“Without promotion, something terrible happens—nothing!” - P.T. Barnum

You may know P.T. Barnum as the famous circus entrepreneur or the singing protagonist in The Greatest Showman. However, many students of marketing, communications, and business know him as a true innovator in the field of advertising and promotion. Before anyone was doing it, Barnum was running controversial ads for attention, getting stories planted in newspapers, and preparing event locations long before the actual event.

Why? He knew that great promotion always precedes a great event.

“Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land—it largely increases the product.” - P.T. Barnum

Agreed, Mr. Barnum. That’s why we’re sharing examples where sales promotion can increase the performance of your offering through email:

• New customer promotion
• Seasonal limited-time promotion
• New product launch
• Discount email
• Members-only promotion
• Free shipping promotion
• Upgrade promotion

Below, you’ll find some useful tips and advice as you consider these approaches for your marketing plan. Make sure you also download the templates that will get you started, all created using Keap’s proven email best practices.

As a plus, you can also download guides for other sales and marketing email templates, including welcome emails, follow-ups, newsletters, sales introduction emails, and more.

Pro tip: Are you ready to put promotional email templates (and others) to work for your business right now? Sign up for a 14-day free trial with Keap. The combination of these curated promotional email templates and Keap’s sales and marketing automation will save you time while generating the sales your business needs.

Send it: How and when to share your promotional emails

Promotional emails may very well be the most common and popular form of emails sent by companies. They keep your audience up to speed with the company’s latest offerings, share opportunities to pounce on a great deal, and call out special seasonal savings.

The good ones will even create ongoing customer engagement and increase overall brand awareness. Here are a few opportunities to consider within the sending process:

How to Send

The ideal approach always includes sales and marketing automation. In fact, the best promotional email examples are a part of a series. By automating a nurture series of emails to highlight your offering, you’re providing a number of relevant touch points for your customer. Want to see how Keap does that? Just download the templates to get started.

When to Send

The simple answer is: whenever your customer is most likely to be online. But, generally, we suggest times where people are most active online:

• Weekdays - the earlier in the week, the better
• Mornings - somewhere between 8 and 10 am
• Early Afternoon - just after the lunch hour

Staying Out of Spam

We have quite a few suggestions on keeping emails out of spam. Here are some highlights:

• Avoid a ton of images that would make the email seem like a promo
• Limit the email to a single call to action (CTA)
• Make the mail from a person, rather than your brand
• Avoid a lot of fancy HTML
• Keep the social links to a minimum

Writing Quality Subject Lines

This is a huge subject that Keap has covered with its Ultimate Guide to Subject Lines. However, the most important takeaway is to always be testing. Try a couple of variations sent to audience segments, determine the ones that are working best, apply your learnings to future emails, and repeat.

In the meantime, we’ll get you started with Keap’s Email Subject Line Generator.

The best promotional email examples for inspiring your next campaign

Let’s dig into some real-world examples to determine how to write a good promotional email. You’ll notice that some brands try to be a little funny, while others are focused only on the facts. However, each one offers the one thing every customer wants—value. That value can come in the form of a great deal, certainly. But it could also come through an interaction that successfully reinforces their choice to receive your content in their inbox, even if they don’t pull the trigger on your offer.

Remember:

“Fortune favors the brave…” - P.T. Barnum

Things to focus on when creating an exceptional promotional email campaign:

• Draw your audiences in from the beginning (starting with great subject lines)
• Make them an easy and entertaining read
• Always be relevant
• Give them a goal and a focus
• Send them when your audience is most willing to read
• Ensure they are mobile friendly
• Create shareable email content

Take a look at a few impressive examples of promotional emails below. Along the way, we’ll point out some things we believe they are doing right so that you can apply the learnings to your email campaigns.

New customer promotion

This sales promotion email example serves as the first touchpoint in a potential customer relationship. Clearly, the recipient had done some shopping with Moment and had not yet completed a sale. This email encourages a future conversion with its offer.

