Jumping between email marketing services, trying to maintain a good deliverability rate, juggling different types of email marketing for your business… At some point, it can be overwhelming and insufferable.
The first step in getting started with email marketing is choosing the right email marketing software for your company. Email marketing software is sometimes used interchangeably with email marketing tool, email marketing service, email service provider, or email marketing platform, so don’t be confused.
After you’ve landed on the right email service provider like Campaign Monitor, it is time to write the emails and use them on your email channel. However, apart from crafting beautiful emails, your campaigns need definitive goals that you can track and reflect upon, such as generating more traffic to your website, winning back inactive subscribers, raising awareness about your brand, lead nurturing, and more.
One of the benefits of email marketing is that there are different types of email marketing you can tailor for your business goals that you can show to the people throughout their customer journey. The right email increases your percentage of email deliverability and conversion rate.
Customer engagement heavily depends on how you position your brand or product, and what you’re offering in exchange for their time and email addresses; therefore, you need to curate content that will accompany the person through their customer journey.
Nevertheless, you don’t have the privilege to send unlimited emails to your subscribers before they lose interest in your content. In fact, most users will walk away if the one email they read does not interest them. That is why it is important to study as many email marketing campaign examples as possible.
In today’s article, we are going to give examples that will inspire your new campaign and change your email marketing strategy.
Different Types of Marketing Email Campaigns
“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale.”
David Newman
Email marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to build a following, reach out to customers and market your products through your email channel. These campaigns are also one of the most profitable ones, if not the most. According to Constant Contact, for every $1 spent, you can expect a return of $42, which makes email marketing the most profitable digital marketing channel.
Therefore, building a consistent, engaging, and effective email marketing strategy for your brand is crucial. And choosing the right type of email to send to your subscribers plays an important role in achieving your business goals.
It is essential not only to identify the email content you want to put in your emails but also you need to include personalized content with clear language and a simple design to avoid risking high bounce rates.
In this section, we are going to take a closer look at the different types of email marketing and how you can employ them for your company.
Informational Email
Informational emails are one or series of emails sent to your subscribers to inform them about the latest updates, new features or products, limited-time deals for early bird customers, discounts, and more. These emails are usually followed by a concise call-to-action (CTA) related to your objective, making them run to their credit cards. Examples of informational emails are an announcement of sales, product updates, free trials, webinars, etc. They can also be classified as promotional emails.
Keep in mind that you should only send these emails to people already on your email list.
When designing your informational email, you must be catchy and not too salesy. You need to highlight the main offer while creating a sense of urgency, so you must use clear and actionable language to convince email subscribers to click on the CTA buttons.
That is why it is also crucial to put a lot of time and effort into your call-to-action. Because it will act as a trigger to maximize the purchases per customer from your email channel, it is best if you adjust your calls-to-action to captivate their attention.
Product Update Email
Product Update Emails are great for informing customers about a product update, new feature, or upcoming product. However, this type of email is not really a fan favorite. It is because these emails are not as engaging or interesting as emails with offers or freebies. They are more like broadcast emails sent disguised as bulk emails to a large group at the same time.
Product update emails are still a good way to show your potential customers or existing ones that you are working on developing your business and services so that they can get the most value out of it.
When sending a product update email, it is important to remember that you need to provide valuable content without overloading or spamming your subscribers. For example, if you have multiple feature updates planned, combine some of the future campaigns into a single email instead of bombarding your customers’ inboxes.
Otherwise, you may end up getting flagged as spam, and your future emails will probably suffer from a high bounce rate.
You can also send your product updates in a weekly or monthly digest form. In this way, you will allocate enough time for people on your email list to explore and try new features because adjusting to changes requires time and effort, be mindful of their needs. Remember to use clear and straightforward language to avoid confusion and frustration.
Your email channel is there to solve their problems, not create new ones.
Digital Newsletter
An increasing number of companies turn to digital newsletters (or email newsletters) to promote their blog articles, educate their customers, and improve customer loyalty by offering credible and valuable content. For example, as the UserGuiding team, we send four emails a month featuring the most valuable blog posts to educate and update our customers.
