How to Optimise Your Shopify Email Marketing

Email is the one marketing channel a Shopify store fully owns. Across 198 client stores we work with, email accounts for a median of 30% of total revenue, yet many stores still send the same newsletter to everyone and wonder why the channel stays flat.

This guide explains how to optimise your Shopify email marketing in the order that pays back fastest: a healthy list, lifecycle segments, the automated flows that earn the most per email, subject lines and design, the measures that still work after Apple's privacy changes, and the UK consent rules. Every benchmark links to its source.

Quick Answer

To optimise your Shopify email marketing, keep your list healthy, segment it by lifecycle stage and build automated flows before you add more campaigns. Start with a welcome series and abandoned checkout and cart flows, which are normally the best performers across our Klaviyo clients, then add post purchase, browse abandonment and win back flows. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks show flows earning nearly 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends. Judge results on clicks, placed orders and revenue per recipient rather than opens, because Apple Mail can load emails in the background, and keep spam complaints below Google's 0.1% guideline.

Key Takeaways

• Across 198 client stores, email is a median 30% of total revenue, so most stores have more to gain from email than they expect.
• Flows earn far more than their share of sends: Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, drawn from more than 183,000 brands, put them at nearly 41% of email revenue from 5.3% of sends, with nearly 18 times the revenue per recipient of campaigns.
• Across our Klaviyo clients, the welcome series and abandoned cart and checkout flows are normally the best performing flows by total revenue and conversion rate, so build those first.
• Segment by lifecycle stage and engagement, not just by who is subscribed.
• Opens are no longer a dependable measure, because Apple Mail can download email content in the background whether or not the subscriber reads it. Use clicks, placed orders and revenue per recipient instead.
• Google asks senders to keep spam complaints below 0.1% and never let them reach 0.3%, so suppress contacts who have stopped engaging.
• In the UK, the soft opt in lets you email past customers about similar products, but only if you offered an opt out when you collected their details and in every message since.

Table of Contents

• Why Email Deserves More Attention
• Why Most Shopify Email Underperforms
• Step 1: Keep Your List Healthy
• Step 2: Segment by Lifecycle Stage
• Step 3: Build the Core Automated Flows
• Step 4: Write Subject Lines That Earn the Open
• Step 5: Design for Phones and the Inbox
• Step 6: Measure What Reflects Revenue
• Step 7: Grow the List with Relevant Competitions
• Step 8: Stay Compliant and Consistent
• Why Matters Perspective
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts
• Related Articles

Why Email Deserves More Attention

Paid social and search charge you every time you reach someone. Email reaches the same people again at almost no extra cost, which is why it compounds. Across 198 client stores we work with, email accounts for a median of 30% of total revenue. We measure that with Klaviyo's attribution window of five days after a click and one day after an open, so it counts orders placed soon after someone engages with an email, and it is worth knowing when you compare it with figures that use a different window.

Most of that value comes from automation. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks found that flows generate nearly 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends, while campaigns make up the other 94.7% of sends. Klaviyo's benchmark report page adds that flows earn nearly 18 times the revenue per recipient of campaigns, and that nearly 48% of flow revenue comes from new buyers, against 16% for campaigns. Flows are not only a retention tool: welcome, browse and abandonment flows win first orders too.

These are averages across many brands, so treat them as a direction rather than a target. The practical conclusion is the same for almost every store we audit: build and improve flows before you add more campaigns.

Why Most Shopify Email Underperforms

The problems we find in email audits are rarely about copy. They are structural:

1. No segmentation. New subscribers, loyal customers and lapsed buyers all receive the same message, which lowers clicks and raises unsubscribes and complaints.
2. Missing flows. Many stores stop at a single welcome email, and some have none. Of the last 50 startup stores we took on, 37 had no welcome flow live.
3. The wrong measures. Stores still judge emails on open rate, which Apple's privacy changes have made unreliable, so they end up optimising towards a number that no longer tells them much.

Step 1: Keep Your List Healthy

Optimisation only compounds on a healthy list. A smaller list of people who click and buy is worth more than a large list that ignores you, both in revenue and in the sender reputation that decides whether Gmail and Outlook deliver your emails at all.

Build the list through a clear value exchange: a discount, free delivery, early access or a genuinely useful guide in return for an address, captured at checkout, through a well timed popup and on product pages. Our guide to getting more email subscribers on your Shopify store covers each method.

Then keep it clean. Move subscribers who have not clicked or bought for around 90 days into a sunset flow, a short sequence asking whether they still want to hear from you, and suppress anyone who does not respond. Shrinking a list feels wrong, but sending to people who never engage pulls down inbox placement for everyone, including your best customers. Authentication is the other half of list health, and it is often missing: of the last 80 stores we audited, 62 had no DMARC record and 45 had DKIM set up incorrectly. The payoff from fixing both is measurable, and deliverability work we carried out produced a 95% fall in hard and soft bounces. Our guide to stopping Shopify emails landing in spam covers authentication and the other deliverability basics.

