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Simplify, Simplify, Simplify with Fjällräven

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It all started with an uncomfortable adventure. When founder Åke Nordin was just 14, he went hiking in the Swedish mountains, his backpack a shapeless lump that required doubling over to compensate for its weight. Using some wood and his mother’s sewing machine, he later built a better, more lightweight frame. A decade later, in 1960, Fjällräven was born.

The Swedish brand’s sustainable backpacks and attire are certainly more comfortable than that first knapsack, and the overall mission to create beauty and function has made its way into their emails.

Here’s how they did it.

Keep it short and sweet

Fjällräven’s email campaigns are both cozy and minimalist. “A lot of brands put too much information into one email,” says Sam Minassian, digital marketing manager for North America. “I have a major pet peeve with super long e-commerce emails. They drive me crazy, and I think they’re ineffective.”

After some testing, their marketing team decided to keep the look of their emails clean. Their pared-down templates typically feature a idyllic image—a skier in the mountains, a woman bundled in one of their coats—and light, sometimes-poetic text. At the bottom of each email, they suggest a few items their customers will love.

The key, Sam says, is to have a catchy subject line and a really engaging picture. And their metrics reflect that insight.

“If you actually look at any kind of email heat mapping or anything like that, it’s super rare that anyone even makes it halfway down an email, let alone all the way to the bottom of it,” he says.

Build a custom template

If selecting a template feels overwhelming, Sam suggests cobbling together your own to suit your needs. Whether your business is big or small, it’s worth spending the time or money to build a template that’s on-brand and easy to update, he says. “Then when people get it, they know that it’s from you.”

Welcome new adventurers

“[Fjällräven] is definitely an aspirational brand,” Sam says. “Whether you get outside and go on an adventure or you sit behind a desk every day, we want you to feel like you want to be doing the things that the people in our pictures are doing.”

One of their primary automations is a welcome series that introduces new signups to the brand, including specifics about Fjällräven’s sustainable efforts and the materials they make, as well as links to their social channels and links to products. “We are seeing huge open rates on all of our automated campaigns,” he says.

Overall, they’ll continue operating with the mindset that simple is best—“unless we can prove otherwise,” Sam adds.

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