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How To Use Email Marketing for Shopify in 2025
Improving ROI, Conversions, and Revenue Growth
Nicola Vaughan
May 18, 2025
Marketing for Shopify sites can be tough. The list of things to consider can seem endless.
How do I drive more traffic?
How can I build trust with my customers?
What strategies should I use?
When I was struggling with marketing for my Shopify site a few years ago, I was relieved to find how much email marketing could scale my business.
Email marketing for e-commerce sites proved to be a game-changer — it allowed me to promote my products and build relationships with customers, all while improving my ROI (Return On Investment).
I wrote this guide to let you in on my Shopify email marketing secrets, from why I decided to test email marketing for Shopify, to my 3 best-performing strategies.
I’ll explain the mistakes I made and lessons I learned, plus how the beehiiv platform made email marketing for Shopify a more enjoyable, results-driven process.
Table of Contents
Why I Decided To Test Email Marketing Strategies For Shopify Stores
Let’s roll the clock back to 2022.
After years of selling on Etsy, I launched my own Shopify website and quickly realized how much more challenging it was to attract customers without the built-in traffic of a marketplace.
I needed to drive high-quality traffic— and fast.
The users who were visiting my website were abandoning their shopping carts, and repeat sales were a distant dream.
That’s when I found email marketing. I’d heard that other Shopify users were able to grow audiences of super interested people using email, so I got to work researching the best strategies for Shopify stores.
My Results: What Happened When I Tried 3 Email Strategies
The three strategies I tested were all focused on the same goal - driving revenue.
I needed my store to start driving revenue to make it worth the time and effort I was putting into it - I knew other people were successful on Shopify, so I was determined to make it work for my business too.
The three strategies I tried were:
Using discounts to boost conversions.
Driving repeat business with personalization.
Targeting abandoned shopping cart customers to improve sales.
I’ll be honest - I wasn’t expecting much. I’d tried different marketing strategies in the past without much success, so why would this time be any different?
That’s where I was wrong. This time was different, and the results I had were surprisingly quick, positive, and changed the way I marketed my Shopify site forever…
Strategy 1: How I Used Discounts To Boost Conversions
The first strategy I tried was focusing on discounts in my email campaigns to help boost conversions.
The difference here between this strategy and a general promotional campaign was the execution - I focused on offering exclusive discounts through my email campaigns, discounts that customers weren’t receiving through other marketing channels.
This helped me focus my campaigns on a specific audience, plus it helped me track the conversions I was achieving by using email-only discount codes.
Here are some discount campaigns I ran to drive conversions:
New Customer Discount: This campaign provided a new customer who had recently purchased from my Shopify website with an exclusive discount code.
Customer Loyalty Campaigns: My loyalty campaign sent a discount code to customers who had made multiple purchases in the last month.
Referral Rewards: I set up a referral campaign using beehiiv that provided incentives and rewards to customers who recommended my newsletter to friends and family.
Limited Time Offers: This campaign created urgency by sending a discount code to customers with a countdown clock, telling subscribers that they needed to use the code before it expired on a set date.
Bundle Deals: Giving customers a discount for purchasing more than one item improved my average AOV (Average Order Value), which in turn improved my ROI.
I assigned each campaign a specific discount code so I could easily track the effectiveness of different campaigns.
My best running offer was the new customer discount - I found that customers who were at the beginning of their journey with my brand were super invested, and were more likely to make an additional purchase while they were excited about the product they’d recently received.
Some other elements I focused on with this first strategy were:
Email Design: I knew that my email design should be slick, responsive, and have a good combination of white space and content to give my subscribers the best experience.
Timing of Emails: I quickly learned that timing was key for email marketing. If I sent an email when a customer had received a recent purchase and was super happy, I’d have much higher success rates with a future purchase.
Exclusivity: Driving home the fact that my customers were receiving an exclusive offer, just for them, made subscribers feel special and increased my chances of more conversions.
Sense of Urgency: Creating a sense of urgency was a quick route to a high conversion rate. This worked particularly well with my limited-time offers, encouraging subscribers to use a discount code before it was due to expire.
Social Proof: My email templates that included reviews and real-life stories from customers were more successful than emails that didn’t include these sections. Providing social proof gave my subscribers that extra push to trust my brand and make a purchase.
Side note: If you use Shopify and are interested in boosting conversions, check out this case study on our customer Black Crow - an AI tool that unlocks hidden value for Shopify businesses.
