How to Update Email Templates In Shopify

Shopify Email Marketing 101

Email marketing is one of the best ways that e-commerce sellers can interact directly with their customers. A good email can build brand loyalty, make customers excited about new products and opportunities, and drive repeat sales.

However, people's email inboxes are cluttered with messages and marketing emails from across the internet, so it's hard to stand out in the crowd. This is especially challenging when using Shopify because all emails for all Shopify sites all over the world look exactly the same. Sure, you can customize some colors, but all Shopify users start off with a bland, templatized email. So how can you be different?

Customizing Shopify Email Templates

It's important to use a service like Klaviyo or Mailchimp to customize your emails to fit your company's brand and voice. This will allow you to make unique emails that stand out from other Shopify sites. Many people create customized templates for receipts, fulfillments, abandonded carts, and other key events in the customer journey. Then, they create a "flow" in Klaviyo or Mailchimp to trigger the new template to send. However, Shopify will still send its own version of post-purchase emails for many of these events, causing the customer to receive a duplicate email.

Shopify will always send the following emails:

• Order Receipt Email

• Shipping Confirmation Email

• Abandon Cart Email

You should not create a flow for these emails in your email software. You will need to migrate these templates into Shopify in order to send them without creating a duplicate. This is especially crucial because the Shopify emails are linked to events that have higher open rates than other ecommerce emails. A 2016 study by Conversio shows that receipt emails have an open rate of 65%, while all other ecommerce emails have an open rate of only 40%. Therefore, these are the best opportunities to reach customers with offers to drive repeat sales.

Migrating Templates to Shopify

Once you've finalized your template, you need to Export the HTML code and paste it into the Shopify template.

In your email customization software you can select "Export to HTML" and the content will copy to your clipboard. Then, you will go to your Shopify Account and select Settings > Notifications. This will take you to the page with all of the automated emails that Shopify sends on behalf of the seller. Then, click on the template you want to update. Highlight all of the existing HTML code in the template, delete it, and then paste the new HTML code from your custom email. Make sure to click Preview and see your custom email come to life directly in Shopify!

You can now guarantee that your high open rate emails are communicating your brand & voice, and most importantly driving sales.