Driving Sales for Your Online Clothing Store

If you run an online clothing store or you’re thinking of launching one, you’re in good company. Clothing is the one of the most popular categories in e-commerce.

So how do you make it in this promising market? With a cohesive strategy to keep sales steady.

1. Create your unique selling proposition

Every online business needs a unique selling proposition (USP) that describes what you sell, who it’s for, and why it’s better or different from other options on the market.

Of course, your USP should include what kind of clothing you sell. Here are a few categories to consider.

• Men’s, women’s, kids, or gender-neutral
• Casual or dressy
• Luxury or affordable
• Trendy or classic

From these basic distinctions, you can more clearly articulate your aesthetic and niche.

As you craft your USP, let your passion lead the way. If you’re in love with your product, your shoppers will be too. Focus on what sets your online clothing business apart and embrace the ways your brand is unique.

2. Establish your product-market fit

Your niche is what determines your product-market fit—the way your online clothing store fits into the broader retail apparel industry.

To have a good product-market fit, you need to meet the needs of a specific audience. The best-case scenario is when your online clothing store fills a demand that no one else is reaching. Sometimes, though, that niche is too small, so you’ll have to go a bit broader.

Find a niche like this by figuring out what people aren’t doing. The fewer companies like yours that are out there, the greater the market opportunity for your business.

3. Set your product portfolio

When you launch an online clothing store, it can be wise to start with just a few items and see how your customers respond. But even if you’ve had your store for some time, assess what sells. What gets the best reviews? When you notice that customers love a style, you can think about what similar styles you might want to offer and expand accordingly.

Letting customer preferences guide your product choices is one way to meet the needs of your market. It also builds strong relationships and helps you nurture a loyal following.

4. Create anticipation

It’s important to build constant excitement for your business—and to do so across channels. You’re doing business in a multichannel market, you can engage customers at different touchpoints before you start making sales. Track all your contacts in one place using our marketing CRM. Then use your audience data to send targeted emails to the right segments and to post strategically on social media.

As you build your audience, set up a landing page for people to explore. Use enticing visuals to introduce your brand and the clothing you sell. Be sure to include an email signup form to grow your audience and keep prospective customers engaged. Use our Creative Assistant to create beautiful, on-brand designs for your marketing assets.

5. Build your online store

To sell goods online, you need an e-commerce platform. Mailchimp stores provide you with all of the marketing and commerce functionalities you need to build your store and start selling quickly. Our commerce platform, with marketing at its core, allows you to have full control over your online business by providing everything you need to effectively market and sell products—all in one place.

Already have an e-commerce site? Mailchimp integrates with most of the major storefronts, including BigCommerce and WooCommerce. That connection is important because when your marketing platform is connected to your store, you can collect audience data and use it to inform your marketing.

Make sure that you have a place on your website where customers can review your products. Many companies have review boxes posted prominently on product pages so they’re easy to find. It also helps to ask for reviews when you send order notifications or thank-you emails.

Mailchimp makes it easy for you to find and display your best reviews with its Yotpo integration. Yotpo aggregates your best customer reviews, pulls out great quotes, and lets you highlight those quotes in an easy-to-use mail widget. It’s a convenient way to showcase all the great things your customers say about you.

6. Generate buzz for your big moments

Whether it’s your grand opening or a major sale, you want to make the most of your business’s special occasions. Be sure to create a buzz ahead of time via email—let your audience know what to expect in terms of products, promotions, and more. Send out postcards telling them about your event. Hype the occasion on social media. Build up to the big day, but don’t stop there—continue to highlight your best-selling products to drive sustained interest.

7. Entice people to visit your online store

Some people in your audience will need a bit of extra encouragement to visit your website and buy. Consider these tried-and-true tactics to help you show the value you offer.

• Promote new products. As your business grows, you’ll add products to your portfolio often. Post announcements to social media and announce them as part of your email marketing campaigns.
• Market your best sellers. Proud that something’s selling well? Share it in your marketing. People trust popular products.
• Offer promo codes. Customers love getting special deals. Consider sending promo codes to celebrate and welcome people to your store. They’re a great way to say thank you to people who signed up for your email list early.

8. Keep it growing

Your relationship to customers new and old is the foundation for your online clothing store’s future. It’s important to keep them engaged.

This task becomes much more manageable when it’s automated. Once you have it all set up, marketing automation takes redundant tasks off your plate—like sending a welcome email to new subscribers or following up about a product you sold. You can choose what triggers your marketing automations and create messages that are both personalized and on-brand.

Deliver relevant messages, that are likely to drive growth, to your customers based on how they engage with your business with Customer Journey builder.

Upsell products when you can

Upselling, or pointing someone toward a higher-ticket product, is one valuable way you can promote new products to your current customer base.

If you have Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform connected to your e-commerce store, you can automatically add personalized product recommendations to emails based on what your customers have already bought. It’s an easy way to increase average order value per customer, while reminding buyers that you care about their interests.

Remind people about their abandoned carts

One of the joys of online shopping is that a customer can add something to a cart, think about it, and then come back. Some may decide not to buy after all, but you can minimize that number with smartly-designed abandoned cart emails.

Build loyalty with product follow-ups

A purchase is a great conversation starter. You can continue more of those conversations by setting up automated follow-up emails to go out whenever someone buys from your store.

Get personal

People love personalized messages. You can send them easily with Mailchimp’s marketing personalization tools.

Mailchimp analyzes your audience’s actions and helps you recommend products they’d like. You can make those product recommendations in segmented emails using drag-and-drop dynamic content so different audience groups get different suggestions. You can even add merge tags to your email so Mailchimp’s servers can introduce content that’s specific to the individual customer.

Reach the right new people with lookalike audiences

Your customers’ behavioral data can also help you reach high-potential audiences. You look at the interests and actions of your best customers and tell Mailchimp which interests you want your lookalike audiences to share. The system can then find people to target with social media posts and postcards.

Schedule social media posts to stay consistent (and save time)

Consistency matters when it comes to social media. To keep people interested in your brand, you have to post regularly—but that’s a big ask when you’re running a small business.

Fortunately, Mailchimp lets you schedule your social posts in advance. That way, you can dedicate time to social media when you have it and still maintain a consistent presence. Create your posts ahead of time and schedule them to go out anywhere from 2 hours to 3 months later.

Get ready to drive sales and keep growing

Mailchimp is here to help your online fashion business thrive. By giving you one central place to manage your digital marketing, you can reach your customers with the right message at the right time.

Once you connect Mailchimp to your e-commerce store, you’ll save time and power smarter marketing. Then you can focus on serving your customers and coming up with exciting new ideas for your business.

Get started today, and find more customers who love to wear what you sell.