Strategy 2: Driving Repeat Purchases With Personalized Campaigns
My second strategy was focused on driving repeat purchases with personalization.
Personalized emails provide 6 times higher conversion rates than non-personalized emails (Instapage) - this is huge!
Tailoring emails to individual customer preferences has also been proven to increase customer lifetime value by up to 15% - one of my marketing aims was to drive repeat purchases, so hearing this stat made me desperate to put personalization into my campaigns as quickly as possible.
Here are some examples of personalization techniques I used to drive repeat purchases:
Subject Line Personalization: A study carried out by Hubspot found that the most successful subject lines were personalized, promotional, and engaging. I included my customers’ names in the subject line to catch attention - this drastically increased my average open rate!
Product Recommendations: I tailored my emails to include product recommendations based on my subscribers’ previous purchases. For example, if they’d bought a certain product last month, I’d recommend a similar one that would work well with it, or include an ‘Other People Also Purchased’ section in my template.
Triggered Emails: Exploring triggered emails with beehiiv’s automation tools was super helpful for personalizing my campaigns. I could automate a series whereby subscribers would receive an email directly after subscribing, thanking them by first name for subscribing, and giving them an idea of what they could expect from my brand in the future.
Dynamic Emails: I loved using personalized dynamic emails to drive repeat purchases. This involved using beehiiv to create sections in my templates that related to specific customers, such as browsing history, recent purchases.
Audience Segmentation: Filtering my subscribers by different attributes allowed me to send relevant emails to specific customers. For example, creating a segment for non-active subscribers and sending them a re-engagement campaign with a specific discount code allowed me to bring inactive subscribers back into the fold.
Using each of these personalization techniques improved my engagement rates, conversion rates, and ultimately increased my ROI.
Alongside these improved metrics, I found that overall, my audience was more tuned in to my content, and reported feeling more valued when I sent out subscriber feedback reports.
Strategy 3: Leveraging Abandoned Cart Emails For Revenue Growth
The final strategy I implemented in my Shopify email marketing journey was using abandoned shopping cart emails to increase revenue.
It’s super normal for people to add a product to their basket while shopping online and get distracted.
Perhaps their phone rang.
Maybe they remembered they needed to be somewhere.
Their phone might have run out of battery.
Whatever the reason, that person nearly made a purchase, but didn’t quite make it.
While this is frustrating for website owners, it provides a pool of people that made their way through most of the conversion process, so they must be highly interested in your products.
I set up a campaign that sent a trigger email to a subscriber within a few hours of them abandoning their shopping cart. This email included a friendly reminder that they had items in their basket.
After 24 hours, this campaign triggered a second email, this time including an exclusive discount code to encourage the subscriber to check out.
After 72 hours, another email was sent with a more persuasive offer and links to other products they could browse.
This strategy was highly effective. It gave me the ability to pick up extra sales from customers who were already engaged with my brand and taught me that my existing website visitors were as important as driving new traffic.
A couple of points I optimized along the way included:
Stopping Emails After a Conversion: If a customer checked out with an item, I made sure the only email they received was a thank you. I didn’t want to bother my customers by sending more emails when they’d just made a transaction.
Ensuring Emails Weren’t Pushy: Being too forceful with emails can really turn a customer off. I made sure that my emails were relevant to my subscribers, only focusing on the product they added to their basket and making sure I didn’t use pushy language.
Testing Email Timing: I tested a range of different time frames with my abandoned shopping cart emails. I found sending an email too quickly after a subscriber added a product to their basket came across as pushy - sending an email too late meant they’d lost interest, and I’d missed the boat on re-engaging them.
Metrics
Understanding some metrics around abandoned shopping carts helped me determine how well this strategy was working.
With a staggering 70% of consumers abandoning shopping carts in 2025 (Statista), I knew there was a market for this type of strategy, but I needed to know what kind of rates to aim for.
A study by Hotjar found that the average recovery rate for abandoned shopping carts sits between 3% and 5%. I aimed for the average, and when I received higher recovery rates, I was pleasantly surprised!
On average, 10.7% of lost revenue can be recovered by setting up an abandoned shopping cart campaign (Active Campaign).
If that’s not motivation to try this strategy, I’m not sure what is!
