Email Marketing in Action | Real-World Examples (Email Marketing Part 4)

There is a pivotal moment in action-adventure films where a lot of tension building comes to the surface, and it usually looks something like this: 

After weeks of slogging through the jungle; fighting bad guys with guns (and zero ability to aim them), battling supernatural monsters, contending with nature; solving endless riddles and puzzles, and generally just embarking on Oddysey-level side quests, they finally do it: the protagonist finds the lost treasure and takes a moment to wonder at it, bright-eyed and euphoric, before finally grabbing it with their own hands.

This is that moment for you. You’ve done the journey, and now, you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Congrats, truly!

Before you set out for the return home, we are going to give you something that most people claiming lost treasure don’t have the luxury of having: a walkthrough on how to make the best use of your treasure, or in this case, your email marketing knowledge.

The bread and butter of your email program will be these six types of emails: promotional, flash sale, educational, seasonal, holiday announcements, and drip marketing follow-up. So, let’s go through some real-world examples of successful emails:

Promotion

Promotions are a very common category of emails, and you will likely find yourself sending a lot of these as you build your digital marketing footprint. 

Below, you will find an example of really good promotional content that is simple, eye-catching, and effective. It has a clear call to action and imagery that speaks to the type of audience that would be interested in an Emsculpt treatment. 

There is an infinite number of variations that exist for this kind of promotional material, but this simple messaging and thoughtful imagery can serve as a good foundational reminder of what to aim for. 

Flash Sale

Flash sales have a lot of power when utilized properly, but it is important that every element somehow helps to create urgency. Open up with a big and meaningful call to action and follow up on that with important and enticing details. Throw in some imagery that will resonate with the persona you are trying to hit, and you have a simple, winning formula for sales emails. 

Educational

Educational marketing can be a very powerful tool for establishing rapport and building trust with your audience… which is just as important as any other component of your marketing efforts. So, emails that provide real educational value are great to put in rotation.

Of course, education and sales aren’t mutually exclusive, but they are very hard to marry — so if you are going to include a call to action or sales hook in an educational email, make it feel natural and unforced to the best of your ability.

Below, you’ll see an example of a medical aesthetic office busting and confirming some commonly believed myths about skin health. This formatting is designed for this specific content, but it can give you an idea of the general goal of education emails.

Seasonal

Seasonal promotions are popular for a reason: they just… work. Everyone is looking for a reason to enjoy the vibes of a changing season, and some seasons, like spring and summer, are prime opportunities to capitalize on your audience’s desire for skin protection and health. 

We have two emails below that show you fun ways to use the changing of the season to communicate with your potential patients in a low-stress way.

The first example is from Senza, who took a “self-care” approach to the email and listed ways everyone could give themselves a little boost in the summertime. 

The second example is much more sales-focused: it taps into its audiences' likely desire to engage in bikini and swimsuit activities and even provides them with information and a discount on Coolsculpting, a treatment that can help them have that ideal summer lounge.

The calls to action, dynamic imagery, enticing content, and overall design of this email really helped it achieve its seasonal promotion goals. 

Holiday

Holiday posts can be tricky to land. You want to be festive and participate in the fun, but you don’t want your marketing to come off as too simple or cheesy. You’ll need to find a balance between sophisticated, polished, festive, and fun — not an easy thing to pull off.

In the example below, you’ll see an email that is holiday adjacent — it is a charity event that the medical practice is involved in. It still checks all the boxes that we need in a good email but brings in a little of that holiday spirit too.

We love a good pun. Or, I do, at least. The jury is still out on anyone who isn’t a dad or into dad jokes. But in any case, this example below shows exactly how to keep a holiday-themed email classy and on brand without losing any of that holiday allure. 

Keep your brand and audience in mind while you slap some bells and Christmas trees around, and you’ll probably end up in a good place. 

Drip Marketing

Drip marketing can be a lot of different things, but a great way to use it is to reconnect with lost audiences who haven’t been back to your office after visiting once or even after becoming a regular. 

Just make sure to have a reason. In this email example, the reason is simple: there are new treatments that weren’t there before, so if don’t tell you about them, you’d never know. Not to mention, they wanted to really entice them back into the practice’s ecosystem, so a $100 discount was given to really bolster this automated drip marketing campaign. 

Solid strategies all around, and it goes to show that you don’t need to overcomplicate things to have a strong email program and even strong drip marketing automation. 

When You Mess an Email Up

Occasionally, an email will go out with a problem. A typo, the wrong imagery, the wrong promotion, incorrect dates, times, or availabilities — mistakes happen, and it’s important to know they aren’t the end of the world when they do. 

If you ever find yourself in a situation where an email with incorrect information was sent, the process to follow is simple:

1. Create a similarly themed email design to follow up with
2. Acknowledge and apologize for the error in the subject line
3. Provide your clarification and reasoning for the follow-up
4. Relax and take a deep breath — recognize that it isn’t the end of the world.

In this example, the issue was that a link to claim one of the promotions was not included in the original email. So, the subject line could have been something like this:

“Whoops — sorry, we forgot to add a link.”

And then the content can do the rest of the heavy lifting:

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• Similarly themed? Check.
• Apologize and acknowledge? Check.
• Clarification provided? Check.

It might feel like bugging people with a second email is a big deal—especially when you are nervously tracking unsubscribe rates—but these kinds of accidents can serve as a reminder that there is a person at the other end of the email, not some kind of email marketing machine. 

Don’t make a habit of reminding them too often, but don’t be afraid to embrace a rare mistake either.

Go Forth and Email

So, you’ve done it all now. You’ve written an email from start to finish, studied advanced email marketing concepts, and now you’ve seen more than a few examples of email designs and concepts that can deliver results.

Now, all that’s left is for you to get out there and dive into yourself… you know, until the next adventure comes along. If you got sidetracked along the way and need some helping finding your way back, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d love to spend some time working through all this with you. 

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