Shopify Email Guide for Merchants

Hey 👋

If you sell commerce online, you do email marketing. It’s the most cost-effective way to retain customers & create a bond with them. You probably use either Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign — did I guess right?

And how much do you pay per subscriber using that service? 🙊 

Well, Shopify has an alternative, already built into your store — and it comes free with all Shopify plans 👀

In today’s post, we’ll cover Shopify Email, how to use it, and a guide for beginners to email marketing & more advanced tips for the pros!

Let’s get started 🔥

1. Why Shopify Email & How To Get Started 📨 

Just like Klaviyo & other email marketing platforms, Shopify Email lets you send emails to your customers, but it does a few things differently. Let’s note some that make it better than other services:

1️⃣ Free for up to 10,000 emails/mo (with low costs beyond that, at $1 per 1000 emails)

2️⃣ Advanced segmentation tied to the shopping habits of your customers

3️⃣ Comes with pre-built templates already optimized for e-commerce

4️⃣ Everything is on one platform, Shopify Email is already baked into your store

If you’re on Shopify already, then why not try this zero-cost & low-risk service to build more goodwill with your shoppers & increase conversions?

To get started, make sure you have a Shopify account with any plan other than the free trial and have an online store, with a payment provider & sales channel set up.

Once that’s done, you can head over to the Shopify Email app page to install it — then, go to your Notification Settings & confirm your sender email address.

Congrats, you’ve set up Shopify Email 😄 

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2. Best Email Practices ✒️ 

There are about a thousand different ways to write & optimize emails, but here are the practices you can take action on today:

1️⃣ Use Pre-Built Email Templates

Choose a template that has already proven to be highly converting, based on email type.

2️⃣ A/B Split Tests

To understand your shoppers better, you need to test what content they are more fond of. Here are a few email elements worth poking around with:

• Subject Lines

• Call-to-Action (CTA)

• Send Time & Days

• Email Layout & Design

A common way to split test is to send your first email to 50% of your subscribers, and the 2nd version to the other half. After sending, compare the performance of the two & take note of which email did what better. (You can also split test with smaller samples, like 10-20%)

3️⃣ Segmentation

Engaging the right customer can be important, since you want to know which of your shoppers are high-value, needing a win-back, and haven’t yet bought from you.

Depending on the case, you can create more personalized messages (and even automate them) to drive more purchases from that specific customer segment.

4️⃣ Automation

You can have a whole series of emails ready to be sent as soon as a customer completes a certain action, here are a few email types worth automating:

• Welcome Emails

• Abandoned Cart Emails

• Cross-Sell & Upsell (related products post-purchase, for example)

• Check-in & Thank You Emails

And if you want to learn exactly how to write winning emails you can automate (with super high CR% examples), check out our post on why Your Email List is a Goldmine.

5️⃣ Establish a Brand ToV

Getting your emails into your shopper’s inbox is one thing, but them recognizing you just by reading the subject line is another.

Early on, adopt a very specific & memorable tone of voice that stands out — it can be either funny, outgoing, straightforward, or literally sarcastic, it’s all up to you.

3. Advanced Email Marketing🤳🏼

Now that we’ve covered the best email practices, let’s get into a few more advanced email marketing techniques:

1️⃣ Analytics

Shopify Email is literally baked into your store, meaning you get to see more relevant stats, like shopper behavior, # of products sold, AoV, and others.

If you’ve already split-tested a few emails between your subscribers, it’s worth finding out at what time your content is read most, the best frequency at which to send out emails, and the most well-received content types — Shopify Email already does some of that for you.

2️⃣ Implement UGC

UGC can be what pushes a shopper to take action, even on something that has more friction, like referring a friend. UGC can also just provide enough social proof to drive a purchase. Look at this example from Aeva beauty

Look at this simple UGC-in-email example from Aeva Beauty (this is just a small part of the email, consisting of many other UGC):

UGC may seem difficult to get into, but we’ve already made a guide to make it super easy for you — check out our Guide on UGC for Merchants.

3️⃣ Newsletter

Just a simple email newsletter can help your customers learn more about your brand — this is a very slept-on way to build more trust with them, too. Newsletters aren’t promotional in any way and exist purely to just give as much value to the reader as possible.

What works best in newsletters are stories. If you can find a compelling story from a customer, family member, or from your team (related to your brand in a way), consider using it as a topic for a newsletter!

Here’s a stellar example of a story-based newsletter from Rothy’s:

That’s that! We covered what Shopify Email is, how to get started, and only the most important tips to get the most out of email marketing 😄 

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Daniil from ECORN