Email marketing campaigns efficiently help ecommerce businesses build strong customer relationships, increase engagement, and boost sales. “You can basically create one message that you can send to a mass of people, so you’re not necessarily having to craft or respond to [customers individually],” says Josh Rosenblat, an email marketing expert and senior editor at Shopify.
Email marketing software can also help you automate and build future campaigns. “You can use [automation] tools that help you build out certain messages or a series of messages, and then that becomes kind of a repeatable and measurable cycle. You’re able to iterate on which messages are successful.”
With a combination of email templates to speed up content creation, automation tools to streamline distribution, and real-world examples for inspiration, you’re well on your way to creating email marketing campaigns that convert.
20 email marketing examples for ecommerce companies
- Welcome email marketing examples
- Re-engagement email marketing examples
- Newsletter examples
- Product email marketing examples
- Transactional email marketing examples
- Announcement and reminder examples
From order confirmation emails to newsletters, here are 20 eye-catching email marketing examples to inspire your next email marketing campaign:
Welcome email marketing examples
A welcome email is a brand’s first email communication with a new subscriber. Welcome emails typically include a greeting, an introduction to the brand’s value proposition, and a call to action (CTA). Brands use them to initiate customer relationships and set the tone for future email marketing campaign content.
Josh recommends collecting email addresses during checkout and sending welcome emails after a customer’s first order. For people who haven’t made a purchase yet, Josh suggests offering email marketing sign-up incentives (like a discount or a free download) and using welcome emails to deliver the promised asset or promotion. “You need to have something that makes your clientele feel comfortable giving up their personal information,” Josh says.
1. Nonna Live
Nonna Live is “an online live cooking experience taught exclusively by Italian grandmothers.” Chiara Nicolanti and her grandmother Nonna Nerina founded the company, which offers cooking classes, olive oil, and a recipe book.
Subject line: HURRY—claim your 15% off discount ⏳
Nonna Live’s welcome email uses its subject line to create a sense of urgency, encouraging new subscribers to make a purchase or book a class. Inside, the email delivers a discount code and also displays high-quality photos of Italian favorites like pappardelle amatriciana and gnocchi cacio e pepe with CTA buttons that read “BOOK NOW.”
Nonna Live’s welcome email highlights the brand’s emphasis on tradition, family, and community. Photos show Nonna Nerina and Chiara cooking, embracing, and showing off the brand’s olive oil. The email includes testimonials and photos of smiling customers showing off their handmade pasta—all choices that show that, remote or not, Nonna and her clients are cooking together.
2. Immi
Immi is a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company specializing in plant-based instant ramen. Founders Kevin Lee and Kevin Chanthasiriphan grew up helping their families prepare and serve noodle dishes in Taiwan and Thailand, respectively.
Subject line: You’re in the running 🍜
Immi incentivizes users to sign up for marketing emails by offering new email subscribers the chance to win a year’s worth of free ramen.
The company strategically bookends its welcome email with references to the sign-up incentive, reassuring subscribers of their entry into the sweepstakes while using the bulk of the email to share the company’s value proposition and brand story.
Immi’s email copy engages subscribers with a personal, cheerful tone. Its brand voice also uses informal word choices and sentence structures, such as “Hey [Name], We’re the Kevins” and “GIMMIE IMMI.” Plus, the welcome email features high-quality product photos, brightly colored CTA buttons, and copy that highlights the brand’s differentiator—its impressive nutritional stats—in bold, large-format text.
3. Our Place
Welcome emails are a great place to let readers cash in on your subscription incentive (which you can do by providing a discount code), but they’re also an opportunity to showcase your brand values to new subscribers. The cookware brand Our Place accomplishes both of those goals in this welcome email:
Subject line: “Welcome to Our Place”
“Our Place believes in the power of home cooking to bring people together and strives to be part of the storytelling that’s inherent in the act of cooking,” Danielle Hoo, the company’s director of digital product shared in an interview with Shopify. Our Place showcases these brand values in its welcome email with a nod toward its mission statement, stating: “We’re here to make gathering around food easier and more joyful.”
“Consumers are looking for more of a deeper personal connection with the people behind the brand that they’re purchasing from,” says Josh. “Emails are a great way to express the values and the vision behind the business that you're running in an authentic way.”
Re-engagement email marketing examples
Re-engagement emails target audiences who have engaged with a company online or in person but haven’t made a recent purchase. Companies also distribute these types of emails to prospects who have yet to convert and shoppers who abandon purchases during the checkout process.
4. Allbirds
New Zealand–based footwear company Allbirds crafts its products with sheep’s wool. The brand emphasizes simplicity, sustainability, and comfort.
