Ecommerce marketing emails are the key to growing your business whether you use Shopify or WooCommerce. Every email you send is an opportunity to make a connection with your customers from welcome emails to cart abandonment reminders.
In this article, we’ll show you how to write a variety of emails. Plus, you’ll get a selection of free ready-to-use email templates.
Let’s dive in!
5 types of ecommerce email templates that you need for your ecommerce business
1. Welcome emails
Most people expect to get a welcome email when they subscribe to your email list. So never skip this step.
Welcome emails help build the relationship between you and your prospect.
And you can use them to set expectations. Give your subscribers the lowdown on what they’ll get from your emails—such as promotions, newest arrivals, or fashion tips.
Let them know when they can expect your emails (e.g. “Look out for our newsletter every Thursday”).
To show how much you value your subscribers, provide a special offer that’s unique to them—such as free shipping or 10% off.
Let’s take a look at some awesome examples.
Highlight 50% off for new subscribers | Ann Taylor
We love Ann Taylor’s email because it’s simple, elegant, and highlights the offer. There’s no chance to miss the $50 off promotion.
Make your readers feel special | Boden
Boden opens their welcome email with a short introduction that makes the reader feel special: “Welcome to our world. Shop our legendary sales before anyone else.”
This warm approach helps accelerate a strong connection with their subscribers.
And Boden also knows that a discount offer is an essential part of welcome emails. They offer 15% off.
Replicate their approach by including warm, inviting language and personalization in your welcome emails.
Keep your welcome email simple | Bonobos
Bonobos’ welcome email is super simple and direct. They don’t go all-in on an elaborate introduction or photos. Instead, they focus on a promotion and a clear Call-to-Action (CTA).
This makes their email great for busy subscribers to quickly scan through.
Bonobos also goes above and beyond to show their goodwill to new subscribers by offering them 20% off and free shipping on their first order.
Additional shipping costs are the number one reason that buyers ditch their carts. Promising free shipping before subscribers shop is an awesome way to build goodwill and entice people to make a purchase.
Create a welcome email sequence | Navabi
Navabi’s email sequence below hits all the right notes:
- Email one— thanks new subscribers with a personal welcome and discount code for signing up.
- Email two— motivates subscribers to use their time-sensitive discount code, driving purchases and inspiring brand loyalty.
- Email three— puts the spotlight on the brand. It showcases their approach and values and helps them build brand awareness.
Want to ace your own welcome sequence in a similar way to Navabi? Carefully balance providing value for your subscribers (i.e. with a unique discount code) with talking up your brand.
Add a deadline for your welcome offers | Fab
This email from Fab is another beautiful example to stash away in your swipe file.
This design-heavy email opts for a dynamic, super-engaging aesthetic with bold hues, fun fonts, and vibrant snaps. The zig-zag, one-two column design also catches the eye—making the email easy-to-read.
They also score points for keeping the intro text to a minimum—highlighting only their products and the subscriber’s time-sensitive offer.
In addition, they tap into the persuasive power of urgency by adding a deadline.
Recreate your own Fab-style welcome email—embrace some fun email design elements and drive sales by offering a time-sensitive sale.
Introduce your brand | Aritzia
An image-centric email is perfect if you want to show off your products. Aritzia does this by highlighting their beautiful clothes and the benefits of shopping with them.
They introduce their brand by calling attention to the perks they offer—from luxe fabrics to awesome customer service. As such, this sequence captures readers’ attention by answering the question, “What’s in it for me when I shop with this brand?”
Another awesome feature of this welcome email?
They invite people to connect with them on social media. Techjury reports that the average person has 200 emails in their inbox.
In contrast, each person spends a whopping 145 minutes on social media each day. Make sure you stay top of mind by asking your subscribers to connect in your welcome emails.
Now you know the ins-and-outs of welcome emails, it’s time to dive into another one of the most popular kinds of emails: promo emails.
2. Promotional emails
While welcome emails introduce subscribers to your company and inspire their very first purchases, the goal of promotional emails is to drive sales for your business. Your promo emails encourage new subscribers to make their first purchase.
You can also use promo emails to upsell or cross-sell to your existing customers.
Upselling means giving solid recs based on what someone just bought. The key is to recommend something of higher value—like a limited-time necklace if they just bought stud earrings. (This plays both on upselling and urgency.)
In comparison, cross-selling inspires customers to buy complementary products (e.g. a bike helmet after buying bike lights). You can boost how much shoppers buy by including bulk discounts on recommended items.
Read on for promotional email examples.
Promote a special offer for their next purchase | SheIn
SheIn uses this thank-you email to offer 40% off to existing customers on their next purchase to show them how much they appreciate them.
This approach is a great way to inspire repeat purchases—fostering brand loyalty.
