In this post I will discuss ideas for an email marketing strategy, focussing on the fashion industry, and on a direct relationship between company and customer. The term ‘customer’ is used to mean anyone signed up to receive emails.

Email marketing is a huge part of a company’s marketing strategy now, emails are easy, cheap, cross-platform fast, interactive, personalised, measurable, integrated and so on.

The key aim with email marketing is to ensure that the emails are opened and read. Unsolicited emails are almost always seen as spam, and thus are rarely opened or read, let alone interacted with and clicked through. It is worth noting that more than 97% of all email ever sent is spam[1], with a 2010 estimation of 200 billion spam emails sent daily[2]. A further study in 2010 ascertained that 46% of respondents had opened spam emails, with only 11% following links[3].

It has been widely realised within the business world that emails should be opted-into. This is where a customer signs up to receive updates about the company, special offers, etc. Other opt-in emails convey information such as order details, receipts, or follow up emails. I will focus on e-newsletters and house-list campaigns. There are other elements to emails such as an easy way to opt-out that are considered good form, but don’t form part of a marketing strategy.

E-newsletters are considered highly valuable for businesses as beyond encouraging interested parties toward the businesses’ site, they offer a wealth of data to the business. These types of emails are almost always HTML based and highly trackable, telling the business if the email was opened, deleted, scrolled, clicked on and so forth. They may be personalised to further encourage the customer. The same can be said for house-list campaigns, although the purpose is to inform the customer of offers and suggested products, enticing them to make purchases. They are also used to advertise products and are often sent periodically.

An effective email campaign is almost impossible to create theoretically. There are no set principles in any industry that dictate what will be effective. Any campaign must be thoroughly tested before sending and after.  Emails are highly trackable and thus A/B testing may be used to improve emails, testing them against each other on things such as bounce rate, click through, scrolling, etc. Through this testing a company may alter their emails and improve them, until they have a successful communication.

Beyond newsletters and periodical emails, there are emails known as a ‘call to action’ (CTA). This is an email designed to encourage a customer to spend money. They are designed to stand out, convey urgency and value, and link to, and correlate to, a specific page of a website. CTAs are a fantastic marketing tool as they offer great exposure and all the other benefits of email. Unlike other social media advertising the email waits for you to read it, whilst a tweet disappears into the abyss after a few moments.

It is of course worth mentioning the disadvantages of emails: they need to be well written and proof read; they require customer’s details to be on file; they also have to go through spam filters which may affect delivery and may result in a poorly constructed email being marked as spam and bouncing. They also take time to properly create and require ongoing testing to ensure they’re as good as they can be. They may have problems being displayed in some clients or some circumstances, such as being offline. However the many advantages of email make the few pitfalls bearable.

Overall it seems that a good email strategy is that which is sent to those who have opted in, which is personalised and optimised to the best standards and which is tracked. An email sent for a reason, to inform customers of a new product or a great offer is a good move. CTAs themselves are a good strategy as long as they’re properly designed. In essence there is no criteria for a good strategy with regards to email, except to follow these guidelines and keep improving it.

A good analysis of fashion email strategy was published online in July 2014[4], studying the frequency, subject line and content of opt-in emails from 16 fashion brands. The author found that all of the sites failed to properly capitalise on the opportunities presented by email marketing. A huge name such as GAP was seen to send too many emails with no personalisation or relevance and with poorly constructed subject lines, bordering on spam. This shows that email marketing is underused and neglected within the industry and should be properly utilized.

Another online blog published in May 2014[5] talks about great email campaigns. This article commends the fashion brand Huckberry for an email which implies scarcity and that the customer might miss out, compelling them to buy. Their email is attractive and relevant with good content. Also included is an email by Banana Republic conveying a personalised discount code. This is an attractive email which has been kept very simple, it is also perfectly personalised. Exclusivity and scarcity are also well conveyed within the message.

Another blog[6] showcases an email from fashion brand Loft who sent an email encouraging subscribers to update their preferences to ensure they wanted to open the emails they received. An interesting customer-centric approach, making the customers feel like they’re really listened to.

This goes to show that it certainly is possible to create a good email campaign, but it takes some time and some thought. It’s no surprise that the bigger and higher end companies seem to be doing this better. One can only speculate that even the best emails started as something different and have been carefully tested and improved to make sure it’s the best it can be.

[1] Waters, Darren (2009-04-08). “Spam overwhelms email messages“. BBC News. Retrieved 26/01/2016

[2] Halliday, Josh (10 January 2011). “Email spam level bounces back after record low“. guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 26/01/2016

[3] “2010 MAAWG Email Security Awareness and Usage Report, Messing Anti-Abuse Working Group/Ipsos Public Affairs” (PDF). Retrieved 26/01/2016.

[4] https://econsultancy.com/blog/65115-how-fashion-ecommerce-brands-use-email-marketing/ (Retrieved 27/01/2016).

[5] https://www.shopify.co.uk/blog/14107733-7-ecommerce-email-campaigns-you-should-steal-today (Retrieved 27/01/2016).

[6] http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32854/10-Simply-Awesome-Examples-of-Email-Marketing.aspx (retrieved 28/01/2016).