Promotional Emails: 33 Examples, Ideas, Best Practices [Updated 2020]

We all have go-to ways to create great email campaigns. While it’s not always easy to crack how to get your recipients excited about email promotion — now you can use our shortcut.

There’s no one template to follow to verify your promotional email's quality, but there are many elements that make your offer complete.

In this guide, we’ll look at nine categories of great promotional email examples, and give you key takeaways to help you craft emails that will delight your recipients and drive more revenue for your business.

What is a promotional email?

Promotional emails are a simple yet powerful way to spread the word about your product or service. The objective of promotional emails is to increase awareness, generate revenue or improve customer retention/ loyalty.

Promotional emails are an essential part of any effective email marketing strategy.

According to recent studies:

• 49% of customers said they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite retails brands weekly (Statista).
• Nearly 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is one of the greatest customer acquisition drivers and retention (eMarketer).
• For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $44 (WordStream).

Email annotations for Gmail’s Promotions tab

An important thing to keep in mind when designing promotional emails is an email deliverability and inbox placement.

Remember, the Promotional and Social Tabs rollout back in 2013? Gmail introduced this update to improve the user experience by filtering emails into tabs based on sender and content.

Now in 2019, a new update has arrived — Annotations in the Promotions tab. Using Gmail annotations can help you engage customers, by highlighting your:

These annotations are displayed in the inbox preview on Android and iOS (scheduled to roll out on desktop early this year), giving you a great opportunity to highlight key information like deals, expiration dates, and promo codes.

Image source: Official Gmail blog

This new annotations feature has been created so that Gmail can rank the most relevant promotional emails and provide customers with a better email experience.

The email ranking is based on Google’s specific filters, and your customer engagement metrics will impact the visibility of your emails. Using Gmail annotations will help your email qualify as a ‘Top deal’, although it’s not guaranteed. All other promotional emails are placed in the ‘Remaining promotions’ section.

Read this guide to find out how to add Gmail annotations to your email.

33 Promotional Email Examples

Let’s take a look at some of the best promotional emails examples out there.

Be careful with special offer emails. It’s the kind of stuff that people can get annoyed with. When you send a special offer, segment your audience and use personalization to ensure the offer is relevant. You don’t want to send a discount code to someone who just paid full price yesterday.

When there is real value for the customer, there can be real value for the business too. As long as you maintain that balance, special offers can be a win-win.

Headspace

Subject line: There’s no time like the present.

Headspace’s promotional email is one of our favorite examples. The hero image conveys friendly, positive vibes that help reinforce the recipient's benefit from Headspace. It makes a subtle and very engaging combination.

The further narrative gives you a few serious reasons to start meditating. There’s never too much positivity, compassion or new people in your life, after all! 😉

Headspace uses the email subject line to offer a clear incentive and follow up with a bold CTA prompt action. Supported by a clear benefit that life will be better when they join Headspace.

Headspace incorporates an offer end date to introduce scarcity and prompt the recipient to take action quickly.

Moo

Subject line: Don’t forget your 10% off!

Moo’s promotion lures you in with 10% off for their great quality print products. The brand again builds up trust with a promise “if your order’s not exactly how you pictured it, we’ll reprint it for free!” That efficiently eases anxiety about making a purchase.

Sounds like a bulletproof sales offer.

Check out Moo’s welcome email example to understand how they craft an excellent email experience.

Space NK

Subject line: Enjoy £15 off every £60 spent.

This is a great promotional email example. Space NK uses everything from a money-off incentive, scarcity — ‘Limited time only’, social proof to personalization.

Also, Space NK uses social proof which gives you some ‘top-rated’ shopping ideas and 5-star reviews from other customers. This eases customer anxieties about whether the brand is reputable and can be trusted.

Space NK uses specific user account information to personalize their emails with relevant product recommendations and account usage summary.

Although there are many, small “Shop now” CTAs sprinkled across this email template, the primary CTA is clear and stands out from other content.

Moo

Subject: Special Edition. Gold Foil. ALL YOURS with your next purchase.

Just one more promotional email from Moo. As you can see, they structured the subject line to highlight all the key points of this offer.

Moo uses the image ‘Last chance’, and body copy ‘Offer ends midnight 2 January 2019’ to create a sense of urgency to act fast. Without a limited time offer, recipients may decide to leave the purchase until later, and some will likely forget about it completely.

Cialdini’s six influences of persuasion include the principle: scarcity. This is based on the premise that people are more likely to do something if they believe the opportunity to do so may not come again. We don’t like to miss out, so we want to do something while we have the chance.

This scarcity principle is commonly used in two ways: limiting the offer by the volume available (short supply) or limiting the offer to a specific time period.

Read more about Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion and how to apply them to your promotional emails to increase conversions.

