3 Essential Ecommerce Email Templates To Grow Your Business

Getting started with email marketing can be intimidating. From creating campaigns to building out all of your automation, it is a heavy lift.

But what if you can have something that will save time and make your life easier by providing a blueprint for your emails?

Yes, we are talking about eCommerce email templates!

On average ROI associated with email marketing is extremely high. You can enjoy $36 worth of return for spending a single dollar.

But the faster you build your email ecosystem, the quicker you will see that ROI, and the faster you can improve on it.

Today, we will discuss three revenue-driving email templates we use here at MKTG Rhythm. 

These templates will not only make your life much easier. But they will bring cohesion among your designs and provide a human element to your emails.

Things we are going to cover in today’s blog: 

1. Why is it Important to Have Ecommerce Email Templates?
2. When and Where are you Going to be Using These Templates?
3. Structure for Different Email Templates
4. How to Implement and Use These Templates Interchangeably?
5. How to Make Sure These E-commerce Email Templates Work?

Why is it Important to Have Ecommerce Email Templates?

If you are starting out in email marketing, you might ask: What makes an email template so essential? 

Well, let’s face it, nobody wants to waste their time writing marketing emails from scratch over and over again. 

So basically, an email template makes your life 100x easier by letting you create a functional and actionable email structure to fit your emails inside and send them to your various prospects without any hassle. 

In other words, an email template streamlines your processes and saves you a lot of time. 

Moreover, if you’re trying to introduce automation early in your email journey, eCommerce email templates will allow you to add variations. 

Creating an email template can also provide you with a brand-cohesive framework you can use consistently while sending emails. 

So, by having an email template by your side, you will have all the necessary nuts and bolts you need for your emails to function as you want. 

With the help of eCommerce email templates, you can create different kinds of emails. Mostly used eCommerce email examples are:

1. Campaign(thrust) emails
2. Triggered(automated) emails
3. Transactional emails

Campaign(Thrust) Emails

Campaign emails are thrust emails that you send to a specific audience or segment for a particular purpose. We intentionally create these kinds of emails around a product, call to reviews, etc.

Your campaign emails may contain your company’s newsletter, product recommendations, and similar types of emails. And having a template is a must to achieve success with it.

Triggered Emails

Triggered emails are automated emails that are set in motion by a specific behavior of a prospect or a customer. 

Let’s consider the cart abandonment issue, for instance. If a visitor has added some products to their cart on your eCommerce store but hasn’t completed the purchase, a triggered email can be sent to him to re-engage him for completing the purchase. And for this, you are going to need a pre-defined template. 

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails, as the name suggests, are the emails that are sent to the customer after they make a transaction/purchase. 

These automated emails can be sent using email automation and marketing platforms like Klaviyo. 

Transactional emails are usually sent when something is shipped, when someone needs to change the password, etc. 

These emails will be a hundred percent deliverable because they must confirm an actual transaction.

Now that we have understood different types of emails let’s move ahead and talk about eCommerce email templates that we should use for these types of emails in detail.

When and Where You are Going to be Using Ecommerce Email Templates?

Here at MKTG Rhythm, we frequently get questions like: What do we need email templates for? Where should we use them? 

To secure a win, you will need email templates regardless of which stage of the email journey you want to curate emails for. 

You can use templates for:

1. Featured or New product announcement emails
2. Cart abandonment emails
3. Newsletter emails
4. Welcome emails
5. Discount or sales emails
6. Product reviews email 
7. Brand or product awareness email
8. Free shipping emails
9. Customer testimonial email 
10. Order confirmation email
11. Follow-up email
12. Product upsell email
13. BFCM customer win-back email

So these are a couple of eCommerce email examples you will use your email templates for. 

However, these emails will have different timings and different purposes for sending. 

Moreover, the eCommerce email templates will function across your email ecosystem and help you build the foundation you need.

Once you have everything set in place, you can start to evolve and tweak your templates as time passes. Now, let’s get to the most crucial part and understand the three revenue-driving eCommerce email templates in detail.

Structures of Email Templates

As mentioned in the beginning, we will discuss three types of email templates that yield results, and we also use them at MKTG Rhythm. 

These are the emails templates that work for us:

1. Everything Template (HTML template)
2. Plain Text Template
3. Hybrid Template

Everything Template’s Structure (HTML Template)

Everything template is based on HTML emails. HTML emails contain graphical elements like compelling buttons, attractive images, videos, text formatting, and whatnot. In other words, we can say that HTML emails are anything but plain.

If you want to learn more about HTML emails, check out this blog we wrote earlier. 

So everything template is what we typically use at the early stage of a buyer’s journey. 

