Promotional Emails Guide: 35 Best Examples [Tips+Ideas]

Momina Asif
Momina Asif

Last updated on

March 14, 2024

Digital marketing has come a long way, but we cannot deny the fact that email marketing is still one of the most widely used and effective ways to keep in touch with your target audience. So, it is essential to remember that the competition out there is cutthroat, and you want to stay at the top of customers' minds. If you are looking for the best promotional email examples for your business or email marketing templates to get some inspiration, you have come to the right place.

In this article, I am going to cover everything you need to know regarding building a promotional email campaign — including basics like what exactly are promotional emails, what you need to look out for, tips for writing an effective promotional email and some great examples that you can use as reference.

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What is a promotional email?

Promotional emails promote your products and services to potential customers. The primary purpose of a promotional email is to get the word out to potential customers about your product or service. Common email promotions include coupons or other discounts, access to exclusive content, or admittance to an invitation-only event.

Promotional emails can help generate revenue, boost customer loyalty, and increase awareness for your brand. Moreover, these emails help build client engagement by giving them a discount or incentive to engage with your business.

Promotional emails are cost-effective tools as they help you target specific audiences that are already interested in your products and services by monitoring their browsing behavior. And since promotional emails usually target those audiences who have already shown interest in your services, they offer the highest return on investment compared to all other promotional tools.

There are a wide variety of ways due to which you can create promotional emails. Here are some of them.

  • Latest arrivals
  • Exciting deals and offers 
  • Product launches
  • Holiday and seasonal promotions
  • Giveaways and exciting contests
  • Special deals like buy one get one free, coupons on signing up, referrals, and promo codes.

Now that you have a basic idea about what promotional emails are, you know why they are essential to building effective email campaigns.

Research says that around 91% of the consumers check their emails daily, and approximately 58% of users start their day by checking their emails before doing anything else. Hence there is no denying the fact that applying the best email marketing strategies can prove to be highly effective and beneficial to your business. If you are not sending promotional emails already, it is high time to do that. 

Common characteristics of promotional emails

If you want your business to flourish and your promotional email to work its magic on your target customers, here are a few characteristics to look out for which will help you create an engaging and successful promotional email campaign.

promotional email characteristics

1. Easy to read

Who wants to read through a long, boring email, right? Most of us always skim through emails to find relevant information. But when the email is difficult to read and not organized properly, it just reaches a dead end the moment the reader opens it.

The key is to be clear and precise about what you want to convey to your target audience. Try to use clear, high-resolution images, bring a variety in the type and color of the font used, and highlight the important text in bold letters to spike the user's interest.

Break the email into separate sections and paragraphs to make it visually appealing and easy to read. And make sure your call-to-action buttons are easy to find and clear.

2. Builds positive relationships with the audience

Okay, you recently secured an interested customer who subscribed to your business — now what to do next? It is now time to establish a positive relationship with their customer. But how? The answer to this question is trust. Whenever you are crafting a promotional email, your primary goal should be to earn the trust of the target customer.

The tone of the email should be personal while being profession at the same time. It should speak to the reader as if they are talking to a knowledgeable friend who is a well-wisher and wants to help you with your requirements. 

3. Keeps the audience hooked

Sending the email is not enough if it cannot keep the audience hooked and capture their attention. For example, let's say that your audience has shown interest in what you have to offer, and they have subscribed to your list. Does that mean your work is over? Definitely not! You cannot rely on that fact and reduce your efforts because you need to spike their interest and recapture their attention with every email you send, so they are still interested in engaging with you.

But how do you do that?

The first step you can try out is to write a subject line that grabs their attention. You need to convince them that going through your email is worth spending their time and energy. While writing the email subject line, give away just enough information to spike their interest without disclosing the entire story. 

The subject of your email can decide whether your target customer chooses to read it among the dozens of other promotions they receive in their mailbox every day.

