Even with all the advancements in technology, email marketing remains a top contender for connecting with your ideal customers. It helps you stay on their radar, so when the time is right, they’re ready to act on your offerings. Just like a successful email marketing strategy has many facets, crafting a compelling promotional email requires careful attention to detail. This guide covers everything you need to create promotional emails that deliver results, including:

• What promotion emails are and when to use them.
• Points to consider before drafting your email.
• Practical tips and best practices for writing your email.
• Inspiring examples of promotional emails for your reference.

P.S. We also have helpful articles on networking email tips and templates and follow-up email templates!

What are promotion emails?

Promotional emails are exactly what they sound like: marketing emails sent to your audience—including customers, leads, or subscribers—sharing information about a current promotion. You can create promotion emails for virtually any offer you’re running:

• Time-sensitive offers.
• Special deals exclusive to subscribers or customers.
• Seasonal or holiday promotions.
• Product launches.
• New arrivals.
• Welcome offers for new subscribers/customers.
• Contests and giveaways.
• Free content such as eBooks, white papers, guides, infographics, and more.
• Other special deals, like buy-one-get-one offers, refer-a-friend programs, coupons, and promotional codes. This guide will provide various examples of promotional emails throughout and at the end. Promotional emails are effective because email marketing itself is highly effective:
• 91% of consumers check their email daily.
• 58% of consumers check their email before doing anything else online.
• Brands experience a return on investment of 42 times the amount they spend on email marketing.

Image source Furthermore, everyone enjoys a good promotion. Combining these two factors makes promotional emails a winning marketing strategy:

• 68% of millennials admit that promotional emails have influenced their buying choices.
• 76% of email subscribers have made purchases based on an email marketing message.

Before writing your promotion emails

While email promotions are effective, you can’t just slap one together and expect stellar results. There are general email marketing best practices to follow, as well as some promotional email-specific guidelines to keep in mind. Let’s begin with some fundamental steps to take before you even start writing.

Determine your promotion

Before you even outline your email (which you should do every time), pinpoint the subject. What are you offering the reader? Whether it’s a limited-time discount, a webinar, a free eBook, or a rewards program, the promotion itself will shape your entire email.

Clarify your promotion’s purpose

Once you know what you’re promoting, determine why. For instance, you might offer free content to guide leads further down your sales/marketing funnel or host a webinar to launch a new product and generate sales. Understanding your objective helps determine your email’s tone, placement, and target audience. Some examples of objectives include:

• Re-engaging inactive customers.
• Boosting sales for a particular product or service.
• Enhancing audience interaction.
• Driving more traffic to your website.
• Increasing brand visibility in a specific industry or niche within your audience.
• Reducing customer churn.

Pinpoint your target audience

After figuring out your promotion and its purpose, identify your target audience. Sending the same promotional email to your entire audience is not advisable because your message gets diluted trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, send it to a select group, or segment your list for targeted messaging tailored to each segment. The way you present the offer to new customers you’re guiding through your sales funnel will differ from how you present it to existing customers you want to encourage repeat business from. Knowing your audience beforehand enables you to write a more impactful email.

Tips for writing your promotional email

With your promotional email’s framework in place, you can start crafting your copy and setting up your send. The following tips can help maximize your open and engagement rates.

Highlight the benefit/value

Avoid focusing too heavily on the promotion and its features at the expense of its benefits. Ideally, the link for your offer leads readers to a landing page detailing the promotion’s features and terms. The promotional email itself should clearly convey the promotion’s value to the reader and emphasize the ultimate benefits.

Send from a person

Besides the subject line, the “from” field significantly impacts whether recipients open, ignore, or delete your promotional emails. Instead of using your company name, consider using your name (or a teammate’s) to add a personal touch. People generally prefer reading emails from other humans, but be sure to test this out, as preferences can vary across audiences.

When sending promotional emails from a personal account, include an attractive and professional email signature. Include the sender’s name, their role in the company, and, if relevant, company contact information, social media handles, and a photo. This adds a nice personal touch to your promotional emails and helps readers feel more connected to your brand.

Introduce your promotion in the subject line

Did you know 47% of emails are opened based on the subject line alone? Therefore, when including your promotion in the subject line, make it catchy, conversational, and compelling. However, remember that certain words and phrases can trigger spam filters and land your email in the spam folder (for example, using “free,” “FREE,” or “100% free”). Here’s an example of a compelling promotional email subject line from Shutterfly:

Utilize preheader text

Email users typically see three pieces of information before opening an email: the sender name, subject line, and preheader text. While only a few words long (around 40-130 characters), preheader text can be the deciding factor in whether someone opens your email. Use this limited space to provide a crucial detail about the promotion, clarifying the email’s purpose and enticing readers. Preheader text appears differently depending on the email client and device. Sometimes it’s below the subject line; other times, it’s right after it, like in the Shutterfly example above:

In some cases, preheader text may also appear within the promotional email itself, as shown below, but not always.

If you can’t manually fill in the preheader text field, your email client will typically pull in the first 40-50 characters of the email. Therefore, make sure those initial characters are engaging and give readers a reason to keep reading.

Brand your header

The header is the first thing a consumer sees when they open your promotional email, so ensure it’s clean, professional, and visually appealing. You can use a standard, simple header with your logo, company name, and brand colors or include space for text to add the promotion’s name.

