A killer email marketing campaign.
You open your email inbox to be met with a flood of pitches and campaigns. So what causes you to click on one? Furthermore, what causes you to actually read an email newsletter? There’s a special sauce to these distinguished emails that makes them stand out among the sea of worthless newsletters.
A well-crafted email marketing campaign begins with an eye-catching subject line that allows the readers to know how you’re about to blow their minds (AKA add value to their lives). You must remember, just like you, your readers are flooded with way too many email newsletters every day. It is essential to stand out.
In addition to snagging your audience’s attention from the get-go, email marketing campaigns must be written in such a way that cleverly constructs the main purpose of your email. I highly suggest you invest in a content specialist to help you build your content marketing campaign via emails.
While it is certainly possible to launch a successful email marketing campaign on your own, content specialists know where to place certain calls-to-action, how to use short-form copy to captivate an audience, and they know how to properly edit your copy so your brand can present a clean and professional image.
Tons of big brands use email marketing to keep their audience engaged, share company news and leverage opportunities to generate new business, because they know it works—but for whatever reason, small businesses seem to shy away from this economical marketing tactic.
Today, I want to show you some of the best email marketing campaigns from big brands, in hopes that they inspire you to begin marketing your business via emails. We can help you construct campaigns that garner leads and generate sales—let’s get started today! In the meantime, here are five brands that got it right.
The Skimm: Short & Sweet Email Marketing
The Skimm has captivated my mornings since 2015, but the brand was founded in 2012 as an idea between friends. The email is a daily newsletter that focuses on delivering popular news to subscribers in a clever (and often downright hilarious) way.
How did they get it right? The beauty is in the simplicity of this email. I literally get my news digest in less than 5 minutes, and there are no fancy gimmicks. The brand uses catchy puns and punchy one-liners to deliver the news of the day.
The real shining star content aspect of The Skimm’s email marketing campaign is the personalization, added care and engagement the brand has with its subscriber base. The team celebrates your Skimm’versaries (milestones for how long you have been a subscriber) and your birthday. It truly feels like you are receiving an email from a good friend, and that’s why this brand has an incredibly loyal fan base. Check out the email I got from The Skimm this morning:
Uber: Simple & Promotional Email Marketing
Uber’s emails are far from fancy, but they are tasteful. They use a simple format, marketing that is tried and true, and personalization. You will notice that some of the best email marketing campaigns use personal touches to appeal to their subscriber base—because it works. I love how Uber gets straight to the point in their welcome email. They congratulated me on my first Uber ride, and then they took it a step further by personalizing the message to my location. The email was personally “signed” by the Dallas-Fort Worth Community Manager, Nicole, which humanizes the brand. This is critical.
Uber took it a step further by giving little ole me a personal promo code to give to my friends and family that is mutually beneficial—personal codes are everything. It really makes people feel important, and the ego is a major driver in consumer decision making.
Apart from the crafty welcome email, Uber keeps it simple. They alert their subscriber base to new promotions, and they provide amazing summaries of your rides, with a detailed map of where you were picked up and dropped off, a breakdown of the charges, and a snapshot of your Uber driver. Take a look at my welcome email and one of my ride summaries below.
DoorDash: The Power of Email Marketing Personalization
I’m low-key starving right now so this email I received from DoorDash has me salivating. I’m a DoorDash addict. It’s the easiest thing in the world to order food and have it delivered straight to your door. But let’s get real, that gets so pricey.
So how is DoorDash ingenious with their email marketing campaigns? They will often send me these email newsletters offering a $0 delivery charge for a handful of certain restaurants. And it gets me almost. every. time.
It’s always the same. They send me some gorgeous imagery that makes me want to stuff my face, then they show me a slew of restaurants that I can have delivered to my front door by a smiling driver, FOR FREE. Sold.
They personalize these choices based on my location and order history, and from personal experience I can tell you that they hit the nail on the head every time. Take a look at my most recent email from DoorDash.
Madewell: Catchy Subject Lines, Great Imagery
Madewell is an American clothing company (with J. Crew being its parent company) that is incredibly good at taking all of my money via their email campaigns. I’m serious. I can manage to stay away from their website, but the email campaigns get me every time. Here’s why:
They understand their audience (those street smarts are terrible for my wallet!).
First of all, they leverage the ego of their audience by calling me a Madewell Insider and offering me free shipping and returns. I’m already hooked and feeling like the GOAT.
Side note: Do you notice how I am writing about this email as if it was sent to me and only me? That’s incredible marketing at work. I thought about going back and rewording it, but I felt there was no better way for you to see excellent email marketing in action, as well as the effect it has on the consumer.
Next, Madewell goes on to offer me a deal of some sort that is set apart from the rest of the email, giving me an easy call-to-action with “SHOP NOW.” Then, they offer great imagery and a hashtag suggestion, which will boost social interaction. *This is so good I could cry, y’all.* Take a look at this email in action below:
InVision App: Freebies, Content Overload
InVision’s weekly roundup of their standout blog posts are a gold mine—you can get sucked into this email for hours, as it’s chock-full of incredible content and information that is a perfect fit for the brand’s core customer.
The newsletter is mobile-friendly and downright beautiful (would you expect anything less from this brand?), and they even offer freebies every week, which is excellent for engagement.
The brand does an incredible job of placing a call-to-action after each piece of text content, which ups the engagement with subscribers as well. The consistency throughout makes it a beautiful newsletter to scroll through, and the call-to-actions aren’t simply “read more now,” but rather complement, and add substance and intrigue to the blog content for which they are assigned. Check out InVision’s email newsletter below:
We’ve showed you how the top dogs do it. Now are you ready to leverage email marketing to appeal to your target audience and grow your business? Let’s do this.
