We’re living in a whole new (digital) world.
A couple of years ago, you likely never imagined spending this much time staring at your own face on an endless cycle of Zoom calls.
Despite this pandemic accelerating our already head-spinning technological evolution (BlackBerry Messenger, we hardly knew ye) good ol’ fashioned email still manages to stand strong and steady at the helm of marketing tools.
Why?
Because email is a platform where you can only consume one piece of content at a time; making it an invaluable resource for marketers trying to capture our ever waning attention.
To build an email marketing strategy that really works, here are 4 email marketing templates you can use right away.
#1. Welcome Email (First Impressions Matter)
#2. Abandoned Cart Email (No Purchase Left Behind)
#3. Engagement Email (Put A Ring On It)
#4. Social Proof Email (They Love You! They Really, Really Love You!)
Before We Begin: Don’t Ghost Your Customers
Before we dive into the different email templates you can use to build a powerful, customer-centric email marketing strategy, we want to get one thing straight: consistency is key for memorable emails that stick.
You want your audience to be engaged, not confused, when they see your name in their inbox — so don’t leave them hanging with weeks of radio silence.
Wowing someone on your first date won’t make up for when you ghost them for a month.
#1. Welcome Email (First Impressions Matter)
Hurrah! A customer just subscribed to your mailing list 🎉
This is a very special moment.
Whether they just placed an order, or simply signed up for your newsletter, at this point you can be certain that your customer wants to establish a relationship with you.
They’re interested in what you have to say, so don’t leave them hanging.
In your welcome email, you get to show your customers what makes you the best at solving their problems. Be mindful of where your customer signed up, and what promises (like discount codes and free shipping) you made in exchange for their email.
For wow-worthy welcome emails, you’ll want to:
Start with your story. Dig a little deeper into your mission, shine a light on your team, and share how you’ve made the lives of your subscribers better. Keep the content and the photos personal — whatever that means for your brand.
Give ‘em the goods. Did you offer a discount code to subscribers signing up for your mailer? Now’s the time to deliver.
Get social. If you’re active on social media, invite your subscribers to connect with you there.
Make sharing a breeze. Your current subscribers are your most powerful asset to growing your user base. Make sure to include links that make it easy for them to forward your mailer to their friends (i.e. including a forward button at the top and bottom of your email).
Share the love. You know those sweet DMs customers send you about how much they love your business? Screenshot and share (with permission, of course) those bad boys with your subscribers. This kind of social proof reassures them that they’re in good company.
Supergoop!, a prestige skincare brand dedicated to suncare, uses their welcome email to:
✓ Spotlight their story, inviting subscribers to connect with their mission through a personal, friendly note from their founder.
✓ Offer a first-purchase discount code.
✓ Invite you to get social with their founder on social media, sharing her Twitter handle in her signature (keeping the tone casual, and not salesy).
#2. Abandoned Cart Email (No Purchase Left Behind)
Ahh, the abandoned cart. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of being this close to getting a sale.
But before you beat yourself up over your customer’s indecision, know that you’re not alone: among ecommerce shoppers, 70% abandon their cart [*].
70% is nothing to balk at.
You don’t want to miss engaging this sizable segment of potential customers with an email.
But be careful: tempting as it may be to play the scarcity/fear card (i.e. “If you don’t buy these today you might never get them again!”), modern ecommerce shoppers are wary of anything that smells of desperation or coercion, and prefers a more casual, friendly approach (i.e. “Looks like you forgot something.”).
For an abandoned cart email your customers can’t resist, be sure to:
Keep it friendly. This is another opportunity for you to create a delightful brand experience with your customer. A hard sell this is not. Keep it light, compliment your customer on their taste (they are considering buying something from you, after all) and if it suits your brand, go in with a sense of humor.
Show them what they’re missing. We are visual creatures, so be sure to include photos for the items your customer abandoned, and offer a link to the products to make it quick and easy for them to complete their purchase.
Double up. Your customer’s attention is an invaluable resource. At this point, they’ve just visited your site, chosen an item, and shown intent to purchase. Your job now is to make sure your business stays fresh in their minds. Through your ecommerce site and/or your email service provider, you can set up a trigger that will automatically send an email to customers who add products to their cart without completing their purchase. This is where you double up: sending the first one one to three hours after they’ve abandoned their cart, and another at the 24 hour mark.
Everlane, an ecommerce clothing store specializing in elevated basics, uses their abandoned cart email to:
✓ Build friendly rapport with customers, kicking off their email with a compliment on their great taste, with a dash of humor (“Then again—we might be biased.”) for good measure.
✓ Show customers what they’re missing, with a beautifully shot photo and well-written description of the product they left behind.
✓ Encourage customers to finalize their purchase with an intriguing call-to-action button (“TAKE ANOTHER LOOK”).