In everything template, you should use elements of HTML email in different ways to ensure consistency and coherency with emails when building them out as a sequence.

Also, make sure you add variations in your HTML emails using everything template. Why? Because most brands use the same template, it becomes tedious for the receivers to see that repeatedly. 

Apart from variations, you must also add some creativity to engage the customers. 

It might confuse you to grasp how everything template can be structured. So here’s a list of what we need to optimize to have a killer everything template:

1. Header or Primary Image
2. Headline
3. Body Content
4. Dynamic code content
5. Button options
6. Secondary callout box
7. Social proof (reviews boxes)
8. Shop by category table and buttons
9. Dynamic content blocks
10. UGC options
11. Footer
12. Unsubscribe button
13. Discount disclaimer 

Headline

The first thing that your email receiver is going to notice is your headline. The most crucial part is where the receiver decides whether to open an email.

So you need to ensure your headline is intriguing and aligns with the content inside the email. 

Primary Image

The primary image will be the first thing your email receiver will gaze upon after opening your email.

It will be displayed at the top of your email. Therefore, it must capture the attention of your prospects to engage them to see what you have to say. Your primary image should convey right away what your email is about.

So, for instance, if we have to feature our unique socks through email, we can make a primary image representing socks with a flair of creativity. 

Body Content

Now here comes the body of your email. In the body, you need to describe the purpose of your email and add some context.

The body of your email may contain a call to action, some more images, multiple types of buttons, links, coupon codes, etc. Furthermore, you can also have dynamic content inside the body of your email. 

Dynamic content may include the receiver’s name, customized coupon code, etc. 

Moreover, you may also highlight the benefits of your product in this section and can also add secondary callout boxes.

Social Proof

In marketing, social proof holds the utmost importance. Buyers tend to rely on and buy products that have benefited other individuals in the past. 

So in our everything template, we also use different social proofs or review boxes for different audiences. 

For instance, if we have to sell a product to a grandparent, we will add a review previously given by a grandparent. This makes the messaging and content much more relevant and impactful. 

CTAs

Now is the stage to incorporate the call to action in your email. 

A call to action is a link, often embedded in a button, to direct users to perform a specific action. It can be a transaction, a website visit, etc. 

You can add two types of CTAs in your everything template, primary and secondary CTAs. 

Primary CTA directs users towards the action you want them to take in the first place, while the secondary CTA is the second option you provide your users. 

In The Wild

Another area we’d like to add is the wild portion. It really gives a great way of showing social proof. We’ll use these intermixed in the process of building out automation to provide social proof around product categories or our business in general.

So that help to illustrate what it will look like in the wild, how people are using them, and build out the use cases around it.In the wild” block example

It’s a really easy table that people can add in. And especially when you have a lot of user-generated content coming through your brand, that builds an argument if other people are enjoying this, I’ll enjoy it too.

So it makes that mental leap for people a lot easier. All of these are things that we can incorporate into our email automations at different times.

Footer, Unsubscribe Button, Discount Disclaimer

In the last, you can add your company’s information in the footer along with an unsubscribe button and discount disclaimer. 

The unsubscribe button will help non-interested email subscribers get rid of the marketing emails.

Note that we can also use all these elements of everything template interchangeably. 

Plain Text Template 

The plain text template is based on plain text emails. The plain text email only contains plain text, with no visual, stylized fonts or fancy buttons. This is the type of email that you typically send as an individual.

The plain text template, just like the email format, is pretty simple with a high level of deliverability. Although this template is not as fancy as HTML, it still effectively drives the action you want to create.

This template is for writing to-the-point and concise emails.

The structure of a plain text template looks something like this: 

1. Greet the receiver
2. Introduction
3. Purpose
4. Bold, Highlight text
5. CTA

Greetings

If you have the data, the first thing you need to do is greet the email receiver with their first name.  

Doing this will add a personal touch to your email, making the reader interested in reading further.

Introduction and Purpose

The next thing after greeting the customer is to introduce yourself and state the purpose of the email right away. 

You can go like this: 

“Hey [first name], I’m Robbie, Chief Intern Officer at MKTG Rhythm. Earlier, I sent you an email featuring our special socks, and I wanted to follow up to see if you have any questions about it.”

Play with the Text

Since you can not add much using a plain text template, you can still play around with the styling of text a little by highlighting strong words, putting emphasis on specific terms by making them bold, etc.

For instance, you can bold your CTAs to make them extra visible to the readers. 

CTAs 

The most crucial part of plain text emails is a call to action. 

You can easily direct your users to your website through hyperlinking text in the email. 

For CTAs, you can write terms like:

Check this out, Click here, View the collection, etc. 

You can also provide product recommendations in this section and a piece of content supporting it.

