Email & SMS Marketing for Fashion Brands: When It Really Matters & Why
Launching a fashion brand but aren't sure when to prioritize email and SMS marketing? This guide was created by Strategy Maven Agency in collaboration with ARD Fashion Consulting to give fashion founders a realistic roadmap for retention marketing—from pre-launch through your first few years in business.
If you're launching your brand, you're probably trying to prioritize so many different tasks. Design. Sourcing. Manufacturing. Branding. Website. Social media. The list goes on.
So when someone tells you that you also need email and SMS marketing, it's easy to put it on the back burner.
But here's what we’ve learned from working with hundreds of product-based businesses: email & sms marketing can make or break your launch. Too early and you're wasting time on things you don't need yet. Too late and you've already lost thousands of potential customers who visited your site and left without a way to connect with them again.
This guide will walk you through exactly when email and SMS marketing becomes essential for fashion brands, what you need to have in place before you're ready, and how to avoid the most common mistakes we see founders make.
The Pre-Launch Phase: Start Collecting Emails
During Pre-launch, you're still in the design and production phase. You may or may not have your website running yet. You don't have inventory.
Do you need a full email marketing program? No. Do you need to start collecting emails? Yes.
Here's why: every single person who discovers your brand before you launch is a warm lead. They found you through social media, through a friend, through your personal network. These people are genuinely interested in what you're building.
If you don't capture their email address, they'll forget about you by the time you actually launch.
What to do in the pre-launch phase:
Set up an email capture form on your website or link in your socials bio. Platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or even a basic Squarespace form will work. You're not building complex automations just yet but you just need a way to collect names and emails.Something as simple as "Be the first to know when we launch" works.
Send updates occasionally. You don't need a weekly newsletter, but if you've been collecting emails for months and haven't sent anything, people will forget about you. A simple "here's where we are in the process" email every 4-6 weeks will keep you at the top of their minds.
Don't stress about the tech. At this stage, you're just building a list. The automations, design, and platforms come later. A personal, text-based low graphic email from you is best during this stage and it's more personal & authentic.
We've worked with tons of brands who spend months building hype on social media before launching but somehow forget to think about their email marketing strategy.
Having a sign-up form on your website during this phase is crucial because it gives you a direct line to the people who want to hear from you and convert at a much higher rate when you actually launch. 50% of consumers made a purchase from email in the past year - outperforming social media ads (48%) and social posts (43%).
The Launch Phase: Make Sure Your Foundation Is Set
During this phase, you’re getting close to launch. Inventory is on the way. Your website is live or about to be. You've been collecting emails for a few months and have a decent list.
This is when email marketing shifts from "nice to have" to "absolutely need.”
Why? Because the people who visit your website during launch week are the hottest leads you'll ever have. They're actively interested and ready to buy from you but, most of them won't buy on their first visit and if you don't have a way to follow up with them, they're gone.
What you need before you launch:
A welcome series. When someone signs up for your email list, they should immediately get a welcome email. Then another email a day or two later. Then maybe one more a few days after that. This series introduces your brand, tells your story, and gives people a reason to make their first purchase. Again, don't over think it for now. It can be simple, low graphic & still on brand. According to Klaviyo's fashion industry benchmarks, the top 10% of welcome flows convert almost 5x as many people as average flows.
An abandoned cart flow. This is the single highest-ROI automation you can set up. When someone adds something to their cart but doesn't complete the purchase, they automatically get an email (or two, or three) reminding them to finish checking out. Automated flows generate up to 30x more revenue per recipient than one-time campaigns because they're so timely and targeted. For fashion brands, abandoned cart flows typically recover 10-15% of lost sales.
A basic post-purchase flow. After someone buys, send them a thank you email. Then a "how's your order?" email after it's delivered. This builds trust, gives you the opportunity to ask for feedback/reviews, and eventually, sets you up for a repeat customer.
An abandoned checkout flow. You're probably thinking "what's the difference between that and an abandoned cart?". A cart abandonment is when someone adds something to their cart and stops there. A checkout abandonment is when someone goes to complete their checkout and pay and then stops there. There are 2 different personas in 2 different parts of the nurture journey. The cart abandoner is still browsing, thinking, considering your brand & likely shopping around. The checkout abandoner was ready to pull the trigger and stopped. Maybe they got distracted or maybe they got stunned by the shipping costs & fees. For this email flow, offering a discount to complete purchase or shipping relief works best.
You don't need a complex segmentation strategy or a 15-email nurture sequence. You just need the basics in place so that when people interact with your brand, you have a system to follow up with them.
What about SMS?
If you have the bandwidth, add SMS to your flows. SMS open rates are very high (98% compared to 20-30% for email) and the top-performing SMS campaigns can drive 7x more revenue per recipient than average. A well-timed text reminder can recover sales that email may not catch.
But if you don’t have the bandwidth, focus on email first. SMS is powerful, but email is easier to set up and manage when you're just starting out.
The First Year: Learn and Test
You've launched. Congrats! Now what?
This is where a lot of fashion founders drop the ball on email marketing. They set up the basic flows, send a few launch emails, and then... nothing. They ghost their subscribers for months.