#3. Engagement Email (Put A Ring On It)
You know that friend that only hits you up when they need a favour?
When you only send emails to your customers with a heavy sales pitch… you’re being that friend.
... don’t be that friend.
Instead, focus on building a rapport with your customers, by sharing engagement emails that, well, engage them with your brand: helping to deepen your relationship, and remind them why your product is the right one to solve their problems.
Engagement emails have a lot to do with identity, and how your product helps customers fit into an idealized image they have of themselves.
This can be by helping them fulfill a need (eating, sleeping and finding shelter), a want (clothing and entertainment), or a purpose (like the social causes we mentioned above).
With a great engagement email, you want to reinforce a sense of belonging into the unique demographic and psychographic groups your customer identifies with.
For commitment-ready engagement emails, you’ll want to:
Place customers at the centre of your story. Keep customers interested in what you have to say, by framing your product’s solution in terms of their problems (i.e. a skincare company saying “Hormonal acne bringing you down? We’ve got the fix.” vs. “Our skincare is sure to give you smooth skin.”). Survey emails are a great, easy tool to find out exactly what customers expect (i.e. a jewellery company asks customers to vote on the styles they would most like to see in their next drop).
Make customer’s goals accessible. How are you helping your customers achieve their goals? Break this down into simple steps they can easily follow. Education emails are engagement emails that make customer adoption of your product quick and easy (i.e. a project management app shares tips and tricks on how to break the cycle of bad meetings).
Validate your thought leadership. “Thought leadership” is a buzzy word for content that shows your target audience how, and why, you can solve their problems better than your competition, often by establishing your team’s authority in your industry (i.e. a health foods brand brings in their founder, a nutritionist, to write about the health benefits of their products).
Casper, an e-commerce sleep products company, uses their engagement email to:
✓ Centre their customer (and their problem): resetting their sleep schedule as daylight savings approaches.
✓ Break down how customers can solve this problem in 5 easy steps.
✓ Clearly link their products to this solution.
✓ Gently push the sale with an intriguing reward at the bottom of their email.
#4. Social Proof Email (They Love You! They Really, Really Love You!)
Say you’re browsing online for a new pair of headphones. You find three that hit the mark in regards to specs and price range, so how do you decide which to take home?
It’s written in the stars...
… sort of. We’re talking more customer ratings, less sun/moon-rising — and, specifically, which product has the most positive reviews.
This is the power of social proof: it motivates you to adopt a product, service or, outside the scope of business, behaviour, depending on its adoption by others.
It’s a natural response rooted in our survival instinct to follow the herd (on whom we once depended to protect us from threats of predatory animals, harsh climates, and violent, competing tribes).
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For a powerful email marketing strategy, you need to be prepared to meet your customers at every step of their journey. To help you get started, we’re sharing tried-and-true email templates you can use right away to turn one-time buyers into loyal fans.
Today, this instinct helps us choose which books we’ll read, people we’ll hire, and products we’ll buy. For e-commerce, where potential customers can’t take a real-live look at your product before purchasing, social proof — seeing what other people have to say about your product — is crucial to driving sales.
In social proof emails, you’ll want to:
Let others do the talking. The whole point of social proof is that it allows others to speak to the power of your product. Customers already expect you to talk about how great your product is — what they don’t expect is to see others being just as enthusiastic about it as you are.
Show your authority. Authority is rooted in prestige. When your product is positively reviewed by gatekeepers (be they the media, industry giants, experts or otherwise), it heightens your business’s status as a trusted, reputable brand. Be sure to include business and media logos or, where it’s an individual authority figure, any notable certifications, titles and accolades they may have.
Get to the point. People will believe a sentence or two of ripe enthusiasm for your product. But when testimonials veer to the extreme — we’re talking more than a few sentences here — they come off as cheesy, and risk seeming inauthentic. A single, bold sentence is far more memorable, and makes for punchy content you can repurpose into graphics for online ads and social media.
Bite, creator of plastic-free and all natural toothpaste tablets, uses their social proof email to:
✓ Focus the spotlight on their positive reviews, with only a couple of sentences to introduce their email.
✓ Start strong with authoritative testimonials, including logos from the established media platforms that shared them.
✓ Get personal, including the names of customers alongside their reviews and an invitation to connect on social media at the bottom of their email.
✓ Repeat their call-to-action (SHOP NOW) after each section, to increase the likelihood of driving customers to act while they have their attention.
✓ Offer a discount, building on this email’s positive vibes.
Stay Connected With Your Customers
Your customers may read your emails one at a time, but the opportunities to engage them through this platform are plenty.
Start using these email templates right away to connect with your customers at every stage of their journey — building, in time, the kind of steady, long-term relationship that turns one-time buyers into loyal fans.
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