Step 2: Segment by Lifecycle Stage

Segmenting only by subscribed and unsubscribed is a compliance setting, not a strategy. The framework that works most consistently across our client stores is based on where each person is in their relationship with you.

Then layer engagement on top. Send regular campaigns to people who have clicked or bought recently, and reserve only your strongest content for contacts who have gone quiet. In Klaviyo, segments built on what people do on your store, such as products viewed, categories browsed and orders placed, usually beat demographic segments for ecommerce, because they capture intent while it exists.

Once you have enough data, Klaviyo's predictive analytics add fields such as expected date of next order. They need at least 500 customers with orders, 180 days of order history including orders in the last 30 days, and some customers with three or more orders.

Step 3: Build the Core Automated Flows

Flows turn email from a weekly chore into a system that keeps earning. Across our Klaviyo clients, the welcome series and abandoned cart and checkout flows are normally the best performing flows by total revenue and conversion rate, so build those first, then add the rest.

A few principles make every flow work harder:

• Trigger from behaviour, not dates. A flow should respond to something the customer did, such as starting checkout or receiving an order.
• Separate first time and repeat buyers. Returning customers need different messages from people who have never bought. Our guide to getting Shopify repeat customers covers the retention side in depth.
• Hold back discounts. Lead with reassurance and relevance, and save incentives for later emails, so shoppers do not learn to abandon carts to get a code.
• Review each flow every quarter against its revenue per recipient and placed order rate.

For subscription brands, Recharge passes subscription events such as upcoming charges and cancellations into Klaviyo, so flows can respond to each one. Our guide to the Klaviyo flows every Shopify subscription brand should build covers those in detail, and our Shopify subscriptions service explains how we set them up.

Step 4: Write Subject Lines That Earn the Open

The subject line and preview text decide whether an email gets read, and small gains add up over a year of sends.

• Put the important words first. Phone inboxes cut long subject lines short, so lead with the benefit rather than the mechanic: "The jacket in your basket is nearly gone" beats "Your cart is waiting".
• Use the preview text. Treat it as a second line that adds to the subject, not a repeat of it.
• Personalise only where it adds meaning. A first name helps when the email itself is personal, such as a reminder about a product someone viewed.
• Keep urgency honest. "Sale ends tonight" works when it is true; invented deadlines teach subscribers to ignore you.
• Test one change at a time, and pick the winner on clicks and orders rather than opens.

Step 5: Design for Phones and the Inbox

Design affects both engagement and delivery.

• Use a single column that reads well on a phone, with text large enough to read without zooming.
• Keep real text in the email. An email built from one large image is harder for filters to assess and shows nothing when images are blocked, so use live text and write alt text for every image.
• Give each email one main call to action, with a button large enough to tap easily.
• Compress images so emails load quickly on mobile connections.
• Check dark mode, because dark logos and text on transparent backgrounds can disappear.

The same thinking applies on your store once someone clicks. Our guide to why your Shopify conversion rate matters explains how to measure what happens next.

Step 6: Measure What Reflects Revenue

Since iOS 15, Apple's Mail Privacy Protection can download an email's remote content in the background when it arrives, whether or not the subscriber engages with it. That content includes the tracking pixel email platforms use to count opens, so open rates overstate real reading, especially on lists with many Apple Mail users. Use opens as a rough trend at most, and judge performance on the measures below.

Google's sender guidelines ask senders to keep their reported spam rate below 0.1% and never let it reach 0.3%, and Google measures it daily, so one badly targeted campaign shows up quickly. In Klaviyo, revenue per recipient is available for each flow and campaign. Make it your main success measure and it will push you towards better segmentation on its own. Compare yourself with Klaviyo's benchmarks for direction, but mostly with your own previous months.

Step 7: Grow the List with Relevant Competitions

Competitions that ask entrants to join your list can add a large number of relevant subscribers quickly, particularly with paid promotion behind them, because people choose to enter based on the prize.

Real result: one of our clients, a Shopify coffee brand, ran a Facebook competition offering a year's coffee subscription, with joining the newsletter as one of the entry requirements, and put paid budget behind it. Its list grew from 1,200 to 9,800 subscribers in one month, an increase of 717%. Because every entrant wanted coffee, the new subscribers were relevant rather than generic.

The lesson is in the prize. A prize tied to what you sell attracts people who might buy from you; a generic prize such as a tablet attracts people who want a tablet. Make the entry terms clear, collect consent properly, and send new entrants into your welcome series straight away. For driving people to the competition, see our guide to getting more traffic to your Shopify store, and for turning that traffic into orders, our guide to increasing Shopify conversions.

