Your audience likes receiving commercial emails regularly, but email marketing statistics also reveal something telling: 86% of consumers feel that more than half of the emails they receive aren’t useful.
So what do you need to do to send emails your audience values and wants to read?
Just one word: variety.
Email marketing is much more than promotions or the odd monthly newsletter here and there. From emails with lists of resources or tips to step-by-step tutorials, there’s a whole world out there to explore.
They aren’t hard-sell emails: they pursue longer-term goals, such as:
🌟 Educating your audience
🌟 Encouraging new habits
🌟 Building anticipation
🌟 Building trust
🌟 Making your brand feel familiar
These emails won’t help you sell more today, but they will help you build a community around your brand. And that’s what will help you sell more tomorrow.
So if you send promotional emails to your contact list, great, that’s a good start. But if you want to build a lasting relationship with your contacts, give your strategy a twist and start sending other types of email.
So you never run out of inspiration, here are some entertaining email examples that will help you keep your audience engaged.
10 entertaining email examples
Do you have a big launch coming up? Great: sending an email is one of the best ways to let your database know about it.
But there’s a way to build anticipation before the launch itself.
The effect you’re after is the same as when you’re watching a series and the episode ends on a dramatic twist (the famous cliffhanger).
In other words, the goal of this type of email is to tell your audience something interesting without giving them all the information. Yes, you want your audience to be hooked and eager to know more.
Fashion brands know very well how to make the most of the teaser effect, for example by sending email marketing campaigns that preview a new collection.
Email example from Sezane
Email example #2: the welcome email
Welcome emails are one of the great classics of any email marketing strategy, and for very good reasons.
For starters, they’re the type of email that generates the most engagement, with open and click rates that far exceed those of any other email.
And it doesn’t end there: welcome emails generate three times more transactions and revenue than regular promotional emails.
Welcome email statistics – Inbox Army
Your readers have just subscribed, so their interest is at its peak. That’s why you need to seize the moment to make a good first impression and tell them what they can expect from your emails from now on.
You need to give them more than a simple courtesy welcome and offer them resources that help them move forward in their relationship with your brand. In other words, the welcome email is your first opportunity to keep your audience engaged.
For example, you can use it to guide their first steps by explaining where they should start, answering frequently asked questions or giving them tips to help them get the most out of your product or service.
Email example from Les Mills
Email example #3: the listicle
We humans love lists for a good number of reasons: we can scan them at a glance, they’re easy to read and, above all, we know what to expect, what’s coming next. That makes us feel secure.
And it’s a format you can adapt to different types of content: blog articles, checklists, social media posts and, of course, email campaigns.
Put your mind in listicle mode, because you can make lists of practically anything.
You only need to meet two requirements: the list must be useful to your audience, and it must be related to your business and the problems your product or service solves.
Just like this example from Freeletics, a listicle email that’s entertaining and at the same time showcases what’s new in their product.
Email example from Freeletics
This format is so powerful that there are actually lots of different types of listicle emails.
That’s why the next email examples are all about exactly that, lists, whether of resources, tips or even series of lists.
Email example #4: the resource list
Your readers have a problem. And you have lots of resources that could help them solve it. Boom! A winning combination.
All you have to do is put all the links together in a list so your audience can easily access all that information.
And the best part is that they can be your own resources, for example from your blog or your YouTube channel (giving them a visibility boost along the way), but they can also be resources from other websites that you’ve been collecting.
All that matters is that the list is well organized and that each resource is interesting and useful for your audience.
Email example from Really Good Emails
Email example #5: the list of tips
If you’re looking for email ideas that are both practical and simple, this is one of the quickest and most effective emails you can create.
After all, who better than you to advise your audience on everything related to your product or service?
1. Gather a short list of tips (three or four will be enough)
2. Write one or two paragraphs about each point (always keep the tone practical)
3. Put them together in your favorite email marketing tool
And voilà! Send.
Email example from LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the companies that get the most out of this type of email and, in fact, an important part of their email strategy is based on lists of tips.