4. Understands the audience thoroughly

When you send any promotional email, your audience will have different expectations based on what you are promoting. But it's not about just sending the email. You need to have a clear objective and goal in mind about how you want to present your business. Your email should make it very clear to the target audience about what you represent and what you want them to understand.

And if customer loyalty is your goal, be consistent throughout the process and do not distance yourself from your customers.

5. Offers something valuable

Why should your audience engage with your product promotion? Are you providing them with anything valuable? When you offer your target customers something that will provide significant value, it helps grab their attention and make them aware of your brand and what it represents. YOu can also embed your QR code business card to further your brand awareness. Apart from helping you establish positive relationships, it motivates them to engage or purchase your products and services.

As a business, when you create a product or a service for your target customers, it is not extremely difficult to promote your content and offer them something of value. For example, you can offer your audience a valuable discount code that will help earn the existing customers' faith and even attract new ones.

3 Things to know before writing promotional emails

Sending out promotional emails is a great marketing strategy and can be pretty effective if done right. But you cannot expect to casually craft an email and receive incredible results. Below, I mention some tips to write the most engaging promotional email to get more customers to buy from you! Let's have a look. 

1. Define your target audience

You need to determine the target audience to whom you want to promote your services. If you send the same promotional email to the entire email list, the point of the message might get diluted.

We suggest segmenting out your list or sending it to some specific members so that the targeted messaging is delivered to the relevant segment. For example, when you want to move some new customers through your sales funnel, the presentation of your offer to them will be different compared to how you describe it to your existing customers.

Hence if you wish to write effective email promotions, know your target audience beforehand so that your strategies work accordingly.

2. Determine why you are promoting

Now that you know what you will promote, imagine a scenario where you are hosting a webinar or maybe a conference to launch your product or services and perhaps even generate some sales. So your audience might have questions, right?

So you need to be prepared to answer those questions and put forward the objective behind the development of your products and services. Your objective could be anything — it could be to bring back your loyal customers, increase sales of a particular service or product, get more traffic to your website, spread awareness regarding your brand, etc.

Establishing your objective will help you connect with the audience better because you will explain your business better.

3. Decide on what you are promoting 

If there is anything else more important than determining the objective behind your promotion, it is to figure out what exactly you are trying to promote. 

No matter what services and products you will offer, once you know what you are promoting, it will be much easier to craft the whole email once you know what you are promoting. 

35 Best promotional email examples

By now, you have an idea of creating an effective promotional email and the tips you need to keep in mind. Let's look over some great promotional email examples for your inspiration.

There are about 9 types of promotional emails. Here are some of them:

  • Flash sale promotional email
  • New offer promotional email
  • Free resource promotional email
  • Time-limited promotional emails
  • Holiday offer emails
  • Event Announcement emails
  • Giveaway promotional email
  • Product launch promotional emails
  • Upgrade promotional email

Flash sale promotional email examples

1. Colourpop

Colourpop promotional email

This one is a pretty great example of a successful flash sale promotional email from Colourpop. It is eye-catching, the timer at the top is excellent to catch the audience's attention, and the promo code is very much visible.

2. Crate&Barrel

Crate and Barrel promotional email

The "60% Off" in the email has been emphasized beautifully, especially via the use of a contrasting color. That particular number acts as the highlight of the email and draws attention to the email.

3. SONY

Sony promotional email

This one definitely deserves a spot on the list of best email templates because it is simple, compact and makes the customer feel that they can expect large discounts and promotions. 

4. WordPress

Wordpress promotional email

Even though this particular one does not have a lot of visually appealing and flashy images, the benefits and the values for the customers are highlighted and the message is very clear and precise.

5. tarte 

Tarte promotional email

This email from Tarte is pretty eye-catching, done up with beautiful, attractive colors and the images just create a very colorful vibe. It hits all the checkboxes quite nicely.

6. LOFT 

Loft promotional email

If going the minimalist route is your vibe, this particular example from Loft will inspire you. The color palette used is soothing to the eyes, yet the audience understands that it is for a flash sale at first look.

