Craft a winning fashion email marketing strategy

I see it, I like it, I buy it.

Isn't that how almost every fashion purchase goes?

Compare a fashion purchase, a B2C one, to an enterprise software purchase, a B2B one. In B2B, sales cycles stretch over a few weeks to a few months and sometimes even years. In B2C, especially for fashion, the buying process happens in a matter of minutes or hours and stretches to weeks at best.

Given that your customers have to make decisions in such a short span of time, it becomes all the more difficult to grab their attention and do it in such a way that you convert them. Fashion brands have been relying a lot on advertisements to ensure these conversions.

Now, with third-party cookies being removed, the efficacy of online advertisements is going to decrease.

But guess which channel requires a low investment and still guarantees better returns than any other marketing medium?

That's right, it is email marketing! 

There's never been better time to double down on your email marketing strategy to increase your sales. So, start creating your fashion email marketing strategy.

Understand customer trends

Before you send an email, you need to understand your audience. Every fashion brand caters to a certain target market, and many times, different products under the same brand are meant for a specific audience. So it's crucial to define who your customer personas are and understand what makes them tick.

When it comes to fashion, most buyers fit into one of the following categories:

• Luxury buyers: They love luxury products from top brands. If you're targeting this segment, you'll need to focus first on brand positioning in your marketing messages and then dive into the products.

• Value buyers: They aren't brand conscious, but not opposed to buying from big brands as long as the products are of good value. The value could be in terms of money saved, product comfort, or the product's longevity. Your messaging must scream value for this segment.

• Impulse buyers: They are the ones most likely to make quick decisions and try new products. So if you're looking to launch a new line or expand your customer base, then they're your best bet. Think discounts, coupon codes, limited-time sales, and buy-one-get-one offers when you talk to this segment.

• Environmentally and socially conscious buyers: All over the world, many people are switching to eco-friendly and ethical brands. Sustainability reports, proofs of ethical sourcing, and stories of people behind the brands are great aspects that will help you stand out to these buyers.

• Loyal buyers: Once they become a fan of your brand, they're not going anywhere, even if the grass is seemingly greener at your competitors. What makes them loyal? Typically, product quality, value for money, brand value, and customer service are among some of the factors that earn you loyal customers. A solid loyalty program also helps!

You can further categorize your audience based on demographics—age group, generation, ethnicity, gender, location, income, and lifestyle preferences. Defining and segmenting your target audience like this will help you create campaigns that will be relevant to the interests of each target group.

Captivate fashionistas in their inbox

Yes, email marketing yields great results, but that is not a secret. Everyone is going to be fighting for the same attention that you want in their inbox. So it's important that you create appealing, relevant, and personalized content. Fashion brands have never been ones to shy away from leveraging pop culture, so capitalize on that.

Subject lines: Your subject lines make or break the deal. They determine whether your target opens your email. So, write subject lines that are interesting and intriguing. Address your customer by name, use emojis, induce a fear of missing out, and include trending topics to get that extra bit of attention.

Email design: A picture is worth a thousand words; and in fashion marketing, every picture is worth thousands of dollars. The visuals you use from the overall email design to the product pictures within the email, should be so good that your audience can't resist scrolling through the entire email and clicking on the CTAs.

Content: The importance of good email content can't be understated. Did you know you can use dynamic content in emails that will change the content, CTAs, and more based on your audience's characteristics and preferences? For example, you can show different types of shoes for male and female customers who receive the same email.

Every fashion brand sends sale emails; that's normal. But what else can you do differently? Here's a collection of some fashion email examples for you to take inspiration from.

Celebrity endorsements: People love celebrities and want to be them. So when celebrities are seen wearing a product, their fans love to buy and flaunt the same. If your brand is doing celebrity collaborations or endorsements, then there's no reason why you shouldn't promote the same in your emails.

Source: Really good emails

Create brand impact: Many businesses have outreach programs, but the impact they make in the community they serve is seldom known to their customers. If you're one of these businesses, you should let your customers know. Such messaging often creates more impact for the brand than a highly-expensive advertisement campaign will.

Source: Really good emails

Showcase commitment to the environment: While fast fashion is not going anywhere anytime soon, more and more people are switching to environmentally friendly alternatives as much as they can. If your brand focuses on sustainable fashion, then make that your unique selling point and talk about it as much as you can.

Source: Really good emails 

Provide value beyond selling: Yes, you're a fashion brand, but what else can you be? Can you create a community for your audience to come together and talk about things that unite them? Can you provide valuable information aboutstyling? Can you advise your customers on the latest trends? Whatever you can do to create more value, do it, and don't forget to tell your audience about it.

Seasonal offers: New seasons are usually accompanied by new collections in the fashion world. Introducing these collections with limited-time sales and discounts is a great way to increase your sales.



Create a brand voice so unique that your audience opens your emails, even if it's just to see what interesting thing you've got to say to them. Make sure your subject lines, visuals, CTAs, and email content pop.

Blend art and science to get your emails opened

The science of your emails is as important as the art (content and visuals). Leverage email marketing techniques such as segmentation, personalization, and automation.

Segmentation: Categorize your audience based on their characteristics and behavior and align your content with the interests of these segments.

Personalization: Use information you have about your customer to show them how well you know them.

Automation: Trigger emails based on your audience's interaction with your communication and send emails that get opened more.

User-friendly emails never go out of style

If you want conversions, you have to let your customers interact with it properly. There's no point creating wonderful emails that don't even load properly. Optimize your emails for all devices. Make sure your emails are especially mobile-friendly as that's where most fashion purchases happen these days.

Here's a mobile optimized email from The Plated Project.

Rescue lost sales with chic abandoned cart emails

One of the biggest advantages that fashion email marketing has over B2B email marketing is that, you can win your customers back very easily! Retargeting abandoned carts in fashion will help you increase conversions and recover lost sales.

Source: Really good emails

Even those who added a product to their cart and then abandoned it for some reason can be persuaded to come back and finish their purchase. Here are some neat abandoned cart recovery emails you can take inspiration from.

Measure what matters

Email metrics such as delivery rates, bounce rates, unsubscribes, open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates must be tracked for every campaign. These metrics tell you whether your strategy is working.

When it comes to email marketing, company leaders and email marketers ask the same question: What's the standard delivery rate/open rate/conversion rate? These metrics are not uniform across industries, geographies, and company sizes. Regularly tracking email metrics will help you create a baseline score for your business so you know what kind of returns you can expect for every campaign.

Select your perfect fit for email marketing

Getting your fashion email marketing strategy right goes hand in hand with getting your email marketing software right. The right tool will ensure a higher success rate for your email campaigns. When you're looking for an email marketing software for fashion email marketing, look for one that helps you do effective personalization, segmentation, automation, metrics reporting, and everything else you need to run successful email campaigns.

While on the subject of email marketing software, check out Zoho Campaigns. It is a comprehensive email marketing software with everything you'll need to run your fashion email marketing campaigns.

Fashion email marketing can be a cakewalk if you do it right. Good content and design, aided by the power of personalization, segmentation, and automation sent using the right email marketing tool, is a surefire recipe for success in fashion email marketing.