Email marketing is the easiest and cheapest way to achieve business growth. It helps your fashion business thrive, reach the right customers, and convert them.
Today, email marketing offers some of the highest ROI – 4 000% or $40 for every $1 spent (Oberlo).
It’s the lighthouse in the storm of declining ad revenues and third-party cookie restrictions. Besides, sending promotional emails and targeted email marketing campaigns doesn’t add costs.
You’re probably already using a solution and paying for its features.
Put them to work.
We’ll see how in today’s article. Below, we’ll discuss the benefits of using fashion email marketing, but most importantly – how to make your fashion newsletters effective and converting. Let’s get to it!
Overview of Email Marketing
Email marketing has been around since the 70s. That’s one of the most underestimated and underutilized marketing channels. It’s a superb instrument for digital and direct marketing.
Paid ads lack character and get lost among the thousands of sponsored posts and video ads we see daily. Email marketing offers you a one-to-one communication method, a more intimate channel.
Through email marketing, you can boost brand awareness and nurture valuable relationships with existing customers.
And that’s one of the reasons why it’s so valuable for the fashion niche – it will play a crucial role in your overall marketing strategy and generate the highest returns.
In the next section, you’ll see firsthand how email marketing impacts fashion and apparel online stores and their results.
Benefits of Email Marketing for Fashion Stores
Today’s digital age shaped email marketing to be among the most powerful tools for engaging customers, keeping them engaged between purchases, and driving conversions.
Fashion newsletters are an invaluable element of the overall marketing strategy – they enable personalization, make prospects feel special, and deliver incentives that drive conversions.
The most prominent benefits of email marketing for the fashion niche are:
- Personalized Communication – use email marketing to make personalized recommendations through product recommendation engines like the one built into the VibeTrace app. Give customers exactly what they want, and make them feel valued.
- Higher Conversion Rates, Lower Costs – targeted emails with personalized content are known to drive conversions. When you start making targeted campaigns, you’ll spend less on paid ads and earn more from existing customers and subscribers. You can use exclusivity, time sensitivity, and a plethora of other tricks to craft converting fashion newsletters.
- Measurable Results – the data that email marketing generates provides invaluable and actionable insights into consumer behavior. You can measure various KPIs to refine and optimize your email marketing strategy to further increase conversion rates.
- Access to Feedback – fashion items receive a ton of feedback. You can launch surveys and learn more about your customers’ tastes and preferences. You can use email marketing and newsletters to request reviews, ratings, and even user-generated content. All that comes in handy when new visitors land on your fashion store. Social proof is one of the building blocks of trust, and you can gather it through email marketing.
- Improved Loyalty & Retention – unlike consumer goods, people don’t buy apparel and fashion items daily. Email marketing helps nurture loyalty and increase customer retention. Use it to deliver valuable and relevant content regularly. Don’t just blast subscribers with promotional emails every time you run a sale. Give them value; foster long-term customer loyalty if you aim to increase returns and reduce promotional costs.
Fashion email marketing comes with all those benefits. But to reap them, you need to spend some time and effort crafting successful newsletters that convert.
Below, we’ll discuss what makes certain emails better than others, so keep reading!
How to Craft Engaging Newsletters for Fashion Stores?
To understand the importance of quality emails, you must first understand the importance of fashion email marketing. Paid ads accounts might get closed, social media accounts – are banned, and your advertisement budget might get limited.
What you truly own as a business are your fashion store, website, and the contacts in your email lists. Email marketing is a direct communication channel that you own.
It can reduce costs and boost returns. It’s of crucial importance to optimize your communication through it. Here’s how!
A. Writing Impactful Subject Lines
We get dozens, if not hundreds of emails every day. If you’re like me, you’ve learned to identify which emails matter and which ones can wait. As a result, I’ve left some emails to go unopened for months.
If you don’t want this to happen to your fashion emails, do the most out of the subject line. It’s your first and probably only chance to grab the subscriber’s attention and move them to the next stage in their journey.
Use power words, personalize, and be bold enough to use an emoji. And then test, test, and test some more. Check out our detailed subject lines guide with expert tips on crafting impactful copy that encourages people to open emails.
TIP: Check out SubjectLine.com – a free subject line rating tool to get you started.
Writing eye-popping actionable subject lines is the result of lots of tests and copywriting practice. Get to know your audience, A/B test your subject lines, and don’t give up!
B. Designing Eye-Catching Emails
Visual appeal is crucial in the fashion context. Besides, creatives depend on the products you’re selling. You won’t feature snowy mountain peaks and glacier lakes in an email for a bathing suit promotion, will you?
But that’s not the only design element to pay attention to. When crafting emails:
- Consider your brand, brand colors, and overall aesthetic, and express it in the email;
- Consider what you’re writing about. If it’s a time-sensitive promotion, lead with it. If you’re showcasing a new product category, use high-quality images. Rely on a clean layout with clear key points and CTAs.
- Consider technology – your email will display on both desktop and mobile devices. Don’t use images that will take too long to load or ones that will stretch the page. Always, ALWAYS preview your emails. Send tests to yourself and your colleagues before launching a campaign.