500px

Subject line: Boo! Enjoy this Halloween treat.

Most 500px users are familiar with “Plus” and “Awesome” accounts. They are mentioned frequently in emails and calls to action to upgrade are all over the site. So when an email shows up offering a discount, there is a foundation of knowledge in place.

The important parts of this promotional email — “15% off” and “Upgrade Now” — contrast nicely with the white background. Users will know exactly what to do.

CrashPlan

Subject line: Save on CrashPlan Gifts & Get 2 Months on Us

The copy in this promotional email is all about giving, not getting.

Special offers are often seasonal, and CrashPlan did something interesting with this holiday email. If you give CrashPlan to someone else, you get two free months for yourself. This is useful to people are the holidays and the added incentive makes it a handy email.

eBay

Subject line: You have a special offer from eBay

This special offer is framed liked a transactional email. The subject line — “You have a special offer from eBay” — sounds more like a casual notification than a promotional email campaign.

The offer itself is sold by the items you could have, if only you had PayPal Credit. This is a perfect example of benefits over features.

Starbucks

Subject line: Enjoy 3-holiday drinks, get another free.

It’s not surprising to see a great email from Starbucks. They send some of the best promotional emails out there (Also, see their newest welcome email).

This email, which is sent only to “members”, offers a buy three, get one free deal for a minimal time. Nearly all Starbucks offers are time-sensitive. This is because they need people to actually come to visit a location, not just order things online.

Avoid the grey area of email marketing. You know, that space where you aren’t really sure if the email you’re sending will end up in the inbox or a spam folder. Sale emails can be dangerous. Send them only to people who have explicitly requested them and consistently engage with your emails.

Low engagement rates are a spam signal. Tread lightly.

Sale Emails

Avoid the gray area of email marketing. You know, that space where you aren’t really sure if the email you’re sending will end up in the inbox or a spam folder. Sale emails can be dangerous. Send them only to people who have explicitly requested them and consistently engage with your emails.

Low engagement rates are a spam signal. Tread lightly.

Zalando

Subject line: Last orders: spend more to save

Zalando’s example embraces simplicity, personalization, and visualization. This promotional email is based on a straightforward message “Spend to save”.

Also, the narrative creates a sense of urgency in the subject line and first paragraph. You’re advised to hurry up since the clock is ticking and this sale will end soon.

Grammarly

Subject line: TODAY ONLY: 55% OFF Annual Plans

This Grammarly’s promotion uses a hands-on-deck rule and bets on a solid money-off incentive. And TODAY ONLY in the subject line creates a sense of urgency to encourage recipients to take action and open the email now.

The Guardian

Subject line: Save up to 52% — offer ends tomorrow

In addition to the solid 52% discount on the annual subscription, limited to 24 hours, you have an extra incentive: two newspapers (The Guardian and The Observer — the sister newspaper published on Sundays) at a single price.

Crate and Barrel

Subject line: Our biggest sale of the year.

Crate and Barrel does a great job emphasizing the “60% off” in a contrasting color. That number is key, and this entire promotional email is built around drawing attention to it.

Jackthreads

Subject line: The Jacktober Sales Event Starts Now

This promotional email is loaded with eye candy. The photos are great, the clothes and accessories look great, and there are several calls to action in the email body.

Target

Subject line: Prep for less with the home for the holidays’ sale.

This is a common theme you’ll see from big retailers. They throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks. If you’ve got data, it’s much better to personalize, but if your product selection is as broad as Target’s, you can use it to your advantage.

This promotional email works because it gets the customer thinking about possibilities. “I don’t need a new camera, but that’s an excellent deal.” Use this tactic carefully as it can backfire.

Holiday Offer Emails

Everyone expects to get more emails during the holidays.

You have a green light to send a promotional email (to people who opted in) but not to badger your subscribers or annoy them.

Use the built-in context of the holidays to craft a message that will be welcome in the inbox.

Tod’s

Subject line: Valentine’s Day — Somebody to Love

Tod’s newest promotional email is definitely something to see. They use colors and a short message to transport you to their picturesque fairy tale and tell captivating stories to drive your attention. All of Tod’s campaigns are stylish and consistent. Clear terms of the offer are highlighted at the top of the email to keep you informed and the offer transparent.

The newest Valentine’s promotional email aligns with Tod’s overall marketing communication. Tod’s team knows how to add some sugar, but not overdo it, and keep it classy.

Monzo

Subject line: Give the gift of Monzo this Christmas

Christmas is all about giving. With Monzo, you can share a discount of £10 with your friends, and make them happier during this special time of the year.

Monzo’s Christmas offer is a fine example of how to use seasonality to promote your customer referral program. Each friend you refer will receive £10 when they become a Monzo customer. This is a great way to reach new customers and reward existing customers.