Hybrid Template 

The hybrid template is a blend of both HTML and plain text templates. It has all the advantages of plain text email from the human perspective and all the functionality of an HTML email. 

In a hybrid template, we can use different buttons, calls to action, multiple ways to incorporate dynamic content, etc. This helps to illustrate the point, drive a specific action, add that human touch, and make it warm and fuzzy the way we want it to be.

A hybrid email template can be structured like this:

1. Begin with the sender: @name or @brand name
2. State your purpose of emailing
3. Body content (may also include dynamic content)
4. Necessary buttons
5. Possible product recommendations
6. Sign off with email signature

Sender Name or Brand Name

So, we’re going to start these emails with the from the address of like name@brand name or @brandname

So like this one would be: Robbie @ MKTG Rhythm. It’s straightforward and simple, but that human element makes it stand out more in the inbox.

You may have a small logo header. But you don’t necessarily need that.

Purpose of Email

The next thing you need to do is describe the purpose of your email just like we did in the plain text template above. 

Tell the reader what your email is about, and try to engage them to read along. 

Body Content

After you finish the introductory part, it’s time to add some helpful content to your eCommerce email design.

Since hybrid templates also contain HTML elements, you can leverage some images to communicate your point more efficiently. 

If there’s a dynamic element here, like in an abandoned cart, you may add them to pull those products dynamically.

You can also have dynamic product recommendations inside the body content. 

Necessary Buttons With CTA

No matter the template you use, adding a CTA is necessary to get results from your marketing efforts. 

So since you are using a hybrid template, adding a CTA inside a button will be preferred. 

You can also add a secondary CTA, which can be less pronounced with the help of a ghost button. 

Also, make sure to have adequate spacing between the text and the unsubscribe button to keep that human feel alive. 

With a hybrid template, you can test which email template elements are working. For example, if HTML elements drive more results, you should use them more frequently and vice versa.

How to Implement and Use These Templates Interchangeably?

Frankly speaking, you need to test these templates to know what’s working and what’s not finally. 

Finding a balance and testing them will give you definitive proof of how you will use them. When are you going to use them? And what are you going to use them for?

So if we talk about personal messages, like a thank you email, a plain text template fits well in this scenario. 

However, if you send a campaign email to a VIP segment to make them feel exclusive, you may use a hybrid template with a CTA. 

An example could be:

“Hey [receiver’s name], here’s early access to our latest arrival. We wanted to give it to you first because you are a VIP.”

Contrary to that, if we have a broad product announcement to make that should reach a comprehensive list of customers, you should always use HTML templates. 

The best part is that we can use that template interchangeably very consistently and leverage it through email automation. 

In short, we’re not reinventing the wheel over and over again. With the help of these templates, we can get our content to a place where it can function itself, driving revenue for us.

From there, we can go back and tweak and polish these templates if required, but initially, they will give that good foundation right out of the gate.

Once you’re revenue positive with this, you can have more latitude to make decisions and try new things.

How to Make Sure These Ecommerce Email Templates Work?

We have seen the eCommerce email templates and how to structure them. But how can we make sure they really work? 

Well, the answer lies in testing emails. There are a few different testing layers you can go through to ensure that the templates will be functioning the way you want them to.

Everybody initially needs help with outlook emails and finds it hard to make them look how they want. 

However, you can use tools like Litmus or Acid for this purpose. These tools will help you identify the areas you need to pay attention to in terms of structuring your email template and eCommerce email design. 

Moreover, you can also test how your emails look on mobile devices and desktops—test whether your syntax, dynamic content, and buttons are working. 

These integrations are going to be helpful for you. You can even get to the place where you’re maybe incorporating a lot of dynamic information.

At the end of the day, once you get into this, you will be using those three templates interchangeably.

You can have some fun with them. But afterward, this will give you an excellent platform to work on.

But when you’re getting started, don’t let perfect get in the way of doing. 

I always joke that if you’re in marketing and you’re not embarrassed by the marketing you’re doing next year, if you are just getting started, you’re not doing it right because you’re not pushing yourself.

It’s Time to Start Testing and Incorporating These eCommerce Email Templates

Here at MKTG Rhythm, we use these three consistently, and they work out well for us. 

These templates give us a good foundation to build initial automation, and we get things done in a scalable and systematized manner.

They drive revenue. Simple as that. 

Now you have the secret sauce. It’s time to leverage these templates and start driving revenue.

You might also like:

• Email Marketing for E-Commerce (A Comprehensive Guide)
• Baseline Automations: The 6 Email Marketing Automations That Every e-Commerce Store Needs!
• HTML vs. Plain Text Email: Which Works Best and Why?