Creating email marketing campaigns using Shopify Email
You can create, customize, segment, and schedule email marketing campaigns using Shopify Email. Email marketing campaigns can be useful to help promote sales, highlight new products, or inform your customers of new stock arrivals.
You can style your email campaigns to suit different audiences and events, and to follow your brand's color scheme, font, and logo to match your store's appearance. You can also save templates you create for future use.
On this page
- Considerations for creating an email marketing campaign
- Set up an email marketing activity
- Send a test email
- Review and send an email
- Change your sender email address
- Marketing automation template section types
- Personalizing your email messages
- Creating a custom-coded email with Liquid
- Creating and managing new Shopify Email templates
Considerations for creating an email marketing campaign
Before you create an email marketing campaign using Shopify Email, review the following considerations:
- Some email providers aren't compatible with Shopify, or they require you to adjust your domain settings. Learn more about setting up your email address.
- Emails are sent only in the language that you write them in and aren't automatically translated. You can create customer segments to target a specific audience of your customers based on language.
- All stores on Basic, Shopify, Advanced Shopify, and Shopify Plus plans have 10,000 free emails to send at the beginning of every month. After you reach 10,000 free emails, the cost is calculated based on volume. Learn more about Shopify email pricing.
Set up an email marketing activity
Shopify Email helps you to send emails to segments of customers who have subscribed to email marketing from your store. To send email campaigns to specific audiences, learn more about creating customer segments.
Depending on what kind of message you're sending to your customers, you can select from a variety of branded templates in Shopify Email. Some templates automatically include assets from your store, such as your logo, products, and colors. The default content of Shopify Email templates is based on email marketing best practices, and includes placeholder text, images, and links in sections that are based on information from your store.
When you set up an email marketing activity, you need to add a subject for the email. You can add international characters and emojis to subject lines. After you add a subject, your email activity is saved with that name. You can change the email marketing activity name at any time.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels.
Click Email.
Click Open app.
Click Create campaign.
Select an email template.
Click To, and then select a customer segment.
Enter a subject line for the email.
Optional: Enter preview text to customize the text that displays after the subject in customer email inboxes. For example,
More fresh finds for your summer wardrobe.-
Make any of the following changes to the email body content:
- To add a section, use your mouse to hover over the email content where you want the new section, and then click
+. - To remove a section from the email content, first click it to open editing options, and then click the trash can icon to remove the section.
- Click the section that you want to edit to review the editing options. Editing options are determined by the section type.
- To add a section, use your mouse to hover over the email content where you want the new section, and then click
Optional: To personalize the subject line, preview text, or body text, click the Personalize icon in the appropriate section, and then choose the value that you want to personalize, and then enter an optional Default value to use if the customer's information is unavailable. If you don't enter a default value, then the space for personalized text is left blank. Learn more about personalizing your emails
After you set up the email marketing activity, send a test email, and then review and send the email.
To change your store's From email address for outgoing email messages, go to your Shopify store settings.
Send a test email
After you set up an email marketing activity, you can send a test email to preview how the email displays in your customer's inbox.
Steps:
- From the email editor, click Send test.
- In the Email addresses section, enter up to five email addresses that you want to send the test to, one at a time.
- Click Send.
Review and send an email
Shopify doesn't check your email content for misspelled words or other errors. After you set up an email activity, you should review your email content before you send it to your subscribers.
When you choose to send or schedule your email, there is a suggested future time that's displayed with a Suggested badge beside it. The suggested time is based on Shopify's data and optimized for the best click-through rate. If you choose to send your email at the suggested time, then it might lead to a better conversion rate. If there's a cost to send the emails, then an estimated cost displays next to the send option that you select.
Steps:
- From the email editor, click Review. Review the email content, and then do either of the following:
- Optional: To make additional edits, click Edit email to go back to the email editor and make your changes.
- Click Schedule send, and then do any of the following:
- To send at the time that Shopify Email suggests, select the suggested time, and then click Schedule.
- To send the email immediately, select Now, and then click Send.
- To schedule a different time, select Custom date and time, select the a Send date and Send time, and then click Schedule.
Cancel or reschedule a send time
You can cancel a scheduled email to stop it from sending at the chosen time. You can also reschedule it for another time.
Steps:
- From Shopify Email, click the campaign.
- Click Edit send date.
- You have the following choices:
- To cancel the email from being sent at the scheduled time, click Remove send date.
- To reschedule, choose a new time and date, and then click Save.
Change your sender email address
The sender email address is the email address displayed in the From field in messages that customers receive from you. Some domains might require additional authentication, otherwise your sender email address might be displayed with via shopifyemail.com, or as store@shopifyemail.com.
Steps:
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Notifications.
