Below are the 9 Must Send Ecommerce Email Marketing Campaigns. 

Campaign Idea 1 - The Referral Email:

Campaign Idea 2 - Summer Related Email:

  • Email Examples:

    - Summer Related Email Example 1

    - Summer Related Email Example 2

  • Purpose of Email:

    Summer is in full swing. Send a summer related email to play to the relevance of the season.

    Note: While you don't need to reference COVID, be mindful of it in regards to your messaging. Take a look the Native deodorant example I included. While they do talk about spending time outdoors and a staycation, I wouldn't say much more than this if your campaign is also focused on getting outdoors.

  • Segment(s):

    - Depending on the angle you take (conversion vs. content/education) will dictate the segment you should send to.

    - If your campaign is conversion focused, I would send to your engaged list (excluding recent buyers).

    - If your campaign is more focused on content/education, you can get away sending this to your engaged list (including recent buyers).

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - Going on an Adventure?🌲

    - Upgrade Your Summer Style ☀️

    - Your Summer Staples

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - Check out our Summer lineup

    - Summer is full of surprises

    - Raise Your Summer Standards

Campaign Idea 3 - Last Chance to Buy Email:

  • Email Example:

    Last Chance to Buy Email Example

    I also have this example from a brand I subscribe to. This example is from Memorial Day since the one we're sending soon for our client isn't finished yet. But hopefully you get the point around positioning and design.

  • Purpose of Email:

    Get rid of old inventory. I really like the email example above. Bellroy does a great job showcasing products that will be disappearing soon.

  • Segment(s)

    - I would send this to your engaged list (excluding recent buyers). I would even consider looping in past buyers that might be slightly outside your typical engaged segment. I made a video walking through this.

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - Up to 40% off retiring styles!

    - Going, going, almost gone...

    - It's now or never

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - These items are disappearing...

    - Last chance! Get em before they're gone!

    - While they last...

Campaign Idea 4 - The Work From Home Email:

  • Email Examples:

    - The Work From Home Email Example 1

    - The Work From Home Email Example 2

    - The Work From Home Email Example 3

  • Purpose/Context of Email:

    This was a campaign we originally sent for clients back in March and April that we're bringing back.

    These campaigns performed well then, and with the few we've sent recently, we're also seeing strong performance now. As such, we'll be rolling this campaign out for a number of other clients next week.

    Note on our internal campaign process: We currently with with ~40 brands so we'll rotate between a small group of brands to test campaign ideas. If the campaigns perform well, we'll roll them out to more of our brands. Assuming those do well too, we'll eventually send for all of our clients where a particular campaign is relevant.

  • Segment(s):

    - Your Subscriber Engaged Segment (consider excluding recent buyers).

    Note: We typically will exclude recent buyers for most campaigns. We typically define recent buyers as anyone who purchased within the last 7 to 14 days. This largely dependent on how aggressive we want to be and how much post purchase automation we have setup for a particular brand.

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - Our WFH Essentials

    - Ready for all your video calls?

    - New Zoom Uniform

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - Time to level up your WFH wear.

    - From video calls to coffee breaks (in your own home) stay chic and comfortable in our...

    - The WFH Uniform You Didn't Know You Needed

Campaign Idea 5 - Free Product with Purchase Email:

  • Email Examples:

    - Free Product with Purchase Example 1

    - Free Product with Purchase Example 2

    - Free Product with Purchase Example 3

  • Purpose of Email:

    This campaign is definitely conversion focused. You're sweetening the pot for the consumer to ultimately try to drive them to purchasing from you. This works well for convincing subscribers to become first time buyers. This also works well for turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer.

    There are multiple ways to approach this as you can see from the examples.

    While they all work, I personally like the example from BYLT (example 3) where you push people towards an AOV that you want to hit.