[Can we add a screenshot of UG’s newsletter here, please? I could not find myself]
You can send yours daily, weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, etc. Remember that your newsletter should contain valuable and visually appealing content. It should be easily skimmed and paired with an image, a captivating email subject line, and a CTA to entice readers to read more (and drive more traffic to your website).
Remember, you don’t have unlimited emails to prove your value, so be mindful of the content you send to your audience.
Transactional Email
Last but not least, you can interact with your customer on a more personal, one-to-one basis with transactional emails. You can think of transactional emails as personalized content, but it is triggered based on the action taken by the customer, such as purchasing with their credit card. These emails are not sent to your entire list (which is the opposite of bulk emails) .
One of the types of email marketing, transactional emails, usually acknowledge a specific action taken by the customer. Confirmation emails, form submission kickback (Thank-You) emails, and welcome emails are some examples we will look at.
The logic behind these email campaigns is simple: Confirm the customer’s action and reinforce the customer’s belief about their transaction.
Confirmation Emails
I personally am a great book lover, or, if you will, a bibliophile. I do love purchasing books online (so much so that I memorized my credit card number), and as soon as I am done with a purchase, I run to my inbox to see that confirmation email stating my order has been placed and is currently being processed. It’s just a big sigh of relief.
If you are a little bit like me, you probably know how frustrating these emails can be: vague email subject lines, weird placement of the confirmation, and so on. We deserve simplicity. And so do the people on your email list.
That is why using straightforward language with a non-complex design is important. You want to convey the information that their order has been received and so they can move on with their day peacefully.
Form Submission Kickback (Thank-You) Emails
Form Submission Kickback emails, also known as Thank-You emails, are triggered after a user submits a form on your website’s landing pages. These emails function as a way to fulfill your promise, deliver the intended high-value products to your customer’s inboxes, and safely store their information.
In form submission kickback emails, it is important to use a clear and strong CTA embedded with an action button. This button will directly lead them from your email channel to the service and value you offered in the first place such as a free ebook, free trial, or a discount coupon.
Similar to other email types, you need to be direct with your email content and design with Thank-You emails as well.
Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are the perfect way to convert potential customers into loyal fans. You can personally thank them for subscribing, signing up for a free trial, or for another offer you’re making. This is the first time the users interact with your brand and product; therefore, it is important to make a good impression.
You can showcase your product’s functions, highlight your brand’s core values, and explain what they can expect from your services and how they can start using your product.
Honorable Mentions
While most emails fall under the categories we mentioned above, we’d like to include some honorable mentions to create a thorough and definitive guide for your business’ next email campaigns. Let’s begin!
Win-back Emails
You don’t need to go Upside Down to win back your clients as an online business owner. Win-back emails are perfect for that.
A win-back email is part of a reactivation campaign where you send emails to inactive contacts who have previously purchased a product from you or signed up to your mailing list but stopped opening your mails after a while. The win-back email maps out a plan to get people to interact with your content and CTAs as your initial marketing campaigns used to do.
Referral Email
A referral email is a message businesses use to find new potential customers via their existing customer base. It utilizes the customer’s professional network to find new leads who might be interested in your product. Similar to the other email types, a referral email should include an eye-catching subject line, a mention of your experience with the recipient, and a CTA embedded in a CTA.
Survey Email
Survey emails help you collect quantitative data by asking questions to your subscribers. You can embed an HTML code in your email to collect data or use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Mailchimp, Hubspot, or Salesforce to integrate a questionnaire.
As you are familiar with marketing through email, you know that customer feedback is indispensable to growing your brand’s visibility on search rankings, creating high-performing emails, generating more revenue, or prolonging the customer lifetime. Survey emails provide you with essential customer feedback to analyze your marketing plan.
What Makes a Marketing Email Good
Marketing emails aim to engage and inform your customers about your business. Therefore, you need a clear structure to nurture their needs and drive action without being too salesy.
A good marketing email comes with lots of preparation.
That is why we dedicated this section to giving you some tips to craft the best marketing email out there.
Build a Targeted Email List
*taps mic* Is this thing on?