Source: Really Good Emails

Some strengths to this approach:

• It immediately compliments the potential customer for their choices so far
• It offers a discount on some of Moment’s most successful products
• Visual shopping links show a variety of “bestsellers”
• Links to deeper-dive content immediately follow
• Very good placement of the brand’s value proposition statements

While we see this as a strong new customer promotion, we also wonder if the discount could be more substantial to encourage even more people to purchase.

Seasonal limited-time promotion

Yay, summer! It’s one of many seasonal- or holiday-specific opportunities for you to offer something special to your customers and potential customers, alike. This offering from Leesa Sleep immediately creates a vibe, encouraging people to use all the relaxing moments of summer to get the sleep they need.

Source: Really Good Emails

What we love about this type of promotional email:

• It grabs you visually with its illustration style
• The email voice is exceptional and fun in every way
• The offer is clear and immediate
• It makes the point that summer is a great time to get your sleep in order (without directly saying it)

New product launch

Is this a product launch? Or is it a limited-time giveaway? Well, honestly, it’s both. When Magic Spoon Cereal does something, it’s usually executed with some originality and whimsy. This email offering is no exception, sharing an invention that every cereal fan has wished for at one time or another.

Source: Really Good Emails

Notable attributes of this special offer email example:

• Extra points for the new product name (long live the Stroon)
• The copy is so tongue-in-cheek, it’s glorious
• The offer is free when you place an order, creating customer loyalty
• The value proposition statement is the whole point of the promo - Happiness 100% Guaranteed

Discount email

Whether you want to stir up some sales during a slow season or double down on a busy one, the discount email is the way to go. This exclusive email offer from Yield represents an approach you’d likely see from a lot of brands in the lifestyle or home goods industries.

Source: Really Good Emails

A few takeaways worth mentioning:

• The hero copy is simple, offering a discount code at checkout
• The imagery is well done, but a little sparse in composition
• The image size makes for a whole lot of scrolling too
• The disclaimer is a little too prominent, almost seeming like body copy

Members-only promotion

Whether you have subscribers to your content or a rewards program that encourages repeat business, this discount email example makes those in your database feel like they are in exclusive company. Of all on this list, this promotion type is one of the rarer examples, as most companies opt for promotions that go out to everyone. Just keep in mind: Occasionally offering a members-only discount (like Pioneer) incentivizes customers to stick with your brand, helping to build subscriber/rewards lists in the long run too.

Source: Really Good Emails

Some callouts worth considering for discount email examples:

• Simple imagery, simple text, simple to digest
• Not sure if it’s great that the discount comes later, rather than the first visual of this email
• Bold move making their Black Friday promotion for members only
• Scrolling deeper provides a cool sneak peak at new products

Free shipping promotion

Who doesn’t love free shipping? This specific type of discount email (seen here from Attention Grace) is one that is used for busy sales seasons (holidays, back to school) when customers will likely be purchasing a whole cart of items, rather than just one. It almost always helps increase order sizes.

Source: Really Good Emails

Things we noticed:

• Illustration style is fun and very on-brand
• Seems to be a part of a series, giving customers time to take advantage
• Some redundancy in messaging that could be removed
• Good use of outlining when customers can always get free shipping

Upgrade promotion

Not all products have an upgraded version that offers more. But if yours does, you may want to consider this type of promotion. The example we’re sharing is from Grammarly, but Keap has been known to offer similar discounts in the past.

Source: Really Good Emails

Notes to consider for your promotion:

• The messaging immediately gets to the benefit, which is ideal
• Could be a little clearer on what Premium actually gives you
• The illustration styles are clashing a bit
• The callout for the promotion end date is helpful

Good promotional emails boost sales. Great ones provide long-term value.

But before they can do either, they need to get to your audience, right? That’s not going to be possible on a regular basis if you’re sending promotional emails out manually. You and your staff will be so exhausted, you won’t be able to accomplish much else.

That leaves a few other options, but the most reliable one, by far, is automation. By choosing an all-in-one sales and marketing automation platform like Keap, you increase your ability to capture leads, convert more leads into customers, and grow your business.

Download free promotional email template series that are built for automation

To see your sales and promotions perform at a higher level than ever before, please download our free guide with templates, Promotional Email Series Templates.

Then start your 14-day free trial of Keap to put them to work for you on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Back to School, or any other sales holiday for your business.