Spring cleaning ideas for your fashion or lifestyle brand: copy & content edition

My second favourite season is here! If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a spring/summer girl through and through. I absolutely love the relaxed vibe, heat, beach days, and fresh fruits of the summer, and spring is the most beautiful precursor to that special time of year. The warmer temps, longer days, and all the stunning blossoms are so, so needed after a long, cold winter!

Spring is called the season of rebirth and renewal for good reason. It comes with a sense of optimism that feels infectious. Maybe you weren’t feeling motivated enough to really follow through on your New Year’s goals and resolutions in the January and February gloom, but now that spring is here, you might be feeling more energized.

And so comes the tradition of spring cleaning — something that isn’t only limited to your home.

Now is a great opportunity to review your fashion or lifestyle brand’s copy and content to make sure you’re really feeling it. This might mean getting rid of copy and content that don’t resonate anymore, sprucing anything up, or adding in new sections that came to you during a spring ‘aha’ moment.

If you’re not sure where to start, I’ve created a handy guideline for updating your fashion or lifestyle brand’s copy and content below!

Website copy refresh

You’re not alone if you’ve felt the urge to give your website a spring refresh.

Now is the time to go through your website and check if there is any copy that feels outdated, stale, or simply off. Be sure to look in the nooks and crannies of your website — micro copy on footers and side bars, and pages that may not be the most central. You’d be surprised at what you might find!

See what you can remove, update, or add. You’ll know what feels right, and what feels wrong. The refreshed version should feel relevant, exciting, and unapologetically you.

Update automated emails

You may be consistent with your newsletters and promo emails, but when was the last time you updated your automated flows and sequences?

I’m talking welcome emails, abandoned cart emails, post-purchase and order confirmation emails, birthday/special promo emails, re-engagement/win back emails … anything that’s set up to send without you having to think about it.

Make sure you’re still feeling them, update accordingly (maybe you’re missing a beneficial type of automated email?), and then you can go back to not thinking about them for a while.

Email list clean up

On a related note, it’s a good idea to go through your actual email list and remove inactive subscribers. Why, you may be wondering? Isn’t a big email list a good thing?

This is yet another case of quality vs quantity. It’s like an Instagram account with a high follower count but low engagement: it’s not just about the numbers, but the amount of people that are actually picking up what you’re putting down.

A large quantity of inactive subscribers reduces your open rates, which negatively impacts the overall deliverability score of your emails. Translation = the email service provider will think that your emails aren’t as valuable because a lot of people don’t bother opening them, and will likely send them off to the promotions tab (where they will be less likely to be seen, let alone opened) or even worse: the spam folder.

Getting rid of those inactive subscribers is like giving your hair a much-needed trim. It eliminates the dead ends causing issues, so your fresh new locks can shine. When your email list is smaller but filled with active subscribers (the ones who actually enjoy reading your emails and regularly open them), your open rates will inevitably go up and your emails are more likely to be seen. This leads to higher conversion and sales, and all the other good things that you want!

Review & update blog content

One great thing about blog content? You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. If you want to take a break from editorial planning, try spring cleaning instead!

Go through your existing blog posts and see if anything needs to be revised, updated, or cleaned up. This can mean adding in newer, more relevant information, removing broken links and adding in new ones, or reformatting for better SEO and readability. On a related note, the updates can also be SEO-based by adding in or revising keywords, or editing anything on the back-end (meta descriptions, alt tags, SEO plug-ins, etc).

You might be surprised at how well a blog that’s simply been updated may begin to (re)perform!