The email must catch the eye, guide it, and provide a seamless experience if people decide to click through.
You can use tools and email service providers that offer catchy, beautiful templates to streamline your work or create the email yourself – it’s up to you!
C. Crafting Engaging Content
Fashion newsletters and email campaigns aren’t just about discounts and promotions. Feature content that will resonate with your subscribers.
You can feature product highlights, exclusive recommendations, and even blog content with tips and tricks. Offer relevant styling advice and pair it with product recommendations. Some brands go so far as to send out fashion newsletters that look like fashion magazines, like Net-a-Porter, for example.
They leverage the email marketing communication channel to further reinforce themselves as a luxury brand fashion store.
D. Structure of an Email for Fashion Stores
Whether you’ll use a template or start crafting an email from scratch, fashion email marketing requires several elements, typical for most retail emails.
Once you entice prospects to open your email with the help of the subject line and the preview text, the rest of those elements must hold that attention. Those include:
- Header – where you must add your brand, logo, tagline, and any navigational links you consider important for a fashion email. Consider the above example – Net-a-Porter has featured key categories in its header.
- Background – fashion newsletters can win from a more minimalistic design. That way, a customer’s attention will follow a predetermined path and focus on key elements, like product showcases and discount codes. Instead of using background images, feature your brand colors.
- High-Quality Images – the body of your email can carry product images. Use only high-quality images, but don’t overdo it, making the email impossible to load.
- Copy & CTAs – clever copy, bright buttons with bold colors and action-oriented CTAs, and a tone of voice adjusted for your audience’s specifics help every fashion email to convert.
The topic around Fashion Stores is available here.
E. Examples of Newsletters for Fashion Stores
If you haven’t subscribed to your fashion competitors yet, go and do it right now. They can give you insights into what works for your competition and what activates their email audience. That allows you to analyze their email structure, the images they use, and the overall layout and content.
Pay attention to their tone of voice and copy, but also – the subject lines that work for them. For example, H&M highlights its free shipping and boasts the perfect summer shorts. They’ve also featured key navigational links on top of their email.
Some of their subject lines include:
- Let the good times flow 🌊
- Hurry! 15% off $60, 20% off $80 or 25% off $100
- It’s a 25% off FLASH SALE ⚡ (for Members only)
Levi’s, in contrast, leads with their discount threshold:
They entice with subject lines like:
- ✨ NEW✨ tops for summer
- The denim you need
- Y’all are absolutely loving these
Shein US emphasizes its wallet-friendly deals and free-shipping options:
They use subject lines like:
- Get your ⚡SALE⚡ shopping rush fix
- Enjoy the Fri-yay deals!
- SHEIN Modely | New style, same fashion
You can find tons of inspiration by signing up for your competitors’ emails. That’s just a fraction of the tactics they apply. Notice how their visuals and tone of voice align with their target audience. If nothing else, take that crucial lesson from their approach.
How your Fashion store can benefit from Email Marketing?
A. Automated Email Sending (and more)
Email sending should not happen manually. Currently this can be done using automations, like the example one below.
B. A/B Testing
Without A/B testing it’s hard to know what worked and what not.
To find more resources on A/B testing, read our main topic. You should test everything, from email subject lines to From address and not last email content.
C. User-friendly Templates
How can User-friendly Templates help email marketing for fashion stores?
- Create templates that are designed around the needs of fashion stores. This could include styling tips, model profiles, and product reviews.
- Utilize templates that have vibrant colors and images that align with the fashion store’s brand identity.
- Design templates that are optimized for both desktop and mobile devices.
- Make sure the templates are easy to use and modify based on the fashion store’s needs.
- Provide templates that include options to integrate social media feeds or images from fashion blogs.
- Create template libraries that fashion stores can access and use for their campaigns.
- Develop templates that use bold and creative typography to stand out.
- Create customizable templates that can be personalized with AI and ML technology.
- Design templates that automatically adjust to the size of the recipient’s device.
Check out how our collect for email design inspiration
D. Real-time Analytics
The most important 4 reasons why Analytics are important to your Fashion store and brand.
- Real-time analytics help you track key customer engagement metrics. This data can be used to optimize the shopping experience.
- Analyze user behavior to understand what products they are viewing and what features they are engaging with.
- Measure conversions in real-time and identify areas of improvement.
- Identify recency and frequency of shoppers and provide personalized marketing campaigns based on their demographics.
Conclusion
Email marketing offers numerous benefits for fashion stores, plays a crucial role in nurturing customer relationships, and gives you one of the most profitable communication channels. A channel that you own.
With ROI of more than 4 000%, you can’t afford to ignore it. Fashion email marketing boosts conversion rates, encourages customer loyalty, and provides a cost-effective solution for retention and enhanced returns.
It’s among the most effective ways to engage customers and establish relevant communication.
Now you can use a robust all-in-one instrument for effective marketing communication. VibeTrace gives you a comprehensive, three-sixty solution for email marketing automation. Don’t hesitate to book a demo with our team to see it in action!