Subject line: You Never Forget Your First
Allbirds uses this email to engage subscribers who have yet to convert. The subject line showcases the company’s playful brand voice. The contents feature a clean design that centers on a large high-quality product photo of the company’s first shoe: “The superfine merino wool runner that put us on the map.” What follows are a few brief lines of email copy, highlighting two key differentiators: sustainability and comfort.
Allbirds’ email marketing campaign demonstrates how companies can effectively target customers with limited behavioral data. The company doesn’t know why email recipients subscribed for email marketing updates or why they haven’t made a purchase yet. So it focuses on the factors most likely to drive interest among its target audience and the innovative nature of the company’s products.
5. French Connection
The apparel brand French Connection has been selling high-quality, fashion-forward wardrobe staples since 1972. In this abandoned cart marketing email, French Connection incentivizes the customer to complete their purchase by offering a discount.
Subject line: Items in your cart are now 15% off
The email’s subject line clearly communicates the contents of the email: a discount code for items in the abandoned cart. Within the email itself, the copy encourages readers to “get them before they’re gone,” which adds a sense of urgency for customers deliberating over their purchase.
Abandoned cart emails re-engage shoppers who have added products to their cart but failed to complete the checkout process. “Abandoned cart emails are a really good first opportunity for small businesses,” Josh says. “If someone has something in their shopping cart on your ecommerce site, you have their email address, and they don’t make a purchase within a certain amount of time, you can send automated emails reminding the customer not only that there’s still a product in their shopping cart, but why they might have been interested in buying it in the first place.”
6. Everlane
Ecommerce apparel company Everlane sells a curated selection of minimalist closet staples. The brand emphasizes sustainability, transparency, and ethical manufacturing processes.
Subject line: You Have Great Taste
Everlane’s post-purchase upsell email targets customers based on purchase history. It opens with a bit of flattery: “You have great taste, [Name]” compliments the customer on their previous purchase, and “See more great styles we think you’ll love” suggests a personal understanding of their aesthetic, while teasing personalized product recommendations.
“The purpose is to drive folks to a product page,” Josh says about these types of Everlane emails. “You’re letting the product speak for itself."
This email marketing campaign uses a two-pronged approach to re-engage customers: The email includes an above-the-fold CTA button that reads “SHOP NEW ARRIVALS” followed by three images of products similar to the customer’s recent purchase. This strategy showcases options for readers looking for more of the same while reminding shoppers there’s more to explore—a particularly enticing offer from a brand with a smaller product catalog that releases new items and colorways in limited drops.
Newsletter examples
Email newsletters can help you make connections with your audience. “With a newsletter, you’re really focused on education, deepening your relationship with different customers, highlighting an individual voice,” Josh says. “I think there’s a lot of softer, longer-tail marketing value with that.”
You can use newsletters to share relevant content with current and potential customers, nurture leads, and stay top of mind with existing clients. Newsletters are also an effective way to gather engagement metrics like click-through rates by driving customers to your ecommerce site or other marketing channels.
7. Kloo
Coffee concentrate subscription service Kloo makes it easy for customers to enjoy high-quality coffee at home—no fancy equipment or technical skill required. The company roasts beans in-house, brews concentrate in small batches, and ages its product to allow flavors to mature.
Subject line: Coffee beans are graded, like diamonds
Kloo prides itself on a precise, sophisticated brewing process guided by the expertise of co-founder Mariella Cho, a master roaster, brewer, and coffee grader—or “the coffee equivalent of a sommelier.” A deep understanding of what goes into the perfect cup is one of the brand’s key differentiators, and its newsletter showcases this knowledge.
Its newsletter subject line teases information that isn’t commonly known, and the email body uses branded infographics to explain the grading process and provide an overview of the factors that influence the flavor profile of a bean. “We are on a mission to decode the complexity of craft coffee,” says co-founder Claudia Snoh on an episode of Shopify Masters. “I think too many brands right now focus their content on selling the product versus selling the brand. We’ve been focusing a lot on the latter, and it has worked really well for us.”
The newsletter also includes an invitation to visit the brand’s online store and a high-quality product image that shows a bottle of Kloo concentrate against a background of chocolate, lemongrass, and grapefruit, highlighting the brand’s attention to the unique notes of each of its products.
8. FinerWorks
Ecommerce company FinerWorks provides fine art and photo printing services, offering giclée reproductions of digital images on acrylic glass prints, printed tote bags, mugs, and stickers. Its target audience includes individuals, professional artists, and dropshipping businesses.
Subject line: FinerWorks Article = > Selling Prints Advice 🤔
FinerWorks’ newsletter provides informational and educational content, strategically mixing articles for professional sellers and product announcements that appeal to its broader audience base. It includes large photos of products and art professionals, and its CTAs drive business owners to blog posts like “Designing Your Print for Selling” and all audiences to landing pages promoting new product drops and flash sales.
