In the competitive world of DTC e-commerce, a crucial element of customer retention is keeping customers engaged with your brand. Email marketing campaigns are a great way to stay top of mind and relevant to your customers. It's not enough just to send email marketing campaigns about your product. To drive engagement, loyalty, and sales, you need impactful, unique & relevant email campaign topics. That's where an effective email marketing campaign strategy starts.
We've put together 21 email marketing examples that are more than just creative inspirations—they're powerful strategies that have driven results for DTC brands. Use these email marketing examples to inspire your next campaign.
Use these email campaign examples to generate 3 new campaign ideas to test in the next 60 days!
Effective Email Marketing Examples
1. Save The Date Emails
Save The Date emails are perfect for creating anticipation for an upcoming promotion or new product launch. The suspense & advanced notice generates more interest, engagement & revenue on launch day. Add in a calendar invite or link to a Facebook event to easily remind interested customers on the day of launch.
We tend to see Save The Date emails consistently work for most e-commerce brands, but are particularly explosive for limited edition product launches & brands with a strong community!
2. Newsletter
Newsletters were popular for e-commerce brands back in 2016 & slowed down the last few years, but we're seeing them return! They're fantastic for building a brand relationship with your customers by sharing value, updates or behind-the-scenes peeks into your business regularly.
You can do a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newsletter. The most important part of this email marketing campaign is to stay consistent!
Newsletters are an especially useful email marketing campaign strategy to keep audiences engaged for fashion, apparel & home goods brands or those who have a small number of products where email campaigns often get repetitive.
In the email marketing examples below, newsletters are used to stay top of mind & relevant beyond repetitive product-focused emails.
3. Seasonal Tips
Seasonal tips are a useful email marketing campaign to share valuable & season-specific advice to position your brand as a knowledgeable resource.
It's an ideal email campaign for brands whose products or services align with seasonal changes, such as outdoor gear or skincare brands. But any e-commerce brand can leverage seasonal tips emails to share relevant advice for challenges, pain points or questions their customers are thinking about at different times of the year.
4. UGC & Testimonial Emails
UGC isn't dead! At least not in email marketing campaigns. User-generated content (UGC) and testimonials email campaigns create authenticity for your brand & build trust and engagement.
UGC & Testimonial email campaigns work well for almost all DTC e-commerce brands, but they can be a great way to show potential customers different ways to use your product, the results customers have seen & what new customers love most about your product.
5. Loyalty Point Promotional Emails
Discounts are a great way to incentivize sales, but if you run too many promotions too often, it can discount the value of your brand & become less effective over time. That's why using loyalty point promotional email campaigns are a useful strategy to incentivize potential customers in a different way.
This type of email marketing campaign incentivizes purchased by offering bonus reward points for a limited period of time. It's a fantastic strategy to drive more email subscribers to your loyalty program, drive more sales & increase customer retention.
6. Quiz-Style Emails
Interactive and engaging, these emails boost click through rates and guides customers towards finding a product. This type of email marketing campaign is fantastic for brands with a large product catalog.
The email marketing examples show different quiz-style emails that help email subscribers select the best product for them and reduce choice fatigue. These emails also collect customer data to help you personalize other email marketing campaigns.
7. Content + Product Emails
One of the principles of effective email marketing strategy is to deliver both value & drive sales in every email. Combining educational content with promoting a relevant product can convert customers through nurturing them.
This type of email marketing campaign example tends to work best for health & wellness, or personal care products where customers typically have pain points they're looking for advice and solutions around. Content + product emails help them with valuable content before sharing a product that they also may like in order to build trust.
8. Product/Brand Education Emails
These emails educate customers about your product or brand, to build trust & differentiate your brand from other alternatives. The highest-performing educational email marketing campaigns share the elements that make your product/brand unique & that your customers care about most in making a purchasing decision.
This can include information about how your product is formulated, why it works better than alternatives, how to use your product or the positive impact your brand makes.