You might even include the CTA directly in the email header, as we sometimes do:

Break up the email body

The body length will vary depending on your promotional email’s offer. However, a wall of text is a surefire way to send readers clicking the “X” to trash your email. Keep your promotional email’s body concise and break up longer text blocks with images, links, or bullet points for easier digestion.

Include a call to action

Most importantly, your promotional email must have a loud (but not annoying) and clear call to action. The most effective promotional emails guide readers seamlessly toward the desired action.

You don’t have to place the CTA at the end of your promotional email, as long as it’s clear and easily noticeable:

You might even include the CTA twice in longer emails so the option remains visible even if the reader has scrolled down. (You can even get some helpful CTA ideas from ChatGPT using these ChatGPT prompts.)

Incorporate visuals

No email is complete without captivating and visually appealing imagery. Instead of using the same stock photos as every other company in your industry, try using your own photos or create graphics with free and easy-to-use platforms like Canva. It doesn’t take much time, it’s a simple way to authenticate your brand, and it helps break up the text. However, don’t go overboard with images. Your promotional email should be exciting but not overwhelming, and the images should complement, not distract from, the CTA.

More promotional email examples

We’ve included numerous promotional email examples with our tips and best practices, but it never hurts to see more. Here are a few more to inspire you or adapt for your business promotions.

New offer promotional email

This excellent promotional email example from BookBub features a branded header with attractive imagery that prioritizes the promotion’s value over the promotion itself. It provides the name of the promoted platform (“chirp”) but highlights the ultimate benefit first (“audiobook deals”). The copy is also clear and concise. In under 50 words, the email addresses all its readers’ questions: Why should I read this email? To get audiobook deals. What should I do? Sign up for free. What is it? A new platform called chirp. Why will I like it? No subscription required, new deals daily, and unbeatable prices. They also include a second CTA that reinforces the ultimate benefit (“Start Getting Deals!”).

Flash sale promotional email

Let’s start with an example of a promotional email that doesn’t follow the best practices covered in this post. First, there’s no attractive imagery—even the logo in the branded header is small. Second, it highlights the features rather than the benefits. Third, while the promotion is clear (20% off all plans), the call to action is not. You’re asked to claim your discount, but for what? Only upon closer inspection do you find that it’s to “upgrade today.”

On the other hand, WordPress could be targeting this email at WordPress power users or engineers who already understand the platform’s benefits and are more inclined to look for specific features. In this case, providing feature details without distractions or unnecessary elements makes sense, which brings us back to our third tip: target your audience. Additionally, two best practices are followed: the bolded blue text highlights the call to action amidst the gray text, and the bullets break up the text for easier reading.
Generally, however, effective flash sale promotional emails can be text-light. You’re urging recipients to stop reading and start shopping, and the discount itself implies the benefit of saving money. Here’s a better example of a flash sale promotional email following the best practices in this post. It uses simple design elements like a legibly-sized logo, an emoji, and branded charts; emphasizes the benefit (“get paid twice as fast”); and features a CTA button that both stands out and clarifies the offer.

Free resource promotional email

This email example from Zoom doesn’t offer a discount or sale but instead presents a selection of free resources. Promotional offers like this keep customers engaged with your brand and products, fostering customer loyalty.
In terms of best practices, it features a branded header and a benefit statement (“host meetings like a pro”) from the get-go. It also includes concise copy for each resource and a large orange CTA clarifying the next step.

Time-limited promotional email

The following example from DoorDash might appear text-heavy, but it’s an effective promotional email for a limited-time offer because it adheres to best practices. It features attractive imagery and a prominent CTA button, and it uses bold and regular font weights to break up the text.

Note that this email’s footer contains details about the promotion. This placement is an effective way to include terms and conditions without cluttering the email body.

New offering announcement email

New products and expanded offerings make for excellent promotional emails. This example email checks all the boxes for imagery, benefit focus, brevity, and CTA best practices. The image complements the colored text, the ultimate benefit is highlighted in large font at the top, the messaging is concise and to the point, and the two options are crystal clear.

Content promotion email

You don’t need fancy promo codes or unique landing pages for every promotional email. Our weekly Performance Tip email is a good example of a simple content promotion. We might be tooting our own horn here, but then again, you’d hope we’re following best practices if we’re writing about them! We use a branded header with appealing imagery that sets the tone for the email type, and the content title is in large font at the top so readers immediately know what they’re getting into. While there’s a fair amount of text, it’s broken up by bullet points for easy skimming. Finally, there’s a clear CTA at the end, directing readers to the full post.

Drive success with your business’s promotion emails

Using email to communicate your special offers, deals, and promotions is undoubtedly worthwhile. Just be sure to follow the tips and guidelines above to maximize your results. Here’s a recap of how to write a promotional email:

1. Determine your promotion, clarify your objective, and target your audience.
2. Focus on the ultimate benefit to the reader.
3. Send from a person (if applicable) and use an attractive signature.
4. Introduce the promotion in the subject line.
5. Use a branded header.
6. Break up the email body.
7. Include visuals.
8. Be concise. For additional help with email marketing, try our copy-and-paste email templates and skip starting from scratch!