Email Marketing 101 for Boutique Owners

You did it. You opened the store of your dreams. But now you have to market it. After being in Marketing for almost a decade, I’ve learned building relationships with your customers is the most important thing you can do. Retaining existing customers is not only less expensive than acquiring new ones but it’s how you build loyal advocates for your brand. The same loyalty people show to Apple, Nike, and Gucci. Raving fans are what sets you apart from others.

Yes, you must have a great product first. That is an essential piece many fail to achieve. But secondly, I believe email marketing is the best way to retain that connection with your base. You can post on social media but they might miss the post. What’s left? Email and SMS marketing. It’s the only way to ensure they see your message exactly when you want them to. Everyone checks their email and their texts when notified. Even if it’s delayed, they will see it.

So where do you start?

1. Grow your email list

   The very first thing you should do is embed a signup form on your website with an incentive to signup for your emails. You can embed a Shopify form and collect emails for later. Promote it on your website with a promo banner. Promote it on your social. Promote it on the checkout page. I’ll share more ideas in another blog once you’ve built a sufficient list. If you’re a new store, offering a discount code of at least 10% off is the standard. For now, make sure the code is displayed post-submission.

2. Choose an email platform

   Next, you’ll have to choose an email platform that fits your industry and needs. As an email marketing expert and professional, I always recommend starting with Klaviyo, so you won’t have to switch over later. It’s built for e-commerce stores, fashion boutiques, and retailers. Templates and flows are all built just for this. You can get started in seconds by creating an account here. If you don’t have an online presence and want to use email to mostly promote in-store events, I would start with Flodesk. You can create an account here and get 50% off your first year.

3. Set up your welcome flow

   Now that you’ve got your email list going and you’ve chosen an email platform, you can set up your welcome emails or welcome flow in your chosen email platform. The welcome flow can consist of anywhere between 3-4 emails. Both Klaviyo and Flodesk will have templates you can edit but here is my suggested flow:

   email 1: a welcome message from the founder and a discount code for signing up.

   email 2: invite them to your most active social platform and make them aware of your categories and best sellers

   email 3: share social proof and reviews, encourage shopping new arrivals

   With Klaviyo, you can A/B test emails to see which emails convert better. Keep testing.

4. Build a monthly email calendar

   You’ll then build a monthly email calendar so emails can line up with new arrivals, new collections, and holidays. If you don’t have your 2023 retail calendar yet, pick it up today here. It has every major retail holiday and email campaign ideas. It’s all thought out for you. You’ll be ready to send out campaigns which are just one-time emails that are not automated with the goal of promoting something. Once you have a few campaigns sent out, you can start building segments of subscribers who are engaging with your emails by opening or clicking them.

5. Don’t get your emails sent to spam

   Over time, you’ll only want to send emails to your engaged segment because that will benefit your sender reputation and promote good email deliverability. It means since your emails are engaging your emails will be less likely to be sent to the spam folder. An example of engaged segment criteria can be “subscriber has opened or clicked an email in the last 30 days”. Turning on your welcome flow and abandoned cart flow will help warm up your new email account as well to help with your deliverability.

6. Add SMS marketing (optional)

   Another great way to get your message out and stay connected with your most active customers is through text messages or SMS. Klaviyo makes it easy to create signup forms that ask for email and phone numbers as well as adding SMS to your welcome flow. SMS is much easier to craft messaging for than email and takes less time but has to be strategic and should only be used a limited amount of times in a month because it is more invasive. It’s good to offer SMS and email as options for your customers. Some prefer to be notified of sales by SMS over email.

7. Email is time-consuming

   You now have all the fundamentals in place to set up and run a legit email marketing channel but never underestimate how time-consuming email is. Every business owner that comes to my agency tells me they know they have to do this but just don’t have the time for it. This is why I created Pink Guava Marketing. My mission is to make marketing more accessible to business owners. I help you put the monthly email calendar together that is tailored to your business, I create all the email campaigns and you approve them. It’s that easy. Email me here now if you’d like to take email off your plate.

Best of luck,

Michelle