15 Swipe-Worthy Email Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

Great marketers are always on the hunt for the best email marketing campaigns.

And even though most articles do a fine job of pointing out individual strong points (i.e. a clever subject line or eye-catching visuals), they rarely explain the underlying strategy that ties each of these elements together.

And without that, it's hard to tell whether an email really "worked" or not.

In this article, we pulled together a selection of email examples that we believe best illustrate what actually works in email marketing today.

We'll break down 15 high-impact marketing emails from B2B, B2C, and ecommerce and show you why they work using a simple 4-part framework. 

By the end, you'll know exactly how to pick and choose which examples make sense to pattern-match in your own campaigns.

But first, let's quickly cover the typical email marketing strategy, different types of email campaigns, and outline the four-part framework we alluded to above.

If you already have a solid grasp of the fundamentals, feel free to skip straight ahead to the examples.

The standard email marketing strategy

In its simplest form, the standard email marketing strategy looks like this: 
 

An email campaign is one or more emails focused on a single goal.

Email marketing goals can include:

• Increasing conversion
• Building brand trust
• Decreasing churn
• Driving engagement

To achieve these goals, your emails must persuasively answer three critical questions:

• What are you offering?
• How will it help the reader?
• What should they do next?

This is essential for grabbing the reader’s attention and enticing them to take action.

Types of marketing emails

Emails can take on different formats, but there are two campaign distribution models: broadcasts and automated sends.
 

Let's first define each one, then look at examples.

Broadcasts

Broadcasts are one-time emails you manually send to subscribers:‍

• ‍Email newsletters: Things that can’t be automated, like our JupHarbor newsletter.‍
• Updates: Product updates, special events, announcements, etc.
• Promotional emails: Sales, new product launches, and holiday shopping events.

Automated

Automated campaigns are pre-written campaigns that trigger based on someone's engagement with your site or app or after a certain amount of time has passed.
 

For example, you can receive post-purchase transactional emails, including receipts and shipping confirmations.

Never waste an email. Every email you send is an opportunity to strengthen a relationship with your customer.

And you can receive welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, and hundreds of other variations. 

Let’s cover a few:

Automated email flows

A flow, or drip sequence, is a series of emails that moves leads through your funnel. 

Through segmentation, you can make sure the right people receive the right message, at the right time, based on where they opted in, purchase history, or email engagement.

Use email flows to:

• Greet new subscribers and get them to engage immediately
• Nurture subscribers and get them to buy from you
• Win back subscribers who stopped engaging your emails
• Maintain a “clean” subscriber list to improve deliverability

There are four flows that are essential for most businesses:‍

1. ‍Welcome/onboarding: These flows are meant to remind new subscribers what benefits they can expect and drive them to take their first meaningful action with your business. The action could be around product usage, reading a piece of content, or making a purchase.
2. Nurture: Nurture flows are focused on providing value and, in return, turning subscribers into new customers. Use them as a way to stay connected to the leads you collect that aren't ready to buy from you yet, and build up trust until they are ready. 
3. Win-back: There will always be a percentage of subscribers who don’t engage with your emails after a certain stage. Win-back flows entice customers to come back.
4. Abandoned cart: An automated email a potential buyer receives after failing to check out. Inside, the reader will usually receive a coupon to incentivize them to complete their purchase. This will likely be the most profitable email you'll ever send (over 70% of ecommerce carts are abandoned).

‍Tip: To make your abandoned cart emails more effective, answer "why buy now?" when their buying intent remains extremely high.

4 elements of an effective email marketing campaign

Every email has four crucial elements:

1. Subject line
2. Design
3. Body copy
4. Goal

The subject's job is to stand out in the recipient's inbox and entice them to click. Design helps engage the reader and keep them interested. Marketing copy is what drives response to your offer. And the goal is what each of these three components ladders up to to make your campaign succeed.

Let's look at the best practices for each.
 

1. Email subject line

The subject line earns the open. Make sure yours is:

• Appealing: Have a hook; avoid blending in with other emails.
• Concise: 30 characters or less is best for mobile.
• Self-evident: Don’t make people guess why you’re bugging them.

Subject lines need to answer "what's in it for me?" 

Make the value of reading your email very obvious, and encourage opens by piquing curiosity about what's inside.
 

Tip: Include an employee's name and your brand name in the "From" field.

This gives your reader context. Try sending emails from different emails depending on the context (ex. sales, customer success, announcements). 

2. Email design

Once people open your email, they’ll reflexively decide if they’re going to read it, skim it, or bounce (and archive). 

Good email design is:

• Simple: Your design needs to be simple, elegant, and clear. 
• Neat: Use a clean design that includes plenty of negative space. 
• Easy on the eyes: Use a standard typeface with large-ish typography and make it easy on the eyes. 

And don't forget to check how your emails look on mobile.‍

Insight: How to design mobile-first emails

More people read emails on mobile, not desktop. So if you aren't creating mobile-first emails, your campaigns aren't fully optimized.

Most email clients automatically adjust mobile-first designs to desktop, whereas the opposite isn't true. So if you optimize for mobile, your design looks sharp regardless of the device.

Here's how you create great mobile-first emails:

1. Write short subject lines so they don't get cut off on mobile.
2. Keep the design clean to make your email easy to read and engage:
3. Narrower design with plenty of negative space.
4. Bigger, legible fonts.
5. More prominent, easy-to-click CTAs.
6. Use small files only. Many mobile devices are running weak processors. Compressing your image files can prevent people from bouncing due to slow load times.
7. Send a test email to your phone before scheduling.

3. Body copy

Body copy serves a specific purpose: It drives people to take action on your CTA. 
 

Here’s what works best:

• Be concise. Don’t waste your subscribers’ time with fluff.
• Fulfill the expectation you set in your subject line: deliver on your promise.
• Promise more value that is only delivered when subscribers click your CTA.
• Show social proof so subscribers see the value their peers got from you.

4. Goal

Most of your emails should only include one clear CTA. 
 

If you use more than one, you run the risk of distracting subscribers from the goal of your email.

• Marketing emails with a promotion should drive people to purchase.
• Nurture emails should get people to read a single blog post about a relevant topic.

The CTA(s) in your emails should drive people to that goal.

However, for certain welcome emails, it’s okay to break this rule and include multiple CTAs to give people a “Choose your own adventure” experience. 

For example, our JupHarbor email drip contains a nurture email that includes multiple CTAs:

• Watch our masterclasses
• Hire an agency
• Get discounts on tools, etc.