How to Access and Customize Your Shopify Email Templates

Hussam AlMukhtar

Dec 5, 2024

Offering one of the most direct lines of communication right to customers, email marketing can be massively impactful for Shopify business owners. 

But with hundreds (maybe even thousands!) of platforms, tools, agencies, and other resources available for ecommerce email marketing, it can be overwhelming to get started — or level up your email strategy. 

For brands that find themselves at this roadblock, this ultimate guide will help you harness the power of the Shopify Email app, refine its templates with customization tips, and even grow beyond its capabilities by introducing new and more powerful apps. 

Read on to take your email marketing in the right direction.

What are Shopify Email templates? 

Introduced by Shopify around the end of 2019, Shopify Email is a Shopify app that provides an easy-to-use email marketing solution for Shopify business owners. 

With the app, users can create, send, and manage entire email marketing campaigns — all from the same digital dashboard where they run their shops.

Shopify Email includes ready-to-use templates, drag-and-drop editing functionality to personalize those templates, and lots of helpful marketing automations for more efficient distribution. Shopify brands can use it to send up to 10,000 free emails each month.

Keep in mind that a Shopify business can also send notification emails to make customers aware of order status, shipping timelines, etc. Shopify Notifications differ from marketing emails, and you control them from a different area of your Shopify admin panel. We won’t discuss that type of email here, but you can learn more about customizing these messages directly from Shopify.

2 steps to install and upgrade Shopify Email templates 

There are currently just over 60 email templates available through the Shopify Email app. As we’ll explore in more depth later, there are many more email templates on the market you can use to express your full creativity.

But, for now, if you aren’t already working with email marketing or just need a way to better integrate your system with your storefront, Shopify Email is the simplest place to start. 

So, here’s how to make Shopify Email, and its templates, work for you. 

1. Add the Shopify Email app to your page

Once you’re logged into Shopify, from the front page of the administration section, visit Settings down at the bottom of the left-hand menu. 

On the next page, select Apps and sales channels. 

Here, you should see a list of any apps you’ve installed. If “Email” is not there already, use the Shopify App Store button to open up the site.

In the search bar at the top of the page, search “Shopify Email.” Then, select the app once you see it pop up in the drop-down list. 

This should direct you to the full landing page for the app, which will look something like this. Use the big “Install” button to add the app to your company’s site. 

2. Test drive your first template 

Once the app installation is complete, your page should reload and you should be dropped into the Apps > Email page back in your Shopify admin panel. Click the pushpin icon next to Email to pin it in your Apps section so it’s always easy to find.

Here, you could select “Create campaign” to start building your first email template from scratch. But, of course, we want to see what Shopify Email has to offer with pre-designed emails! So, head to Email > Templates (in the left-hand menu) instead.

‍Tip: For future reference, Apps > Email > Templates is where you’ll continue to find all Shopify Email templates you create and save.

Here is where you’ll eventually see any templates you create. Your page is likely empty right now, so select “Create template.” 

Next, you’ll see all the email templates, sorted by type. There are options for sale announcements, product updates, promotions, and more. 

Select the template you want to create and follow the prompts to name and save it. Just like that, you’re in the template editor and ready to customize.

You’ll see tons of editing options as you click on various elements of the email template, starting at the very top.

Let’s say you click on “My Store” in our example. You can choose between featuring your brand’s name or logo, customizing typography elements, and even changing the alignment and background. When you make your adjustments, your changes are saved automatically.

As you scroll through the template, click on each section to see what you can customize. You can edit, duplicate, rearrange, and remove most images, colors, text, buttons, and other elements. You can also: 

• Replace images from your library

• Use Shopify’s built-in free image options

• Pull products in from your existing catalog

• Add URLs to buttons and other links.

When you’re done sprucing things up, look at the top of the template editor. There, you’ll see a bar where you can view your template on different devices, test it out, and more. 

Use the “Done” button to save your template and exit, or “Send test” to send it to yourself via email, check it out in real life, and look for improvement opportunities. 

From the triple-dot menu, you can put the template to work immediately and send it out as an email to your subscribers. For the purposes of this tutorial, we suggest you simply hit the “Done” button to save your template for now.

With your first template customized, what’s next? Keep reading for further tips, tools, and examples to make your email templates even better for when you are ready to start your Shopify email marketing campaign. 

5 more apps to enhance your Shopify emails (+ top templates)

While Shopify Email’s templates and features are useful, integrating third-party apps into your Shopify storefront may help take your email strategy to the next level.

Here are five more apps to further your creativity and capabilities and help your business thrive.

1. OrderlyEmails: Email Templates

OrderlyEmails focuses on providing professionally designed email templates that seamlessly integrate with Shopify.

It covers a wide range of email types — order confirmations, shipping updates, abandoned carts, and more. The app allows you to customize templates with your brand’s fonts, colors, and logo, ensuring that every email is consistent.

Best for: A cool feature of OrderlyEmails is how it automatically pulls in relevant order data and product details to help you personalize customer interactions. This makes it especially fitting for Shopify brands that want to boost marketing customization.