- In the Sender email section, enter your email address.
- Click Save.
Marketing automation template section types
You can customize the body content for your email marketing activities by adding, editing, or removing sections. Changes are saved only to the specific email marketing activity that you're editing.
Text
| Editing options |
Changes to the text style are applied to the whole email. For example, when you set Heading 1 to use Times New Roman font, then all text with Heading 1 applied to it is displayed in Times New Roman. The text of Price can’t be changed. The price of a product has to be changed in the product itself. You can add international characters to email subject lines and text. Email subject lines also support emojis. |
|---|---|
Button
| Editing options |
|
|---|---|
Image and GIF
| Editing options |
You can select an image or GIF from your Shopify files, or upload a new image or GIF. |
|---|---|
| Requirements |
|
Video
| Editing options |
You can select a thumbnail image from your Shopify files, or upload a new image. |
|---|---|
| Requirements |
|
Header
| Editing options |
|
|---|---|
Product
| Editing options |
The price of a product can only be changed in the Products section where the template pulls the product detail from. It can't be changed in the Shopify Email editor. |
|---|---|
Express checkout
| Editing options |
Only one product with one variant can be selected for this section. If you have Shop Pay activated on your store, then both Buy with Shop Pay and the Check out now buttons display in the section by default. You can deselect the Shop Pay button to hide it, but the Check out now button can't be hidden. You can edit only the button size and corner style of the Shop Pay button. |
|---|---|
Gift card
| Editing options |
Gift cards must be created in the admin before creating an email campaign. They can’t be created or edited from the Shopify Email editor. |
|---|---|
Discount
| Editing options |
Discounts must be created in the admin before creating an email campaign. They can’t be created or edited from the Shopify Email editor. |
|---|---|
Image with text
| Editing options |
|
|---|---|
Multi-column
| Editing options |
|
|---|---|
Footer
| Editing options |
The store address and phone number can be customized by editing the text directly, or in your store settings. The store name can be customized in your template branding settings or in your store settings. Social media links can be added to your email directly, or in your store brand settings. |
|---|---|
Custom Liquid
| Editing options |
You can input custom Liquid and HTML into the code editor. The code that you enter can't exceed 50 kilobytes (KB) in size. Learn more about the supported Liquid variables for Shopify Email. |
|---|---|
Personalizing your email messages
You can add personalized text to your email campaigns during campaign setup, such as your customer's first name, last name, email, city, state, province, and country. If you add personalized content to a certain section of your email message, then Shopify Email automatically uses customer information in that section, if it exists for the customer receiving the email. You can add personalized text to your subject line, preview line, and email body text. Personalization provides a more tailored experience for your email subscribers, and can improve open rates, conversions, and engagement.
You can personalize the following customer values in an email:
- First name
- Last name
- City
- State/Province
- Country
You can have only two personalization values in your email's subject line and preview line. For example, in the subject line you can use First name and Last name, but not a third personalization value. You can have a maximum of ten personalization values in the email body text. You can also add default information that is used when specific customer information isn't available.
Creating a custom-coded email with Liquid
If you want to use custom Liquid code in the creation of your email, then you can either add a custom Liquid section, or create an email entirely from custom Liquid code.
All emails created with custom-coded Liquid must include the {{unsubscribe_link}} variable. If you've opted in to open tracking, then the {{open_tracking}} variable is also required. Custom-coded Liquid emails can't exceed 500 KB.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels.
Click Email.
Click Open app.
Click Code your own.
Optional: If you have a file saved to your local device with the code that you want to use, then click Import. Imported files must be
.htmlformat.Enter your liquid code.
Optional: Click Review for a preview of how your email is displayed to customers.
Learn more about the supported Liquid variables for Shopify Email.
Creating and managing new Shopify Email templates
All emails that you create using Shopify Email can be edited and customized. You can save custom templates to use as a starting point for future campaigns.
Creating a custom template
You can create and save custom templates to use as a starting point for future campaigns.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels.
Click Email.
Click Open app.
Click Templates.
Click Create template.
Select a template to customize.
Name your template.
In the Shopify Email template editor, edit your template. All changes are saved automatically.
Click Done.
Using a custom template
You can use your custom templates for any future marketing campaigns.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels.
Click Email.
Click Open app.
Click Create campaign.
Under Custom templates, select a template. After you select your template, follow the steps to create an email marketing campaign.
Editing a custom template
If you need to change an existing template, then you can edit it from the Templates list in the Email app.
Steps:
From your Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels.
Click Email.
Click Open app.
Click the overflow menu button to open the available options for the template that you want to manage.
-
Click one of the following:
- Click Duplicate to duplicate the selected template.
- Click Create email to create a marketing campaign from the selected template.
- Click Delete to delete a template.