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Key takeaways ✨
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Email marketing and eCommerce are old friends that happen to work very well together. Email marketing ROI consistently outperforms other channels, with 35% of companies getting over $36 back for every $1 spent on the inbox. What eCommerce brand doesn’t love those results?
Retail email marketing isn’t a magic money-printing machine, however. Today’s shoppers expect personalized, seamless, and beautifully rendered emails that speak to what they want, when they want it. That can feel like a tall order if you’re a lean team, trying to scale alongside a growing company, or simply pressured to boost performance.
We know you aren’t one to back away from a creative challenge, though, and this guide will help you join the ranks of companies like Kate Spade, which boosted revenue by 174% with just a couple of emails.
Read on for a walkthrough of the full eCommerce email lifecycle, from acquisition to re-engagement. You’ll also find real retail benchmarks (hello, 2025 click-through rate averages), creative personalization ideas, and QA best practices that help you send better emails, faster.
Table of contents
Email still out-performs ads for eCommerce in 2025
All the way back in 2013—practically a lifetime ago in digital standards—there was talk that email outperformed Twitter and Facebook for selling stuff online. Guess what’s still the best marketing investment for eCommerce brands more than a decade later? Email.
The eCommerce brands that master email see healthier margins than if they put more marketing dollars into paid ads.
There are a few reasons why email is a better bet to make every marketing dollar count.
- Email can be less expensive per person than ads. True, brands might have to pay more to send a message to 50,000 people than 500. But, in general, once you create an email, you can send it over and over without paying for each view or click.
- Email marketing is relationship-driven. (At least, the best programs are). Building trust over time and relevance through personalization puts potential buyers in a better state of mind than an ad that pops up out of the blue. Plus, they’ve opted into seeing your emails. The same can’t always be said for paid ads.
- Email isn’t beholden to algorithms or third-party cookies. Email sidesteps these restrictions, allowing for direct, personalized messaging based on first-party behavior like purchases, opens, or clicks. Data privacy is also a concern for subscribers, and being upfront about the data you use can build trust. The three most important aspects of email privacy were transparency about data collection (58%), no third-party sharing (54%), and control over personal information access (52%).
By the numbers: Are ads or emails better for e-commerce marketing?
| Metric | Ads | |
|---|---|---|
| Average ROI | 2:1¹ | 36:1² |
| Acquisition cost trends | Retail paid CAC rose 7% from 2023 to 2024³ | Retail organic CAC rose by only 2% from 2023 to 2024 |
| Percent of consumers who say this is the top channel affecting purchase decisions⁴ | 22% (social media ads) | 28% |
| Audience perception | 42.7% of internet users now block ads⁵ | Subscribers have opted in to receive messages from you |
| Privacy concerns | 65% of people say they are concerned about excessive cookie usage⁶ | Email targeting relies on first-party data |
Sources:
¹ Wordstream
² State of Email 2025
³ Focus Digital
⁴ Litmus
⁵ CROPink
⁶ CookieYes
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The eCommerce lifecycle framework
Before you can start planning your email marketing for eCommerce strategy, you need to step back and look at the entire journey a customer takes. An eCommerce lifecycle framework helps you split the buying journey into manageable chunks so you can create and send content that moves the needle at that moment.
eCommerce email playbook by stage
Now that you have a general understanding of the eCommerce lifecycle, it’s time to look at how specific types of emails fit into the strategy. P.S. If you want to find more email examples, check out our favorite spots for email inspiration.
E-commerce Email Marketing Lifecycle
| Lifecycle Stage | Email Types | Cadence | KPI Targets |
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Discover |
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Triggered on signup 1–2 emails over 3–5 days |
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Welcome |
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3–5 email series over 7–10 days post-signup |
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Recover |
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Series of 2–3 emails: • 1–3 hrs post-abandon • 24 hrs later • 48–72 hrs final reminder |
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Grow |
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Transactional email immediately
Follow-up series 2–3 emails over 7–10 days post-purchase |
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Reward |
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Monthly or event-triggered based on milestones |
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Reignite |
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Triggered after 30–90 days of inactivity
1–2 message series |
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1. Discover: acquisition and list-building emails
Think of the first phase in the eCommerce lifecycle as meeting a new friend. Potential customers find you from a referral, social post, ad, or elsewhere and start to get to know you. If they like what they see (fingers crossed), they’ll sign up for your email list. You shouldn’t try to sell to them yet, just build the connection.
Your goal: Introduce people to your brand and collect first-party data you can use for future email personalization.