New offer promotional email examples

7. HEADSPACE

Headspace promotional email

Headspace offers a clear incentive to the audience with a bold call to action for them. With this email, they have tried to prompt the users to take action quickly and have incorporated an offer to elevate their point further.

8. 20||20

20II20 promotional email

It is a great way to promote new products and offers using promotional emails and this particular email from 20 || 20 has followed all the best practices. The image and the text complement each other, the colors are engaging and the benefit for the client is highlighted in a large font so that it is crystal clear. 

9. MOO

Moo promotional email

Moo's promotional email tempts the customers to engage with the brand with the 10% off offer. They have further taken it one step ahead by assuring the clients about their quality by promising them to reprint the product again if it doesn't match their expectations.

10. CRASHPLAN

Crash Plan promotional email

This particular promotional email is focused more on giving rather than receiving. Crash Plan took a regular promotion and gave it a twist by encouraging the customers to gift CrashPlan to someone else and get two months for free yourself.

11. ANTHROPOLOGIE

Anthropologie promotional email

Anthropologie has paid great attention to the aesthetics with complimenting colors and font styles while being clear with their offer at the same time.

12. ebay

eBay promotional email

eBay has shown the perfect example of offering benefits over features in this mail. 

Free resource promotional email examples

13. zoom

Zoom promotional email

Instead of focusing on discounts or sales, Zoom has decided to offer multiple free resources to build customer loyalty. This type of email builds brand loyalty and gets customers hooked for more resources. 

Time-limited promotional emails examples

14. WHISTLEFISH

Whistlefish promotional email

The colors, design, the timer — it’s all clear and eye-catching. They also add an element of urgency by showing the timer to let customers know how much time is left to avail the discount. 

15. DOORDASH

Doordash promotional email

Even though it is text-heavy, the images are attractive, and the CTA button is prominent. The text talks about the offer in such a way that the customers just cant refuse. 

16. Wizz Air

Wizz Air promotional email

Wizz Air offered a wonderful discount on various flights and services for Valentine’s Day, and their unique selling point definitely works like a charm to convince the audience to take up on their offer.

17. Casper

Casper promotional email

Casper has done an incredible job with the custom illustration and the color palette all make sense. The festive nature of the email looks super appealing. 

18. Walgreens

Walgreens promotional email

Walgreens does a great job of offering your audience a valuable discount to convert unsure readers into faithful customers. In the example above, Walgreens attracts the bargain hunter in each of us by offering a 20% coupon. 

19. BOSE 

Bose promotional email

Bose has a great promotional email with lots of cool visuals. The email features various products with multiple CTA buttons throughout, keeping the audience engaged and interested in the products.

The above email is a great example of a professional and sleek-looking promotional email that captures interest.

20. COLOURPOP

Second example for Colourpop

Colourpop sends emails that are centered around their brand’s identity. These emails make the best use of colors to ‘pop’ their emails. The above email is super eye-catching with stunning colors.

21. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms has a very informative promotional email.

Formidable forms example

They provided lots of links in the email to various pages on their site, giving users different ways to interact with their brand. Although the email is mostly text-based, they have used emojis to make it eye-catching. 

Holiday offer emails examples

Holidays are one of the best times to send promotional emails with holiday sales and offers. People are doing their holiday shopping online and in-stores and they are more likely to take up on your offer. Let's have a look at some of the holiday promotional emails

22. Monzo

Monzo email example

Monzo have used holiday spirits quite appropriately to promote their customer referral program. The email is text-based but the high quality of the email copy persuades the customers to shop from them. 

23. amazon

Amazon promotional email

Amazon doesn't need an introduction. The brand has gone high every year especially during the holiday season. This email from Amazon shows the Black Friday deals with a free two-day shipping offer. 

24. PUMA

Puma promotional email

Along with festive colors, Puma has added a couple of banners and links to offers that really appeal to the late shoppers. With their free overnight shipping, this offer attracts people who are in a hurry to get their orders delivered. 

