10 must-try email marketing campaigns for engaging and retaining customers

Email marketing is a powerful driver of return on investment (ROI), matched only by SEO and PPC, making it a key part of any digital marketing strategy.

According to the DMA (Direct Marketing Association), UK firms can expect an average return of £42 for every £1 spent on this lucrative marketing tactic.

That is, if you know how to get the most out of it.

To help you get the biggest bang for your buck, we’ve outlined 10 tried and tested types of email marketing campaigns that’ll help you generate engagement, inspire click throughs – and ultimately secure sales for your business.

What is an email marketing campaign?

An email marketing campaign is the process of sending out promotional messaging around your products, services or brand to multiple recipients. Those recipients might be existing customers who know your business well, or prospective clients you’re hoping to raise awareness with.

Email campaigns are designed to help you communicate valuable content and promotional offers, allowing you to build a deeper relationship with your customers. They’re also an effective tool when used alongside other marketing platforms, like social media and direct mailers, as part of a multi-channel campaign.

What are the benefits of email marketing?

As a business owner, you’re always on the lookout for new ways to keep in touch with your customers, and email marketing can help you do that – and more. Here are just a few of the benefits you can expect from sending regular marketing emails…

Nurture new leads

Regular communication through email marketing helps you connect with potential customers, educating them on your products and services, and gradually building trust and interest. By providing valuable content and updates, you can turn new leads into loyal customers who are ready to take the next step.

Keep existing customers engaged

Maintaining a strong relationship with your current customers is key to long-term success. Email marketing allows you to keep them informed about new products, special offers, and company news. This ongoing engagement keeps your brand relevant (and at the top of the right inboxes), ensuring customers don’t drift away to competitors.

Improve sales performance

Email marketing directly impacts your bottom line by driving sales. By sending targeted promotions, product recommendations, and timely offers, you can encourage customers to make purchases. Personalised and well-timed emails can significantly boost your conversion rates, leading to increased revenue and a stronger overall sales performance.

Easily report and collect data on customers

By keeping track of key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and revenue, you can easily track how your emails are performing and gain valuable insights into customer behaviour. Plus, knowing what kinds of messaging customers respond best to allows you to tailor your marketing strategies to better meet their needs.

Improve your business

Essentially, email marketing provides a direct line to your customers, making it easy to gather feedback through surveys and reviews. This feedback helps you refine your products, services, and overall customer experience, leading to a stronger, more customer-centric business.

10 types of email marketing campaigns you should be sending (+ examples!)

1. Welcome & onboarding emails

A welcome email is often the first piece of communication you receive directly from a business. It happens when you make a purchase or subscribe to a blog or newsletter mailing list via email. Whether it’s a friendly hello, or a limited-time offer, welcome emails are a great way to establish a new connection.

Welcome emails are important for making a great first impression, especially as your new subscriber won’t have an established connection with your brand yet. And they’re pretty effective too! Research suggests that welcome emails generate on average up to 320% more revenue than other types of email campaigns.

This welcome email example from Sainsbury’s ticks all the right boxes, with a friendly welcome message, a reminder of their unique selling points (USPs) and an informative video that uses social proof to outline key benefits of shopping with this brand.

There’s no need to stop at a single email. Many businesses find success through email onboarding flows, which guide new customers through their first few weeks or months with you. These flow campaigns often start off with introductory information about the business, its values and core services, and then get increasingly more aggressive with limited-time-only new customer discounts.

2. Newsletters and company updates

Newsletter emails are one of the most widely used types of email marketing and are usually sent out on a regular schedule, such as once a month. Newsletters are great at reaching new and existing customers, often sharing company updates and events as well as useful blogs and customer success stories.

It can be tempting to add tons of content to newsletter emails, but the most effective way to use them is to define a single topic that each section links back to. For example, if your business sells products to schools, your August newsletter is a great opportunity to promote your back to school range and any relevant blogs.