Without a group of devoted subscribers on your list, it is hard to build a successful email marketing campaign or increase total revenue from your email channel. You need someone to speak to, someone that will read and love what you offer and cheer you on. So, you need a targeted email list, not just random people.
The best way to curate such a list is to turn your email visitors into subscribers. Bu using an exit-intent popup, you can retain the visitors who are about to leave your site.
Exit-intent popups track the visitor’s movements, and a popup is shown the moment they are about to leave your site. A discount code or coupon is usually used as an offer to convince the user to finish their purchase.
As a result, you collect their email address in exchange for a valuable offer. You will see better conversion rates once you gather people interested in your services.
Know Your Audience
While building a targeted email list, you must cherry-pick the best fits and potential customers for your company. If you have been a marketer for a while, you probably have a grasp on your target audience. If you are starting your business, there are some helpful tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager to collect data for potential email clients and refine your email channel.
Honing your email clients supported by demographic, location, interests, and other essential data will help you create better email marketing campaigns. You will see better improvement in your return on investment.
Craft Your Email Design
Email design is the bread and butter of an effective email marketing campaign. If your email design is not attractive or does not reflect your company’s core, then people will click away, become inactive subscribers, and not be willing to use their credit card on your site to make a purchase.
It is important to consider the number of people who read emails on different devices, so optimizing your email templates is vital. Besides, even if you are using email templates, there is plenty of room to customize your template to create a visually appealing design.
Most good emails contain more text than images. Although visuals are important to sustain your email flow, many people opt to disable them. To ensure that your email recipients still read your emails, you should avoid including important information on images. Instead, use alt tags to describe images so the user knows what they are supposed to see through their email server.
Because emails rely heavily on texts, you must convey your message as clearly as possible. The content should be clear and concise so that you can encourage email recipients to use the action button, i.e., your ultimate goal, and make the content easier to digest.
Plan Emails and Follow-ups
After you gather the necessary data about your audience, decide on the most useful email type for your campaign, and build strong email or contact lists, it is time to plan and write your email campaign. Because we live in a constantly evolving digital sphere, you need to send emails at regular intervals. Emails per day, week, month, and so on.
Your content should be interesting and offer something valuable that will feed your list of subscribers. For example, UserGuiding sends a sequence of welcome emails introducing the tools and functions the user needs with clear calls to action.
Sending too many emails will annoy your readers and send you directly to the spam folder. To avoid this tragedy, stick to a manageable and timely schedule you tell them beforehand, so they are aware of what and when to expect new content from your email channel.
You can also write and schedule bulk emails before you send them, giving you more time to craft them better.
5 Email Marketing Examples
We receive a handful of emails every single day. While some do deserve our click and precious time, others do not interest us that much. There is no secret ingredient to add to your recipe. You simply need to put effort into writing memorable, clickable, and readable emails.
In this section, you will find five great email marketing examples that will enable you to boost your engagement and conversion rates to inspire your future campaigns.
Let’s get started.
Grammarly
This email marketing campaign example from Grammarly shows you what you can do to keep your subscribers engaged with your service or product. Grammarly builds a connection with you and famous writers, using your analytics, to persuade you to upgrade your plan without being too pushy about it as it offers to minimize your errors (so that you can maximize your score!).
With the advanced issues that need correction, Grammarly addresses a pain point that needs a solution and resonates with the audience. The solution, undoubtedly, comes from Grammarly.
This wisely crafted email ends with a strong call-to-action button; thanks to this email, they can easily increase the conversion rate.
Spotify
Spotify Wrapped has become a December tradition since its introduction in 2015. Ever since, many listeners and music streamers around the world wait by their phones and refresh their inboxes to see the top songs, genres, and artists they have listened to during the year.
This email marketing campaign example is essentially Spotify’s social proof and a growth hack showcasing its legitimacy among users as they share their Wrapped graphics across social media platforms. Spotify Wrapped initially creates hype among listeners and allows them to interact with the artists, other listeners, and the company.