25. Harry’s 

Harry's promotional email

Harry’s does a great job of sending out Valentine’s Day email through a genuine sense of humor and conversational tone of voice to upgrade its trial users. They use a different approach to Valentine’s Day emails compared to other platforms. 

26. Taco Bell

Taco Bell promotional email

Taco Bell does a great job of using Christmas-centric content to motivate the audience to buy gifts for their loved ones.

Event Announcement emails examples

27. CXL 

CXL promotional email

The above email is an example of building the event announcement into an existing newsletter. CXL does a great job using a conversational tone. The email doesn't go overboard in selling the webinar and if people have already subscribed to the newsletter, they know CXL does great work.

28. University of Maryland

University of Maryland promotional email

This email is a really nice way of featuring everything the event has to offer along with the event details. The email has date, venue, and timing all including. It also encourages people to arrive early and have a conversation with the CEO. 

Giveaway promotional email examples

29. prose

Prose promotional email

This email from Prose does not just focus on the giveaway, but also does a great job of compelling storytelling. It is an excellent example of turning subscribers into customers.

30. L’OCCITANE

L'occitane promotional email

L’occitane gets people shopping from them by offering them a chance to get it free. This example takes it one step ahead and grabs the attention of even those users who you are unsure of what to buy today itself.

31. VINOMOFO

Vinomofo promotional email

Vinomofo brand went all-in on its birthday and threw the biggest surprise by hosting daily giveaways for an entire week. 

Product launch promotional emails examples

32. PELOTON

Peloton promotional email

Peloton sent out a great promotional email when they launched The Peloton Tread. This one covers all the great angles, benefits for the customers along with a special offer.

33. Drop

Drop promotional email

Drop has managed to build customer loyalty by giving importance to the feedback of their customers while focusing on engagement. This product launch email shows how they took the votes of their audience into accounting before launching. 

34. Great Jones

Great Jones Promotional Email

They have taken proper care of customer needs and have shown that they have incorporated those requirements in the latest launches.

Upgrade promotional email examples

35. Spotify

Spotify promotional email

Spotify has taken into account that people might not always be willing to upgrade to a new plan, so they encourage their users to try their premium service for free initially.

18 Tips for writing a promotional email

tips to write promotional emails

1. Determine your primary goal for the email

Figure out the main reason you are going ahead with your email marketing campaign. Are you trying to promote your new product? Do you want to capture the attention of your audience and stay on top of their minds?

Every email promotion can lead to different results, and you'll have to come up with different strategies to achieve your goal. After you figure out the primary purpose of your email, you can create specific targets you want to reach and build your campaign around it.

Determining specific metrics will also help you determine whether your campaign actually worked or not based on the data. Moreover, using this data, you can make significant improvements to your email ads for better performance using this data.

2. Utilize templates for email planning

Why build everything from scratch and do double the work when you can save both time and energy by utilizing templates to create good-looking and professional promotional emails? 

Using an email planning template is a great idea to develop an organized and effective email marketing campaign and keep everything sorted.

3. Select the best-suited template to start

Mailmunch has 1,000+ email templates for different industries and for different email campaigns.  But how do you choose the one best suited for your goals?

It all depends on the style of promotion you are going for. Determine what you are promoting, and the target audience you want to reach out to, and your industry. These factors will help you select the best suitable template for you to start with.

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4. Concentrate on the "from" field in the mail

An effective email marketing campaign is about getting in touch with your customers and building brand loyalty. You need to make them feel that you care for them as a business and are willing to fulfill their requirements.

The "from" field in your promotional email can create a significant impact on whether your audience opens and engages with it or sends it to the trash folder. Using your personal or even your teammate's name in the "from" field is suggested instead of using your company name because it helps create a better personal touch.

People prefer to read emails received from other humans instead of going through automated emails.

5. Make use of pre-header text

Before opening the entire email, the receiver usually faces the top 3 layers — the subject line, sender name, and the pre-header text. And when we say that this pre-header text creates an influence on the reader, we are not kidding! 

