An email newsletter is probably the most versatile marketing strategy to stay in touch with your readers whether they are your clients, or even your company members. Between sharing news, making announcements, and reaching out for help, newsletters can be molded into just about anything.
So if you’re working on your digital marketing and struggling to find good email newsletter designs to inspire you, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered!
Let’s have a look at different topics and the corresponding newsletter formats and techniques that you can apply:
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For Employees
What kind of content will make employees actually open and read your internal newsletter?
Think of your newsletter as the heartbeat of your business, providing vital information to everyone in your organization, such as:
- Company Achievements
- New Hires
- Individual Awards and Recognition
- Personalized Messages from the CEO
- Important announcements
- Surveys and polls
- Featured Employee Birthdays
- Team Spotlights
What these emails must reflect is that the company cares about the employees and wants to keep them active and involved in all the activities and events that take place in the company.
In this example we can see a message from the CEO addressing the entire company, informing them of the achievements of the last year and congratulating the company on its anniversary.
What we like about this newsletter: It has a simple design. There are no extra elements that distract from reading, and there is a highlight of the main subject of the email. They have also added photos of the employees celebrating the anniversary, which makes it cheerier.
What we don’t like: The simple design can be a handicap too. Even if it is not an excessively long text, using bolded text would have helped to highlight certain phrases or words.
Company-oriented newsletter examples
What does a company newsletter include? Well, they mainly contain information regarding:
- Departmental Highlights
- Internal Product Launches
- Positive Press concerning the company
- (Updated) Company Policies
- Events
- Holiday Party Invites
- Customer Stories
- Tips from the Experts
- Blog Roundup
- Advice Column
- Video Updates
- Alerts
It’s about giving your colleagues and employees the weekly, monthly or quarterly news about what’s going on inside your company, because it’s something that affects all your workers.
Look at the example below. It provides information about the events that will occur during the month of May, so the members are aware, and can make plans to be there and enjoy them.
What we like about this newsletter: It’s fast and easy to read, thanks to its design, and it shows the information in an orderly way.
What we don’t like: It works for an easygoing company, but not for a serious one. This design would not be appropriate, for example, at a law firm.
School newsletter examples
The purpose of a school newsletter is to provide information that keeps parents up-to-date with what is happening in school. They are almost always a reminder of what will happen at school during the term, reporting on:
- School calendar
- The school canteen
- News from the nursery
- Extracurricular activities held at the school itself
- School festivals
- Tips for Parents Teaching from Home
- Trips
What we like about this newsletter: Its design makes it easy to read and the elements and pictures are well integrated.
What we don’t like: It may be too long for a newsletter. As they can send it weekly or monthly, they could have divided the information in two different newsletters.
Parent newsletter example
It is similar to the previous one but focuses on each classroom or course, rather than on the entire school in general. Normally, the information included in this type of newsletter is focused on:
- What will be learned during the term or course
- Announcement of upcoming events
- Invitations to class activities or an open house
- Reminders
- Lists of items parents could collect or save for class projects
- Each student’s progress (a newsletter to parents of that student in concrete)
- Explanations of grading policies, standardized testing, and other means for assessing and evaluating performance
This example is about a preschool course, so this newsletter would only be sent to parents who have a child in this course.
What we like about this newsletter: The information is divided into blocks, which makes it easier to read, and the design elements are not too childish.
What we don’t like: The first block of information should contain elements that highlight the different topics it covers.
Christmas newsletter examples
This time, your newsletter should have a warmer feel because of the holidays, so the design takes a lot of importance.
If you’re sending it to your employees, it should be a snapshot of the whole year, plus a peek at the year to come, thanking them for the big effort they made and wishing them a very happy holidays.
If it’s a marketing newsletter, then you should include a gift, such as a coupon or promotion for these days, making the copy very Christmassy.
Look at this example from Saverstore. The design is Christmas themed, and the first thing you read is the coupon they offer you for purchases to make before the 2nd of January. The rest of the text is short, wishing clients a merry Christmas from the whole team.
What we like about this newsletter: We love the design and the structure of the text. It’s exactly the kind of newsletter that you expect during the holiday season.
What we don’t like: We miss a call to action to drive the customer to the online store, and the calligraphy-styled typography may make the text less readable.
Gym newsletter examples
It is a perfect opportunity to share exciting announcements and developments happening at your gym with your members, such as information about new classes, new staff, personal training schedules, and anything else that’ll keep them feeling connected.
Here are some ideas you can include:
- Educate on nutrition and food groups
- Advice on general health and wellbeing
- How to get the best outcome from various exercises
- The latest studies on fitness
- Ways to get motivated for the gym
- The benefits of pairing training with certain diets
- How to avoid sport-related injuries
- Information on the best ways to keep a healthy routine
- Workout ideas
Your gym should have its own newsletter template, and it’s recommendable to use images to accompany your texts (it’s better if they’re not from a bank of images). Plus, if you use some memes, you will add a touch of humor with which they can feel identified.
What we like about this newsletter: The use the same email to talk about different topics related to health, dividing it into blocks so you can go directly to what interests you most.
What we don’t like: The pictures. It seems that they took them from a image bank, which can cause a loss of connection of the client from the gym.
Blog newsletter examples
A blog newsletter is an email to notify subscribers you’ve published a new blog post. In other words, this drives traffic to your site.
These are some of the topics you should include in your newsletter.