Wait a couple of weeks between the thank-you email for an order and your promo email. Most customers won’t be ready to make another purchase immediately.
Encourage visitors to return | DODOcase
Here’s another eye-catching special offer. DODOcase encourages visitors to return to their site and make a purchase with a special seasonal discount.
Seasonal offers are tied to particular times of the year.
They work super well because they build excitement around a certain season or event. These offers also help drive purchases because they’re time-sensitive.
Go beyond Christmas, Black Friday, Easter, and other holiday promos. People quickly get bored and oversaturated with the onslaught of ‘standard’ holiday promos that overrun their inboxes. Promote your own seasonal offers based on more unique or niche holidays like Galantines day (celebrated for female friendship on the 13th of Feb).
Design beautiful promotional emails | Rifle Paper Co.
This email from Rifle Paper Co. is simply beautiful.
The colors and images are gorgeous and on-brand. This design-focused email is perfect if you’re selling apparel or other items with aesthetic appeal. They perfectly highlight the item for sale.
Our favorite part of the email? Instead of giving a deadline, they confidently say “These bags won’t last long.”
This highlights that the bags are desirable and high-value—and encourages immediate purchase.
Help your customers find the right products | J. Crew
This email goes beyond just a direct promotion.
It helps customers solve a problem.
J.Crew shows three different ways to put together an outfit with their leopard print skirt. With this approach, J.Crew saves customers time and makes it more convenient to purchase a matching outfit.
They also provide added value by reminding shoppers that their 40% off sale ends today.
Imitate this email by diving deep into some of your audience’s common desires or issues.
Promote your special sale early on | Loft
Subscribers are used to getting promotional emails that announce sales. This means emails will get buried in their inbox easily—especially during sales season.
We love this example from Loft because it highlights their upcoming sale in a fun and memorable way: they use a fun email design and snappy, unforgettable email copy.
To make your sale announcement email stand out: use a fun sales copy and an interesting CTA button. ‘See what’s new’ sparks curiosity and interest, as opposed to something overused and basic like ‘Click here.’
3. Cart abandonment emails
Cart abandonment emails are sent to people who add items to their cart—and leave your website without buying.
The latest global cart abandonment rate is 76.9%. That means that 8 out of 10 visitors who add an item to their shopping cart will ditch it before they go through the checkout.
These huge stats mean you should never forget to send cart abandonment emails.
Klaviyo reports that abandoned cart emails help businesses regain between 3% and 14% of lost sales.
These emails typically offer a reminder and incentive, such as a discount, coupon, or free shipping.
Send a simple reminder | Google Express
Google Express keeps things simple. They focus subscribers’ attention on what they need to do next.
They include a visual reminder that showcases the items in the abandoned shopping cart and a direct CTA, saying “Check out now.”
Promote your customer reviews | Casper
Casper levels up the persuasiveness of their cart abandonment email with an impressive testimonial.
They use social proof in the form of positive applause from other customers. It’s a great way to persuade your cart-ditching customers to carry through with their purchase.
Include a great review in your abandoned cart emails to make sure your customers have no doubts about their purchase.
Promote a 15% discount | Kate Spade
Kate Spade uses a 15% discount in their cart recovery email to convince visitors to complete their purchase.
A discount gives cart abandoners the little jolt they need to finish their checkout.
They also provide personalized recommendations based on the items in their customer’s cart.
What can you take away from Kate Spade? Personalized discounts and recommendations are strategic ways to inspire your prospects to complete the checkout process.
Remind customers about the items they abandoned | J. Crew
What makes this cart abandonment email from J.Crew special? That tiny red note: NOW ON SALE.
This approach is a way more subtle and powerful way of encouraging a return visit compared to a direct discount or coupon.
Test this line of text in your own cart recovery emails.
4. Transactional emails
You’ve driven sales with your promo emails, now it’s time to think about the emails you need to send after customers have put in their orders.
Transactional emails are emails that you send to your customers after they complete a purchase.
These emails usually confirm that an order has been made or shipment has gone out.
These emails have extremely high open rates compared to promotional emails—because most customers expect to receive a confirmation of their order or shipment. Below, we’ll show you what you can do with them.
4.1. Order confirmation emails
Send a simple order confirmation email | Blue Bottle
Blue Bottle’s email is great because they provide customers with all the information they need.
They rehash every detail of the purchase in the email. In addition, they give subscribers the opportunity to contact them with any questions.
Be like Blue Bottle and provide extensive details on your customer’s orders so they don’t have to log into their account to drag up information.
Provide customers with a link to track purchases | Stradivarius
This email from Stradivarius is an ace example because they provide a link for customers to track their orders.