As a perfect example of successful email marketing, Spotify Wrapped builds heavily on word-of-mouth marketing without constantly bombarding email series about the product because the users are already talking about their proud or embarrassing listening choices online.
FlixBus
As a business owner or email marketer, you must appreciate every email address on your list of subscribers. You need to understand what might pique their interest or annoy them so that you can aim for the highest click-through rates (CTR) and minimum unsubscribe rates.
This subject line from Flixbus is the perfect eye-catching email marketing example that you can copy. Instead of filling the subject lines with triggering emojis, all-caps, exclamation marks, and warning-like sentences, Flixbus chooses a curiosity-triggering subject line that will instantly make you click because you simply want to know more.
This campaign is a promotional but personalized email that celebrates you as a customer and hooks your interest by offering a 20% discount to you and your friends.
Because it is an interesting email that offers value, FlixBus is less likely to suffer from low deliverability rates for this email because it is less likely to be sent to the user’s spam folder.
Tuft & Needle
Abandoned cart emails can be discouraging for businesses. After choosing an email marketing service and email channel to operate on your brand, trying to form constant contact with your customers, and experimenting with different email marketing platforms, you can easily lose your motivation.
That’s what abandoned cart emails are all about. Abandoned cart emails are used to persuade customers who left your website without finishing their purchase. A study shows that abandoned cart emails can earn your company $5.81 in revenue per customer.
Check out this email marketing campaign example from Tuft & Needle:
As you can see from the subject line Tuft & Needle does not beg you to come back and check-out the items in your cart. Instead, like FlixBus, it incorporates an interesting subject line that you will instantly click on. Without pushing constant contact or being too pushy about a sale, Tuft & Needle grabs your attention.
After acknowledging the unpleasant experience of mattress shopping, Tuft & Needle shows you that they understand you and are here to solve your problem. Thanks to speaking to the customer’s needs, the company achieves the first step toward successful email marketing. They then provide you with a hyperlink taking you to a landing page where your questions are answered.
If you are not fully convinced, they follow up with other emails comparing themselves with competitors, offering a satisfaction guarantee, and so on. This sequence clears the possible objections in the customer’s minds, eases their concerns, and shows how they are better than their competitors.
Netflix
Netflix does not only emulate your vibes, so to speak. Instead, it uses a sense of belonging and hyper-personalization as an email marketing tool—hence the emphasis on “Don’t Miss Out.” More than that, Netflix’s successful email marketing persuades their list of subscribers and their email channel to try their service because it speaks to their hearts.
As one of the types of email marketing, Netflix’s strategy relies heavily on delivering a consistent and easily understandable message about the brand, or in the words of Seamas Egan, “Netflix has a standard template for its emails that allows the company to insert content and maintain consistent branding in its messaging”.
It does not shower you with purple prose or over-the-top visuals; everything is kept at a minimum because Netflix already knows what you may like, and pushes that content to keep you on the platform. There is usually a few sentences and a clear action button, and that’s it.
Final Words
Long story short, the power of email marketing is undeniable and it is better late than never to adjust your marketing strategy to incorporate effective email campaigns. Email marketing increases the amount of money a customer spends during their customer lifecycle. In addition, it helps you gain new leads who are interested in your brand’s message and products.
Different types of email marketing examples serve different purposes, therefore, it is best to switch your emails based on your goals to avoid increasing bounce rates. You can send your emails on a daily, weekly or monthly basis as long as you keep up with consistent intervals with valuable content.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the different types of marketing emails?
Usually, an average early-stage SaaS company grows 4.4% per month, which adds up to a 68.0% yearly growth.
What are the most common uses of email marketing?
Email marketing strategies often focus on generating traffic, raising brand or product awareness, lead nurturing, and generating revenue via high click-through rates and low unsubscribe rates.
How can I improve my email marketing performance?
To improve your email marketing performance as well as deliverability rate, you must use your email channel to facilitate customer journey by creating valuable content. After deciding on an email server to store users’ email addresses, you need to study different types of email marketing examples and tailor your content according to the specific type you’ve chosen. While creating your content, you must be precise, use strong CTAs and interesting subject lines. Otherwise, you may suffer from high complaint rates.
