As a fashion and apparel brand, you should be familiar with the advantages of email marketing.
In this era of fast fashion and quick inventory cycles, email marketing lets you:
Among other benefits.
The only problem with email marketing in the fashion domain is that it’s very difficult to find industry-specific examples. This can be especially daunting for brands who are just starting out.
To help you out, we’ve curated a collection of 6 fashion and apparel emails that we thought were brilliant.
We’ll discuss what we liked about them and some of the takeaways you can apply in your email marketing.
The Cotton Bureau is a fashion and apparel brand that specializes in all things, you guessed it, cotton. Their selling point is creating ethically produced cotton T-shirts in all sizes for men and women.
The email: Cotton Bureau is celebrating its 3’rd anniversary by holding massive giveaways for their subscribers.
The good: The first thing you notice about this email is the striking manner in which the number 3 is designed and colored. The triple lines plus the soothing color palette evokes a pleasant emotion. And that sets the tone for the rest of the email.
The tone of their copy is celebrant yet humble. They want to share the joy of their success with their customers and so they go all out with special giveaways for their subscribers.
After they outline all the giveaways for grabs, they already have the reader on the hook and so they use the following space to add a huge red-colored CTA (call to action button) that says ‘Shop all shirts’. Perfect time to ask readers to take action.
Takeaways: It’s a good idea to include your customers in your internal milestones. It helps them feel a part of your brand, builds quality relationships with them, and gives you a chance to share your best deals.
Everyone is familiar with Nike. They’ve blended sports and fashion to dominate the athletic/leisurewear market for many years now.
The email: This email is all about Nike’s green-colored collection of shoes and sportswear. They’ve used phrases like ‘go green’ and ‘green scene’ to appeal to a growing eco-friendly consciousness among their consumers.
The good: The color scheme just looks wonderful. Most athletic wear aficionados will feast their eyes when they view the header image in the email. You are greeted by a 3x4 array of Nike shoes with colors ranging from mud to olive green.
They smartly employ minimal copy to keep the focus on the actual products themselves. Nike has a strong enough brand appeal where they don’t have to excessively sell themselves. Their products themselves do the selling. So all you see are one-liner headlines that outline the benefits or appeals of their products.
The takeaway: Don’t be afraid to go minimal with your fashion email copy. Sometimes it’s a good idea to let your products do the talking.
PrettyLittleThing is a Women’s fashion clothing and apparel brand based in the U.K. but operates in multiple countries. They sell a wide array of products including dresses, shoes, bags, sunglasses, and jewelry.
The email: This is a welcome email from PrettyLittleThing. One you’d receive after your first purchase or when you sign up.
The good: PLT remains true to its brand of being girl-centric by employing heavy shades of pink through-out the email. They aren’t afraid of using bold colors because they are well aware of their target market, and know it will appeal to them.
What makes their copy effective and eye-catching is the use of contrast: The white text is used as an overlay over bold images to make it more prominent and to easily direct the reader’s eye.
They also keep the tone of the email rather casual. Their headline is inviting and asks you to take a look around by saying ‘Girl, you’re new here’.
The takeaway: When you know your target audience really well, you can go bold with your emails and talk in a language that really resonates with them.
Breda, in their own words, is a collaborative, independent brand run by a tight-knit team of creatives with a vision anchored in the idea of self-expression, based out of Texas, USA.
Their goal is to create high standard time-pieces at fair retail prices.
What the email is: This is a discount email that offers 50% off on one of Breda’s collections.
The good: The header image, which displays black textured strap watch, with golden accents on the side, against a dark grey background spells out the grace and classy nature of the brand.
This is a win on the part of the brand because they manage to exude luxury while still being affordable ($75 at 50% off). This helps with sales because if people perceive Breda’s products to be highly valuable but still reasonably priced, they’ll have more incentive to buy from them.
They only add the single CTA ‘shop more’ and that also after they’ve displayed the items on discount. This helps direct the attention of the reader as they don’t have to focus on any other possible actions besides the shopping option.
Takeaway: With fashion items, people love a good deal. If customers perceive your products as highly valuable, and then you set discounts, they’ll flock to purchase from you.
Away is a travel company that creates and markets backpacks and suitcases. Their unfettered faith and experience in travel (evident from the fact that all their team members are in a different country, traveling) gives them insight into creating high-quality, fashionable travel bags.
What the email is: This is a product announcement from Away. They’re unveiling 2 new additions in this email: The Backpack and the Daypack.
The good: The first thing to notice is the tone of the copy. Away goes for a grand, larger than life tone to inspire awe. This is a smart strategy as it appeals directly to the wants of their target market.
Travelers like to experience life fully and enjoy moments of wonder, if Away can cater to those emotions, they’ll have better luck selling their products. By using phrases like ‘take the world on your shoulders’ and ‘travel light, near and far’, Away is inspiring independence and competence, which most travelers value.
The second notable thing is product photography. It’s very functional and shows how the products can actually be used thus letting the readers imagine themselves easily with the product. This warms them up to considering a purchase.
Takeaway: If you understand what kind of needs you can fulfill for your customers, be bold in expressing them. Away understands that travelers value independence and competence, and so they’ve shaped their marketing message around that.
Baggu is a fashion company on a mission to design bags that make life easier and more enjoyable. They design products by catering to their customers’ everyday needs. They also pride themselves on minimizing waste and using sustainable materials.
What the email is: This is a site-wide discount offer from Baggu where they were offering everything at 15% off.
The good: This email stands apart by being unconventionally short for a promotion email but still delivering a punch.
You’re greeted by a colorful, cheery graphic that makes sure the 15% off message sticks with you.
Then, rather than going into details, they straight away employ the fear-of-missing-out tactic by saying ‘don’t miss out’ and proceed to give you a discount coupon, followed by a CTA button. Quick, no-frills, and to the point.
The only other piece of information in the email is related to shipping (which a lot of US consumers would find useful) and then the email ends after a request for a follow.
The takeaway: You don’t always have to heavily decorate your emails to deliver your message. In Baggu’s example, they just told us they have a 15% off and left the rest to the reader. Such emails are also a sigh of relief for your customers when they’re already busy and can’t skim through long emails in crowded inboxes.
By learning from these 6 fashion marketing emails, you can start thinking about what kind of emails you want to send your subscribers. Hopefully, the emails gave you a good few ideas to get started with. To learn more, you can read this article on email design guidelines or this piece to improve your email marketing efforts.
Do you work for a fashion brand? What kind of emails do you send your subscribers? How do you generate ideas? We’d love to know in the comments below.
Rukham is the Content Lead at Mailmunch. He believes trust should be the basis for all marketing communications.
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