Canva sends about 5 emails per month, each carefully curated around a single topic, such as this deepdive into Facebook shop. This campaign was sent inline with Facebook launching its new eCommerce service during lockdown and served as a perfect opportunity for Canva to portray its expertise and position its design template offering.

3. Promotional campaigns

Promotional emails are by far the most commonly sent marketing email. In fact, you’ve probably received about five of these in the time it’s taken you to read this far down the page. They focus primarily on your products and services, often sharing discount codes to entice customers to make a purchase.

Since consumers receive so many promotional emails on the daily, standing out is critical. Whether that’s a cleverly worded subject line or including the discount in the email preheader (the little bit of preview text visible from your inbox), there are lots of ways to improve click through rates.

Using unusual punctuation, numbers and emojis in your subject lines are great ways to grab attention, just be sure not to trigger any spam filters! Another tactic is to use personalised subject lines that include your customers’ name.

4. Product launch campaigns

If you’re planning on launching an exciting new product, feature or service, email is a great platform to build up a buzz. By targeting people who’ve signed up to receive your emails, you already know they’re interested in your offering so your email audience is likely to be more perceptive than other channels, like PPC or social media, where your brand may not be as established.

Product launch communications should be approached in three stages: pre-launch, launch and post-launch. While your launch day email will include all the essential information about the new product, the pre-launch should only give away the most tantalising snippets of information.

Like the example below from gut-friendly beverage company OLIPOP. From the teasing copy to the blurred out image, we challenge anyone to ignore this powerful messaging.

Plus, OLIPOP expertly wields FOMO (fear of missing out) tactics to encourage its customers to sign up to their SMS mailing list with the promise of VIP access to the new flavour.

5. Seasonal marketing emails

Seasonal email campaigns are a type of promotional email marketing centred around major holidays, like Christmas, Father’s Day, or more localised holidays like St Patrick’s Day. Something that all these holidays have in common? People spend money – on gifts, food, clothes and going out.

This example from Man Crates plays on the common trope of leaving Valentine’s gift-buying until the very last minute, using humour and relatability to drive customers towards the call to action to place an order.

Urgency works brilliantly in seasonal email marketing campaigns because they’re only around for a limited amount of time. Pair this with an exclusive discount for the holiday, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for an uplift in sales!

While this type of marketing is particularly effective for retail and ecommerce businesses, B2B brands can also benefit from seasonal promotions. But you might need to plan your campaign well in advance. If your customers’ customers start buying Christmas products in October, for example, you’ll need to start promoting your festive range in August or September.

6. Transactional emails

Imagine placing an online order or booking. And then not receiving a confirmation email. Knocks your confidence in the company, right?

Transactional emails, like automated order confirmations and delivery updates, are an integral part of your business’s communications, and customers expect to receive them. Unlike promotional emails, transactional emails are sent in response to specific user actions, making them far more personalised and unique. They’re also focused around important transactional and logistical information.

So, it’s no surprise that order confirmation emails receive open rates of more than 63% compared with the 10-20% average open rate of standard marketing emails.

Effective transactional emails do more than just share necessary information. They’re also an opportunity for building better engagement with your brand and developing stronger relationships with customers. All elements of your brand guidelines should be clear, including your colours, logo and tone of voice. And, most importantly, the information you share should be clear, accurate and concise.

7. Re-engagement emails

Re-engagement emails are like a gentle nudge to remind your subscribers that you’re still here and have something valuable to offer. These campaigns target those who haven’t interacted with your emails in a while, encouraging them to reconnect with your brand.

You might offer them an exclusive discount, showcase new content, or simply ask if they’d still like to hear from you. The key is to make these emails personal and appealing, giving them a reason to re-engage. For example, the email below from Skillshare encourages cold leads to join their premium membership scheme with a heavily discounted first month subscription.

Not only do re-engagement emails help in reviving dormant subscribers, but they also help you clean up your email list by identifying those who are no longer interested. This means more accurate targeting and better overall performance for your future campaigns.