Why Listen to Me? I have been working in the digital marketing space for nearly 10 years, predominantly helping brands with their email marketing and online presence. I now specialize in creating great content for beehiiv to help people nail their email strategies!
The Results: Which Strategy Delivered the Best ROI For Shopify?
While all three of these strategies provide success for Shopify websites, there’s a standout winner if you’re looking for one strategy to focus on.
Here’s a data table breaking down average results across a range of industries while using these strategies, focusing on metrics such as sales, click-throughs, and engagement rates.
This table shows some interesting results.
While each strategy increased metrics across the board, the Abandoned Shopping Cart Campaign had the biggest impact, increasing CTR to 21% (the average is typically 2.3% across a range of industries), and bringing open rates to 48% (with the average being between 17% and 28% depending on industry).
These are staggering results.
However, while the clear winner appears to be the Abandoned Shopping Cart campaign, I would strongly recommend using all three of these strategies to improve your Shopify email marketing.
It’s impossible to ignore the success of using discount codes and personalizing emails to drive positive metrics, particularly when it comes to driving revenue.
Why beehiiv Is My Top Pick For Shopify Email Marketing
beehiiv has been the best change I’ve made when focusing on improving email marketing for my e-commerce business.
While there are many different email marketing platforms out there, beehiiv came up trumps when comparing a range of features.
I’ve explained in detail below the features I love about beehiiv, and how they compare with other popular platforms such as MailChimp, Active Campaign, Substack, and Kit (previously ConvertKit).
Automation
beehiiv is well known for its automation capabilities.
Using advanced triggers and actions based on user behavior saved me hours when building email campaigns. It made my marketing more efficient and gave me confidence that errors were kept to a minimum.
When comparing beehiiv with the platform Kit, a system known for its robust automation, I found that beehiiv offered similar functionality, such as triggers, events, and sequences, but with a cleaner design.
I could use drag-and-drop for automation rather than a complicated process, which was great as I don’t have a coding background.
Analytics
You can tell when using beehiiv that it was built with analytics and data-driven results in mind, particularly when using their 3D Analytics platform.
3D Analytics allowed me to track the performance of my campaigns, understand my audience more deeply, and make decisions based on this information to drive better results.
beehiiv offers analytics on elements that other brands barely scratch the surface of, including monetization tracking, predictive analytics via AI, and paid content engagement rates.
User-Friendly Design
While most email marketing platforms tend to be user-friendly these days, beehiiv stood out with its simple drag-and-drop editor and emphasis on the fact that anyone can get into email marketing regardless of their background.
I found while comparing beehiiv and MailChimp that beehiiv was more geared towards newsletter creators, while MailChimp had a broader focus on all types of content creators.
Price
beehiiv is the clear winner when it comes to the cost of email marketing software.
I love that they focus on rewarding customers for increasing subscribers, seeing it as a mutual benefit rather than one that they can exploit financially.
Here’s a quick comparison of cost to show how they compare with other email marketing platforms, showing they’re the cheapest of the 5 compared companies:
Monetization
Another way beehiiv excels over other email marketing platforms is with monetization.
Making additional revenue from my Shopify store was always a priority, particularly if it could happen in the background without me needing to exert too much additional effort.
beehiiv, quite simply, has far more methods for monetization than other platforms, including the following:
Integrated Ad Network: The beehiiv Ad Network allows creators to feature sponsorships for large, well-known brands within their newsletter, instilling trust and generating revenue from ads.
Paid Subscription Tiers: beehiiv allows creators to set up subscription tiers, generating revenue by providing subscribers with exclusive, paid-for content.
Boosts: Boosts allow creators to get paid when they recommend subscribers to other beehiiv publications.
Partner Program: The beehiiv Partner Program allows users to integrate affiliate links within newsletter content, using a unique partner link to generate commissions.
Easily Integratable
Connecting Shopify with a beehiiv account is easy.
beehiiv was made to integrate seamlessly with third-party tools - we’re under no illusion that beehiiv won’t be the only online platform you use, so we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to use your preferred tools together.
To link your Shopify store to beehiiv, you will need:
A verified beehiiv account via Stripe
An active account with Make (the no-code platform that allows users to connect beehiiv with other apps/integrations)
An active Shopify Plus account
You can then connect your Shopify account to beehiiv using Make, which will allow you to automatically add new subscribers to beehiiv when a purchase is made in Shopify.
Yes, you heard that right - automatically.