    They are incentivizing you with a free shirt when you spend $85+. Without them telling me this, I can tell that the shirts they are giving away are ones that don't sell as well as others. If you pay attention to the colors available, you'll notice they are all random colors. If they included shirts that were white, black, or grey, then that'd be another story.

  • Segment(s):

    - Your Engaged Subscriber Segment (excluding recent buyers).

    Note: We typically will exclude recent buyers for most campaigns. We typically define recent buyers as anyone who purchased within the last 7 to 14 days. This largely dependent on how aggressive we want to be and how much post purchase automation we have setup for a particular brand.

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - Your Favorite [INSERT ITEM NAME] is now FREE! 🙌

    - Score your FREE [INSERT ITEM NAME]

    - Free [INSERT ITEM NAME] with purchase!

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - Don't Miss Out On A FREE [INSERT ITEM NAME]! 🔥

    - [INSERT ITEM NAME] is free with purchase from now until we sell out!

    - Don't wait - these will go fast!

Campaign Idea 6 - Company Birthday Email:

  • Email Example:

    - Company Birthday Email Example 1

    - Company Birthday Email Example 2

  • Purpose of Email:

    We surprisingly have a few brands that we're sending this campaign for during the week of July 27-July 31. I haven't ever seen anyone talk about this type of campaign so I wanted to create some content for it.

    There are 2 main goals with this email.

    1. Build brand affinity and celebrate a company milestone. This is a great opportunity to share any relevant and interesting info about your brand.

    2. Drive revenue through a discount code so your subscribers can celebrate and support your brand.

  • Segment(s)

    - Your Engaged Subscriber Segment

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - BIRTHDAY SALE 🎊 A gift for you, from us!

    - [INSERT OFFER] to celebrate our birthday

    - Happy Birthday to us!

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - It's our birthday and we want to give you a gift!

    - Yes, you read right. We're hooking you up for our birthday.

    - Let's get this party started!

Campaign Idea 7 - The Best Sellers Email:

  • Email Examples:

    - The Best Sellers Example 1

    - The Best Sellers Example 2

    - The Best Sellers Example 3

  • Purpose/Context of Email:

    This is great campaign for brands that sell a decent number of products. The more products you sell, the more overwhelmed consumers can get by your stores offering.

    This campaign helps consumers focus on the products that others have purchased/enjoyed the most.

    This campaign plays on the psychology that people want to buy products that others, like them, have purchased. As such, through curating and recommending your stores best sellers, this campaign does a good job at driving sales for our clients.

    There are two ways you can approach this campaign.

    The first is just simply curating the best sellers without offering a discount (like examples 1 and 2 from above).

    The second is by offering a discount of sorts (like example 3).

    There is no right or wrong way to do this. Both options work.

    Note: While we're sending this type of campaign for a lot of our clients the week of August 3-7, this is a campaign that you can run monthly or quarterly.

  • Segment(s):

    - Your Subscriber Engaged Segment (consider excluding recent buyers).

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - You need these

    - These best sellers are 🔥🔥🔥

    - Compliments guaranteed.

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - These are our MUST haves

    - Our stuff is the COOLEST

    - All the best—just for you

Campaign Idea 8 - The Content Focused Email:

  • Email Examples:

    - Content Focused Example 1

    - Content Focused Example 2

    - Content Focused Example 3

  • Purpose of Email:

    Content, content, content!

    You have to be sending your subscribers content.

    So what does that entail?

    We approach content in 3 ways:

    1. Solely focused on educating (no selling involved). With this type of campaign, you can expect the same open rate but higher click-through. Typically there's not a ton of revenue driven but that's okay. The goal of this type of campaign is to build trust and get people onto your site.

    The more times we drive people to the site, the more likely we are to drive a first purchase (or repeat purchase) at some point. A lot of the advertising teams we work with do a great job re-targeting the traffic we drive so there is some big potential upside to this approach beyond just building a bond.

    The first example email from Gymshark is solely focused on providing people content about learning how to (re)lift when gyms open back up (again).