Even though this section usually ranges between 40 to 130 characters, you can utilize this limited space that will summarize the purpose of the email clearly to the reader while attracting their interest at the same time.

The format of the pre-header text varies depending on the email and the kind of device you are using, where sometimes it can appear below the subject line and sometimes right after it.

6. Incorporate visuals

If you want to engage customers with your email, it is recommended to use visually appealing and captivating images. However, instead of using the regular stock photos used by most businesses, try using your own, or create graphics with free platforms. It is a great way to save time and represent the authenticity of your brand.

At the same time, remember not to overdo it too much, not to look overwhelming. The images should complement each other while keeping the customer's attention on the content.

7. Add a call to action

A call to action in your promotion can elevate your email campaign and make it more effective. It will be a nice flow for the reader and motivate them to take the desired action if done right.

It is not mandatory to include the call to action at the end of a promotional email. It just needs to be clear and easy to spot. If your email is long enough, you can also include it twice so that even if the reader scrolls, the CTA will still be visible.

8. Add an on-brand header

The header of the email is the first component that your target audience will see when they open it. It needs to look presentable, clean, and visually appealing. You can always go for the standard option and display your company name, logo, and the colors of your brand, or you can go the minimal route and just use text to include the name of your promotion. 

9. Craft an engaging subject line 

Statistics say that approximately 47% of the receivers open any email based on the subject line solely. So it is essential to make it catchy, compelling, and conversational. Keep in mind to avoid phrases and terms which might land your promotional email in the spam folder like "100% free", "FREE," and so on. 

10. Add value to the audience

Why should the audience engage with your promotional email? What is there in it for them? That brings us to the point of offering benefits and values to your users. Make sure not to just focus on the features and the promotion that you forget about the benefits.

In an ideal scenario, the email should contain a link to the offer, and once the readers click on the link, it should redirect them to the landing page, where they will get to know more about the features and terms of the promotion in detail.

Craft your email so that the body should be clear and precise and the reader understands the ultimate benefits of it for them.

11. Divide the body of your email into sections

The length of the body of your email depends significantly on the offer you're providing. But let's face it, no one wants to read a long wall of text which looks like an essay.

So try to keep the body of the email precise and divide it into sections in case it's a long one. Add images, bullet points, links, etc., to make it look easier to read and understand.

12. Build proper follow-up strategies

Throughout your email campaign, you will get to look over many factors and even work on follow-ups based on the response received by the recipient and the actions taken by them. However, remember that a single marketing email will not magically do everything. 

Your email campaign should contain multiple offers but make sure that each of them is taking the audience on a journey and showing them some value.

The duration of the buying process and the sales cycle is directly proportional to the number of emails you will need.

13. Understand the receiver of the email

During your business, you will come across many different customers. And you will notice that each of those customers is different, and their requirements vary from each other. In other words, if you try to speak to everyone with a single email, you won't be able to reach out to anyone in particular.

That is where the concept of email segmentation comes into the picture. Try to focus on creating high-value and relevant content that has the power to speak directly to the receiver. Email segmentation is all about identifying your audience correctly and making sure that you deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. 

Once you nail this technique, you will get the opportunity to let your creativity flow and be more specific with your emails.

14. Come up with a targeted list

Build a proper goal regarding who you are targeting and what action you want them to take in the promotional mail. Think about your customers' personalities and factors that all of them might have in common. Does your CRM align with those properties?

Today everyone uses various types of software for their marketing campaigns, but software cannot automatically determine which type of recipients you are sending the emails to. Will all the recipients receive the promotional emails simultaneously, or do they have to meet any particular enrolment criteria. 

15. Write customer-centric email copy

After you have decided the purpose of each email in your campaign and you have crafted your subject lines, you can write the copy that will keep the receivers in your list engaged. Go over the buying journey and determine the position where the audience is at right now and offer them the type of content that will be of some value to them and they will find it helpful.

16. Duration of your email marketing campaign

Depending on your circumstance, tailor the length of your campaign per the buying cycle and where your audience is in that journey. Your primary goal should be to deliver an accurate message at the right time.

