The 8 Types of Emails You Must Be Sending Your Customers

As an apparel related eCommerce merchant, one of the main ways you will communicate to customers about sales, discounts, product launches and other relevant information is through email. And, you will want to send specific types of emails to invoke different actions. Here are 8 types of emails your apparel and accessories webstore should send out.

Welcome Emails

This should be the very first email a new subscriber gets from your company. It should make them feel welcome, set the right expectations, thank them for subscribing and introduce them to your brand. You can also add a special offer or discount for the first purchase. This can be implemented as a welcome email series if you want to further explain your brand.

Newsletters

These are the most popular emails to send out with 83% of businesses sending them out. Newsletters are usually sent out following a schedule and include links to blogs, events, webinars and company news or updates. Content needs to be relevant and valuable to your audience. Newsletters are a great way to build your brand and share your company ethos.

Schuler Shoes has a simple yet efficient newsletter that talks about any news, discounts or special projects:

Browse Abandonment Emails

Abandonment emails do not just end at the cart. Instead, you can also send out browse abandonment emails. Browse abandonment emails are emails that target subscribers who viewed a particular product on your webstore but never added it to their cart or make a purchase. Before sending out these emails, customers need to be logged into their account, so that the system can track their actions or a cookie can drop on their computer while shopping. From there, you or your marketing agency can narrow it down to the subscribers that abandoned their browsing. Just like cart abandonment emails, these browse abandonment emails are a reminder that can spark customers’ interest. A recent study from Klaviyo shows that out of the 1000 browse abandonment emails sent to one million users it had a 52% open rate, 10% click-through rate and $1.35 average revenue per recipient. Email marketing experts suggest sending out two browse abandonment emails — the first one sent two hours after the customer views the product, and the second one sent 24 hours of viewing the product.

Cart Abandonment Emails

As an apparel webstore, you may get many customers who leave items in a cart. Remind your customers of their cart by sending a cart abandonment email. It shouldn’t be too long and should showcase at least one of the items in the cart and have a clear call to action. Some companies also include a discount to further entice customers to finish the purchase, but be careful not to “train” customers to expect a discount. For more information on how to utilize cart abandonment emails, check out our recent guide.

Lead Nurturing Emails

These are a series of emails sent out over several days to convert leads into customers. They are sent out automatically and have useful or helpful information. These emails provide engagement as well with up to an 8% click-through rate.

Transactional Emails

These emails include purchase receipts and order confirmations. Transactional emails have 8 times the open and click-through rate compared to other emails. Use these emails to their maximum potential by personalizing content or adding product recommendations.

Milestones

Companies send out milestone emails for special occasions like birthdays, subscriber anniversaries and the webstore’s anniversary. Many customers enjoy these milestone emails. Birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction when compared to promotional emails. Milestone emails usually include unique discounts, dollar-off deals or events to celebrate and to boost your open and click-through rates. Using a customer’s personal milestones as a reason to re-engage with them is a no-brainer.

Surveys

These emails allow customers to interact and give their opinions about the brand, the products, customer service, etc. Surveys will help your brand in areas that need improvement. You can send these emails automatically after a customer makes a purchase and can include personalization and discounts for filling it out.

Upsell & Cross-sell Emails

Target existing customers to shop other products on your apparel webstore. You can do this by creating emails that tailor item recommendations to customers’ shopping or browsing history, give them a few options to increase your chances of showing them something they want and show items of a similar price range from past purchases. To better understand how to upsell or cross-sell your products, check out this guide. 

Seasonal and Promotion

Seasonal or promotion heavy emails are the norm for many eCommerce businesses. Apparel and accessories webstores usually have emails for holidays or special promotions throughout their monthly campaigns.

Ready to power up your email game, but need some help pulling the pieces together? We’re here to help – just shoot us a note.