Best Email Marketing Templates for Your Campaigns

What is an email marketing template?

An email marketing template is a pre-designed layout used to create email campaigns quickly and efficiently. Templates provide a structured framework and fast solutions for organizing content, images, calls-to-action, and other email marketing design features, making it easier to convey your message effectively.

Email templates act as a starting point for creating attractive campaigns for better communication with your customer base. Templates can be customized and personalized according to the business objectives and the audience’s needs. Imagine that you don’t have to spend time organizing content, searching images, or choosing among hundreds of fonts — everything is already prepared. You just need to fill it with your own content. 

Here is a Shutterstock email marketing campaign that has likely been created from a simple template with a heading, a banner image, text, and a CTA button. Thanks to a template this email can be easily replicated.

Templates are one of the most convenient tools in email marketing that help businesses improve their email marketing management. Using email templates has many advantages:

• With templates, businesses can organize and manage the whole email creation process, maintain consistency in communication with customers across multiple different campaigns, and deliver appealing and professional-looking emails to their audience. 
• Templates don’t require any advanced design or coding skills, so they are an essential tool in email marketing for beginners.
• Templates save time as you don’t need to design emails from the ground up.
• Email templates are an easy way to try a new design and adapt your emails to new trends and customer preferences or just reorganize your previous successful marketing campaign. Email templates are usually already responsive, so you don’t have to redesign them for mobile devices. 
• As templates are prepared in advance and don’t change in their core, it’s harder to make mistakes.

Best email templates for marketing campaigns

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s explore some of the best email templates for various marketing campaigns:

Welcome email

Make a great first impression with a warm and welcoming email that introduces new subscribers to your brand.

The perfect welcome email requires personalization, warmth, and clarity. Express your joy when greeting a new customer and then summarize important information. Develop a tone that reflects the personality and values of your business. Finally, end the email with a sincere thank you and a call-to-action encouraging recipients to explore your suggestions or ask any questions.

Additional sales

Encourage repeat purchases and upsells with targeted emails showcasing additional products or services that complement previous purchases the customer made. You can also use this email marketing template to inform your customer base about additional promotions and discounts.

This email marketing campaign has a simple template that starts with a banner and a CTA and then dives deeper into each benefit of upgrading to a richer subscription plan. This is a classic structure for an upselling campaign for a SAAS business. 

Feedback request

Feedback helps you to improve your product and business operations, so you should send customers an email inviting them to share their thoughts and opinions.

You can send a customer who made a purchase an email with a survey or feedback form. The email doesn’t have to be long or include any marketing offers. You can motivate a customer to help with an encouraging heading and a prominently placed button.

Seasonal newsletter

Whether it’s for summer or winter, you can have one seasonal newsletter email marketing template to let your customer base know about upcoming events, promotions, and content related to current trends or holidays.

Promotion

Email marketing promotions like exclusive offers, discounts, or limited-time deals are always relevant, so you should have a template ready.

You can prepare different templates for different promotions, for example, it’s worth having one for a customer’s birthday or your company’s anniversary. Any repeating promotion that warrants an email marketing campaign is a candidate for a dedicated template. 

Event invitation

A visually appealing email invitation that provides all the necessary details and encourages action can generate interest and RSVPs for upcoming events or webinars. You can have one simple template for all events or create separate ones if your company has regular pop-up stores, blogger meetups, conferences, etc.

Abandoned cart

Re-engage customers who have abandoned their shopping carts with a targeted email reminder that prompts them to complete their purchase and offers incentives to seal the deal. This is one of the most important templates you can have as it stimulates sales and brings revenue.

New arrivals announcement

Showcase new products or services and generate buzz among your audience with a visually striking email announcing the latest arrivals or offerings. A template focused on product images and descriptions will suffice. 

Top 5 platforms with email marketing templates

Of course, you can search for pre-made email templates on the internet, but it’s way easier to just use a platform that offers them. In most cases, these templates are already responsive and ready to be customized. We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 platforms that have a wide range of email templates and other nifty design features:

Selzy

Selzy is an email marketing software known for its user-friendly interface and robust features. Thanks to its ready-to-use solutions, Selzy empowers marketers to design and send professional-looking emails with ease. 

Selzy has a free plan for up to 1,500 emails and 100 contacts. Paid plans start from $7 per month.

• 40+ pre-designed templates that are constantly being added to, for various industries and purposes: events, sales, webinars, and more.
• The editor has many elements and blocks you can save and reuse. You can also make your own blocks (for example, a header with your company’s logo) and save them for future use.
• A built-in media gallery with artificial intelligence image generation and 800k+ free stock images and GIFs.
• Multilingual AI-based text writing assistant that helps to write a convincing text from scratch, based on your instructions and your company’s tone of voice.

An A/B testing feature to test the effectiveness of different email template designs. Use different templates or shuffle elements in the same template and track analytics to see which one brought better conversion.

Stripo

Known for its intuitive drag-and-drop and HTML email builder with an extensive library of customizable templates, Stripo makes it easy to create emails that drive results. 

Free plan allows you to store 10 emails and templates with 4 free exports a month. Paid plans start from $15 per month.