Types of emails to send:
- List opt-in confirmation and email preferences
- What to expect/short intro
- Welcome offer (especially if that’s why they signed up!)
How to measure email marketing success:
- Signup conversion rate
- Open rate
- Click-through rate (CTR)
reMarkable’s sign up email features a welcome message from the team plus a few links to explore content and socials.
2. Welcome: intro and first purchase emails
Once subscribers are on your email list, you move them to their first sale. After subscribers have met your brand, you can start to work toward the first sale.
Your goal: help subscribers connect with your brand or products and drive urgency toward purchase.
Types of emails to send:
- Brand intro series
- Product education
- Social proof/testimonials
- First-purchase incentive
- Personalization based on browse
- Time-limited offers for first-time buyers
How to measure email marketing success:
- First purchase rate
- Revenue per email (RPE)
- Time to first purchase
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Email read time/engagement
Gozney’s welcome email introduces new subscribers to the brand and product without feeling like an immediate sales pitch.
3. Recover: cart and browse abandonment emails
Not everyone buys on the first try, but with a targeted cart and browse abandonment strategy, you can save the sale. Cart and browse abandonment emails follow up with window shoppers or people who came *this* close to buying. You can either use a discount or offer to sweeten the deal, alert them to low stock, or simply remind them of exactly what they left behind.
Your goal: Get browsers and lookers to come back to your website to finish the purchase they started.
Types of emails to send:
- Cart/browse reminder
- Product photo and dynamic CTA
- FOMO (“low stock”, reviews)
- Secondary offer if no purchase
- Reviews, FAQs, or low-stock warnings
How to measure email marketing success:
- Cart recovery rate
- Revenue per email
- Conversion rate
Bite shows subscribers exactly what they left in their cart with a call to action (CTA) to finish checkout. They also found a way to incorporate benefits and brand differentiators in the design with a banner touting their clean ingredients and cruelty free formula.
4. Grow: post-purchase and upsell emails
What’s better than a buyer? A repeat buyer. Showing customers what else they can do with your brand and keeping them up to date with the latest drops keeps the good times going. Personalized content can promote related items, or you can upsell them on add-ons or larger items.
Your goal: Smooth out boom and bust sales cycles with higher repeat purchase rates.
Types of emails to send:
- Order confirmation
- Personalized product recommendations
- Thank you and review request
- Product tips/how-tos
- Upsell/cross-sell
- Loyalty invitation
- Review requests
How to measure marketing success:
- Repeat purchase rate
- Review conversion rate
- Avg order value (AOV) uplift
Outer shows customers how to complement their purchase with other product categories.
5. Reward: VIP, loyalty, and referral emails
Loyalty programs and VIP discounts reward your best customers, and referral programs encourage them to share your brand with others. Reward emails and loyalty programs give you a chance to show gratitude to your most engaged subscribers and buyers.
Your goal: Incentivize engagement with rewards, offers, or discounts.
Types of emails to send:
- Tier progress updates
- Birthday/anniversary perks
- Referral program invitations
- Personalized milestone emails
- Exclusive access to product drops, events, or early sales based on customer tier or purchase history
LitTip: putting an ‘add to calendar’ option in your email helps subscribers keep track of VIP events
How to measure marketing success:
- Referral conversion rate
- VIP retention
- Churn rate
Graza promotes their referral and reward program, Glug Club, with an overview of benefits and rewards.
6. Reignite: re-engagement and winback emails
Sometimes, subscribers and customers go quiet. Re-engagement emails are a reminder to come back around, but if they don’t re-engage, then you can remove them for a tidy and active email list.
Your goal: Identify who’s drifting and give them a reason to return.
Types of emails to send:
- “We miss you” winback offers
- Personalized recommendations
- Last chance re-subscribe prompts
How to measure marketing success:
- Re-engagement rate
- Unsubscribe rate
Belgian Boys let subscribers know that they’ll remove them from the email list and give them a chance to re-engage without pressure or guilt.
Retail-ready segmentation and personalization
As a human with an inbox, you know what it feels like to have way too many messages to catch up on. Our recent research confirms that your customers want relevant emails at a manageable cadence, too.
- The primary reason consumers delete retail marketing emails without opening them is too many emails/inbox overload (39%).
- Irrelevant or non-personalized content drives 46% of unsubscribes.
- 42% unsubscribe due to excessive promotions with few valuable offers.
So what’s an eCommerce email marketer to do? Segment and personalize your retail emails to balance your sales goals with the subscriber relationship.
First, a quick lesson on segmentation vs. personalization, since we’ll use those terms in a moment. Email segmentation sorts your customers into groups based on traits they have in common.