    2. We will include content and products within a single email. This email is geared towards allowing people to select (self service) what they are interested in. They can check out blog content and/or they can shop products.

    The second example from Honest Paws shows an email digest that has various sections for various CTA's. From top to bottom: Blog Content, Product, Blog Content, Video Content, Music Content.

    3. We use content/education to try to drive conversions. While we are focused on educating, it's really geared towards giving people enough information to try to try to drive a sale.

    The third example from Parachute is a good representation of this. They share tips about how to master taking a nap. With each tip they gave, they provide a product that will meet that specific need.

    There is no right or wrong way to approach content emails. I highly recommend testing all 3 approaches to see what performs best with your specific goal(s) in mind.

    One tip: We take high performing content based campaign emails and turn them into an evergreen content/education flow for folks that didn't previously receive the content as campaigns. So essentially anyone who joins your list after you send the campaign(s) would receive the top performing ones.

  • Segment(s):

    - Your Engaged Subscriber Segment

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    This campaign is a big tougher to provide subject lines and preview text ideas for because as mentioned above, there are a few ways as mentioned above that you can approach this.

    - [HOW TO + INSERT TOPIC OF CONTENT] i.e. How To Groom Your Dog At Home

    - [TOPIC 101] i.e. Napping 101

    - [TOPIC + PRODUCT/OFFER] i.e. Prep your skin for summer + 10% off

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - >>> [THE FEW GREATER THAN SYMBOL COULD LITERALLY JUST BE THE PREVIEW TEXT. SEEN IT WORK DECENTLY WELL]

    - [INSERT CONTENT TEASER]

    - Hope you learn a thing or two...

Campaign Idea 9 - Giveaway Email:

  • Email Example:

    - Giveaway Email Example 1

    - Giveaway Email Example 2

    - Giveaway Email Example 3

  • Purpose of Email:

    Giveaways can be a major hit or miss. Tons of brands deploy solo giveaways as well as partner giveaways, but only a small percentage of them actually drive decent revenue from their efforts.

    Solo Giveaway: When you run a giveaway by yourself (without partnering with any external brands).

    Partner Giveaway: When you work with 1 or more external brands for your giveaway.

    Things to consider when running your next giveaway:

    1. Should I run a solo or partner giveaway? 

    If you’ve never run a giveaway and have a decent sized audience, I’d consider running your own giveaway to get a sense of how things perform. Record your metrics and if the data shows it was a success, look to incorporate more of these (including working with external giveaway partners) into your marketing mix. It’s also easier to get this executed quickly as you don’t have to wait for others to get onboard. 

    2. In the case of a partner giveaway, who should I partner with?

    You should partner with brands that have a complimentary audience but non-competitive products. Say you sell men’s apparel, you should try to recruit other brands that sell to men in a similar demo. For example, that could be a men’s grooming brand or a men’s accessory brand, and so on. 

    You also need to make sure that you’ve done your homework on brands you partner with. How big is your audience compared to theirs? If your audience has 50K people and they only have 10K people, they might not be the best partner. They don’t need to have the exact same audience size, but it should be in a similar range.

    3. What should the giveaway prize be? 

    In my opinion, the prize(s) should be directly related to what you (and your giveaway partners if you go this route) sell. Far too often companies put together massive giveaway packages that are completely unrelated to what they sell. For example, say you sell watches, don’t go giving away a free trip to your audience. There needs to be alignment in the incentive so that way you don’t end up with a bunch of people on your list that just care about a free trip and not about watches.

  • Segment(s)

    - Your Engaged Subscriber Segment

  • Subject Line Ideas:

    - Enter to win!

    - Our biggest giveaway yet!

    - Our SUMMER giveaway

  • Preview Text Ideas:

    - A giveback giveaway.

    - You'll want in on this...

    - The summer essentials giveaway you won't want to miss.

  • Tools our clients use to run giveaways:

    - Viral Loops
    - Vyper
    - Gleam