The retail fashion apparel market is growing quickly, which means more and more brands are trying to reach your audience with marketing. That makes for a pretty cramped customer inbox. How does an apparel marketer stand out? By building customer trust and proving content they value.Successful marketing for fashion brands is based on trust, but for many consumers that trust is broken. Consumers hand over their email addresses, and their inboxes are flooded with irrelevant batch and blast emails. This approach to marketing doesn’t work anymore. Many consumers view digital marketing—including email—as an interruption, not as a value add. Today, marketing must be personal and relevant to rebuild trust and deliver a valuable experience.Here are three ways fashion marketers can send more relevant and effective emails.#### **Real-Time Testing & Optimization**Many teams don’t have the resources to regularly do testing, but on the fly A/B and multivariate testing are key tools to ensure value add for customers. This fashion retailer wanted to boost conversions by testing text versus product imagery and then swapping the under-performing campaign for the winner in real-time. They experienced a 102% lift in CTR for the winning creative—the version using product imagery.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/13162427/unbranded-retailer.png)#### **Personalization**According to Experian, personalized promotional mailings have 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rates than non-personalized mailings. This example from Boden uses personalization to deliver a data-driven personalization campaign to lapsed purchasers, by weaving the customers purchase history into a story. As a result, they saw a 2256% lift in revenue per email.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/13162448/Boden.jpg)#### **Device Detection**A fundamental element for a great mobile email is design. If users have to pinch at their screens just to click a link, they’re more likely to give up & delete the email entirely. Truly responsive design will change content depending on device type so that mobile users have a seamless experience when trying to interact with the email. And a feature like device detection—which offers up the right app download for the device— significantly increases the chance a consumer will download your app. American Eagle wanted to drive customers to download their mobile app by targeting users based on the device they were using. They saw a 231% lift in clicks-to-download.[](https://s3.amazonaws.com/movableink-blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/13162515/device-Detection_American-Eagle.png)Today, email marketing is about customer experiences, not campaigns. Instead of blasting untargeted messages to your customers and being an interruption, create content in emails that builds real-time interactions and experiences.
Contextual Email Marketing for Fashion Apparel Retailers
