Shopify email marketing: how to set up a newsletter + the best email marketing apps to boost your sales

In e-commerce, email marketing is one of the best ways to strengthen customer loyalty and generate more sales. There’s no alternative here – your Shopify shop needs an email workflow, otherwise you’ll be throwing money away every day. That’s exactly why, in this article, I’ll show you how to build a relationship with your customers using automated emails.

Shopify email marketing – what is it?

As the name suggests, Shopify email marketing refers to all marketing activities related to sending emails. The most common method is a newsletter that customers can sign up for. In addition, there are various marketing automation tools that can be used to send messages to customers depending on the situation. But more on that later – first, let’s clarify why you absolutely need an email list and automated emails.

What opportunities does email marketing offer you?

• An email list allows you to connect directly with your audience, without relying on third-party providers such as Meta or Alphabet.

• You can share information about new products or interesting news with your customers.

• You can segment your customers and send personalised emails.

• Automation saves you time and helps you stay organised.

What are the benefits of Shopify email marketing?

• Increasing turnover: By targeting your audience effectively, you can increase your turnover.

• High return on investment (ROI): The ROI for email marketing is particularly high, making it an indispensable tool for success in e-commerce.

• Customer loyalty: By sending out high-quality newsletters, you can build customer loyalty to your brand and get them excited about your products.

• Automation: With email flows, you can automate the sending of the right emails; once set up, everything runs itself.

• Measurability: For successful marketing, you need data – and that’s not always easy to come by. With email marketing, however, it is. You can easily view the CTR and conversion rate.

Possibilities for email marketing automation

As well as a newsletter – which, for example, sends a new email every month to all customers who have signed up to the mailing list – there are various email automations that are triggered by different events. Here are my top seven email flows:

• #1 Welcome emails: This email is sent out as soon as a customer has signed up for the newsletter. Here, you can thank them for signing up and introduce your brand. You can also turn this into a welcome sequence, in which case each subsequent email should help to strengthen the customer’s loyalty to your brand.

• #2 Post-purchase flow: After the purchase, you can show the customer your appreciation and thereby signal to the buyer that you value them, which can help to increase loyalty.

• #3 Abandoned Cart Workflow: Potential customers often add a product to their basket because they want it, but then leave the Shopify shop. There can be several reasons for this; this workflow allows you to contact precisely these people and bring the product back to their attention.

• #4 Abandoned checkout flow: Even just before checkout, customers frequently abandon their purchases. This is particularly frustrating as it happens just before conversion. You can send an email to remind users of their abandoned purchase and thus win back some of those who abandoned their shopping cart.

• #5 Abandoned-Browse-Flow: You can go one step further and even target users who have viewed products but haven’t added them to their basket.

• #6 Review Flow: The main aim of Review Flow is to collect more product reviews. These, in turn, have a direct impact on the trust new customers place in your business. By giving buyers the option to leave a review directly within the email, you make it easy for them to rate your products.

• #7 Winback flow: With this flow, you target customers who haven’t bought anything from your shop for a long time. This way, you may be able to win them back and turn them into paying customers again.

How to make your Shopify email marketing automation a success

Perhaps you’ve found yourself annoyed by a newsletter at some point. I, for one, know the feeling all too well. There’s a fine line between a newsletter that wins people over and one that’s perceived as intrusive advertising. That’s why we’re going to take a look at the best practices for successful email marketing campaigns.

• Frequency: Monthly, fortnightly or weekly are all acceptable frequencies for a newsletter. It can also vary depending on the target audience. However, you should ensure that your automated emails do not overlap too much. If a customer receives a post-purchase email, an abandoned basket email and the regular newsletter all at the same time, followed shortly afterwards by a review email, this can come across as spammy.

• Personalisation: Personalise your emails as much as possible. Addressing your customers by name makes them feel valued. Tailored product recommendations can boost your conversion rate.

• Segmentation: Segmentation ensures relevance; only relevant emails achieve their objective. For example, you can segment by demographic, geographical or behavioural criteria.

• Design: Of course, design plays a part too; it should fit in with your brand and look good on all devices.

