Retail and Ecommerce Email Marketing Playbook 2025

Electronic mail advertising and eCommerce are outdated associates that occur to work very effectively collectively. Email marketing ROI persistently outperforms different channels, with 35% of corporations getting over $36 again for each $1 spent on the inbox. What eCommerce model doesn’t love these outcomes?

Retail e mail advertising isn’t a magic money-printing machine, nevertheless. In the present day’s customers anticipate personalised, seamless, and superbly rendered emails that talk to what they need, when they need it. That may really feel like a tall order in case you’re a lean crew, attempting to scale alongside a rising firm, or just pressured to spice up efficiency.

We all know you aren’t one to again away from a inventive problem, although, and this information will enable you to be a part of the ranks of corporations like Kate Spade, which boosted income by 174% with simply a few emails.

Learn on for a walkthrough of the total eCommerce e mail lifecycle, from acquisition to re-engagement. You’ll additionally discover actual retail benchmarks (whats up, 2025 click-through charge averages), inventive personalization concepts, and QA finest practices that enable you to ship higher emails, sooner.

Desk of contents

Electronic mail nonetheless out-performs advertisements for eCommerce in 2025

All the best way again in 2013—virtually a lifetime in the past in digital requirements—there was discuss that email outperformed Twitter and Fb for promoting stuff on-line. Guess what’s nonetheless the perfect advertising funding for eCommerce manufacturers greater than a decade later? Electronic mail.

The eCommerce manufacturers that grasp e mail see more healthy margins than in the event that they put extra advertising {dollars} into paid advertisements.

There are a number of the reason why e mail is a greater wager to make each advertising greenback rely.

1. Electronic mail will be inexpensive per particular person than advertisements. True, manufacturers may need to pay extra to ship a message to 50,000 individuals than 500. However, typically, when you create an e mail, you may ship it time and again with out paying for every view or click on.
2. Electronic mail advertising is relationship-driven. (At the least, the perfect applications are). Constructing belief over time and relevance by means of personalization places potential patrons in a greater mind-set than an advert that pops up out of the blue. Plus, they’ve opted into seeing your emails. The identical can’t all the time be stated for paid advertisements.
3. Electronic mail isn’t beholden to algorithms or third-party cookies. Electronic mail sidesteps these restrictions, permitting for direct, personalised messaging based mostly on first-party habits like purchases, opens, or clicks. Information privateness can be a priority for subscribers, and being upfront in regards to the information you employ can construct belief. The three most essential points of e mail privateness have been transparency about information assortment (58%), no third-party sharing (54%), and management over private info entry (52%).

By the numbers: Are advertisements or emails higher for e-commerce advertising?

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The eCommerce lifecycle framework

Earlier than you can begin planning your e mail advertising for eCommerce technique, it’s essential to step again and take a look at your entire journey a buyer takes. An eCommerce lifecycle framework helps you cut up the shopping for journey into manageable chunks so you may create and ship content material that strikes the needle at that second.

eCommerce e mail playbook by stage

Now that you’ve a common understanding of the eCommerce lifecycle, it’s time to take a look at how particular forms of emails match into the technique. P.S. If you wish to discover extra e mail examples, take a look at our favourite spots for email inspiration.

E-commerce Electronic mail Advertising Lifecycle

1. Uncover: acquisition and list-building emails

Consider the primary section within the eCommerce lifecycle as assembly a brand new buddy. Potential clients discover you from a referral, social put up, advert, or elsewhere and begin to get to know you. In the event that they like what they see (fingers crossed), they’ll join your e mail checklist. You shouldn’t attempt to promote to them but, simply construct the connection.

Your purpose: Introduce individuals to your model and acquire first-party information you need to use for future e mail personalization.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• Listing opt-in affirmation and e mail preferences
• What to anticipate/brief intro
• Welcome provide (particularly if that’s why they signed up!)

The best way to measure e mail advertising success:

• Signup conversion charge
• Open charge
• Click on-through charge (CTR)

reMarkable’s join e mail includes a welcome message from the crew plus a number of hyperlinks to discover content material and socials.

