It would be nice to believe that the fashion brands with the best clothing styles at reasonable costs would be the most successful brands on the market. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Although the quality of your fashion products matters to your customers, it’s irrelevant if people don’t know — or remember — that your brand exists.
High-quality marketing can set your fashion brand apart from the numerous clothing companies customers can choose from. Fashion email marketing helps you stay relevant to your customers, improving recognition of your brand and increasing the chances that they’ll decide to shop with you.
In this guide, we offer ten different fashion email marketing campaigns worth implementing into your strategy, including some examples you’ll love.
Benefits of drip campaigns for fashion email marketing
An email drip campaign — also known as an automated email campaign or automated email series — allows you to automatically provide information to your customers based on their actions on your website or a schedule you provide. This set-it-and-forget-it email marketing campaign type can be very impactful for your fashion brand.
Once you set up the drip campaign, the email technology goes through the effort of sending the information to your customers on a regular and logical basis, carefully moving them through your sales funnel and increasing the chances of them remembering and engaging with your brand.
Drip campaigns and email automation have several benefits for your fashion brand. These include:
- Increased brand recognition as regular campaigns will keep you front and center in the minds of your customers
- Re-engaging with customers who may have forgotten about your brand or moved on to other brands, bringing them back into your circle
- Improving customer loyalty as you remind customers why they should shop with you and give them regular incentives for sticking with your brand
- Promoting content that provides value to your customers, ensuring they see you as an industry expert
10 types of email campaigns
Fashion email marketing campaigns aren’t one-size-fits-all. Instead, creating email marketing for clothing brands is a fluid process that involves numerous interconnected campaigns that work together to move your customers through your sales funnel.
Consider implementing these ten types of email campaigns into your marketing strategy, along with fashion email marketing examples that you can modify for your personal goals.
1. Welcome emails
The welcome email campaign goes out to new customers who have either just purchased from your brand or have signed up to receive news from your brand for the first time. Studies show that customers who receive a welcome message are 33% more likely to engage with the brand going forward than customers who receive nothing when they sign up for the email list.
Your welcome email campaign series can be relatively short, but it should contain more than one email. Brands that send a series of welcome messages receive 13% more engagement than brands that send just one.
The first mailing in your welcome campaign should go out immediately after someone subscribes to your list. This email is best left short and sweet and should include:
- A quick thank-you to the customer for subscribing to your email content
- Brief information on your fashion brand, including the type of clothing you sell and your brand message
- Information about what future content to expect from your brand
Ideas for follow-up emails in your welcome campaign include:
- An invitation for people to follow your social media accounts
- Coupons for the customer’s next purchase with your brand
- Information on loyalty programs or referral programs that your brand offers
- Brand-specific information, such as an interview with a fashion designer in your company
2. Abandoned cart emails
Approximately two-thirds of all online shopping carts are abandoned before the customer purchases. Sending an email reminding customers about the items in their cart can provide the gentle nudge they need to buy the items they’ve already shown interest in.
Your abandoned cart campaign can have just one email that reminds customers of the items they’ve forgotten and takes them back to their cart. This is perfect for customers who may have had an internet problem that prevented them from checking out or may have gotten interrupted in the middle of shopping.
3. Post-purchase emails
Help your customers feel good about their purchase by sending a series of post-purchase emails.
The first email in this series should be a thank-you to the customer for shopping with your clothing brand. This can be as simple as a line of text thanking the customer for buying from you or personalized to make the customer feel particularly recognized.
Ryan Popoff from Popov Leather even records a personal thank-you message for each customer. This goes above and beyond what most brands do and sends a clear message about the appreciation they have for their customers.
Additional emails in your post-purchase series can include:
- An update when the customer’s item ships, including tracking information
- A check-in when their item arrives to make sure it’s in good condition and to provide contact information that they can use in case of an order issue
- An email a few days after the item arrives to see how they’re liking it and ask them to leave a review on your website
4. Content-driven emails
Studies show that 50% of potential customers aren’t ready to purchase when they first interact with your brand. The marketing rule of seven, a classic go-to statistic for many brands, states that it takes an average of seven interactions with your brand before a customer feels confident enough to make a purchase.
But with more competition for leads than ever before, you may find that it takes even more interactions with a customer before they establish trust with your brand. Content-driven email campaigns can help you establish this trust by showing customers what your brand cares about beyond just promoting your products.
For your fashion brand, this can include content from your blog, including styling guides, fashion trends, and information on any good acts your company participates in (such as sustainability efforts or sourcing materials locally).
Luckily, the extra work is worth it. Nurtured leads make, on average, 47% larger purchases than buyers who purchase on their first interaction alone. So when you finally do convince these prospective customers to buy, the return on investment will be worth it.
5. Promotional emails
Of course, some portion of your email marketing content should directly promote your materials. The key with promotional email campaigns is not to send them so frequently that your customers mark your emails as spam.
Your promotional emails also need to be relevant to the customer somehow, so they want to open your email. This could include:
- Coupons for certain products
- An offer of a free item with certain purchases
- An offer for free shipping for orders over a certain amount
Adding an incentive to your promotional offers makes customers more likely to click through the offers and gives them the impression that they’re getting the VIP treatment from your brand just for staying subscribed to your emails.