By connecting both platforms, you’re essentially syncing the data you have across multiple tools and using it to your advantage.
Here’s a full walkthrough for integrating your Shopify store with beehiiv.
Mistakes I Made And Lessons Learned From Testing Strategies
While the strategies I’ve mentioned were successful, I certainly made some mistakes.
But we’re all human, right?
The benefit you have here is that I’m about to share all the mistakes that I made so that you can learn from my errors, rather than making your own.
So what mistakes did I make, and what lessons did I learn?
Sending The Same Email To All Subscribers
One of my earliest mistakes in email marketing was sending out blanket emails to all subscribers.
I thought this would be quicker.
Easier to manage.
Turns out I was wrong.
While it was quicker to initially send the email, I spent more time confused about why my emails weren’t performing.
When I started segmenting my audiences and sending them specific, more targeted emails, my results spiked upwards as my audience was receiving information that was specific to them.
It’s 100% worth putting in a bit more time at the beginning to segment your audience and reap the results later. My subscribers were more likely to engage and convert with more tailored content than a blanket email that was sent to everybody.
Designing For Desktop Only
I primarily manage my Shopify store on my laptop because it’s easier to work on and it’s my personal preferred method.
However, this resulted in most of my emails being created on a laptop device, which meant that my emails were focused primarily on laptop and desktop users.
I was discounting mobile users’ experience without even realizing it - a whopping 85% of users (99 Firms).
Don’t get me wrong - there’s no issue with designing your emails on a desktop device. But make sure you’re thoroughly testing your emails on small devices to make sure they’re fully responsive and offer a great user experience.
Not Making Use Of Automation
My name’s Nicky and I’m a control freak.
The thought of using automation, quite frankly, scared me, as I felt that doing everything manually was the safest way of controlling my email marketing.
While this worked for a certain amount of time, as my business grew, I was missing out on clear opportunities for improved efficiency. If I automated even some small parts of my email marketing strategy, I could save myself time and focus on the parts of my marketing that really needed me.
This started with scheduling the odd email and eventually grew to automating complete email sequences. While I still like to carry out some tasks manually, I’ve learned to let go and let automation carry the load with my email marketing.
My Best Practices For Shopify Email Campaigns
Now onto best practices.
There are some key points that I’d recommend to people setting up Shopify email campaigns, regardless of industry, goal, or budget.
These best practices help to ensure your email campaigns are well-targeted and use the best tools available to prioritise results.
Segmentation
Using segmentation is a best practice for sending Shopify emails because it allows you to send the most relevant content to your subscribers.
I touched on this earlier, but I cannot emphasise enough how useful segmentation is, particularly when it comes to e-commerce.
You collect all kinds of different data with a Shopify store, allowing you to segment your customers by different features and send them specific types of content.
Using the beehiiv system, you can segment data by the following:
Activity: How active a subscriber is or isn’t.
Acquisition Channel: How a subscriber found your store (Google, Social Media, etc.)
Behavior: How a user reacted to your content, e.g., you could choose to email a specific email to users who engage regularly with your content
A/B Testing
A/B testing is super effective in understanding what content works better than others.
One of the key uses of A/B testing is running tests on subject lines.
This can tell you how well different subject lines perform, and ultimately which to prioritize.
Some key benefits that come from A/B testing include:
Increasing Open Rates: Testing different subject lines with A/B testing allows you to see which provides the best open rates.
Optimizing Sending Times: You can split test by time and see when you’re receiving the best results.
Automatic Testing: Using A/B testing with beehiiv allows you to test on autopilot, with beehiiv automatically choosing the best version for optimal results.
Data-Driven Decisions: A/B testing allows you to make the best decisions based on data and results.
Easy To Use: beehiiv makes A/B testing easy with a simple, intuitive system that requires no coding knowledge to operate.
Leveraging Seasonal Campaigns
Many businesses choose to leverage seasonal campaigns to set up promotions because people are generally geared to spend money around these times.
Think Christmas Sales!
Summer madness!
Spring Savings!
Whichever seasonal promotions you choose, make the most of the holidays by prewarning your subscribers of your upcoming promotion and sending regular updates.
It’s particularly important to remind your audience when your sale is due to end, creating urgency which can lead to further sales.
You could even extend your offer if you want to give users an extra opportunity to shop with you.
List Hygiene
Keep your list clean. Arguably, the more boring side of e-marketing, but still very important.
