All the Common Types of Emails To Use in an Email Marketing Campaign

The importance of using different email types

Did you know that in 2020, the number of global email users amounted to four billion and is set to grow to 4.6 billion users in 2025?

These statistics show that email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have to maintain your customer base and grow your business in e-commerce. So in order to build brand loyalty and reinforce engagement and the relationship between you and your customer, harness the full potential of email marketing by using different types of email.

When you are thinking about your email marketing strategy, the hardest thing to do is to find this “starting point” of research as there is a lot of information available nowadays. What is the first step, where can you begin collecting information to build your emailing strategy in order to successfully convert a lead into a client? It will be a good idea to familiarize yourself with different types of emails first, and we have good news — we prepared a full list of them, so you don’t spend time surfing around the web.

If you use a variety of email formats it keeps your audience engaged. Sending various sorts of emails can assist you in maintaining consistency and building long-term connections with existing and new clients.

Different types of emails

Welcome emails

Before everything, it is important to warmly welcome your new subscribers when they sign up for your emails. This is where you use a welcome email.

Why is it important?

• Helps to make a good first impression.
• Give subscribers an overview of what they can expect from your future emails.
• Provides an opportunity to drive traffic back to your website.
• Allows subscribers to confirm that their registration has taken place.

What to include?

• Client’s name – customize your subject line to add a nice touch
• A message with a sincere thank you and a note on what to expect
• Exclusive special offers or value-added content like a special offer or a free ebook

Newsletters

Companies use newsletters to communicate with their prospects and customers. Newsletters are informational and are aimed primarily at informing your prospects and customers, and not at pushing them towards your conversion goals (for example buying your products or using an offer).

Why is it important?

• Keeps your customers engaged.
• Increases traffic and conversions.
• Informs your customers about current trends.
• Increases your credibility.
• Customizes communication.
• Helps promote your products and services.

What to include?

• Your signature style according to branding
• Interesting and eye-catching headlines
• Useful information for your customers
• Creative design and infographics

Announcement emails

An announcement email informs recipients of anything new, updated, or different in your company. They’re utilized to spread the word about a new product released or a launch, a chance to pre-order or a unique occasion like a new store opening.

Why is it important?

• Keeps your audience informed about new product releases.
• Gives your audience an idea that you are always evolving.
• If you are introducing a new business, it instantly allows you to reach the existing customer base.
• Brings traffic to your website.

What to include?

• Clear and concise message
• Invitation to visit a website to read more information about the announcement
• Attractive graphics and images

Special offer emails

Sharing exclusive special offers by email is a great way to involve your customers. A good example can be a last chance email that helps to remind your clients that they have a limited time to take advantage of your generous offer. Just remember not to spam them with tons of offers through cross-sell or upsell emails every week or even every month. Keep a special and occasional offer to get the best results.

Why is it important?

• Creates an excitement by promoting the upcoming sale on your website and social media pages, and then sends it exclusively to email subscribers.
• Encourages customers to stay subscribed for upcoming offers.
• Gets more registrations with sales teasers before the email launch.

What to include?

• An exciting copy and visible texts and catchphrases (bold, color, etc.)
• Clear wording
• A call-to-action that allows subscribers to buy easily from email
• A sense of urgency – don’t make your sale last forever and communicate clearly about its end

Survey emails

Sometimes, to get the feedback you need, you have to ask for it! It is entirely appropriate to ask from time to time for specific reviews or comments on your products or email messages.

Why is it important?

• Reviews are often the first thing a new customer sees – make sure you have a lot of good reviews by asking satisfied customers to leave a review on Google, Facebook or direct email, which you can add to your website.
• Get information about what content your customers want to see and what products they like or would like you to offer.

What to include?

• Polite requests or surveys
• Clear calls to action with a link to where customers can write their opinion or answer your survey
• Clearly stated conditions, for example, whether it is anonymous or not

Confirmation emails

A confirmation email is a transactional email that is sent to a client once a specific task or stage is satisfied. This email can be used to confirm that a customer has made an order or a booking, signed up for a newsletter, purchased tickets, or registered for a webinar.

Remember, it can be the first email that arrives in your customer’s inbox, so make a good first impression!

Why is it important?

• Gives an opportunity to sell complementary products or services.
• Increases conversion rate as the confirmation emails are usually anticipated and land in the primary inbox.
• Helps to analyze the audience’s behavior.

What to include?

• Short and customized messages
• Signature creative design
• Call-to-action to your offerings or deals

Abandoned cart emails

Abandoned cart emails are emails sent to re-engage consumers who abandoned their carts without finishing the checkout process. According to a study conducted on 500 of the world’s most well-known businesses, 44.1% of abandoned cart emails are read, and nearly a third of abandoned cart email clicks (29.9%) result in a recovered transaction.

Why is it important?

• Helps to re-engage customers into buying a product.
• Increases sales.

What to include?

• Catchy phrases
• Interesting offers
• Personal messages
• Clean and eye-catching graphics

Anniversary or birthday emails

You can strengthen the personalization of your emails by giving your clients the opportunity to indicate their date of birth or an anniversary related to your field of business (wedding, children, home, diploma). When they sign up, you will have an opportunity to surprise them with a personal message on the day.

Why is it important?

• Reinforces the relationship between your customers and your business.
• Shows your subscribers that you care about them.
• Boosts sales by encouraging customers to buy something on a special occasion, when consumers are more likely to indulge.

What to include?

• A brief but sincere message
• An exclusive special offer and an additional bonus that they can redeem with a purchase

Subscription cancellation emails

The name speaks for itself. It’s the short email that confirms that your client decided to unsubscribe from your newsletter, services or promotional emails. We know that it’s always hard to break up but let’s accept the bitter truth and learn from our mistakes.

Why is it important?

• Gives an opportunity to collect feedback from your customers.
• Helps to learn about your audience’s preferences.
• Can serve as a re-engagement email.

What to include?

• Request for feedback.
• Short message that makes the customer regret leaving you.
• The reason to subscribe back.
• An interesting offer or a discount.
• Clear instructions on how to subscribe back.

How to measure the effectiveness of different kinds of emails

Imagine how you finish working with the design and the contents of your email, click “Send” and you finally let yourself heave a sigh of relief as your job is done, but it’s too soon to relax. There is a really important step that you are missing — measuring the performance of your email campaign.

Each type of email has its own peculiarities so, naturally, you need to treat each one of them differently. For a welcome, confirmation, anniversary/birthday, abandoned cart emails it will be wise to track an open rate, deliverability, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate; for a special offer add the conversion rate metric and, finally, for a newsletter maybe it will be useful to monitor a sharing rate too as it’s used for informational purposes rather than promotional ones.

Conclusion

Now you know the different types of emails to use as part of a marketing strategy. Let’s have a quick recap.

We talked about the various types of emails and how important it is to make your client’s inbox diverse if you want to increase conversions and as a result your sales. To achieve that, experiment with different types of emails with valuable content that will keep your audience interested to follow you for a long time.

Consider adding these email types to your email marketing strategy:

• Welcome emails
• Newsletters
• Announcement emails
• Special offer emails
• Survey emails
• Confirmation emails
• Abandoned cart emails
• Anniversary or birthday emails
• Subscription cancellation emails

Also, use automation for scheduling your emails and don’t forget to measure the performance of each email marketing campaign to learn from your mistakes and correct your strategy for the future.