Good idea!

Do you like this email? Create a free account and build your promotional email campaign in Vero.

Harry’s

Subject line: A Valentine, from you to you

Harry’s promotional email uses a genuine sense of humor and conversational tone of voice to upgrade its trial users on Valentine’s day. Harry’s do a great job at making a tenuous link with the occasion and their offer. We’ve picked out some best practices used in this email:

• Intriguing subject line; it’s playful and conversational.
• Strong, beautiful imagery looks grotesque and hilarious.
• Clear CTA, implies action and the benefit at the same time.
• Scannable and easy-to-digest

This example shows a different perspective on Valentine’s Day and proves you don’t have to go with the flow. Sometimes a less conventional approach can be more engaging.

Amazon

Subject line: Black Friday Deals All This Week

By the time customers receive this email, they’ve likely already heard a few news stories about how Amazon is prepping for the holiday season. They know the deals will be good. The context is already there. This email is just a green light to start shopping.

You have two options when it comes to announcing events via email. You can include the announcement in an exiting email (like a newsletter) or send a separate email dedicated to the announcement. Both can work, and we have examples of each.

As always, the format is less important than the content. Can you concisely and clearly communicate value? Do that, and your event will be off to a great start.

ConversionXL

Subject line: Announcing: Conversion XL Live

This is an example of building the announcement into an existing newsletter. Peep does a great job using a conversational tone. If you’ve read the blog, it sounds like Peep. He sells the conference, but he doesn’t go overboard. Why? Because if you’ve already subscribed to the newsletter, you already know ConversionXL does great work.

KISSmetrics

Subject line: How we survived a 40$ traffic hit from Google.

This is a different approach. KISSmetrics sent this email with the sole purpose of announcing the webinar. Startups are rarely willing to talk about their challenges, so they get your attention from the beginning. The story builds your interest before sealing the deal with a call to action.

Unbounce

Subject line: Announcing The 1st Unbounce Call To Action Conference!

Another example of a dedicated announcement email, Unbounce doesn’t waste much time getting recipients to the conference website. Conferences are big investments, so people are likely to spend a lot of time researching before committing. The landing page really sold the show. This email was just a catalyst.

Buffer

Subject line: Your Social Media Report Card: Dec1 5 — Dec 21

This isn’t a dedicated upgrade email… or is it?

In this report that Buffer sends each week, they ask users to upgrade above the fold. Recipients see the call to action before they even see the metrics. Upgrade emails exist in many forms. There are a few different approaches in this section. Pay special attention to Buffer as they seem to be onto something great with their version.

TripAdvisor does something very similar. This is a great example of making the most of transactional email. Users like receiving their reports and probably feel good about the metrics. It’s the perfect time to ask them to upgrade.

Spotify

Subject line: Let us introduce Premium — you’ll love it!

Instead of going for the upgrade right away, Spotify lets you try their premium service for free first. And the service is great. Email marketing always works best when the product does the selling for you.

Todoist

Subject line: Love upgrades? Test Todoist Premium for Free

This approach is similar to Spotify, but Todoist spends a little more time on its benefits. This is useful to newbies since the software does so much.

The emphasis on “no commitment and no credit card” alleviates some of the anxiety around free trials. And just when the user’s interest is piqued, they bring it home with a bold, red button.

Click-bait emails

Why is there so much click-bait out there? Because it works.

The problem with clickbait is that the headline oversells the content, leaving the reader disappointed.

“Most clickbait is disappointing because it’s a promise of value that isn’t met — the payoff isn’t nearly as good as what the reader imagines… BuzzFeed headlines pay off particularly well because they actually make fairly small promises and then overdeliver.”
— Nilay Patel (Editor-in-chief, The Verge)

Read the full post: Why BuzzFeed Doesn’t Do Clickbait.

So there’s your strategy. Now let’s see how some of the pros do it.

Quora

Subject line: If the USE decides to shut down the Internet, can it? — Quora

Quora lets their users generate subject lines for their emails.

Each newsletter arrives with a question from my feed, meaning the subject lines are always interesting and cover a wide range of topics. You never know what you’re going to get with a Quora email, but it’s always worth checking out.

We wrote more about this strategy in 20 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails.

Survey your customers about your product. I bet you’ll find that they know about half of what it does.

“Did you know” emails

“Did you know” emails are great for onboarding and inactive users? They can be promotional or behavioral. We suggest the latter, since highly targeted behavioral emails consistently perform better than promotional emails.

Adobe

Subject line: Five Creative Cloud features we think you’ll love

If you’ve ever used Adobe’s tools, you know they are beastly. Powerful and useful, yes but overwhelming.