Pricing: OrderlyEmails is free to install and test. Email themes run $99 per year. 

2. Grid & Pixel: Email Templates

Grid & Pixel provides a collection of responsive email templates designed for Shopify brands that want visually striking emails. These templates are fully customizable using a drag-and-drop editor, which allows you to add personalized product recommendations, dynamic content, social media integrations, and more.

‍Best for: This app is ideal for Shopify businesses that focus heavily on design and aesthetics, such as those in the fashion, beauty, or lifestyle space. Because of this design focus, Grid & Pixel is also a great option for brands that need email templates that stand out visually.

‍Pricing: Install and get your first 100 unique email opens for free. It runs $10 per 1,000 unique email opens after that. 

3. Klaviyo: Email Marketing & SMS

Klaviyo makes it easy to pull off targeted, personalized email campaigns based on customer behavior, checkout history, and browsing activity. Advanced segmentation options allow you to create custom audiences and send tailored messages. 

‍Best for: Klaviyo is for you if you prioritize robust email performance reporting tools, powerful automation and segmentation, and integrated SMS features. 

‍Pricing: Get started with Klaviyo free for up to 250 email contacts. After that, email pricing starts at $20 a month. 

‍Learn more: 3 Ways to Automate Shopify Email & SMS Marketing With Klaviyo

4. BayEngage: Email Marketing, SMS

BayEngage serves up an easy-to-use platform with pre-built Shopify email templates and automation options.

With features like drip campaigns, abandoned cart reminders, and holiday marketing templates, BayEngage helps you deliver timely and relevant messages to your customers. The app also includes robust segmentation and personalization features, allowing you to send customized messages.  

‍Best for: Providing both email and SMS marketing, BayEngage fits brands seeking a holistic solution for engaging customers across multiple channels. 

‍Pricing: BayEngage is free to install. Pricing begins at $237 a month on an annual plan for 10,000 emails and SMS credits per month.

5. Sender: Email Marketing & SMS

Sender is a simple email and SMS marketing tool that makes it easy to create visually appealing Shopify emails without any coding knowledge. Sender’s automation tools help streamline your email marketing campaigns, enabling you to automatically send welcome emails, cart recovery messages, and product recommendations. 

‍Best for: We love that Sender includes A/B testing and detailed analytics for brands obsessed with optimizing campaigns for maximum cost efficiency and effectiveness.

‍Pricing: Sender offers a free tier for 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 monthly emails. Pricing begins at $15.83 per month for an annual plan. 

6 Shopify Email template personalization tips

Personalized emails are more likely to cut through the inbox clutter and win you eyeballs, clicks, and conversions. Let’s look at some easy-to-integrate tips to make your templates from Shopify Email, or any other app you use, feel customized and on-brand

1. Always add your logo 

You likely spent a lot of time, money — or both — on the perfect logo for your brand. After all, it’s supposed to be the first thing that catches people’s attention and represents your brand. As such, you want to feature it front and center in marketing emails. 

Consider editing all your marketing email templates to feature your logo right at the top, not just your brand’s name.

This immediately communicates who the message is from, instills credibility among recipients, and helps to create brand consistency across all your communication channels.

Make sure your logo looks crisp to show you’re tuned into the details and don’t skimp on quality. In exchange, customers will likely trust you more and demonstrate better brand recognition.

2. Incorporate recognizable branding when you can

Beyond your logo, all email templates should also reflect other key brand elements: colors, fonts, custom iconography, and overall style.

These brand components should align with what customers see on your website, social media, and other communications — ensuring a delightfully seamless brand experience. In addition, the rest of the email’s tone, especially when it comes to content and imagery, should also reflect your brand’s personality.

That said, branding can sometimes take a backseat. If your email template needs to stick to a particular look, such as the Halloween-themed one we chose to customize above, you’ll probably want to scale back your usual branding to let the unique design shine. 

3. Don’t use the default content

Default is pretty much the opposite of personalization, so you want to avoid it when you can in your marketing email templates. 

Most Shopify Email templates come with pre-written content. That’s a fine starting point, but we suggest customizing it to reflect your own brand messaging, audience, and goals. 

Lots of brands start with email templates, so customizing the content in yours is a critical step to making your emails feel more relatable and engaging. 

4. Make the footer useful 

Often, the footer section of the Shopify Email templates are pretty bare. However, this space is prime real estate for essential information.

In addition to the legally required unsubscribe link, use this space to include extra info, such as social media links, contact information for support, links to your brand blog or an FAQ page, and whatever else you think readers would find helpful.

Stacking all this useful stuff in the footer is another way to make emails actionable and get recipients to engage with your business website.

5. Resist the urge to go overboard 

Hopefully, you’ll notice here that we’re mostly recommending adjustments that personalize templates — not reinvent them. 

That’s because the email templates offered by Shopify, and plenty of other apps, are usually visually pleasing and complete. You shouldn’t need to spend a lot of time moving, deleting, or adding new sections and elements to get your point across. 