8. Survey emails

Survey emails are a great way to show your subscribers that their opinions matter. By inviting them to share their thoughts, you’re not only engaging them but also gathering valuable insights that can help improve your products, services, or overall customer experience. Plus, the feedback you collect can be a goldmine for refining your marketing strategies and ensuring your offerings align with what your audience really wants.

These emails should be straightforward and easy to respond to, with a clear call to action. Whether it’s a quick question or a more detailed survey, make it as simple as possible for your audience to participate. You can offer a small incentive, like a discount or entry into a giveaway to boost response rates.

Most importantly, let your subscribers know how their feedback will be used – it shows you’re genuinely interested in their input. The example below from Grammarly nails this, putting their customers at the centre of the conversation from the get-go by asking ‘What Can We Do For You?’.

9. Triggered ‘drip’ campaign

Also known as automated web flows, triggered ‘drip’ campaigns are a set-it-and-forget-it way to nurture relationships with your subscribers over time. These automated emails are sent based on specific actions a subscriber takes, like signing up for your newsletter, making a purchase, or abandoning a cart.

Each email in the sequence builds on the last, guiding the subscriber through a journey that’s tailored to their behaviour. This personalization makes drip campaigns incredibly effective at keeping your brand top-of-mind and moving subscribers closer to a desired action, like making a purchase or signing up for a service.

The beauty of drip campaigns is their ability to deliver the right message at the right time, without requiring constant manual effort. They help maintain consistent communication with your audience, ensuring no one falls through the cracks.

10. Milestone emails

Celebrate important moments with your customers and acknowledge their journey with your brand using milestone emails. Whether it’s their birthday, the anniversary of their first order or they’ve reached a new loyalty program tier, it’s the perfect chance to surprise and delight your audience with something special. Like a discount code or free gift!

What makes milestone emails particularly powerful is their ability to create positive emotions and a sense of belonging. These gestures make subscribers feel valued and appreciated, reinforcing their connection to your brand. Ultimately, this helps build trust and loyalty, which can lead to increased engagement and repeat business.

How do I make an email marketing mailing list?

Building an email list should be at the heart of your customer retention strategy. If you’re building a mailing list from scratch, your website design is a great place to start.

One effective tactic is using a pop-up call to action (CTA) that appears when visitors first land on your site or when they’re about to leave. This pop-up can offer something valuable, like a discount, free resource, or newsletter subscription, in exchange for their email address.

Another method is adding sign-up forms directly to your blog posts and landing pages. Since these visitors are already interested in your content, they’re more likely to subscribe when prompted within a relevant context. Make the sign-up process easy and clearly communicate the benefits they’ll receive by joining your list.

Lastly, don’t overlook the website footer. This is a prime location to include a simple sign-up form since it’s a consistent element across all pages. While it’s not as prominent as a pop-up, it’s a subtle yet effective way to capture emails from engaged visitors who scroll to the bottom of your pages.

Speak to our web design team for help optimising your website for lead generation!

What metrics should you use to measure the success of email marketing campaigns?

To measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, focus on these key metrics:

Open Rate: This is the percentage of recipients who open your email. A high open rate indicates that your subject lines are effective and that your audience is engaged.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The CTR measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email. This metric shows how compelling your content is and how well your call to action (CTA) performs.

Conversion Rate: This metric tracks the percentage of recipients who completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form, after clicking through your email.

Bounce Rate: This measures the percentage of emails that couldn’t be delivered to recipients’ inboxes. A high bounce rate can indicate issues with your email list, like invalid email addresses.

Unsubscribe Rate: This is the percentage of recipients who opt out of your emails after receiving a campaign. While some unsubscribes are natural, a high rate may signal that your content isn’t meeting audience expectations or that you’re sending emails too frequently.

Return on Investment (ROI): ROI measures the overall financial return from your email campaigns relative to the cost of running them. It’s the ultimate metric to determine whether your email marketing efforts are paying off in terms of revenue.

Incoming email from Bubble Design!

Ready to start creating an email marketing campaign that hits all your goals? Get in touch with our expert team today for a no-obligation chat about how we can help boost engagement and revenue with professionally designed, strategic marketing emails.