2. Welcome: intro and first buy emails

As soon as subscribers are in your e mail checklist, you progress them to their first sale. After subscribers have met your model, you can begin to work towards the primary sale.

Your purpose: assist subscribers join along with your model or merchandise and drive urgency towards buy.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• Model intro sequence
• Product training
• Social proof/testimonials
• First-purchase incentive
• Personalization based mostly on browse
• Time-limited affords for first-time patrons

The best way to measure e mail advertising success:

• First buy charge
• Income per e mail (RPE)
• Time to first buy
• Click on-through charge (CTR)
• Electronic mail learn time/engagement

Gozney’s welcome e mail introduces new subscribers to the model and product with out feeling like an instantaneous gross sales pitch.

3. Get well: cart and browse abandonment emails

Not everybody buys on the primary strive, however with a focused cart and browse abandonment technique, it can save you the sale. Cart and browse abandonment emails observe up with window customers or individuals who got here *this* shut to purchasing. You may both use a reduction or provide to sweeten the deal, alert them to low inventory, or just remind them of precisely what they left behind.

Your purpose: Get browsers and lookers to come back again to your web site to complete the acquisition they began.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• Cart/browse reminder
• Product picture and dynamic CTA
• FOMO (“low inventory”, critiques)
• Secondary provide if no buy
• Evaluations, FAQs, or low-stock warnings

The best way to measure e mail advertising success:

• Cart restoration charge
• Income per e mail
• Conversion charge

Bite reveals subscribers precisely what they left of their cart with a name to motion (CTA) to complete checkout. Additionally they discovered a method to incorporate advantages and model differentiators within the design with a banner touting their clear substances and cruelty free method.

4. Develop: post-purchase and upsell emails

What’s higher than a purchaser? A repeat purchaser. Displaying clients what else they will do along with your model and maintaining them updated with the most recent drops retains the nice occasions going. Customized content material can promote associated gadgets, or you may upsell them on add-ons or bigger gadgets.

Your purpose: Easy out increase and bust gross sales cycles with larger repeat buy charges.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• Order affirmation
• Customized product suggestions
• Thanks and overview request
• Product ideas/how-tos
• Upsell/cross-sell
• Loyalty invitation
• Overview requests

The best way to measure advertising success:

• Repeat buy charge
• Overview conversion charge
• Avg order worth (AOV) uplift

Outer reveals clients how you can complement their buy with different product classes.

5. Reward: VIP, loyalty, and referral emails

Loyalty applications and VIP reductions reward your finest clients, and referral applications encourage them to share your model with others. Reward emails and loyalty applications offer you an opportunity to point out gratitude to your most engaged subscribers and patrons.

Your purpose: Incentivize engagement with rewards, affords, or reductions.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• Tier progress updates
• Birthday/anniversary perks
• Referral program invites
• Customized milestone emails
• Unique entry to product drops, occasions, or early gross sales based mostly on buyer tier or buy historical past

LitTip: placing an ‘add to calendar’ possibility in your e mail helps subscribers hold monitor of VIP occasions

The best way to measure advertising success:

• Referral conversion charge
• VIP retention
• Churn charge

Graza promotes their referral and reward program, Glug Membership, with an outline of advantages and rewards.

6. Reignite: re-engagement and winback emails

Generally, subscribers and clients go quiet. Re-engagement emails are a reminder to come back again round, but when they don’t re-engage, then you may take away them for a tidy and energetic e mail checklist.

Your purpose: Establish who’s drifting and provides them a cause to return.

Sorts of emails to ship:

• “We miss you” winback affords
• Customized suggestions
• Final probability re-subscribe prompts

The best way to measure advertising success:

• Re-engagement charge
• Unsubscribe charge

Belgian Boys let subscribers know that they’ll take away them from the e-mail checklist and provides them an opportunity to re-engage with out stress or guilt.

Retail-ready segmentation and personalization

As a human with an inbox, what it feels prefer to have method too many messages to compensate for. Our current analysis confirms that your clients need related emails at a manageable cadence, too.

• The first cause shoppers delete retail advertising emails with out opening them is just too many emails/inbox overload (39%).
• Irrelevant or non-personalized content material drives 46% of unsubscribes.
• 42% unsubscribe on account of extreme promotions with few helpful affords.