• 1,500+ email templates for various needs and preferences (abandoned cart, coming soon, welcome, etc.), different industries (beauty&care, art, baking, etc.). There are also email templates with carousels and AMP features and templates built for integrations with other ESPs and tools.
• Integrates templates seamlessly with leading email service providers, including Mailchimp, SendGrid, Salesforce.
• New designs and features are added regularly to keep your campaigns fresh.
• Free email signature generator.
• Annotation designer for the “Promotions” tab in Gmail.

EmailOctopus

Offering affordable pricing plans and a vast selection of pre-designed templates, EmailOctopus is a popular choice for small businesses and startups looking to elevate their email marketing efforts.

EmailOctopus has a free plan for up to 2,500 subscribers and 10 thousand emails per month. Paid plan starts from $9 per month.

• A simple and modern email editor with 32 pre-designed templates for product announcements, a blog entry, transactions, newsletters, etc.
• Integrations with pop-up form solutions (OptinMonster, MailOptin), and other software.
• Automated welcome campaigns and drip email newsletters.

Omnisend

Combining email marketing with powerful automation and omnichannel capabilities, Omnisend allows marketers to create dynamic, personalized campaigns that engage customers across multiple touchpoints.

Omnisend has a free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails, including all features. Paid plans start from $16 per month.

• 250+ ready-made templates for your newsletter. Templates for welcome messages, product abandonment emails, shopping cart recovery emails, order confirmation emails, shipping confirmation emails, and so on.
• Product listings in the newsletter to allow for purchase right from the inbox. 
• Integration with e-commerce platforms such as Zippo, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and more. 

Brevo

Brevo has all the necessary tools for creating, managing, and analyzing email campaigns. It also has a modern, user-friendly email builder with customizable templates optimized for conversion.

Brevo has a free plan with unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails a day, the plan includes templates. Paid plans start from $25 per month.

• Sending targeted offers based on visited landing pages (great for e-commerce).
• Preview and test for your email templates before sending.
• 40+ email templates for welcome emails, new product, sales, and feedback, as well as subscription confirmation (or double opt-in), order confirmation, notifications, and other transactional emails, etc.
• A/B testing allows you to experiment with different designs and layouts to see what works best for your audience.
• Rich text editor for basic text-only emails, or an HTML file created by a design professional.

How to create an email marketing template

Creating an email marketing template doesn’t have to be a difficult task. Follow these simple steps to create a template that effectively communicates your message and resonates with your audience:

Set your goals: This is the first step in every process. Even before designing the template, you should decide what purpose it’s going to serve and what you’re trying to achieve with this email campaign. Goals such as driving sales, promoting a new product, or nurturing leads each have a different impact on email design and the content of your template.

Pick a template format: Next, choose a template format according to the goals of your campaign and the content you need to include in it (images, GIFs, and other visuals, product cards, count-down timer, etc.). Some of the popular format options are single-column, multi-column, and hybrid layouts.

Create the template layout: Use a drag-and-drop email builder or HTML editor to design the layout of your template. Don’t forget to add a header and a footer. Overall, try to strike a balance between an appealing and informative design, and make sure it is consistent with your brand’s image. As a final step in this process, make sure your template is responsive and looks good on both desktop and mobile. In most builders, including Selzy, you can save your custom templates to use in your future campaigns.

Customize content blocks: After you make a draft of your design, you can customize it to better suit your business. Complete the template with your company’s colors, logos, and fonts, as well as other visual elements and features that distinguish your brand from others.

Test and iterate: When you are satisfied with the template, there is one last step you shouldn’t overlook. Make test sends of the template to as many email clients and devices as you can to check the rendering and functionality. Only after that can your template be truly ready for sending to customers. When the template has been in use, collect feedback from colleagues or run A/B tests to refine your template.

Tips for using email marketing templates

To make the most of your email marketing templates and drive better results, consider the following tips:

• Test templates in practice and adapt them to your audience if needed. Test email providers (many of them have free plans) with different templates to find what works better for your business.
• Find the most intuitive user interface. An easy-to-use tool saves not only your time but also your team’s resources. When everyone on your team can easily use an email builder, there’s no need for your email marketer or designer’s help, and your team can devote their spare time to the email content.  
• Choose a template that matches your business style, tone of voice, and the idea behind it. For example, if you sell handmade ceramics, use templates that highlight the product’s visual appeal and use less text. But if you promote an event, make sure that you use a template that prioritizes text and makes it look visible and engaging. 
• Experiment and be creative. Create different types of email templates from serious and informative to more bright and creative, and send them to your subscribers to see which works the best. Keep tracking the results with email analytics and optimize your strategy to achieve the best results.
• Watch the others. If you want to keep up with the times and make newsletters following the latest trends in email marketing, you certainly need to keep an eye on the others’ emails. For example, you can read the best email marketing resources to get some inspiration.

Final thoughts

Thanks to the pre-designed templates and fast and user-friendly drag-and-drop editors, making emails is an easy and creative process. 

Whether you’re promoting products, sharing updates, or attracting potential customers, various email templates have been already created for your business needs. Let’s revise once again the most common types:

• Welcome emails
• Additional sales
• Feedback request
• Seasonal newsletter
• Promotion
• Event invitation
• Abandoned cart
• New arrivals announcement

With email templates, you can launch marketing campaigns for any marketing purpose and better communicate your business ideas to your audience.