Order tracking helps reduce customer anxiety about their shipment and builds confidence in you as a reliable and transparent company.
Build trust with your customer. Explain what will happen next—so they know exactly what to expect.
Promote store credit | Huckberry
Huckberry’s email confirms the order and entices customers to share Huckberry as a way to earn store credit.
This is a good way to boost your company’s reach while attracting new customers—all without lifting a finger.
At the end of the email, they also show you the products that are trending right now. This is another best practice to note.
When you don’t have a lot of data for customer personalization, recommending bestsellers and hot products are great ways to encourage repeat business.
4.2. Shipping emails
Use a friendly tone in your emails | Fitbit
We like Fitbit’s email because of the friendly and playful tone they use. Always go for fun language instead of a message that’s easily forgettable.
Their email also has a clean look. The design and content are minimal, which focuses on the reader and doesn’t distract them with unnecessary information.
Keep your copy scannable to avoid annoying or confusing your readers.
Promote rewards for referrals | Tradesy
Tradesy’s shipping confirmation email gives customers a chance to invite their friends in exchange for a discount on their next purchase.
Recommendations from friends and family are highly persuasive. ReferralCandy found that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people in their social circle.
Take this approach to encourage repeat business and bag more customers.
Free email marketing templates for ecommerce brands
Now that you’ve seen some great ecommerce marketing emails, you can start converting more results from your own email campaigns.
To get you started, check out our three simple ecommerce email templates. Download them now and start using them today for free!
Our email templates are completely customizable. So take the time to customize them to suit your brand: from your brand colors to your brand’s tone of voice.
In addition, also utilize A/B tests for different elements of your emails and find which ones perform best.
How to build an email list and why you should do it
Most businesses still see email as the best channel to build relationships with customers and leads. 4 out of 5 marketers say they’d rather give up social media than email marketing.
People regularly use their smartphones to check emails. This means that emails are a great way to reach your visitors in real-time.
Here’s why you should build your email list, according to CampaignMonitor:
- A message is 5x more likely to be seen in an email than via Facebook.
- Email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
- For every $1 spent on email marketing, it generates $38 in return on investment.
- Email marketing drives higher conversions than any other marketing channel, including search engines and social media.
Luckily, there are many simple ways to build a healthy email list.
A healthy email list contains visitors who are actually interested in your products. Maintaining a healthy email list is referred to as email hygiene. It involves:
- Regularly cleaning up your list of inactive subscribers that will drag down the overall performance of your email marketing campaigns (e.g. by lowering your open rates and click-through rates).
- Segmenting your list (dividing your list based on factors such as subscriber location, their job, their interests, etc.) and only sending your subscribers relevant content.
- Sending your subscribers high-value, relevant content.
What’s the best way to start building your list? Check out some of the best strategies below.
Subscription box at the footer
Add a newsletter subscription box to the footer of your website. If your visitor wants to subscribe, they will look for a subscription box there.
Check out this example from Best Buy:
Use subtle sidemessages
You can also promote your newsletter by using a sidemessage. A sidemessage appears on the right or left side of your page and follows your visitor as they scroll down the page—making it hard to miss.
A sidemessage means that you won’t disturb visitors while they’re scrolling or viewing a product on your site.
You can use OptiMonk’s sidemessages to segment visitors and target them more effectively based on their location or interests.
Promote coupons on popups
Coupons and discounts are another awesome way to convince visitors to subscribe to your email list.
Provide immediate value in exchange for their contact details by displaying a discount on a popup to drive new signups.
Here’s a sleek example from Mydeal.com.au. They provide a $10 coupon in return for signing up for their email list:
Free shipping
Free shipping is another killer incentive. Use it to encourage visitors to sign up for your email list.
Free shipping over a certain cart value drives sign-ups and boosts your average order value (how much your visitor spends per order).
In the example below, OKA’s popup gathers email addresses by promoting free UK standard delivery:
Alternative offers to store discounts
If you don’t want to offer a discount, don’t sweat it. You have options.
For example, you could promote a free eBook as an incentive. The key is to provide valuable content that addresses the problem or desire of your target audience.
Take a look at this strong example from BOOM! by Cindy Joseph, the cosmetics retailer:
Recreate their winning-formula by offering an ebook on a topic that intrigues your customers:
Conclusion
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you first dive into the world of ecommerce email marketing.
From knowing how to style out your cart abandonment emails to what to write in your welcome emails, it’s a lot to think about. But this little list gives you everything you need to ace the most important kinds of email sequences for growing your brand. Remember to provide value, go all out on your design, and use urgency and seasonal events to spike your sales.
Get started on your own winning sequences: Grab your free email templates by clicking on the button and start seeing results!
Which real example was your favorite? Let us know in the comments!
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