Now that most Adobe users pay a monthly fee to use their creative suite, it’s important to continually remind users that they are getting something great for their money. This promotional email is a perfect way to engage users with the software and make them feel good about their investment.

Pinterest

Subject line: Another thing you can do on Pinterest: Plan your next trip!

Pinterest sends a great onboarding series. Seriously, go sign up for a new account to get some great ideas for your own onboarding email.

As a new user, I didn’t know about “place boards”, but I created one after seeing this promotional email. So it worked … really well.

Onboarding emails are designed to drive engagement. So when Pinterest says “Here’s something cool you probably didn’t know” then immediately prompts the user to try it, everyone wins.

Apology Emails

Saying “I’m sorry” can be really hard but sometimes it must be done.

Email is a good way to send a personal message apologizing if you've upset your users or customers.

You also have an opportunity to delight the recipient ( more on that here) by giving them something free or surprising them. Check out what we mean.

Buffer

Subject line: We got this one wrong. We’ve adjusted all paid plans: Now add up to 15 blog feeds.

When Buffer first added feeds to their app, users were upset because they could only add one. It was still better than before, just not as good as people hoped.

Instead of getting defensive, CEO Joel Gascoigne sent this email apologizing for the disappointment. And he announced that effective immodestly, users could add up to 15 feeds.

Now that is a great apology email.

Copyblogger

Subject line: CORRECTION: Tomorrow’s Rainmaker Webinar

We’ve all sent an email we wish we could take back. Maybe it had a bad link, an incorrect date or a grammar error.

In this case, Copyblogger sent an email about an upcoming webinar but listed the time incorrectly. This email arrived shortly after apologizing for the error and the extra noise in the inbox.

They got it right, though. The correction had to be made, and the email was short and sweet.

Sumday

Subject line: Service Interruption

Your tech team invests a lot of team energy trying to achieve 99.999% uptime, but somehow people are still upset when your site goes down. It happens, and it often requires an apology.

Sumday kept this email brief but still got the point across.

If you want to make people feel special, invite them to something. A special email list, a pre-sale, a beta group … it makes people feel excellent.

Be sure to spend time segmenting your lists before you hit send on an invitation. Don’t send them to everyone, defeating the purpose — and trying to segment based on past behavior. It’s a great indicator of future behavior.

Amazon

Subject line: You’re invited to join Amazon’s Site, MyHabit.com.

Perhaps because I’ve purchased just a few days of signing up for a new account, Amazon wants to strike while the iron is hot. In this email, they invite me to join a site called MyHabit.com that curates deals for clothing and other fashion products.

Within five days of opening the account, I made two purchases.

• October 21: Open account
• October 23: Purchase #1
• October 26: Purchase #2
• October 31: Invitation to MyHabit.com

My purchasing behavior is trending upward. They’ve had to do very little to entice me to buy. They see this as a signal that I’m ready to spend and are trying to build a frequent purchasing habit.

Read more on this email in our post How Amazon Dominates E-Commerce With Email Marketing.

Divvy

Subject line: You’re invited — DivvyHQ New User Training.

Everyone is used to orientation sessions. New job, new school, new software … you need to get oriented. So this promotional email from Divvy inviting new users to orientation is not only useful, it’s expected.

Inbox by Gmail

Subject line: Your invitation to try Inbox by Gmail

Google loves to build anticipation for new products by requiring an invite to join. By the time you get this email, you know the product and itching to get your “in”.

The email starts with the good stuff … the call to action. It’s there too, complete with a video walkthrough and an explanation of the new features for those wanting more information.

Key Takeaways

Promotional emails can be your greatest customer retention driver and effective revenue generation channel. The examples we picked out represent some of the best email marketing practices for promotional emails. Here’s a summary of the key takeaways:

1. When you send a special offer, make sure you segment your lists first. You don’t want to send a discount code to someone who just paid full price yesterday.
2. Use your subject line to clearly present your value proposition statement and make sure to make it friendly, intriguing and conversational.
3. Use images or GIFs (dynamic content) to communicate your readers' benefit from the offer quickly.
4. Make your copy brief, but concise. Email attention spans are short — about 11 seconds, according to Litmus research. So you don’t need a wordy email. Less is more.
5. Add a clear CTA that’s scannable and aligns with your email's overall narrative to prompt an action.
6. Use Cialdini’s scarcity principle to prompt recipients to create a sense of urgency and quickly complete the purchase.
7. Use personalization to make your offer super relevant and develop a stronger attachment with your recipient.
8. Show customer reviews and ratings to build trust with recipients and bring them closer to a purchase decision.
9. Optimize your promotional emails for Gmail annotations to highlight your offer.
10. AB test your promotions to optimize your promotional emails and increase conversions.

Next Steps

Go to Chapter 4: Transactional Emails. Back to Table of Contents