Email personalization uses subscriber data and dynamic content to create highly relevant, individualized email experiences.
Now, onto your playbook to create retail emails that inspire ‘oohs’ instead of ‘ughs’.
Choose data that matches your objective
You already know that basic first name personalization doesn’t wow anymore, but maybe you’re at a loss for where to go from there.
To build personalization that drives clicks and conversions, you need to lean into behavioral and value-based data. Here are four foundational inputs for retail marketers to use email personalization best practices:
E-commerce Personalization Data Types
| Data Type | What It Means | What You Can Personalize | How It Can Help |
|---|---|---|---|
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RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) |
Measures how recently someone purchased, how often they purchase, and how much they spend |
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Category Affinity |
Highlights which product types or collections a shopper browses or buys most |
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Geolocation |
Describes where the subscriber lives, down to city or region |
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CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) |
Forecasts or reflects the long-term value of a customer based on spend and behavior |
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Build 1:1 experiences with personalized and dynamic content
Personalization for eCommerce can be fun and creative, but sometimes it seems intimidating to actually put the ideas into motion. In fact, Litmus’ State of Email Report 2025 found that the top personalization challenge is developing personalized content efficiently (17%).
That’s where email personalization tools come in. Builders like Litmus Personalize let non-tech-savvy marketers add personalized and dynamic content into emails.
Take it for a spin in this interactive demo:
Now, let’s tie them to your eCommerce lifecycle so you can actually put them to work for you. Here’s how to use Litmus Personalize to add personalized and dynamic content across the retail email marketing lifecycle.
Discover:
- Add live polls to ask new subscribers what they’re interested in.
- Use personalized images to welcome subscribers based on source or device.
- Pull in Instagram feeds to show social proof with real UGC.
- Enable interest signals to begin tracking clicks and preferences from email #1.
Welcome:
- Use rule-based images to feature different products based on category interest or persona.
- Add timers to drive urgency around limited-time welcome offers.
- Show progress bars to highlight how close they are to free shipping or a reward.
- Include personalized images that say hello by name and recommend top-sellers.
Recover:
- Add timers to create urgency around expiring carts or limited stock.
- Use rule-based images to show the exact product left behind—or a smarter alternative.
- Include a scratch-off to surprise them with a save-the-sale discount.
- Try a sentiment tracker to ask if something got in the way (like price or shipping).
Grow:
- Add image carousels with related products or “you might also like” ideas.
- Use interest signals to recommend next-step items based on past behavior.
- Embed videos in email for unboxings, product demos, or styling guides.
- Include an ‘add to calendar’ option for refills, launches, or product care content.
Reward:
- Show progress bars for loyalty tier tracking or earned rewards.
- Use rule-based images to unlock VIP content for top-tier shoppers.
- Add animated videos to celebrate milestones or send thank-you messages.
- Drop in a scratch-off to deliver a fun perk or surprise reward.
Reignite:
- Use personalized images with “We miss you” messaging and custom offers.
- Swap in rule-based images that scale incentives based on past value or inactivity.
- Add a sentiment tracker to find out why they stopped engaging.
- Include a live poll to let them tell you what content or products they want now.
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Tool stack and integrations for retail marketers
Creating an email is a labor of love. Plus time, sweat, and occasionally, tears. Thankfully, email workflows are generally getting easier and more efficient. Our 2025 State of Email report found that the percentage of teams taking over two weeks to produce an email dropped dramatically to just 6% in 2025.
One component of excellent email workflow management is centralized tools and email integrations. The better and easier your marketing tools work together, the less time you spend shuffling information around. Here are the types of tools you might need for each step of an eCommerce email marketing workflow.
Email Marketing Workflow Stages & Tools
| Workflow Stage | Popular Tools |
|---|---|
| Planning and content creation | Litmus Template Library, Figma, Adobe, Trello, Asana, Airtable, Copy.ai |
| Build, QA, and testing | Litmus Builder, Litmus Previews, ESP editor, Litmus Personalize, Grammarly |
| Approvals and sending | Litmus Proof, Slack, Teams, Litmus Checklist |
| Post-send review | Litmus Analytics, ESP dashboard, Google Analytics |
Planning, design, and content creation
Retail marketing runs on rhythm: campaign calendars, product drops, promotions, and peak seasons. That is, until something throws a wrench in the process. The smoother and faster your planning, design, and content creation are, though, the better you can weather any storm.
- Litmus helps you move faster without compromising brand quality. Email design tools like reusable templates and code snippets keep content consistent.
- The top email design programs include Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Canva, and Adobe InDesign.
