What is Shopify Email? Introduction, features, and tips

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways for businesses to build relationships with their customers, so it’s no surprise that this element of digital marketing is high on the to-do list of many aspiring entrepreneurs. But what tools do you need to make the email channel a profitable part of your marketing strategy?

When you build your business on the Shopify platform, Shopify Email is ready to give you everything you need for email marketing.

What is Shopify Email?

Shopify Email is an email marketing tool created by Shopify. You can create, send, and manage your email marketing in the same system you use to manage your store. Get started with pre-built email templates, email automations that can be set up with just a few clicks, and send your first 10,000 emails every month for free. You can easily scale your efforts with custom designs, customized automation, and campaign management.

Shopify Email Key Features

Shopify Email has everything you need to launch and scale your email marketing strategy:

• Ready-made templates and flexible styling. Customize the layout, colors, fonts, and images of your emails using the visual designer.
• Personalization. Add personalization to your emails by including customer information such as first name, last name, city, and country.
• Segmentation. Divide your subscribers into different groups to deliver more relevant content and improve the performance of your emails.
• Email automation. Send pre-designed emails to subscribers at the right time, whether it's after they join your email list, make their first purchase, or abandon their shopping cart. Start with templates for common automations or customize your own.
• Planning your mailings. Prepare your letters in advance and schedule them for sending at appropriate times.
• Testing your emails. Send yourself test emails before sending them to your list.
• Campaign metrics and analytics. View metrics such as open, click, and unsubscribe rates for each subscriber group or automated email.
• Create and manage newsletters on mobile devices. With the Shopify mobile app, you can create a newsletter from an idea to a finished result, launch it, and analyze its effectiveness.

Shopify Email: 4 Top Email Marketing Tips

1. Manage your email list carefully

To get the most out of every visit to your store, you need to offer visitors ways to contact you that go beyond just buying—many people aren’t ready to buy right away. That’s why it’s smart to have a lead capture form.

If you're new to lead capture, here's a quick explanation: Any time you see a signup form offering a discount on your next order in exchange for your email address, that's lead capture.

If you're wondering what to offer visitors in exchange for their email address, here are some ideas:

• Discount on their order. This is a classic in commerce and there is a reason for it – it works and people love discounts.
• Exclusive Access. If you have items that regularly sell out or you run special sales, get people excited about it by asking them to sign up for your email list. Then, when a new item or sale comes on, send them an email an hour or two before you promote it anywhere else.
• Expert tip. Do you have useful content that pairs perfectly with your product? Turn it into a PDF and send it via email in addition to the welcome email, and promote it in your lead capture forms. It’s valuable to your customers and will cost you less than a discount on your products.

Shopify Forms is a free app that helps you create engaging lead capture forms in just a few clicks—no coding or design skills required. The app integrates with your email marketing automation tools right out of the box.

2. Take your email design to the next level

When someone opens your email, you want them to know it was sent by you and have a clear understanding of what they should do next, whether that’s visiting your store or adding a new item to their cart. Shopify Email gives you the flexibility to customize your design without the need for technical expertise, so your emails will look great on both desktop and mobile.

Here are some tips from Shopify Email Lead Designer, Laura Forbes, that you might want to consider to make your email designs stand out. Laura spends her days thinking about creating great email designs, so she knows her stuff.

Edit product titles and descriptions directly in your email

When you add products to an email, Shopify pulls product information directly from your store to save you time. But the information may be too detailed for the template you've chosen. In that case, you can hide the product description, title, and price, or edit a long headline so it fits well in the template's structural grid.

Download free images directly from the editor

Shopify Email is integrated with Burst , Shopify's free stock image library, so you can add stock photos to your emails with one click.

Use the Image and Text section to structure your layout.

If you want to showcase products in a new way, show different benefits of a product, or introduce several promotions, consider alternating images and text. This will help you make the presentation more interesting. You can even use the “Image and Text” section to inform about your store’s opening hours or introduce yourself to your subscribers. You can end your email with an image of your signature.

Use background color and add dividers

Sometimes design is not just about what you include, but also what you leave out. If you use background color in your emails, try adding dividers of the same color between sections to improve the structure of your email.

With Shopify Email, you can do a lot more to create effective emails. Why not try using a multi-column template to showcase your latest blog posts, create a side-by-side CTA , or even just go with a two-column text layout ? You can also include an express checkout block to add a sense of urgency to buy a hot new product and send your subscribers straight to the checkout page.

3. Segment your audience

When you only have a few subscribers, it makes sense to send the same email to everyone at once. However, as you grow, especially once you surpass 100 subscribers, you'll likely see higher open rates, clicks, and sales if you target your emails to a specific audience.

You can create dozens of segments directly in Shopify using the customer data you already have, including what, when, and where people buy. Start with pre-built segments, then add filters as needed to send different offers to your customers. This could be, for example, giving VIP customers early access to an annual sale or sending a compelling discount offer to people who haven’t made their first purchase yet.

4. Automate your email marketing campaigns

Email marketing automation is one of the most powerful tools your business can have. Once you set up your automations, they will work for you and run in the background at the exact time for each customer.

Here are a few ways to automate your emails, templates for which you can find in the Marketing Automation section of the Shopify Email app:

Welcome Emails. Send emails to subscribers immediately after they join your list to welcome them, tell them more about your story, and of course, provide the discounts you promised!

Upsell after first purchase. Bring new customers back to your store after their order is delivered to encourage them to place a second order as soon as possible.

Customer Reactivation. Invite customers who haven't ordered in a while to come back and make a purchase. Note that you can easily customize this automation based on your purchasing cycle. If you know your customers shop with you once a year, set the automation timeframe to 365 days .

Abandoned Orders. This automation is enabled by default for all new Shopify stores because it works. You can easily customize the look and content of abandoned cart emails using the Shopify Email editor.

Abandoned Carts. This automation is for those visitors who add items to their cart but do not proceed to checkout. You can set up a text message or perhaps offer a discount to bring them back to complete their purchase.

Viewed Products. If you have customers in your subscriber list who were simply browsing product pages, bring them back and convert the view into a sale by sending them a reminder email about the products they were browsing in your store.

You can customize any of the available templates and create your own to send exactly the email you want, to exactly the customers you want, at a time that works for your email list members.

Tip: To turn any template into a serial email, add a new wait step, then add another marketing email.

Shopify Email: Example Email Templates

Successful brands use Shopify every day to create beautifully crafted email marketing campaigns. Get inspired by these examples of marketing emails created using Shopify Email. And borrow effective tactics for your own brand to turn your subscribers into customers.

Ogham Craft Spirits

Feature Used: Quick Checkout Button

Why it works: Ogham removes the barriers to purchase by allowing customers to purchase the featured product in one click, directly from the email.

Saltspring Kitchen Co.

Function used: Automation

Why it works: Saltspring Kitchen Co. combined great storytelling content with a template that lets the brand shine.

Sam James Coffee Bar

Function used: Automation

Why it works: Sam James used the automation functionality to pull discounts from Shopify directly into a marketing email.

Wood Wood Toys

Function used: Automation

Why it works: Wood Wood Toys used automation functionality to pull products from their Shopify store directly into their marketing email.

Get Started and Scale with Shopify Email

Whether you're just starting out and want to send your first newsletter or looking to set up more complex marketing campaigns with automation and segmentation, Shopify Email can help you and your business.