FASHION EMAIL
THAT HOLDS
40.3% open rate. 2.66% click rate. Both above industry average, simultaneously. 58 flows, 46 campaigns, and an unsubscribe rate under 0.32%.
The Fashion Email Problem
Fashion and activewear email has a well-documented problem. Subscribers sign up during a discount moment (a first-purchase offer, a seasonal sale, a welcome popup), collect the code, and disengage. The brand used a discount to acquire the email address. The subscriber associated the email address with discounts. When the discounts stop, so does the engagement.
Most fashion email programs try to solve this by sending more frequently and leaning harder on promotions. That compounds the problem. Open rates drop as subscribers learn that most emails don’t warrant attention. Unsubscribe rates climb when sends feel like noise rather than signal. The spiral accelerates.
The industry average for fashion email open rate is around 20-25%. Click rates average 2-2.5%. Brands that run discount-heavy programs often land below both. The goal with this activewear brand was to build an email program where engagement held above both benchmarks without needing to lean on constant promotional incentives to drive it.
Industry open avg: ~25% Industry CTR avg: ~2.5% This account: Both beat
The Automation Foundation
58 flows is not a number chosen arbitrarily. Every flow exists because a specific subscriber moment required a specific automated response. The program treats email less like a broadcast channel and more like a CRM.
- Acquisition flows (Welcome & Onboarding): Welcome sequences, SMS opt-in prompts, and early education flows introduced new subscribers to the brand before they encountered a campaign. First impressions were managed, not left to chance.
- Behavioral flows (Browse & Abandon): Browse abandonment, cart abandonment, and checkout recovery flows fired on observed behavior. These triggered when it mattered, when a subscriber had shown intent, not on a generic schedule.
- Retention flows (Post-Purchase & Loyalty): Post-purchase sequences, VIP early-access flows, and loyalty acknowledgement turned single buyers into repeat customers without requiring a new campaign send for each interaction.
- Win-back & sunset (unengaged profiles handled systematically): Before any profile hit a suppression threshold, a win-back flow gave it every opportunity to re-engage. Profiles that didn’t respond were removed cleanly, protecting sender reputation and keeping the active list percentage high. This is the part most fashion brands skip, and it’s the main reason their deliverability degrades over time.
Total: 58 active flows, covering every lifecycle stage, running in parallel, around the clock.
Segmentation as Strategy
With 58 flows handling the always-on lifecycle work, the 46 campaign sends were reserved for moments that warranted a full broadcast: product drops, seasonal releases, and a limited number of promotional moments tied to real occasions rather than calendar-filling sends.
Each campaign was segmented before it sent. VIP subscribers received early access before the general list. Engaged subscribers received the standard version. Unengaged subscribers (those who hadn’t opened in the last 90 days) were excluded entirely, protecting the open rate and the sender domain simultaneously.
Brand voice consistency was enforced across every touchpoint. Fashion email fails when it looks like a different brand each week: inconsistent design, inconsistent tone, inconsistent offer logic. Every send followed the same visual identity and communication style, which is part of why the unsubscribe rate held at 0.32%: subscribers knew what they were getting, and they chose to stay subscribed.
The segmentation tiers:
- VIP: Early access to drops. Exclusive acknowledgement. Different copy tone. Higher-intent audience treated as such.
- Engaged: Standard campaign sends. Consistent cadence. Full campaign access on release day.
- Lapsing: Win-back flow triggered. Not included in standard campaign sends until re-engagement is confirmed.
- Unengaged: Excluded from campaigns. Suppressed after win-back flow concludes without re-engagement.
The Delta
Quantitative outcomes from 12 months of Klaviyo campaign and flow reporting. Most email programs beat the open rate benchmark or the click rate benchmark. Beating both simultaneously is significantly harder, especially in fashion, where a subscriber base acquired through discount incentives tends to click less and unsubscribe more as promotional frequency increases.
- Avg open rate: 40.3% (+15.3pp above avg)
- Avg click rate: 2.66% (above industry avg)
- Click-to-open rate: 6.1% (strong content match)
- Avg unsub rate: 0.32% (well under 0.5% risk)
- Active flows: 58 (full lifecycle)
- Campaigns sent: 46 (calibrated, not filler)
“Fashion email fails when the list becomes a discount audience. The 58 flows treated each subscriber tier differently from day one. You can't retroactively fix a list trained to expect discounts: you have to build it differently from the start.”UROS KORENE, FOUNDER
[ DATA_NOTE ] This case study is a representative composite created to demonstrate the strategy and potential application. Brand details, timelines and figures have been modified and should not be interpreted as the verified results of one identifiable client.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
How do you maintain a 40.3% open rate across 46+ campaigns?[+]
Consistency at that level comes from three disciplines: sending only to engaged segments, writing subject lines that earn the open without relying on discounts, and maintaining a steady send cadence that conditions subscribers to expect and open the email. Fashion audiences are harder to maintain: the novelty factor drops fast if the content doesn't earn attention. The 40.3% average reflects a brand that built an audience that genuinely wanted the content.
Is a 2.66% click rate good for fashion email?[+]
Yes, and more importantly, it's consistent. Industry click rates for fashion typically land between 1.0–2.0%. Sustaining 2.66% across 46 campaigns means the email content was reliably driving action, not just occasional spikes from one-time promotions. That kind of click consistency signals that the copy, creative, and offer were working together across the full campaign set.
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