- Trello, Asana, or Airtable keep campaigns organized, especially when you’re managing multiple handoffs across creative, marketing, and ops.
AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper help you brainstorm subject lines, CTAs, and content so you don’t have to start down the ever-intimidating blank page. Our recent research found that AI-generated email marketing faces a trust divide along generational lines—trust increased with younger generations like Millennials (38%) and Gen Z (38%).
LitTip: Create an email brief during the planning process to keep stakeholders on the same page and guide everyone in the same direction.
Build, QA, and testing
Once you’ve nailed your message and layout, it’s time to build. Then, you need to make sure everything looks flawless, no matter where it’s opened.
- Litmus Builder cuts email development time in half with ESP integrations and sync, centralized design assets, and the option to build with or without HTML.
- An email testing tool like Litmus Previews lets you test emails across 100+ clients and devices before hitting send. You’ll catch layout breaks, image issues, and font weirdness early. Email QA automation saves time without sacrificing quality.
- Litmus Email Guardian monitors your emails to alert you to changes in how your email renders, like if email client updates suddenly make your welcome email template break.
- Your ESP editor (like Klaviyo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or Mailchimp) may have a drag-and-drop editor in addition to HTML code views.
- Litmus Personalize makes it simple to layer in dynamic content blocks, like timers or personalized product rows—no heavy ESP configuration needed.
- For copy checks, tools like Grammarly help maintain tone, clarity, and polish across messages.
Approvals and sending
When deadlines are tight, you need a fast, flexible approval flow that works for marketing and stakeholders. And that doesn’t require you to jump between email threads, tabs, images, and discussions.
- Litmus Proof simplifies the process. Share a live, interactive email preview (not a flat screenshot) where reviewers can leave feedback directly on the email and in one centralized location instead of in various places like Slack, Teams, and email.
- Before anything goes live, Litmus Previews and QA runs a full pre-send QA, like checking links, images, tracking, load speed, and accessibility, so you can send with confidence.
Post-send review
Every email is a chance to learn, but you need the right analytics and reports to make sense of how each campaign performed.
- Litmus Analytics goes beyond open rates. See read time, device breakdowns, and how different audiences interact with your content.
- Your ESP dashboard tracks revenue, automation flows, and top-performing segments—essential for retail teams who live and die by ROI.
- Google Analytics (or GA4) closes the loop, tying on-site behavior and purchases back to email clicks.
Design and QA best practices for mobile-first retail
We care (a lot) about helping email teams send out error-free emails and have guides to email testing best practices. We even have mobile-responsive email templates you can use.
In addition to general best practices design and QA best practices, like maintaining an email style guide, here are a few conversion-centered design elements to consider when you’re creating mobile-first emails for a retail audience.
Email Design Best Practices
| Best Practice | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| Lead with a clear CTA | Focuses user action and makes performance easier to measure |
| Stack content vertically | Ensures smooth scrolling and clean layout on mobile screens |
| Test your designs in dark mode | Prevents disappearing logos, inverted colors, and unreadable buttons |
| Use 16px+ fonts and use min 48px tap targets | Keeps text legible and scannable on small screens and makes buttons easy to tap without errors |
| Test image load times | Prevents lag on mobile networks and ensures key visuals load quickly |
| Don’t send image-only designs | A significant portion of your audience may never see the design, from visually impaired customers to people without a strong internet connection |
| Build with reusable modules | Speeds up production and ensures mobile-ready design with less rework |
Lead with a clear CTA
Limiting your call to action buttons to a single action benefits both you and your customers. For you, it’s easier to measure the email’s performance—it’s a case of whether they clicked or not, instead of “no, they didn’t click this, but they did click that.” For customers, it’s easy to see the point of the email and act on it while skimming.
Stack content vertically
Mobile phones are narrower than, say, laptops or tablets. Putting emails in a single column, especially retail messages showing off multiple products, makes it easier to see everything with a simple up-and-down scroll.
Beware Dark Mode
Dark Mode is the default for many mobile users, particularly in Apple Mail. But it can mess with your email design. Light logos can disappear. Colors invert. Buttons become unreadable. Optimizing for Dark Mode means using transparent PNGs, safe color palettes, and testing your designs to make sure they hold up in both light and dark environments.
Use 16px+ fonts and ample button spacing
Email font size is always important for accessibility, but it’s especially noticeable on smaller devices like phones. Fonts should be at least 16px and have breathing room around all of your headers, text, and buttons so the message doesn’t feel smooshed. 48px is a good place to start with tap targets.