9. Renée Rouleau
Newsletters can be a great place to repurpose your company’s blog content and drive new readers to your blog.
Skin care brand Renée Rouleau, which sells products targeted to specific skin types, features a robust blog with content ranging from skincare advice to trend predictions from founder Renée Rouleau herself. Other website content, like an interactive quiz about skincare and an in-depth explanation of skin care ingredients, cements the brand’s educational approach to skin care.
Renée Rouleau extends this approach to its newsletter. In this example, the company features an explanatory graphic alongside a link to a blog post on how to adjust your skincare routine for spring.
Subject line: Hit reset on winter-weary skin ✨
10. CAP Beauty
The skin care and wellness company CAP Beauty sells its own branded products, items from other businesses, and a lineup of co-branded products that range from pancake mix to scrunchies.
Despite its diverse product offerings, CAP Beauty maintains a keen eye toward aesthetics and wellness. It highlights this lifestyle-driven brand identity in its blog and newsletter.
In this example of the CAP Beauty newsletter, the company showcases its appreciation of design-driven objects with a range of item suggestions—from a lamp to shampoo in soap block form.
Subject line: THE LIST: VOLUME 217
Product email marketing examples
Product email campaigns exist to drive sales. They can involve sending general promotions to a company’s entire email list or targeted campaigns based on specific customer demographics (like age and geographic location) and behavioral information (such as click-through rates and browsing patterns). They often include promo codes and drive to landing pages that advertise product launches, sales, or other promotions.
11. Cancha
Former professional tennis player Jack Oswald founded the travel and tennis bag company Cancha to create reliable, practical tennis and sports bags for athletes and adventurers.
Subject Line: The Bag That Does It All - Back In Stock
Promotional email marketing campaigns might focus on sales, but they’re also a chance to engage subscribers around a brand’s value proposition. Cancha is one example. “This is an example of one of those product-focused emails that use a little bit more of an engaging way to get you to open the email rather than just saying ‘new bag available,’” Josh says. “This idea of [doing it all] in the subject line immediately connects to the recipient. It promises that Cancha will help them do something better.”
Cancha’s email reinforces this message by combining visually appealing product close-ups with photos of the bag in action. “The combination of product photos shows the bag being used in multiple ways,” Josh says. “This first photo is in a camping setting, and the second photo shows how much you can actually fit in one of their bags.”
12. Damson Madder
You can also use product marketing emails to advertise collections and other groups of products, rather than individual ones.
Take a look at this example from fashion brand Damson Madder, which encourages readers to shop the company’s collection of pink clothing. The email’s CTA brings customers to a page of assorted pink products, from an eye mask to a cardigan.
Subject line: PRETTY IN PINK
13. Olive & June
In the crowded ecommerce landscape, catchy and creative copywriting can help make your brand stand out.
Subject line: What does your polish say about you?
This marketing email from the nail care brand Olive & June functions like a quiz in which readers can select their favorite nail polish color and then learn something about themselves.
“The copywriting needs to be quick, it needs to be witty, and it also needs to be informative,” says Josh. “Then you can let the product page on your ecommerce website do most of the talking.”
14. Anyday
You probably worked long and hard on every feature and design choice in the product development process, and you probably know them (and why they matter) like the back of your hand. Potential customers, however, are likely less familiar.
Product marketing emails present an opportunity to educate your audience on the ins and outs of your products, ultimately illustrating why they’re so good and helping readers decide which to buy (sometimes, indecision can be a holdup for customers).
You can see that in this product marketing email from Anyday, a company that sells plastic-free cookware. A side-by-side comparison of two of Anyday's products shows customers the features of each.
Subject line: Everything vs Classic Dishes — what’s the difference?
Transactional email marketing examples
Brands send transactional emails after customers complete a specific action, such as placing an order, resetting a password, or providing feedback to the company. Email platforms can automate order or event registration confirmations, shipping notifications, and double-opt-in emails.
15. Fast Growing Trees
Fast Growing Trees is an online nursery that sells fruit trees, shade trees, and indoor and outdoor plants. It prides itself on its excellent customer service and offers free access to a Plant Expert helpline and a 30-day “Alive and Thrive” guarantee.
Subject line: Your FastGrowingTrees.com Order Confirmation
Fast Growing Trees’ order confirmation email emphasizes clarity, using a direct subject line and including a graphic that outlines the order fulfillment process. It also includes a CTA to check your order status above key details like order confirmation number, customer contact info, billing and shipping information, items purchased, and price.
