Are you knocking it out of the park with your email campaigns? Any marketer would rarely answer yes to that question. No matter what your strategy looks like or how effective you think they are, email marketing mistakes happen, and results, open rates, and conversions can always be improved. 

There are different types of emails, and the ones you end up creating matter. If you aren’t sending emails your audience finds relevant, they’ll disengage and possibly unsubscribe altogether, which can affect your deliverability over time. An effective email marketing strategy goes a lot deeper than just a casual message to your email lists once in a while to let them know you’re still around. If you want to create emails that engage, delight, and convert, you need to be diversifying your efforts with emails that span a range of formats, purposes, and frequencies. This includes creating emails that cater to the various email lists in your arsenal. 

So avoid rapid unsubscribes and uninterested audience members. Below are ten essential types of marketing emails you should be incorporating into your email strategy and why they’re beneficial for not only you but your email subscribers as well.

1. Welcome Email

A welcome email is so successful because customers are expecting it when they sign up and because they’re excited about your brand. This is when first impressions really count and when your customers are most engaged, so spend time and resources on creating an amazing first email.

Some brands take it a step further and offer a welcome discount. This is one of the best ways to make sure you don’t lose your subscriber and to gently nudge them along the purchase funnel. Nowadays, you can find email templates of all stripes, including welcome photographer templates, for makeup artists and hair stylists, coaches, marketers, sellers, tutors, graphic designers, and more.

You could also consider creating a welcome sequence to keep your brand top of mind for a longer period of time and sustain interest.

Every element of your welcome email is prime real estate – including your subject line. Use it wisely! 

This welcome email from Tattly works because:

• It’s on-brand and showcases their personality really well.
• It celebrates the reader.
• It offers them a discount as a hook.
• It showcases some of their most popular products.

2. Newsletters

Opt-in email newsletters are crucial for building brand awareness and loyalty and a great opportunity for marketing teams of all sizes to increase engagement with their audience. Whether you send newsletters weekly, monthly, or just once a quarter, use them to provide a round-up of your most recently published content, as well as a place to highlight any new promotions, offers, or events.

Think of your email newsletters as hubs that can direct subscribers to other valuable digital resources. A well-done newsletter will drive more traffic to your website, grow your social media community, and increase your sales. Not too shabby for what some consider to be the most basic form of email marketing.

3. Content Marketing Emails

There are various types of emails that fall under this category, but they all have one objective – to provide value rather than sell a product or service.

Content marketing emails are geared toward educating customers. For example, a fashion retailer might send trend alerts with styling advice, or a bookshop might send a round-up of book reviews. Here are some other kinds of content marketing emails:

• Ebooks
• Blog post roundups 
• Members-only information

Content marketing is a great way to build affinity for your brand and humanize it. Let’s face it: no one wants to be sold to all the time. By offering value, you show that your priority as a business is not just making a sale but also building a long-term relationship with your customers.

Take Buffer, for example. This email works for them because:

• It’s simple and to the point.
• The tone is conversational and pleasant.
• It offers helpful advice only for the sake of being useful.
• It loads fast because it’s a text email.
• It’s personalized to their social media management account and is a friendly encouragement to tweet.

4. Lead Nurturing Drip Campaigns

Drip campaigns are a type of email marketing campaign that rolls out targeted content to your subscribers to gently guide them along the sales funnel. We recommend having segmented lists for prospects in each stage of the buyer’s journey so you can reach out to them with resources that answer their unique questions and needs. This adds a level of personalization that will delight your prospects. And because they’re automatic, drip campaigns save you time in the long run. 

Drip campaigns are incredibly useful when it comes to staying top of mind with your audience. They help you effectively follow up email with and re-engage prospects who might have gotten distracted somewhere along the funnel. They also help ensure that the content you put a lot of work into creating (blog posts, webinars, infographics, guides, etc.) actually ends up in front of who it’s intended for.

5. Review Requests

What’s more reliable than word-of-mouth marketing? Nothing! Reviews are the digital equivalent of this, but leaving a review is not always a customer’s priority. A review email can make the process much easier, getting you those coveted endorsements for your social media pages, website, or even future email campaigns.

And, of course, you can dangle a little bait to make reviewing rewarding. Offer an incentive for those who complete and submit their opinions. For example, offer a discount or an entry into a contest where they can win a gift card.