Step 8: Stay Compliant and Consistent

Good consent practice and good results go together, because people who chose to hear from you behave differently from people who were simply added.

• Know the UK soft opt in. ICO guidance lets you email or text your own previous customers about similar products without separate consent, provided you offered a simple way to opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover prospects or bought in lists.
• Never tick consent boxes in advance. Everyone else needs to give clear, affirmative consent.
• Make leaving easy. Include a visible unsubscribe link in every email. Google's guidelines also ask senders of around 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail addresses to authenticate their mail and support one click unsubscribe.
• Send on a steady rhythm. A burst of emails followed by weeks of silence teaches subscribers to forget you. Most small teams can sustain one or two strong campaigns a week while flows run in the background.

For how email fits alongside other channels in a new store, see our first 90 days marketing plan for new Shopify stores.

Why Matters Perspective

Email underperformance is almost never a writing problem. The right email reaches the wrong person, or the right person at the wrong moment. A plain email sent to people who viewed a product yesterday will usually beat a beautiful one sent to everyone, because relevance wins in a channel where readers decide in a second.

That is why our audits start with flows and segments. Across our Klaviyo clients, the welcome series and abandoned cart and checkout flows are normally the best performing flows by total revenue and conversion rate, and they are also the flows we most often find missing or broken. We also treat email and deliverability as one project: careful flows are wasted if the list has not been cleaned in years. If you would rather hand your email over, our email marketing agency builds and manages Klaviyo flows, campaigns and SMS for Shopify stores.

As a Klaviyo Partner and a Recharge Partner, and a Shopify Select partner with Verified Skills across development and marketing, this is work we do every day. Our pricing is published on our website, retainer clients are not tied into long contracts, and every development project carries a three month guarantee. If you would like us to find where your email revenue is leaking, email us at info@whymatters.co.uk.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good email open rate for a Shopify store?

Open rate is no longer a dependable measure, because Apple Mail can download email content in the background whether or not a subscriber reads it. Focus on click rate, placed order rate and revenue per recipient instead. For reference, Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks put average click rates at 5.58% for flows and 1.69% for campaigns.

How much revenue should email generate for a Shopify store?

It varies by category and stage, but across 198 client stores we work with, email accounts for a median of 30% of total revenue. Within email, Klaviyo's benchmarks show flows generating nearly 41% of email revenue from 5.3% of sends, so a store earning little from flows usually has the most room to grow.

Which email flows should I build first?

The welcome series and abandoned cart and checkout flows. Across our Klaviyo clients they are normally the best performing flows by total revenue and conversion rate. Add post purchase, browse abandonment and win back flows once those are working.

Should I use Shopify Messaging or Klaviyo?

Shopify Messaging, formerly Shopify Email, handles campaigns and a set of ready made automations, and by default sends those automations only to customers subscribed to marketing. Klaviyo adds deeper behavioural segmentation, more flexible flows and predictive analytics once you meet its data thresholds. For a store treating email as a revenue channel, Klaviyo is what we build on by default.

How often should I send email campaigns?

Let engagement and content quality decide rather than a fixed calendar. Most small teams can sustain one or two strong campaigns a week, with automated flows running continuously alongside them. Watch unsubscribes and spam complaints after every send.

What spam complaint rate is safe?

Google's sender guidelines ask senders to keep their reported spam rate below 0.1% and never let it reach 0.3%. Suppressing contacts who no longer engage is the most reliable way to stay below those levels.

Can I email past customers without consent in the UK?

Usually, under the soft opt in. ICO guidance allows you to email your own previous customers about similar products if you offered a simple opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. It does not cover prospects or bought in lists.

Final Thoughts

Most Shopify stores do not have an email content problem. They have a targeting problem, an automation problem and, underneath both, often a deliverability problem. Fix the list, then the segments, then the flows, starting with the welcome series and abandoned checkout. Measure on clicks, orders and revenue per recipient, and let those numbers decide what to improve next.

Start with whichever core flow you are missing. That is where the quickest revenue is.

Related Articles

• Klaviyo Flows Every Shopify Subscription Brand Should Build
• How to Stop Your Shopify Emails Landing in Spam
• How to Get More Email Subscribers on Your Shopify Store
• How to Get Shopify Repeat Customers: A Practical Implementation Guide
• Why Your Shopify Conversion Rate Matters and How to Measure It
• Your First 90 Days: A Marketing Plan for New Shopify Stores
• How to Get More Traffic to Your Shopify Store: A Practical Guide
• Customer Lifetime Value for Shopify Stores: How to Calculate and Grow It
• Email Marketing Campaigns for Shopify: Types, Examples and Timing
• Klaviyo Pricing UK: What You Will Pay as Your List Grows
• SMS Marketing for Shopify Stores: Rules, Tools and Examples
• Mailchimp Alternatives for Shopify Stores