• Testing: As with all marketing campaigns, you need to keep testing and optimising. Every aspect of your emails should be tested; fortunately, it’s very easy to set up A/B tests in email marketing.

The best email marketing tools for Shopify

If you want to get started with email marketing for your Shopify shop (and you do), you have two options. Either you use Shopify Email, the in-house email marketing app, or you use third-party Shopify marketing apps. Here’s a brief overview:

Shopify Email

The email marketing solution offered by Shopify.

Advantages: A major advantage of Shopify Email is its seamless integration as a standalone application directly within the backend. This allows you to create your email campaigns directly in the Shopify admin panel without having to switch back and forth between different platforms. The user-friendliness is complemented by a selection of templates that automatically incorporate your logo, your products and your shop’s colour scheme. This not only saves you valuable time, but also allows you to create, send and track the success of customised emails without any design expertise. Another advantage is that the emails are sent via your own domain, which not only strengthens your brand presence but also reduces the likelihood of them ending up in your customers’ spam folders.

Drawbacks: The segmentation options are not ideal, and, unfortunately, automation features cannot be implemented, which is particularly problematic for shops with a large number of email subscribers. Furthermore, the options for customising the email design are quite limited.

Cost: You can send up to 2,500 emails a month for free; after that, you pay $1 for every 1,000 additional emails.

My conclusion: Shopify Email’s user-friendly interface and the fact that it’s free to use are its main advantages. However, the app is kept very simple, and the lack of automation features, as well as the limited segmentation options, make it less suitable for larger shops. For this reason, Shopify Email should only be considered as a starter solution. However, as soon as the shop grows, you should switch to one of the other tools.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is arguably the best-known email marketing tool and, fortunately, is now available in the Shopify App Store.

Advantages: One reason for Mailchimp’s popularity is that there are a total of four plans, one of which is free. Each plan is suited to different requirements. Another factor is that the free plan offers features that will appeal even to beginners with more demanding requirements, such as simple automation or detailed segmentation. Furthermore, the editor allows templates to be individually designed and customised using a drag-and-drop interface.

Drawbacks: Although the free plan offers useful features, additional features such as advanced automation or custom branding require paid subscriptions, which can quickly add up. Furthermore, emails sent via the free plan contain an advertising banner.

Costs: The Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium plans are available. With the free plan, you can send up to 10,000 emails per month to a maximum of 2,000 subscribers. However, the cost of the paid plans depends on the number of your contacts. For example, the monthly fee for the Essentials plan is $9.99 for 500 contacts, whilst it rises to $74.99 for 10,000 contacts.

My conclusion: Even the Essentials plan from Mailchimp offers all the features you need for successful email marketing. And the app remains easy to use. However, I cannot recommend the free plan. The advertising banner makes your emails look unprofessional.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a widely used e-commerce tool for marketing automation. Email marketing is one of its key features.

Advantages: The focus on automation is Klaviyo’s greatest strength. Customers receive precisely the personalised emails that suit them and their user behaviour. One of the reasons the automation is so effective is that segmentation is extremely precise thanks to excellent synchronisation. Retailers using Shopify, in particular, benefit from the specialised features developed specifically for Shopify, such as unique discount codes, back-in-stock emails and targeted pop-ups.

Disadvantages: Unfortunately, the wide range of features has a negative impact on user-friendliness. For inexperienced users or beginners, Klaviyo is quite complicated to use, which is why it is more suitable for experienced users. Furthermore, the features are expensive; Klaviyo costs more per email contact than Mailchimp.

Costs: Prices are based on the number of contacts; for example, 500 contacts cost $20 a month.

My conclusion: The wide range of features makes Klaviyo popular with experts. For non-experts, however, the tool can quickly become overwhelming. Those who take the time to learn how to use Klaviyo will see the greatest increase in turnover.

Conclusion

Shopify email marketing is one of the most effective ways to boost your sales. That’s why you should at least have the basic email workflows set up for your shop. Otherwise, you’ll be missing out on a lot of potential. However, to get the most out of email marketing, it requires some training and ongoing testing, which can take up a lot of resources. That’s why it can be worthwhile working with a Shopify agency. Depending on your requirements, we use Mailchimp or Klaviyo to build profitable email funnels and foster long-term customer relationships.

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