7 types of engaging emails to send your customers
Article topics
- Welcome emails
- Thank you emails
- Educational emails
- Feedback emails
- Promotional emails
- Cart abandonment emails
- Re-engagement emails
Email marketing offers one of the best return on investments across all marketing channels. For every £1 you invest in email marketing, you can receive £36 in revenue!
To maximise the chances of making a sale, it’s essential to understand the different types of emails you can send prospective customers and when you should send them. Here are the seven types of emails you should factor into your email marketing strategy.
1. Welcome emails
Best for: Saying hello to brand-new customers.
First impressions count, and a high-quality, well-worded welcome email is a brilliant way to introduce customers to your business. Whether a customer signs up for your newsletter, provides their contact details for a quote, or makes a purchase in your online store, a welcome email is a must-send!
As it’s the first message you send, use it to showcase your brand and values. Establish your unique selling point and encourage your customer to take the next step in your fledgling relationship.
Here’s a welcome email from Boohoo.com thanking customers for signing up for Boohoo Premier. It lists all the benefits of signing up and encourages customers to sign up for regular email updates. It’s clear, image-led, and well-branded.
Top tip: Time is a crucial factor when sending a welcome email. You want to reach out as soon as a customer has made a purchase or signed up for your mailing list. Leave it too long, and you risk losing momentum.
2. Thank you emails
Best for: Thanking customers for a purchase and advising them what to do next.
Your customer has bought your product or service… what next?
You want to encourage your customers to come back and buy from you again. A thank you email is a simple way to show your appreciation and promote a positive customer experience, turning a one-off purchase into repeat custom.
Here’s an excellent thank you email from Curry’s detailing how to arrange a return and what to do if a customer is struggling to set up a product. The quirky start to the email and unusual purple font is engaging and encourages you to keep reading.
Top tip: Order confirmation emails have an open rate that’s eight times higher than regular marketing emails, so use this to your advantage. For example, you can drive customers to your latest blog post or offer a discount code on their next purchase.
3. Educational emails
Best for: Introducing customers to your brand and showcasing your values.
Not every email you send has to sell a product or service. An educational email can be a fantastic way to raise brand awareness, show off your industry knowledge, and boost customer loyalty.
For example at Xigen, we send a regular email newsletter to our customers, with links to our latest blog posts and news about the digital marketing industry. By showcasing our skills in digital marketing, we’re building trust and fostering long-term relationships.
Top tip: Personalising your emails can increase the chances of your customers opening and responding to your content. For example, emails with personalised subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
Personalisation shouldn’t stop there though. Use segmentation to send the right kind of content to the right customers. For example, if you operate a skincare brand, you can use dynamic content to show articles about oily, dry, or combination skin, depending on a customer’s previous purchase history.
4. Feedback emails
Best for: Encouraging customers to provide product or service reviews.
Customer feedback is invaluable to your business. You can use the information you receive to improve how you operate your eCommerce store and also get valuable product or service reviews.
Not only do prospective customers read these reviews before making a purchase, but you can use these reviews as trust signals, showing that you’re a credible eCommerce business.
Here’s an email from Beer Merchants asking for a review. To entice customers into giving feedback, they offer reward points that customers can exchange for money off future purchases.
Be careful if you choose to do this though, as some third-party platforms (like Google or Yelp) don’t allow reviews in exchange for incentives.
Top tip: Don’t forget to respond to all feedback received, both positive and negative. Responding to negative feedback shows that you’re listening to shoppers and can transform a frustrating customer experience into a more satisfying one.
5. Promotional emails
Best for: Telling customers about your latest sales and offers.
Promotional emails are the cornerstone of a good eCommerce campaign, the messages that entice your customers to visit your website to buy. Colourful and with a clear call to action, these emails promote sales, discounts, and carefully curated product offerings.
You can use promotional emails to:
- Launch your latest product range
- Publicise your upcoming flash sale
- Provide an exclusive offer to your most loyal customers
- Showcase a seasonal campaign, like your Black Friday promotion
- Offer personalised product recommendations
- Promote cool competitions and giveaways
- Upsell products after making a purchase
- Send a discount code or freebie on a customer’s birthday
This email from Snag is a brilliant example of a promotional email. Bright and easy to understand, Snag uses FOMO (fear of missing out) to encourage customers to grab a great deal!
Top tip: While promotional emails are great for letting customers know about your latest products and discounts, too many can be frustrating. Keep an eye on your email frequency and monitor your open rates to ensure customers aren’t switching off.
Segmenting your promotional emails can also be a good way to keep customers happy and ensure they’re receiving the content they want to read. For example, if you run a clothing store, set up separate promotional mailing lists for men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing.
6. Cart abandonment emails
Best for: Encouraging customers to come back and complete a purchase.
About 70% of shopping carts online are abandoned. This can happen for various reasons; for example, a customer got frustrated with the checkout process or didn’t want to pay for delivery. In some cases, a customer might just get sidetracked.
If a customer is ‘just browsing’, a carefully worded cart abandonment email can encourage them to come back and finish their purchase. More than 50% of cart abandonment emails get clicked on, with 50% of the customers that click completing their sale!
You can offer a discount code or voucher as an extra incentive to get customers to return to your site. However, be aware that some savvy shoppers intentionally leave an item in their cart in the hopes of getting some money off!
Here’s a cart abandonment email from PhotoBox, encouraging customers to come back and complete a purchase. While PhotoBox doesn’t offer a specific money-off code for the calendar, it does remind customers about all the latest deals and discount codes available.
Top tip: Don’t forget to include a direct link back to your shopping cart. You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to complete their purchases with no roadblocks or distractions.
7. Re-engagement emails
Best for: Connecting with customers who haven’t bought or interacted with you in a while.
While you’ll have a dedicated cohort of die-hard customers, you’ll also have several customers that have just… well… disappeared!
Whether a customer has bought once and never again, or signed up to your mailing list and ignored your emails, re-engagement emails are great for reaching out and making contact.
If you want to engage with previous customers, you can showcase some of your latest products, perhaps with an exclusive special offer.
If you’re targeting someone signed up to your mailing list, you can ask if they want to stay connected. Asking someone if they want to unsubscribe may sound like a bad idea. However, it can help improve your open and click-through rates as you’re not contacting people who aren’t interested in your emails.
Here’s an email from Flaming Candles, offering a 20% code to encourage a lapsed customer to come back and check out the latest products.
Top tip: It’s vital to grab the attention of a lapsed customer with a catchy and engaging subject line. In the case of Flamingo Candles, their subject line was: ‘Hey! We Miss You So Here’s 20% Off Your Next Order face-grin-hearts’ – straightforward, friendly, and the emoji adds a touch of fun.
Supercharge your email marketing strategy with Xigen
Email marketing is a fantastic way to build relationships, encourage reviews, and make sales. If you’re not already using it, now’s the time to set up your first email marketing campaign!
Not sure how to get started? We’re the experts in email marketing. Our skilled team will work with your business to identify your goals and create stunning, well-worded, and timely emails that your customers can’t help but click on.
Get in touch today, and let’s take your email marketing to the next level.
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