So what’s an eCommerce e mail marketer to do? Section and personalize your retail emails to stability your gross sales objectives with the subscriber relationship.

First, a fast lesson on segmentation vs. personalization, since we’ll use these phrases in a second. Email segmentation types your clients into teams based mostly on traits they’ve in frequent.

Electronic mail personalization makes use of subscriber information and dynamic content material to create extremely related, individualized e mail experiences.

Now, onto your playbook to create retail emails that encourage ‘oohs’ as an alternative of ‘ughs’.

Select information that matches your goal

You already know that primary first title personalization doesn’t wow anymore, however possibly you’re at a loss for the place to go from there.

To construct personalization that drives clicks and conversions, it’s essential to lean into behavioral and value-based information. Listed here are 4 foundational inputs for retail entrepreneurs to make use of email personalization best practices:

E-commerce Personalization Information Sorts

Construct 1:1 experiences with personalised and dynamic content material

Personalization for eCommerce will be enjoyable and inventive, however typically it appears intimidating to truly put the concepts into movement. In reality, Litmus’ State of Email Report 2025 discovered that the highest personalization problem is growing personalised content material effectively (17%).

That’s the place email personalization tools are available in. Builders like Litmus Personalize let non-tech-savvy entrepreneurs add personalised and dynamic content material into emails.

Take it for a spin on this interactive demo:

Now, let’s tie them to your eCommerce lifecycle so you may really put them to give you the results you want. Right here’s how you can use Litmus Personalize so as to add personalised and dynamic content material throughout the retail e mail advertising lifecycle.

Uncover:

• Add live polls to ask new subscribers what they’re concerned about.
• Use personalised photos to welcome subscribers based mostly on supply or system.
• Pull in Instagram feeds to point out social proof with actual UGC.
• Allow curiosity indicators to start monitoring clicks and preferences from e mail #1.

Welcome:

• Use rule-based photos to function completely different merchandise based mostly on class curiosity or persona.
• Add timers to drive urgency round limited-time welcome affords.
• Present progress bars to focus on how shut they’re to free transport or a reward.
• Embrace personalised photos that say whats up by title and suggest top-sellers.

Get well:

• Add timers to create urgency round expiring carts or restricted inventory.
• Use rule-based photos to point out the precise product left behind—or a better various.
• Embrace a scratch-off to shock them with a save-the-sale low cost.
• Strive a sentiment tracker to ask if one thing obtained in the best way (like value or transport).

Develop:

• Add picture carousels with associated merchandise or “you may also like” concepts.
• Use curiosity indicators to suggest next-step gadgets based mostly on previous habits.
• Embed videos in email for unboxings, product demos, or styling guides.
• Embrace an ‘add to calendar’ possibility for refills, launches, or product care content material.

Reward:

• Present progress bars for loyalty tier monitoring or earned rewards.
• Use rule-based photos to unlock VIP content material for top-tier customers.
• Add animated movies to have a good time milestones or ship thank-you messages.
• Drop in a scratch-off to ship a enjoyable perk or shock reward.

Reignite:

• Use personalised photos with “We miss you” messaging and customized affords.
• Swap in rule-based photos that scale incentives based mostly on previous worth or inactivity.
• Add a sentiment tracker to search out out why they stopped participating.
• Embrace a stay ballot to allow them to let you know what content material or merchandise they need now.

Drive engagement with dynamic content material

Personalize emails with stay polls, personalised photos, scratch-offs, and extra. No coding expertise required. Learn more.

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Device stack and integrations for retail entrepreneurs

Creating an e mail is a labor of affection. Plus time, sweat, and infrequently, tears. Fortunately, email workflows are typically getting simpler and extra environment friendly. Our 2025 State of Email report discovered that the share of groups taking up two weeks to provide an e mail dropped dramatically to simply 6% in 2025.

One part of wonderful email workflow management is centralized instruments and email integrations. The higher and simpler your advertising instruments work collectively, the much less time you spend shuffling info round. Listed here are the forms of instruments you would possibly want for every step of an eCommerce e mail advertising workflow.