In almost all instances, less is often more. Stick to a clear, concise layout that focuses on one primary goal — such as promoting an offering or category of offerings, driving traffic to a certain page on your site, or sharing a piece of important brand news. 

Overloading your email templates with too many images, text, or calls to action (CTAs) can be confusing and overwhelming. After a certain threshold, they may even impact email size and responsiveness, damaging email deliverability.

6. Conduct A/B testing 

Even the most well-designed email template that follows all of these tips can benefit from some trials and tweaks.

A/B testing is all about sending two different versions of your email to two similar audience segments to see which one performs better.

You can use this method to test every email element, like subject lines, visuals, buttons, and even the time of day when the email is sent.

This data-driven approach lets you discover what works best and incrementally optimize your email templates for higher engagement and a more effective email marketing strategy. 

5 types of marketing emails Shopify owners should send (+ examples)

Ready to make the most of everything you just learned about crafting beautiful email marketing templates?

Below are five crucial types of marketing emails every Shopify business owner should send as part of their email strategy — complete with some real-life examples from great brands. 

1. Warm welcomes

As you know, first impressions are vital. The same principle applies to your brand.

Your welcome email is the digital “handshake” and smile that first introduces your brand to new subscribers, so you want it to make a positive and lasting impact. A well-crafted welcome email or sequence can set the tone for a meaningful relationship. 

Use welcome emails to:

• Share the unique story behind your brand

• Offer an enticing deal right off the bat

• Reinforce the benefits of being on your mailing list

• Highlight how your brand stands out from competitors

Timing is everything here. The most effective welcome emails are sent shortly after the customer subscribes. Fortunately, this process is made easier by most email-focused Shopify apps that offer automation. 

For example, New Balance’s welcome email does a great job of being simple, impactful, and engaging thanks to the design, discount, and clear CTA.

2. Abandoned cart follow-ups

If you’ve ever “window shopped” online, you’ve very likely received a follow-up email encouraging you to finalize your purchase. That’s called an abandoned cart email, and it's designed to recover potential lost revenue by reminding shoppers of what they left behind. 

These emails can include a gentle reminder or a more action-inspiring discount code. Abandoned cart emails are a great place to run A/B tests to determine what works for your audience.

Aim to send a reminder within just one to two hours of cart abandonment, as this is when the customer’s interest is still high. You may also build out a simple string of follow-up emails. Since timing is key, just like with welcome emails, make sure you’re working with a Shopify email app that includes easy automations.  

Below, Bite gets clever with a cart reminder email that draws you back through impactful branding. 

3. Celebration and announcement emails

There are plenty of excuses reasons to send out celebratory and fun announcement emails — customer birthdays, big holidays, seasonal shifts, new product launches, brick-and-mortar store openings, and so on. 

Smart marketers look for events to send out emails to drive engagement and revenue throughout the year.

Plan, create, and schedule these emails with care. Make sure your messaging is thoughtful and sensitive, but also creative enough to stand out from the flood of other emails recipients are likely getting.

This marketing email from the Three Nails brand makes their new product announcement stand out with simple messaging and bold imagery. 

4. Regular newsletters 

Regular monthly email newsletters are a widely accepted way to stay connected with your audience. 

They can include everything from industry news to customer spotlights, product updates, relevant tips, and anything else recipients would find valuable. The key is to provide content that keeps subscribers informed and involved. 

Be careful of overwhelming your audience with repetitive or “salesy” messages. Instead, focus on delivering emails that enhance the experience with your brand. A newsletter’s purpose is to foster relationships, not to push for an immediate, one-time conversion.

The below example from the James Beard Foundation highlights relationship building by featuring stories, not sales. 

5. Promotional announcements

Emails that share sales news, deals, exclusive discounts, and other promotions are a staple of any marketing strategy.

The key to a successful promotional email is to keep it streamlined. Content should be clear, simple, and focused on the goal — driving sales. Calls to action should focus on driving recipients to take advantage of the promotion. Design should be intentional, but not too intricate. 

But just because these messages are straightforward doesn’t mean they have to be pushy, boring, or unbranded. Our example from Ring shows just that.

How will you maximize your Shopify brand success? 

Making email marketing approachable for yourself or your marketing team is critical to getting your strategy off the ground and into your audience’s inboxes. 

Once you tackle that through Shopify Emails or another app of your choice, you should be well on your way to delivering impactful, professional emails that boost engagement and sales.

But if you’re on the other side of this journey — maxing out your marketing campaign resources and results or just tired of struggling to make an impact — we have another path you can take. 

You’ve worked so hard growing your Shopify brand that it may be the perfect time to sell your business so you can rest, recoup with friends and family, and pursue your next passion. 

The OpenStore team is well-versed in purchasing and running the best businesses on Shopify. 

We keep our acquisition process fast and streamlined, so business owners like you can close and exit fast and fair — walking away with the nest egg you need for a new adventure.

For U.S.-focused Shopify businesses that are at least six months old and have netted $500K or more in consumer sales, selling to OpenStore starts with a simple application process. 

Intrigued? 

‍You can request an offer here and expect to hear back from our experienced team in just one business week.