Giving reviewers a discount code also encourages repeat purchases – would you say no to that?

This email from Tailor Brands is smart because:

• It specifies “3 minutes,” bulldozing the number one reason people don’t leave reviews – because they don’t have time.
• The 50% off incentive is in the heading, acting as a very effective hook to make people read on.
• It’s humble, and the tone is just right.
• The call to action is clear, and you don’t need to scroll down too far to see it.

6. Transactional Emails

Marketing doesn’t stop at the point of sale. Transactional emails, which include digital receipts, shipping confirmations, and personalized post-sale product recommendations, deliver relevant information to your customers while also giving you a leg up when it comes to getting them to keep coming back again and again. 

Transactional emails fill in many of the gaps that often result in people becoming one-time customers. On top of providing need-to-know information, they also increase customer engagement and build trust — both of which are essential if you want to keep your customers around.

7. Abandoned Cart Emails

The beauty of abandoned cart emails is that they work as a gentle nudge. Your customer has made it through *almost* all the stages in your purchase funnel, and they are this close to completing the sale.

At this point, your abandoned cart email could be the difference between closing the sale and losing their interest for good. 

In their eCommerce Industry Benchmark Report, Klaviyo found that each abandoned cart email earns $5.81 in revenue. So what have you got to lose (and what’s the contrast against what you stand to gain)?

If you’re on board with the idea, here’s a great example to learn from. Birchbox’s email:

• Creates a sense of urgency with “before your items sell out.”
• Offers an additional discount (and tracks it with the promo code).
• Has multiple call to action buttons, which typically is a no-no, but these are all the same, so they aren’t overlooked. 
• Has a direct link to product reviews – the main consideration for someone on the fence about buying.
• Lists your cart in the email itself, which makes it easier to remember what you wanted and why.

8. News Updates

It’s okay to toot your own horn! News update emails call attention to anything exciting that’s going on with your company. Next time you win a big award, have an upcoming conference that your CEO will be speaking at, or secured additional funding, let your subscribers know about it. It helps contribute to your brand authority and continues to secure their faith in your partnership. 

With all of the competition out there, it makes sense to use email marketing as a way to increase brand integrity and authority, and news updates do just that. For the best outcomes, send them only when something big happens — everything else can be mentioned in a newsletter.

9. Milestones

If you’re using a CRM, then chances are you’re monitoring key information about your customers, like their birthdays or anniversaries. So why not put all of that data to use with milestone emails? These creative and personalized campaigns recognize important occasions to drive conversions and make your customers feel appreciated.

Why they’re great: You know your customers matter, but they need to know too. Milestone emails remind your subscribers that you care and can include assets like personalized coupon codes that lead to future purchases.

This happy birthday email from Topshop succeeds for a few reasons: 

• It uses fun colors and a design that is eye-catching and celebratory.
• It offers a nice discount and code that recipients can click through to use, making the purchase process oh-so-simple. 
• It’s valid for 30 days. People get a lot of emails on their birthday, so giving them plenty of time to spot this message and use the code is a great way to show you care. 

10. Promo/Offer Emails

Everyone loves a good deal, and promotional emails are just the vehicle to share your most recent exciting offer or a new product. Why? Well, email marketing is one of the easiest ways to share deals and offers with your audience because they’re already enrolled and engaged with your messages. And, they’re a great way to get more eyes on a newly released piece of content, like a whitepaper or guide. After all, why create something if you’re not going to show it off? So, include a link to a promo piece or landing page of a newly released gated piece of content.  You can even try some a/b testing with these promotional emails by changing up the copy for the call-to-action, which can tell you what messaging was more successful. 

These types of emails get more eyes on your most valuable marketing campaigns and content and can inspire thought and conversions that might not have otherwise happened.

These are just a handful of the many kinds of emails available to you in your marketing strategy. Play to the strengths of the different types to help you identify which emails you need to start testing for your audience. And, if you could use some more creative ideas, try sending your audience surveys to gauge their interests and preferences. Mix up your content to keep your subscribers interested, and let your emails give them a reason to fall in love with your brand, product, or service. And if you need some extra help, make sure you use a free email marketing tool that will help you send emails like these and more.