Electronic mail Advertising Workflow Phases & Instruments

Planning, design, and content material creation

Retail advertising runs on rhythm: marketing campaign calendars, product drops, promotions, and peak seasons. That’s, till one thing throws a wrench within the course of. The smoother and sooner your planning, design, and content material creation are, although, the higher you may climate any storm.

• Litmus helps you progress sooner with out compromising model high quality. Email design tools like reusable templates and code snippets hold content material constant.
• The highest email design programs embody Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Canva, and Adobe InDesign.
• Trello, Asana, or Airtable hold campaigns organized, particularly while you’re managing a number of handoffs throughout inventive, advertising, and ops.

AI writing instruments like Copy.ai and Jasper enable you to brainstorm topic strains, CTAs, and content material so that you don’t have to start out down the ever-intimidating clean web page. Our recent research discovered that AI-generated e mail advertising faces a belief divide alongside generational strains—belief elevated with youthful generations like Millennials (38%) and Gen Z (38%).

LitTip: Create an email brief in the course of the planning course of to maintain stakeholders on the identical web page and information everybody in the identical course.

Construct, QA, and testing

When you’ve nailed your message and format, it’s time to construct. Then, it’s essential to be sure that every thing appears to be like flawless, irrespective of the place it’s opened.

• Litmus Builder cuts e mail improvement time in half with ESP integrations and sync, centralized design property, and the choice to construct with or with out HTML.
• An email testing tool like Litmus Previews helps you to take a look at emails throughout 100+ purchasers and gadgets earlier than hitting ship. You’ll catch format breaks, picture points, and font weirdness early. Email QA automation saves time with out sacrificing high quality.
• Litmus Email Guardian screens your emails to warn you to modifications in how your e mail renders, like if e mail shopper updates out of the blue make your welcome e mail template break.
• Your ESP editor (like Klaviyo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Mailchimp) could have a drag-and-drop editor along with HTML code views.
• Litmus Personalize makes it easy to layer in dynamic content material blocks, like timers or personalised product rows—no heavy ESP configuration wanted.
• For copy checks, instruments like Grammarly assist keep tone, readability, and polish throughout messages.

Approvals and sending

When deadlines are tight, you want a quick, versatile approval move that works for advertising and stakeholders. And that doesn’t require you to leap between e mail threads, tabs, photos, and discussions.

• Litmus Proof simplifies the method. Share a stay, interactive e mail preview (not a flat screenshot) the place reviewers can go away suggestions straight on the e-mail and in a single centralized location as an alternative of in varied locations like Slack, Groups, and e mail.

• Earlier than something goes stay, Litmus Previews and QA runs a full pre-send QA, like checking hyperlinks, photos, monitoring, load pace, and accessibility, so you may ship with confidence.

Publish-send overview

Each e mail is an opportunity to be taught, however you want the fitting analytics and studies to make sense of how every marketing campaign carried out.

• Litmus Analytics goes past open charges. See learn time, system breakdowns, and the way completely different audiences work together along with your content material.

• Your ESP dashboard tracks income, automation flows, and top-performing segments—important for retail groups who stay and die by ROI.
• Google Analytics (or GA4) closes the loop, tying on-site habits and purchases again to e mail clicks.

Design and QA finest practices for mobile-first retail

We care (quite a bit) about serving to e mail groups ship out error-free emails and have guides to email testing best practices. We even have mobile-responsive email templates you need to use.

Along with common finest practices design and QA finest practices, like maintaining an email style guide, listed here are a number of conversion-centered design parts to think about while you’re creating mobile-first emails for a retail viewers.

Electronic mail Design Finest Practices

Lead with a transparent CTA

Limiting your name to motion buttons to a single motion advantages each you and your clients. For you, it’s simpler to measure the e-mail’s efficiency—it’s a case of whether or not they clicked or not, as an alternative of “no, they didn’t click on this, however they did click on that.” For patrons, it’s straightforward to see the purpose of the e-mail and act on it whereas skimming.

Stack content material vertically

Cell phones are narrower than, say, laptops or tablets. Placing emails in a single column, particularly retail messages displaying off a number of merchandise, makes it simpler to see every thing with a easy up-and-down scroll.