Regularly maintaining your email marketing lists is imperative. If you don’t clean your lists, you’ll end up with a large percentage of inactive subscribers, which will negatively contribute to a high bounce rate/inactivity rate.
With a clean list comes good deliverability, higher conversion rates, and increased engagement.
Why?
Because you’ll have a list of subscribers who are interested in your content. Keeping your most loyal subscribers in one place results in a higher percentage of your subscribers purchasing from you.
Here’s a short checklist of items you should carry out regularly to keep your email list squeaky clean:
Purge Inactive Subscribers: Inactive subscribers lower your metrics and make it difficult to ascertain how your emails are performing. Check out this beehiiv video to learn the best ways of deleting inactive subscribers.
Verify All Email Addresses: Use a double opt-in feature to verify email addresses before users sign up to ensure that all addresses being added to your list are genuine.
Make Unsubscribing Easy: While you want a low unsubscribe rate, if a user wants to unsubscribe, it’s key to make this as easy as possible. You don’t want unengaged users on your list, plus you irritate people by making it difficult to unsubscribe.
Interactivity
My final best practice for you is to experiment with interactive content.
Text and visual content are the bread and butter of email templates, but other, more engaging types of content will be great for increasing engagement rates, such as:
Polls: Including an in-email poll can improve engagement rates while also providing you with feedback you can use to improve your newsletters.
Add-To-Cart Functionality: Including buttons that directly add a product to a user’s cart is a great way of increasing conversion rates for e-commerce sites.
Countdown Timers: Create urgency in your emails for a soon-to-end sale with an interactive countdown timer that links to relevant products on your website.
Image Carousels: Using different methods to display images can make your emails more interesting, bringing your templates to life and keeping your audience engaged.
Videos: Engagement rates are vastly improved with video content, with longer form content keeping users engaged in your email for longer.
Final Thoughts: How Email Marketing Can Drive Shopify Sales
There we have it.
Everything you need to know about email marketing for Shopify stores.
Quick summary:
The potential of email marketing to scale Shopify stores is endless, so make sure you’re using it!
Try out my 3 top strategies: using discount codes to improve conversions, personalizing your emails to drive repeat business, and targeting abandoned shopping cart customers to increase sales.
Consider beehiiv as your main email marketing tool for data-driven insights, efficient automation, monetization, and accessibility.
Remember the best practices for e-commerce email marketing: Segmentation, A/B Testing, leveraging seasonal campaigns, list hygiene, and interactive content.
To try out some of the powerful tools in beehiiv’s remit, start a free 30-day trial today.
beehiiv can help you expand your Shopify store, growing subscriber numbers and driving extra revenue for your business. There are many features included, such as Custom Domains, API Access, 3D Analytics, and beehiiv AI that can help drive growth and push your store to where you want it to be.
Get started with beehiiv today and see just how successful your email marketing can be!
Google’s People Also Ask Questions:
Can I do email marketing with Shopify?
Yes, you can do email marketing with Shopify.
You can either use an external system, such as beehiiv, and link it with your Shopify store via an API to enable beehiiv to collect email addresses from your Shopify orders. You can then use beehiiv to create appealing email templates and communicate with your customers.
Alternatively, you can use Shopify’s internal email system. However, this system is limited in comparison with beehiiv in terms of tools, analysis capabilities, and sophisticated automation/testing features.
What is the best email marketing for Shopify?
The best email marketing for Shopify is via these three strategies:
The use of discount codes to drive sales
Personalizing emails to improve engagement rates
Targeting shopping cart abandoners to increase conversions
What is the best email provider for Shopify?
The best email provider for Shopify is the beehiiv platform.
beehiiv specializes in helping creators produce high-quality communications for subscribers with conversion and data-driven decisions at its heart.
It is particularly useful for e-commerce users because it offers features that go beyond simple e-marketing, catering to more specific needs such as automation, monetization, audience growth/management, and advanced analytics/reporting.
How do I email customers through Shopify?
You can email customers through Shopify directly by using Shopify Email to create and send email campaigns individually or to groups of users.
However, the internal Shopify system is fairly basic and doesn’t offer an advanced platform focused primarily on newsletters for e-commerce stores.
beehiiv is a better choice if you’re looking for an intuitive tool that can integrate seamlessly with Shopify to combine the benefits of the data of an e-commerce platform and a specialized email newsletter platform.
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