This focus on clarity is particularly valuable given the brand’s fulfillment schedule. The company accepts orders year-round, but shipping timelines depend on growing zone and product availability: Customers in cold climates don’t receive orders until it’s warm enough to ship live plants within the region, and back-ordered items face additional delays.
To head off confusion, the brand uses a subject line that’s easily searchable in a customer’s inbox and ensures that its email quickly answers questions about order status. The email also advertises the brand’s product guarantee and expert support, including two CTAs that invite the reader to call the company’s plant experts. These choices highlight the brand’s emphasis on excellent customer service and provide customers with multiple ways to contact the company for help, which can go a long way toward improving customer satisfaction.
16. UrbanStems
UrbanStems sells high-quality, contemporary flower arrangements through a courier service that provides same-day and next-day delivery, a disruptive strategy that allows clients in the high-end floral industry to use one shop to send flowers to recipients nationwide.
Subject Line: Activate Your Account
UrbanStems’ account activation email announces its migration to a new website and invites readers to activate their accounts, offering a discount code to entice customers to complete the setup and become a return customer. The email is brief, direct, and visually appealing, using the company’s signature blue and a simple flower icon in the brand’s minimalist visual style.
17. Turtle’s Soup
Order confirmation emails act like receipts, but you don’t need to make them boring. Try infusing these emails with your brand assets (like brand colors, logo, and typography) to solidify your brand identity in the minds of your customers.
Here’s an example from Turtle’s Soup, a “one-stop sticker shop” that sells vinyl stickers alongside temporary tattoos, stationery, t-shirts, and more. The brand’s diverse products all share the company’s distinctive visual identity, one grounded in vibrant colors and cartoonish designs. The company emphasizes this identity in its order confirmation email with pink CTAs and a prominently placed logo.
Subject line: Order confirmed
Announcement and reminder examples
To maximize awareness of events like sales, pop-ups, store openings, speaking engagements, and product launches, you’ll want to advertise your event on multiple channels, including your website, social media pages, and email.
Just because you notified your subscribers, however, doesn’t mean they’ll remember. People have crowded inboxes, and sometimes, customers might miss your email or read a message and forget about it. That’s where reminder emails come in. Some common ones to consider are welcome discount reminders and reminders about sales coming to an end.
18. Glossier
You can make promotions more creative than across-the-board seasonal sales. Take a look at this one from the makeup brand Glossier, which ran a promotion giving customers 20% off (or more in-store) on three products with the purchase of a beauty bag.
The company used email marketing to announce and remind customers of the promotion, then sent a reminder email a day before the promotion ended.
Sending multiple announcement and reminder emails can help keep your brand top of mind, but you run the risk of inundating your subscribers with too many messages. Monitor email marketing metrics like your unsubscribe rate to make sure you’re not pestering your readers, and experiment with your cadence until you find one that works for you.
19. Crap Eyewear
In this announcement email, the sunglasses company Crap Eyewear tells subscribers about its upcoming Sunshine Sale, where customers can receive 40% off sitewide.
The message includes three CTAs calling on readers to shop bestsellers, new arrivals, or everything.
20. Uppercase
When you’re delivering a disappointing announcement, sending an impersonal, unsigned email can potentially alienate your readers. In moments like these, you want to show your customers how important they are to you.
Opt for a personal note, like this example from Uppercase, a quarterly print magazine that focuses on design, craft, illustration, and typography. It’s a one-woman operation, and in this announcement email, Uppercase’s publisher, editor, and designer tells subscribers that the upcoming edition is running behind schedule with a personalized explanatory note.
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Email marketing examples FAQ
Email marketing examples FAQ
Weekly email marketing newsletters are one common type of email marketing campaign. A newsletter email campaign distributes relevant content to subscribers to build authority and trust with a particular target audience.
What are the different types of email marketing?
Newsletters, welcome emails, transactional emails, re-engagement emails, and promotional emails are all different types of email marketing. Effective email marketing campaigns typically use multiple types of email marketing to engage or re-engage customers, build relationships with new subscribers, and drive sales.
What companies have the best email marketing?
Here are three successful email marketing campaign examples:
- Kloo’s newsletter. Kloo’s newsletters share in-depth information about the complexity of producing top-quality coffee concentrate to highlight the brand’s key differentiator—a sophisticated bean selection and brewing process guided by coffee expert Mariella Cho.
- Allbirds’ re-engagement email. Allbirds uses eye-catching subject lines like “You never forget your first,” high-quality product imagery, and minimalist design to encourage inactive subscribers to convert.
- Immi’s welcome email. Immi encourages visitors to sign up for its newsletter by offering a chance to win a year of free ramen. The welcome email reassures readers that they have entered the sweepstake and introduces them to the company’s founders and products.