17. Create a visually appealing email

There is hardly anyone who wants to read an email that looks like a long essay. Focus on visuals so that the email recipient can understand the point quickly and effortlessly. If you are looking to increase your click-through rates, try to place visually appealing images in your email strategically, and it will support your message even better.

18. Get in the shoes of your buyer persona

Once you figure out the goals you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign, it is time to plan how you want to offer value to your buyer persona so that they are tempted to engage with your company name and take the action you want them to.

Step into the shoes of your buyers and think about questions like how they subscribed, what is relevant to them, and what else you can offer that will make them excited to engage with you?

It's all about understanding their point of view and building strategies to deliver accordingly.

What kind of promotional newsletters should you send?

Marketing newsletters have been in use for a long time now, and there are endless opportunities to take advantage of them. But when there are so many options, it can get overwhelming to choose the best one.

As a business, the best way you can use email newsletters is if you want to announce any sales and discounts or maybe inform your audience about company news and updates. The main goal is to try and get your customers to subscribe to your channel and retain current customers.

Moreover, promotional newsletters are a cost-effective method of communication and help you connect with the customers better. With the correct tools, you will also be able to see how it's performing and receive the metrics.

How to create an amazing email marketing campaign

Building an effective email marketing campaign needs a lot of thinking and planning. Right from the creation process to delivery, there are a lot of steps to consider and a variety of different tools that you can try out to make the process easy and sorted for you.

But when you have a helpful tool in your hand like Mailmunch, what else do you need?

Mailmunch is your ultimate solution to generating new leads while providing your users a much more engaging experience with your business. 

steps to create amazing email marketing campaigns

Take your promotional email design up a notch by using the best-optimized set of marketing tools that are guaranteed to boost conversions. And if you are still wondering if these tools are going to be helpful for you, let's look at the tools and see how they can help you reach your business goals. 

Drag and drop email builder

Whether you are looking to create forms or send stunning emails, the drag and drop email builder is the perfect tool for you from Mailmunch. It makes the process of creating your design much more smooth, flexible, creative, and functional.

Just like the name suggests, all you need to do is drag the elements you need directly onto your form, and once you do, you can always edit and modify any element. This tool from Mailmunch is a time-saver, and it saves you the hassle of creating elements every time you need them.

Responsive email templates 

Using professionally designed, tried, and tested promotion email templates can be a game-changer, and the Mailmunch email template library is here to make it even better. There is a wide range of high converting templates built for multiple industries and categories, including sales, seasons, holidays, and more.

The free email template library can help you realize the full potential of a good email campaign. Today people are more active on their mobile devices, and you need to ensure that your email is mobile-optimized as well. But no worries because Mailmunch offers mobile email templates that load fast and are extremely easy to design.

Make yourself stand out among hundreds of emails in your subscribers' inbox by using 1000+ high converting email templates from Mailmunch.

Segmentation and personalization

As we have already established above, you cannot communicate in the same way with every customer because different groups of people might have different needs, and they might respond differently.

According to a survey by Statista, more than 90% of consumers in the US say they appreciate personalized communications from brands. Hence, customer personalization and customer segmentation are extremely critical. Among the multiple benefits it offers, it helps to get in-depth insights about the customers and know them on a deeper level.

Combining proper customer segmentation strategies and the right platform like Mailmunch will help you automate the campaign in the most impactful way and build an engaged customer base.

Conclusion

Promotional emails are a great way for you to increase revenue and retain your customers — the examples in this article show some of the best ways to send promotional emails. Sending a business proposal in your promotional emails can also be an effective way of getting more work from potential clients and give the company an advantage when compared with other offers they receive on the go.

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Author Bio

Momina Asif

Content marketer by day and book nerd by night, Momina works at Mailmunch as a Marketing Communications Specialist. Momina eats, sleeps, and breathes content marketing. Her expertise ranges from ideation to production to distribution of content, thanks to 4+ years of experience in the B2B content marketing sphere.

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