Test image load times
Retail emails are visual by nature, but image-heavy design can drag down load speed on slower connections (especially when your audience is on the move). If your hero image or first product block takes too long to load, people may never see it. Compress file sizes, use modern formats like JPG or WebP, and test for lag so load time doesn’t get in the way of conversions. Feel free to snag our imagery code.
Stay away from image-only emails
If your entire email is one big image, you risk losing the message for anyone using image blockers, with accessibility needs, or on slow connections. Use live HTML text for headlines, CTAs, and key messaging so everyone can enjoy your email.
For example, this email has the images on:
This email has the images off:
Build with reusable, tested modules
Modular email design makes building emails faster and easier, which will be a real gift when you get the notice that you need to create and send that specific promo ASAP. Swapping in new partial blocks, like reusable CTA elements, helps you build new emails that stay on-brand.
Emails that wow, built with ease
Drag-and-drop or code from scratch. Sync with your ESP and test in one click. Build emails your way. Ready to build better?
Try email builder 
Testing workflow for retail emails: From preview to inbox
Nobody wants the dreaded feeling of realizing the email you just sent has a mistake. To err is human (we’ve all been there), but an organized pre-send workflow and email testing checklist catches mistakes without last-minute scrambling.
Litmus takes the chaos out of send day with a workflow that helps you catch mistakes before your customers do. Here’s how the ideal testing process unfolds:
Step one: Start with reusable modules and templates
Start with mobile-ready, pre-tested building blocks from your Litmus Design Library. This keeps layouts consistent, speeds up production, and reduces rendering issues down the line.
Step two: Litmus Previews and QA Checks
Before you send a test, use Litmus Email testing to run pre-send QA checks. It flags common issues like broken links, missing ALT text, untracked CTAs, and how your images affect loading speed.
Step three: Preview across top inboxes
Check how your email renders across 100+ email clients and devices, including key mobile environments like Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook Mobile. Dark Mode included.
Step four: Confirm accessibility
Use Litmus’s built-in accessibility tools to flag contrast issues, missing semantic structure, or font sizing problems so your emails work for everyone.
Step five: Share for review with Litmus Proof
Collaborate in real time with your team or stakeholders by sharing a live email proof. Collect feedback, tag comments, and resolve edits—all in one place without long email threads.
Case snapshot: How Kate Spade increased email conversion rates 50% with Litmus
You could say the Kate Spade email team had too much of a good thing. A constant stream of new arrivals to share with a large customer base makes personalization difficult without the right tools. Even if your brand can’t relate to the scale of Kate Spade, the pressure to juggle campaigns with limited time or teams is relatable.
“We have new products arriving all the time and our new arrivals emails are key to our CRM strategy. We needed a smart way to manage new in and move from a one-size-fits-all email. We’re a small team so we needed automation to help us achieve our personalization goal, we simply couldn’t build a version of the email for every product category. We’re now listening to what our customers would like from us and using Kickdynamic to show them what they want.“
Chloe Temple
Ecommerce Marketing Director (Europe)
To personalize email at scale, the Kate Spade team created two emails with Litmus Personalize. The first one encouraged subscribers to engage, and what they clicked determined their preferred category for the following new arrivals email. Email two showcased the latest products from the click category using an automated product feed in conjunction with their CRM data.
Setting goals and targets is a must-have part of every email campaign strategy, even if it isn’t quite as flashy as brainstorming creative copy or visuals. Once you understand how your emails typically perform, though, you can work on email optimization (and impress your boss with your progress).
What it is: the percentage of recipients who opened your email out of the total delivered.
You should know: open rates aren’t a reliable metric anymore. While many email marketers still track it, don’t rely too heavily on it to indicate performance.
What it is: the percentage of recipients who clicked any link in your email.
LitTip: check how your ESP or analytics dashboard defines click rate or click-through rate. The terms are often used interchangeably or alongside click-to-open rate, but meanings can vary slightly. They all measure how many people clicked in your email, but might use the total delivered emails or number of people who opened the email as the basis.
What it is: the percentage of delivered emails that led to a purchase or desired action.
What it is: the average amount of revenue generated for each email delivered.
What it is: the percentage of delivered emails that led directly to a completed order.
What it is: the profitability of your email program relative to the cost of running it.
How to measure ROI: ((Revenue from Email – Email Marketing Costs) ÷ Email Marketing Costs) × 100
Litmus can help you save time, reduce errors, and boost retail email ROI, whether you’re in-house at a retail brand or help with email marketing for agencies. Here’s what to do next with your newfound retail email smarts:
You’ll learn best by doing, so start with one idea, see what works, and let your results point you in the right direction.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