Why? Because they know that if their users learn to use the platform better, they’ll use it more, and that’s good news for their business.
Email example #6: the sequenced list
This type of email combines two popular email marketing resources: the listicle email, which we’ve already seen, and the email series or sequence.
In other words, you gather a list of tips, resources, problems, challenges… you choose. But instead of putting them all together in a single email, you develop each point on the list in its own email and send them one after another.
You can schedule the emails at regular intervals, so they arrive daily or weekly. The key, of course, is the quality of the content: if it’s really good, it will keep your audience engaged and looking forward to the next tip.
This example from Lucidchart is a mix of a list of tips and a welcome sequence. As soon as you subscribe, you start receiving a series of emails, each with a tip that helps you get more out of the tool.
Email example from Lucidchart
In short, a 4-in-1: you’ve got a list, you’ve got tips, you’ve got a sequence and you’ve got a welcome 🙂
Email example #7: the success story
Let’s start from the premise that your audience joined your list because they’re interested in what you offer and because they have a pain point that your product or service solves.
That’s why you want your emails to show how you could help them, but it isn’t easy to do that in an entertaining way without sounding too salesy.
The type of email that helps you achieve exactly that is the success story: a story in which you explain to your audience how other people who were in the same situation managed to solve their problem.
The key is to make the content practical and useful for your audience by focusing on their problems.
And what role does your solution play in all this? It’s simple: think of the pain point as the protagonist of this story, and of your product or service not as the star, but as a supporting character.
Email example from Declarando
Email example #8: the habit email
Building a habit is the foundation for changing a behavior. So if the success of your business depends on your audience changing their behavior in some way, you first need to help them change their habits.
Habit formation is a super powerful tool that goes far beyond keeping your audience engaged.
So, naturally, we’re talking about building good habits: habits that will help them achieve their goals or solve their problems. You know… using the power of email marketing for good 🙂
There are two types of email that are especially useful for building habits:
1. Reminder emails, prompting them to take a specific action
2. Emails that share some kind of progress
You can send an email when your users take a specific action that you want to reinforce positively.
For example, the Petit Bambou app sends its users an email after each meditation they complete. It’s like a summary of what they’ve learned, and the app also uses it to give them tips they can put into practice between sessions.
Email example from Petit Bambou
Email example #9: the tutorial
Who said the only way to teach your audience how to do something is with a tutorial on YouTube or on your blog?
A step-by-step tutorial can also be the perfect type of email to keep your audience connected with your brand, while you show them how to get the most out of your product or service.
And to avoid overloading the email with text, you can include a list of steps that’s as concise as possible and add links to more information about each step, if you’ve published it elsewhere.
That’s exactly what they do in the email in the following example (check out the hot tips).
Email example from Arengu
Related posts:
- Mailing for $0: The Financial Impact of Migrating Your Contacts to Mailrelay
- Legal email marketing: 10 GDPR and LSSI rules for your campaigns
- How to Introduce Yourself to a Client by Email? 9 Key Examples
- Social Marketing and Influencers: Is Their Social Commitment Real?
- Costs of Launching an eCommerce Store: Essential Tools
Email example #10: the (attractive) product presentation
Talking about your business in a salesy way all the time is one thing (there’s nothing entertaining about that). But presenting relevant news about your product or service, interspersed with other types of emails, is something else entirely.
Especially if you present the content in an attractive way, for example by using visuals, videos, GIFs, emojis or by including short practical tips.
Take a look at this example from Todoist, where new features are always presented from the user’s point of view, focusing attention on the benefits.
And that’s combined with good product images, text formatting changes (bold, emojis) that make the copy easy to read, lists of tips and resources, and so on.
Email example from Todoist
And if you’re looking for more ideas for your emails…
Here are two more posts with examples to inspire you (you can’t miss them!).
▶︎ 5 email templates inspired by examples from top startups
▶︎ Sales funnels in email marketing: Types of emails and examples
If you want more ideas to achieve this, we have another article with 7 strategies to keep your audience engaged, all aimed at improving customer loyalty.