This is a major problem because if you go silent, your list goes cold and your engagement will drop. Then, when you finally do send an email months later, most people will ignore it because they forgot about you. This is how you get yourself in a spam situation.
What to do in year one:
Send regular emails. You don't need to send daily, or even weekly. But you should be emailing your list at least once or twice a month. Share new product drops. Highlight customer stories or reviews. Give styling tips. Talk about your process. The goal is to stay top of mind.
Segment your list. Not everyone on your list is the same. You have your purchasers and browsers. Some people love you for your dresses, some for your pajamas. Start creating segments based on behavior and tailor your messaging to each persona. Research shows that segmented campaigns saw open rates of 42.5% compared to just 28.7% for non-segmented campaigns. This is where email marketing starts to get really powerful. Segmented campaigns outperform every time.
Test and learn. Try different subject lines and copy. Test sending at different times of day. See what kind of content gets the most engagement. Year one is your chance to figure out what resonates with your audience before you scale up.
Don't neglect SMS. If you have the time and once you've nailed the basics of email, SMS becomes your high-impact channel for time-sensitive offers, restocks, and VIP early access. Fashion brands that use email and SMS together see significantly higher revenue than those that rely on email alone.
One of our fashion brand clients launched with a solid email strategy but didn't prioritize regular sends. She'd email once every few months when she had a new collection drop, but otherwise her list sat dormant.
When she came to us six months post-launch, her email list had grown to 2,000 people—but her open rates were in the single digits. People didn't recognize her brand name anymore. We had to basically re-engage the entire list from scratch, which is much harder (and more expensive) than staying consistent from the start.
The lesson: consistency matters more than perfection. A simple email every few weeks beats a beautifully designed email once every three months.
When You're Ready to Scale: Bringing in Professional Help
For most fashion founders, the DIY approach works fine for the first 6-12 months. You're figuring out your product-market fit, learning what resonates with customers, and keeping things lean.
But there comes a point where DIY email marketing stops being efficient. You're spending hours every week trying to figure out segmentation. Your automations are breaking. You know you should be doing more, but you don't have the time or expertise to execute.
This is when it makes sense to bring in outside help.
Signs you're ready for professional email and SMS support:
You're doing at least $500K-$1M in annual revenue. At this point, you have enough customer data & website traffic to make advanced segmentation and automation worth the investment.
You're launching seasonal collections and want to maximize each drop. A well-executed launch strategy can 2-3x your revenue compared to just "announcing" a new collection.
Your list is growing, but engagement is flat. This usually means your strategy needs an overhaul with better segmentation, better content, better flows.
You're ready to add SMS, but don't know where to start. SMS requires compliance knowledge, strategy, and ongoing optimization. It's one of those things that's worth hiring an expert for.
At Strategy Maven, we typically work with fashion brands in one of two ways:
Foundational setup for pre-launch or early-stage brands. We come in, build out your core automations (welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase), set up your basic segmentation, and give you a campaign calendar to follow. This is usually a 3 month project.
Full retention marketing for growth-stage brands. We become your outsourced email and SMS team-managing strategy, execution, optimization, and ongoing campaigns. This is typically for brands doing $1M+ in revenue who are ready to scale.
The ROI is real. Email marketing delivers an average ROI of $36 for every dollar spent - that's a 3,600% return. SMS can be even higher.
What to Look for in an Email and SMS Partner
If you're ready to bring in help, here's what you should look for:
A strategic approach, not just execution. Anyone can send emails. What you want is someone who can look at your customer data, understand your business goals, and build a strategy that actually drives results.
Klaviyo expertise (or whatever platform you're using). The tool matters, and Klaviyo is the most popular for fashion brands. Make sure they know how to use your platform inside and out.
Transparent pricing and realistic timelines. Be wary of agencies that promise overnight results or charge rock-bottom rates. Good work takes time, and you should understand exactly what you're paying for.
The Bottom Line: Timing Is Everything
Email and SMS marketing isn't something you can ignore and then magically fix later. The earlier you start building the infrastructure—even if it's just a simple email capture form—the better positioned you'll be when you're ready to scale.
Here's the quick recap:
Pre-launch: Start collecting emails. Send occasional updates. Don't overthink it.
Launch phase: Set up welcome series, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, and post-purchase flows. Add SMS if you have the bandwidth.
Year one: Send regular emails. Start segmenting. Test and learn.
Year two and beyond: Consider bringing in professional help if you're ready to scale.
You've already invested so much into building your fashion brand with all the designs, the production, the branding. Email and SMS marketing is what turns those one-time customers into repeat buyers. It's not glamorous, but it's one of the few marketing channels that actually gets more valuable over time.
If you're a fashion founder and you're not sure where you fall on this timeline, we'd love to chat. Book a consultation with Strategy Maven, and we'll help you figure out what makes sense for your brand right now—and what you should be building toward next.
This guide was created by Amy Hage of Strategy Maven Agency, an email and SMS marketing consultancy specializing in retention marketing for product-based businesses. Strategy Maven works with fashion, beauty, food & beverage, and health brands to build automated systems that turn one-time buyers into loyal customers.
