you have many email marketing templates to choose from – like newsletters, promotions, or product highlights. You also have the option to create your custom email templates.

Now, let’s choose the Back-in-stock email template under the ‘Announcements’ section.

Step 5: Shopify email template customization

Before moving on to edit the content of the email, you have to select which of your customers or segments should receive the email. Here, you can select the customer segments you have already created.

In this case, you can select a segment created using the filter ‘Products viewed.’

Then, you have to enter the subject lines, preview text, and the ‘from’ address.

Now, we will get into the business of Shopify email template customization and its elements like logo, product images, footer, background color, and font style of those elements.

You have to select the element you want to edit, and a sidebar will appear where you can do all the customization of email templates.

Here is an image of editing the logo in your marketing email.

This is an image of editing the product image.

In this way, you can edit all the elements of your email and send customized email campaigns in Shopify.

Step 6: Test and launch Shopify email marketing campaign

Before sending the Shopify marketing emails, you have to test the email.

Enter your email address where you wish to receive the test email. If the email is looking as you intended, you can send your Shopify marketing emails.

This is how to create email marketing on Shopify using its built-in feature. The scope for customizing and producing personalized emails is limited, and it is quite cumbersome to use, too.

This is where the email marketing app comes in.

You can automate, segment, and customize your email campaigns with ease and launch high-converting Shopify email marketing using an email marketing app for Shopify like – Retainful.

Here is how you can do it.

Creating a Shopify email marketing campaign using Retainful

Retainful is an email marketing app for Shopify, designed specifically with e-commerce store owners in mind.

It has easy-to-setup automation and pre-built workflows to launch your email marketing campaigns for Shopify in minutes. With its advanced segmentation feature, you make the campaigns targeted to unique customer preferences and increase your email conversion rate.

The steps for setting up email marketing in Retainful:

• Install Retainful from the Shopify App Store.
• Sync orders and contacts of your Shopify store with Retainful
• Segment your customers using the ‘List and Segments’ feature.

Now, let’s move on to learn how to create an email marketing campaign on a Shopify email marketing app.

Let’s see the steps in detail.

Step 1: Log in to the Retainful dashboard

Log in to your Retainful dashboard and go to ‘Campaigns’.

Step 2: Set up email properties

Write a subject line, preview text, and set up email properties like ‘from’ and ‘reply to’ email addresses.

Step 3: Edit the email template

We have completed the Shopify email campaign setup. It is time to choose the Shopify email marketing template and customize it.

Retainful has a template library where you can choose your email template based on what type of email marketing campaign for Shopify you are planning to send.

Let’s pick up the Back-in-stock email template.

Here is a peek into the drag-and-drop email template editor of Retainful, where you can customize every element of the template.

You can also add or remove a section in the template.

If you are done with your editing, send a test email to make sure the template has come out as you intended.

Step 4: Selecting recipients

Now the email is ready to go, you have to select the recipients – to all the contacts or only to contacts under a list or segment.

You can select the list or segment you have already created as your recipients.

Step 5: Sending the email marketing campaign

You can review the email properties, email templates, and recipients before clicking ‘Send’.

After reviewing the campaign, you need to click on the ‘Send Campaign’ button to send or schedule it.

This is how to send marketing emails on an email marketing software for Shopify. You can see that there is more scope for segmentation and customization than the built-in features of Shopify.

5 Best Shopify Email Marketing Apps

The best Shopify email marketing apps are the ones that have seamless Shopify email marketing automation and allow you to personalize your emails.

Let’s see the best email marketing apps for Shopify in detail.

1. Retainful

Retainful is a multi-purpose Shopify email marketing app specifically designed for ecommerce businesses. It is a simple and powerful plugin to cover all your bases for email marketing in Shopify. Its pre-built workflows and templates will make it effortless to launch your email campaigns.

At its core lies a seamless email automation capability. With this automation feature, you can set up specific triggers – what triggers the email, entry rules – when a customer should enter the workflow, and customer rules – which customers should receive the email. This allows you to send customized email campaigns crafted based on a variety of customer actions.

It doesn’t stop there. This email marketing platform’s advanced segmentation feature allows you to group your customers based on many pre-defined or custom criteria and send personalized emails.

Crafting emails? It’s as effortless as it gets with a drag-and-drop email editor. No code, no fuss.

On top of that, with its Abandoned Cart Recovery feature, many businesses have seen a significant increase in recovery numbers.

Apart from these features, you can also send next-order coupons and create referral programs easily.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a full-fledged digital marketing hub, giving you multichannel campaign support, website-building tools, reports, and Shopify automated email marketing.

This Shopify email marketing service boasts advanced automation and segmentation features like multiple triggers, predictive analytics, and more.

One of Mailchimp’s most outstanding features is that you can have a taste of almost all its key features with a free plan. You just have to sign up with your email to access the email marketing automation on Shopify, the marketing CRM, multichannel marketing tools, and pre-designed email templates.

3. Omnisend

Omnisend is an omni-channel marketing platform for Shopify tailored for e-commerce businesses. It provides email marketing automation capabilities, allowing businesses to set up automation workflows for creating effective Shopify promotional emails, cart abandonment emails, post-purchase, welcome emails, and more.

It allows you to include dynamic content in your Shopify automated emails using customer data and behavior, ensuring each recipient receives a tailored message.

This Shopify email marketing service offers a plethora of email templates, or you can create one on top of the pre-built layout. It also has a drag-and-drop email editor to create customised email campaings in Shopify.

4. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an email marketing platform that offers user-friendly design tools, extensive templates, and robust Shopify email marketing analytics, catering primarily to small and medium-sized businesses.

More than providing an email marketing tool to Shopify, Constant Contact features an event management tool. You can create, promote, manage registrations, and send follow-up emails for events all within the platform.

With this Shopify email marketing service, you can grow your email list in multiple ways, from website sign-up forms to integrations with social media platforms.

5. Active Campaign

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform for Shopify that provides several functionalities tailored for e-commerce businesses.

It features advanced automation, which helps in crafting personalized customer journeys based on shopping behavior and interactions.

This email marketing software excels in its ability to track customer interactions on your store like pages visited, products viewed, and purchase history. Leveraging this data, the platform triggers event-based automations, sending highly targeted emails based on specific actions taken by customers.

There you have it. The best email marketing apps for Shopify to create successful email campaigns.

Wrapping up!!

Shopify email marketing could be not just a step but a leap forward toward your revenue growth. It allows you to reach out to customers and engage them, sowing the seeds for successful conversions.

Throughout this guide, we’ve explored the intricacies of setting up effective Shopify email campaigns, how to do best email marketing for Shopify using personalization and segmentation, and how to create email campaigns in Shopify and an email marketing app for Shopify.

Know more about Email marketing in Shopify

• How Email Template Design Plays a Huge Role in Marketing Campaigns Success?
• Top 10 Email Marketing Automation Apps For Shopify