If you are a business owner or marketer, you know that messaging the right people can be a real challenge. There are so many platforms for reaching potential clients, but which ones are actually worth your time and investment? While social media and search engine advertising can be effective, the good old-fashioned email can still be a game-changer among those businesses.

Before diving into strategies, let’s make it clear why it's a must-have in fashion marketing and what benefits it offers.

Why do fashion brands need Email Marketing?

Social media does not guarantee that everybody will remember your brands until payday. People might save your materials for later occasions, but as time goes by, there are thousands of fashion brands populating their feed, that’s why they no longer remember their saved brands.

On the other hand, the misunderstanding is that most fashion brands believe that their contents will reach all of their followers; though in reality, Instagram is not showing up your materials to every single follower that you have, and its proportion is extremely small.

Some consumers, who barely use popular social networking sites like Instagram, Facebook, etc., do not know about your existence. Social media is just a tool with a limited lifespan to serve specific objectives; for example, Snapchat is no longer used, now it is about Instagram or TikTok due to ongoing innovation.

Whereas with email marketing, it gives you complete control. Everybody checks their email at some points, your email will be seen if it is intriguing enough to entice them. Unlike social media, where visibility is dictated by algorithms and data structures, email marketing ensures your content reaches your audience without the unpredictability of engagement metrics.

How does Email Marketing advantage your fashion brands?

From ‘why we need email marketing’, here we give a clearer perspective of what makes email marketing the perfect partner:

• Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to target a global audience.

• The average email ROI (return on investment) is $42 for every $1 you spend on it.

• Email marketing automation enables you to hyper-personalize your content, significantly enhancing the customer experience.

• By providing valuable content and resources to the target audience through email, you can attract new leads, build trust and credibility, and move on to making a purchase.

• Keep your brands top of mind and build strong relationships.

• Email marketing can be seamlessly integrated with other marketing channels such as paid advertising, social media, etc.

How to calculate email marketing ROI

1. Calculate your spending:

Firstly, you have to calculate how much you have spent on email marketing. This is not completely simple when there is not only ESP (Email service provider) expenses. ESP will not give you a reliable result when you don’t notice other factors, don’t forget to add time spent on email marketing.

If your whole email marketing budget goes toward your ESP and your email marketer's time, your total spend is ESP + team bandwidth.

2. Calculate your gain:

Calculating the revenue from your email campaign is quite straightforward if you run your apparel business online. If your ESP integrates Google Analytics into the dashboard, you can easily track every sale originating from an email, whether it's for a specific campaign or over a designated period. To gauge total revenue, calculate the lead value by multiplying conversions by the lead value.

3. Calculate ROI: 

(Gain-Spent)/ Spent= ROI (expressed as a percentage).

Let’s say you pay $200/month for your ESP. In a year, that comes up to $2,400. You also have a marketer directly working on email campaigns for 2 hours, 5 days a week and at a rate of $16/hour.  That amounts to $7,680 a year.

Your email marketing spend in a year is $7,680 + $2,400 = $10,080.

If the cost of your lead is $100 and your email campaign brings 500 leads/year, your total revenue from email becomes $50,000.

Combine all the data following the equation, you will have:

($50,000 - $10,080)/$10,080 = 396,03%.

Nail your Email Marketing with best guidelines 

1. Investing appealing visuals:

Visuals are everything in the fashion industry, so if you want to make a lasting impression on your customers, high-quality visual material is the thing you must invest in. Here are some high-quality visual ideas:

• Eye-catching product shots: Hire professional photographers and models who could fit your styles to get the job well done. Do not hesitate to ask a pro how to make your products go viral on social media. 

Think out of the box, try some lifestyle images that give customers a better idea of how your products will look and fit into their real lives.

• 360 degree image and video: Provide your customers with immersive experiences by showcasing your products from various angles using videos, GIFs, or 360-degree images. This small investment can significantly enhance your brand's trust and credibility.

• Show fashion on different body-types: If your business is primarily eCommerce, customers don’t have the opportunity to try on a product before deciding to pay for it. They can only visualize an outfit by seeing an image of someone else wearing it online.

2. Provide value to customers

Don’t attack your customers with hard selling and promotional contents. Instead, provide them with personal value contents. For example, adding blog posts will provide to the recipients.

Additionally, tutorials, infographics, videos or any relevant content that can address user’s pain points, tell them that your products will solve their problems. 

3. Use relevant, fashionable subject lines

A subject line can make or break your email success. A little investment in the subject line can make a big difference, as it is the first thing recipients see. So that is why your subject line should be appealing and encouraging to open. Especially, in fashion marketing, make sure that your subject lines seem to be fashionable.

Raise the bar and unleash the creativity to make mind blowing subject lines!

4. Personalize email

Don’t just copy and paste other’s email format. Generally, people love to feel special and cared for. Ensure that your customers feel like your email is sent specifically for them, this is the purpose of sending this email. By personalizing email, it can strengthen the connection between customers and brands.

Such a tactic can be as simple as including their name in the email, or suggesting contents based on their history, gender, age, occasions, etc. 

5. Include storytelling

Seems vital that every business has their own stories to tell. In the past years, marketers used their brand’s history as a storytelling tool to communicate with audiences in a narrative, interesting and compelling way. Thus, customers learn more about your business and build emotional bond with it

Accordingly, in the fashion industry, you can incorporate storytelling by highlighting the history of your brand, the humans, the challenging situations you faced; and some BTS look into the designs.

6. Retarget customers

One of fashion email marketing's best practices is retargeting customers who abandoned their carts. These customers might still be interested in your products but they had second thoughts about what you offered or got distracted.

Hence, retargeting them will increase your conversion rates and restore the lost revenue. 

7. Incentivize subscription

A key practice is incentivizing subscriptions by igniting users' interest in being part of your email list. For instance, as an incentive for subscribing, you may send your audiences exclusive offers and coupons. 

For one more exclusive tip that is asking for referrals from your subscribers. As after having tried on, worn and justified their purchases, buyers are more likely to refer a friend. One common approach is to offer a percentage discount as Bonobos do:

8. Track email metrics

As we always say, to achieve success, you must constantly track your marketing efforts to assess their effectiveness. Fashion email marketing is no exception; it must also be monitored. Focus on key email metrics such as click-through rate, open rate, bounce rate, and conversion rate.

Wrap up

Unlike social media platforms, email marketing is a versatile and effective tool for every business that wants to increase revenue, generate leads, and build strong relationships with customers.

One of the key benefits of email marketing is its ability to deliver a strong return on investment (ROI) and drive revenue growth. Operating a business without knowing which strategy is profitable and which isn’t is a sure recipe for failure. That's why knowing how to calculate ROI is a must for a digital marketer.

With the best practices outlined in the article and examples to follow, you'll be ready to crush fashion email marketing. Although we have compiled the best guidelines for fashion email marketing in 2024, there will never be enough due to the ever-changing landscape. 

So, get in touch with Inflow to get more information and tips about fashion marketing strategies.