9. Profiles
Email marketing campaigns that highlight team members, influencers, or customers can be a great way to humanize your brand & build community. The email marketing examples below show different ways to use profiles - from sharing how influencers use your product, to spotlighting collaborations, to sharing stories of customers who have been transformed by your product.
10. Ingredient Spotlights
Ingredient spotlights are a type of email marketing campaign that is perfect for health, wellness, food, beverage, personal care & clean beauty brands. These emails create transparency, build trust & educate customers on the benefits of these ingredients in their daily routine.
11. Must-Have Products For ________
There are a variety of email marketing campaigns you can create with this theme, and the best ones will relate to common pain points, seasons or customer types your business has. For example, a fashion brand may send a "Must-Have Products For Fall" email campaign to promote different clothing & collections for a fall wardrobe.
A skin care company may send a "Must-Have Products For Acne" to promote the skin care products that customers struggling with acne-prone skin should use.
This type of email marketing campaign works best for brands with a larger product catalog where customers may struggle with choice fatigue to find the best products to suit their preferences or needs.
12. Bundle Emails
Bundle emails are a strategic email marketing campaign to increase average order value (AOV) & increase product awareness. They simplify the purchase process for customers by recommending a combination of products based on their needs.
It's a great way to get new customers to try multiple products at once while also reducing choice fatigue, and increase the AOV of returning customers by recommending additional products they may like.
13. _________ For The Season
Season-focused product recommendations can capitalize on changing customer needs throughout the year. This type of email marketing campaign helps keep your content & product messaging relevant for customers. It's also ideal for brands with seasonal products or versatile catalogues.
14. Holiday Emails
No, we're not just talking about Black Friday or the Christmas holiday season. Look for fun national holidays such as "National Pet Day" or even "National Make A Friend Day" as fun, playful ways to share relevant content about your brand.
15. Educational Emails
Educational email marketing campaigns focus on sharing value first, and selling second. To create effective educational emails, you want to start by asking yourself what the top questions, pain points, or challenges your customers have & would want to learn about.
This positions your brand as an expert & deepens their trust with your products as well. It also keeps potential customers engaged with your brand even if they're not ready to buy yet.
16. Team Highlights
Showcasing the people behind the business builds authenticity, humanizes your brand & promotes your company culture. It's also a fantastic way to build team morale! You can use team highlight emails to spotlight individuals on your team, have them share their favorite tips or products.
17. Guide To ______
Similar to educational emails, these "Guide To" email marketing campaigns provide value to your customers by helping them solve a pain point or challenge they might be facing. For example, a travel brand may share a guide to packing for a weekend trip. Or a fitness company may share a guide to toning your body. This email campaign places your brand & products as part of a larger process or lifestyle to improve your customers' lives.
18. Workout Roundups
This type of email marketing campaign is another way to provide value & motivate your customers to drive brand engagement. It's particularly effective for fitness or wellness brands. You can provide free workouts in your emails & even turn them into a challenge to get customers posting on social media to build community.
19. Founder Letters
For founder-led brands, a personal messages from the founder can create more intimacy between the brand and its customers, a sense of connection & transparency. Founder letters is a create email campaign to use when launching a new product to tell the story & "WHY" behind the product, during holidays, and milestones for the business.
20. Building Your Subscription
A common mistake e-commerce brands make is not actively promoting their subscription products enough! Encourage customers to start a subscription by guiding them through the process and showing them how easy it is. For companies with multiple products that customers can subscribe to, you can even guide customers in choosing the best products for them.
21. Personality Emails
Personality-based emails are a fun type of email marketing campaign that help customers choose the best product for them based on different elements of their personality such as their style, favorite color or even their horoscope!
An effective email marketing strategy starts from choosing effective email marketing campaign topics that are relevant to your audience, and allow you to position your brand/products in unique ways. Use these email marketing examples to inspire you to nurture your customers, educate them with relevant content, and drive sales.
Remember, it's not just about promoting products—it's about providing value, telling your brand's story, and building a meaningful connection with your audience. That's the best approach to long-term retention and success for DTC brands!