Beware Darkish Mode

Dark Mode is the default for a lot of cellular customers, significantly in Apple Mail. However it may well mess along with your e mail design. Mild logos can disappear. Colours invert. Buttons turn into unreadable. Optimizing for Darkish Mode means utilizing clear PNGs, secure shade palettes, and testing your designs to verify they maintain up in each mild and darkish environments.

Use 16px+ fonts and ample button spacing

Electronic mail font dimension is all the time essential for accessibility, however it’s particularly noticeable on smaller gadgets like telephones. Fonts must be at the least 16px and have respiratory room round all your headers, textual content, and buttons so the message doesn’t really feel smooshed. 48px is an efficient place to start out with faucet targets.

Take a look at picture load occasions

Retail emails are visible by nature, however image-heavy design can drag down load pace on slower connections (particularly when your viewers is on the transfer). In case your hero picture or first product block takes too lengthy to load, individuals could by no means see it. Compress file sizes, use fashionable codecs like JPG or WebP, and take a look at for lag so load time doesn’t get in the best way of conversions. Be at liberty to snag our imagery code.

Keep away from image-only emails

In case your whole e mail is one large picture, you danger dropping the message for anybody utilizing picture blockers, with accessibility wants, or on gradual connections. Use stay HTML textual content for headlines, CTAs, and key messaging so everybody can get pleasure from your e mail.

For instance, this e mail has the photographs on:

This e mail has the photographs off:

Construct with reusable, examined modules

Modular email design makes constructing emails sooner and simpler, which might be an actual present while you get the discover that it’s essential to create and ship that particular promo ASAP. Swapping in new partial blocks, like reusable CTA parts, helps you construct new emails that keep on-brand.

Emails that wow, constructed with ease

Drag-and-drop or code from scratch. Sync along with your ESP and take a look at in a single click on. Construct emails your method. Able to construct higher?

Try email builder

Testing workflow for retail emails: From preview to inbox

No one desires the dreaded feeling of realizing the e-mail you simply despatched has a mistake. To err is human (we’ve all been there), however an organized pre-send workflow and email testing checklist catches errors with out last-minute scrambling.

Litmus takes the chaos out of ship day with a workflow that helps you catch errors earlier than your clients do. Right here’s how the best testing course of unfolds:

The 1st step: Begin with reusable modules and templates

Begin with mobile-ready, pre-tested constructing blocks out of your Litmus Design Library. This retains layouts constant, accelerates manufacturing, and reduces rendering points down the road.

Step two: Litmus Previews and QA Checks

Earlier than you ship a take a look at, use Litmus Electronic mail testing to run pre-send QA checks. It flags frequent points like damaged hyperlinks, lacking ALT textual content, untracked CTAs, and the way your photos have an effect on loading pace.

Step three: Preview throughout high inboxes

Examine how your e mail renders throughout 100+ e mail purchasers and gadgets, together with key cellular environments like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook Cellular. Darkish Mode included.

Step 4: Verify accessibility

Use Litmus’s built-in accessibility instruments to flag distinction points, lacking semantic construction, or font sizing issues so your emails work for everybody.

Step 5: Share for overview with Litmus Proof

Collaborate in actual time along with your crew or stakeholders by sharing a stay e mail proof. Gather suggestions, tag feedback, and resolve edits—multi function place with out lengthy e mail threads.

Case snapshot: How Kate Spade elevated e mail conversion charges 50% with Litmus

You might say the Kate Spade e mail crew had an excessive amount of of a very good factor. A relentless stream of recent arrivals to share with a big buyer base makes personalization troublesome with out the fitting instruments. Even when your model can’t relate to the size of Kate Spade, the stress to juggle campaigns with restricted time or groups is relatable.

“We’ve got new merchandise arriving on a regular basis and our new arrivals emails are key to our CRM technique. We would have liked a sensible method to handle new in and transfer from a one-size-fits-all e mail. We’re a small crew so we wanted automation to assist us obtain our personalization purpose, we merely couldn’t construct a model of the e-mail for each product class. We’re now listening to what our clients would really like from us and utilizing Kickdynamic to point out them what they need.“

Chloe Temple
Ecommerce Advertising Director (Europe)