6. Personalized product recommendations
Offering personalized product recommendations allows you to promote your emails in a much more intimate way than you can with generic promotional campaigns.
There are a few different ways to create this style of recommendation. One option is to upsell customers based on something they recently purchased. For example, if a customer bought a cute shirt, you could promote a hat or purse that would complement that shirt well with a heading like “the perfect accessory for your new shirt.”
Another option is to promote items in the same style as previous purchases. For example, someone who has bought a couple of nice spring dresses from your brand might be interested in seeing the other spring dresses in your lineup.
The great thing about personalized product recommendations is that you can automate these campaigns based on customer interactions in your store. When customers open their inbox, these emails will feel unique and personalized to their store experience.
7. Special event campaigns
Special event campaigns are short-term drip campaigns that you might launch at certain times of the year.
For example, you might set up a Black Friday weekend campaign. You could start it a week before Black Friday with a look at upcoming sales and then send reminders throughout the weekend.
You can set up the same promotional system whenever you’re running event-based sales in your store. This could include back-to-school fashion campaigns, “New Year, New You” campaigns, or sales on Halloween costumes.
Special event campaigns can go out to everyone on your email list rather than a segment since they only happen occasionally.
8. New product campaigns
Your fashion email marketing wouldn’t be complete without a way to advertise new product launches.
The best new product campaigns don’t just show a picture of the new product — although that should certainly be included. They also discuss the inspiration for the product and help potential customers envision themselves wearing that article of clothing. You might discuss your Boho-chic inspirations, highlight the on-trend colors you used, or emphasize the sustainability efforts your team made when dreaming up your new line.
Just be sure to point out why your product is worth your customers’ investments.
9. Charity campaigns
The vast majority of customers want brands to reflect their values and give back to the community. This is especially true of millennials, with 71% willing to spend more on a product if they know a portion of the profits goes to a charity.
Email campaigns that promote a charity your company supports show customers that your brand cares about giving back. This can instill goodwill with customers, increasing brand loyalty and driving sales.
You can run charity drip campaigns in a few different ways. One option is to have a series of emails talking about a charity you regularly support. This could include emails that:
- Discuss the charity itself
- Explain why you chose to partner with that particular charity
- Describe how your brand helps that charity, along with information on how your customers can support the charity further if they are so inclined
Alternatively, brands that support specific charities during seasonal events can create a series of emails to promote them. This might include:
- An email a few weeks before the date, explaining the upcoming charity event
- An email the day of the event, telling customers how to participate and explaining what the funds will be used for
- A few messages throughout the event, continuing to encourage customers to participate and support the charity
10. Revitalizing customer campaigns
Studies show that it costs approximately five times as much to win a new customer as to engage a pre-existing customer. For this reason, you must have a strategy for calling back inactive customers — those who have either stopped opening your emails or haven’t made a purchase in a while.
A series of targeted emails encouraging them to re-engage with your brand can help. These emails — often known as revitalizing campaigns, re-energizing campaigns, or win-back campaigns — can prevent customers from shopping with your competitors by reminding them why they chose to subscribe to your brand in the first place.
Like your welcome campaign, your win-back email campaign should have two or three emails in it. This is enough to encourage customers to return to your brand without pestering those who have already moved on.
Once the campaign is over if the customer hasn’t taken some sort of action — from opening the email to clicking through your ads — move them to a list of inactive users. This helps your email open rate going forward and keeps campaigns targeted and relevant in the future.
Tips for creating a great drip campaign
Understanding the best types of email drip campaigns is only the first step to creating a fashion email marketing strategy that will inspire your customers to make a purchase. Next is to make those drip campaigns stand out so that your customers actually look forward to receiving them. Here are three key tips for creating well-done email marketing campaigns.
1. Use high-quality images
Your fashion brand is all about style. As a result, your fashion email marketing campaigns must show off that style with high-quality, impactful images that showcase everything there is to love about your clothing brand. Use professional photos with people wearing your clothes so customers can see themselves wearing those garments in their daily lives.
2. Segment your emails
Not every customer needs to receive every email you send out. When you have segmented email lists, you can send newsletters and emails to customers who want them most. For example, you could send an email highlighting your new back-to-school fashion lineup only to customers who’ve indicated that they have children.
Segmenting your email campaigns improves the chances that the right people will open your emails, improving your click-through rates and ultimately getting them to purchase your products.
3. Incentivize subscribing to your emails
Your email campaigns are only as strong as your email lists. To improve the usefulness of your campaigns, you have to continue building your email list and adding customers to it.
One way to do this is to give people a reason to sign up. For example, you could offer new subscribers a coupon. Or you could offer a styling guide in the form of an e-book for new subscribers.
Create stellar email marketing for clothing brands
Fashion email marketing is an art form. Getting this aspect of your marketing right can vastly improve your sales and increase brand recognition among your customers, increasing their chances of choosing your brand over competing fashion brands when they make their next purchase.
Get started today by choosing one incentive for getting people to sign up for your email updates. Once that incentive is created and offered on a landing page, you can add one email drip campaign to your sales funnel. Week by week, increase your offering of drip campaigns until you have a selection of quality email campaigns to drive engagement with your customers.