- Your Latest Posts
- The Month’s Most Popular Posts
- A Round Up of What You’ve Been Up To
- Products You’re Loving Right Now
- Exclusive Tips and Competitions
- Exclusive Discount Codes/Offers from Brands You Work With
- How Recipients Got On Your Mailing List
- Links to Your Social Media
Capitol Standard connects a global community of young professionals redefining work, leisure, and the standards of success. It uses its blog to talk about different topics that are interesting from many users.
What we like about this newsletter: It has most of the elements that we talked about to include, and it has a classic and light design.
What we don’t like: The CTA buttons should be bigger and more visible.
Ecommerce newsletter examples
Usually, newsletters are used to get attention from prospects, but the importance of ecommerce newsletters is to maintain an ongoing connection with contacts and existing customers, reinforcing a strong relationship with them.
These kinds of communications can serve a few more purposes, such as:
- Promote new products in the store
- Announce seasonal promotions or sales
- Help build a community around the brand
They can be sent weekly, monthly or quarterly, depending on the objectives and the business activity that your company has.
Look at the example below. This newsletter comes from Airbnb, the online marketplace which lets people rent out their properties or spare rooms to guests. As you can observe, they use this newsletter to inform their clients (hosts) about tips to apply to their settings to help them increase their bookings.
What we like about this newsletter: They offer the information in an orderly fashion, with visible CTAs and an attractive design that invites you to read it.
What we don’t like: As this is a newsletter about new settings, they should have added a screenshot about the new sections to make it clearer.
Museum newsletter examples
Newsletters are a good method of communication between a museum and its visitors.
The information that museum newsletter should include:
- Exhibitions and works of art
- Reminders of upcoming concerts, classes, and activities
- New merchandise in the store
- Changes in schedule and special dates
Personalization is key in this type of newsletter. If you riddle your customers with all kinds of information about every exhibition, your emails will end up in the spam folder. Look at the interests of your users and send information related to their tastes.
These newsletters always include photos of the exhibitions or events that will be held there. If the email is not accompanied by visual elements, it will not work. A museum is a visual place, so your newsletter should be, too.
Take a look at the example below. It is a newsletter from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they highlight a key exhibition, where the photo occupies more than the information itself, and they accompany it with two other events that may interest the reader.
What we like about this newsletter: It contains all the elements of a good newsletter: photos, relevant information, visible CTAs, highlights, recommendations and links to social networks.
What we don’t like: It would be complete with a gallery of images of the exhibition they advertise in the email itself, to give the client an idea of ​​what they are going to see.
Vacation newsletter example
People love to travel. So it’s no wonder they like to receive newsletters with travel and hotel information. Vacation newsletters are usually very visual, with lots of photos and just descriptive text, so keep it short (our attention spans are not very long) and personalize the information. You should know the preferences of your consumers in order to send them more relevant information, thus ensuring a higher rate of clicks and conversion.
Here are some tips for vacation newsletters:
- Usea a CTA for each topic/destination
- Offer incentives
- Get creative with your content. Here some ideas:
- Food recipes and dishes from around the world
- Travel packing checklist
- 5 things to do before you travel
- Travel hacking tips
- Top 5 lessons learned from traveling
- must-read travel articles
- Travel stories
- “How-to” newsletters that solve specific travel problems
In the example below, you can observe a newsletter that includes lots of possible destinations for your next adventure, such as skiing, trekking, sailing…You can view and choose from a variety of activities and destinations, each one with a picture and a brief description of the vacation type.
What we like about this newsletter: It offers diverse destinations in the same email so they increase the possibilities of people clicking on one of them.
What we don’t like: There is no personalization in this newsletter. They offer different adventures, but without focusing in one topic in particular.
Parts of a newsletter
Newsletter introduction examples
Your introduction has to encourage readers to keep on reading. If you don’t work on this part, the rest of the email can be amazing but will not matter. It won’t be seen.
So, how do you write intros that people can’t help wanting to read? Follow these techniques:
Get to the point
Nobody wants to spend their time reading an email that may not be interesting to them. They want to know as quickly as possible what it is about and what’s in it for them, so get to the point immediately.
Personalize it
Yes, yes, yes. We always repeat this, we know. But it matters a lot. Studies show that personalized emails get 25% more opens and 51% more clicks than non-personalized emails.
And not only that. People nowadays expect their emails to be personalized, because it makes them feel special. If they receive a newsletter with general information about any topic and with an introduction like “Dear customer”, they will see it as spam. Segment your audience and send relevant information.
Include questions
They can play a big part in effective newsletter introductions, because it makes them wonder about the answer and keep on reading.
But don’t ask “yes or no” questions; they might make you lose that reader. Make sure it’s an open-ended question that doesn’t invite to a “no” response. Like this example:
Use pictures
Make a combination of words and images. This can be a very effective way to get to the point quickly. Did you know that our brains process images 6,000 times faster than text?
Newsletter sign up examples
When it comes to the signup form of your newsletter, there are some tips you should follow if you want to increase the number of conversions:
- Match your forms to your content: Create signup forms that are personalized to the page a visitor is reading.
- Keep it simple: For newsletter signup forms, shorter is better. Keep it to one or two fields max.
- Make your CTA clear: Make it visible and try not to use generic words like “Send”, be creative on this point too.
- Offer an incentive: If you give subscribers immediate value by offering an incentive for signup, like a coupon or content upgrade.
- Give info about your emails: Did you know nearly 70% of people unsubscribe from email lists because they receive emails too often?. Our recommendation is to tell people how often they’re going to receive your newsletters and what type of content you’ll send them.
Let’s have a look at some examples.
This one here offers a discount for signing up and they just ask for the email address. Simple, visual and with a promotion. Nice!
This one from Panda makes clear that they will send a newsletter every few weeks, so you get an idea of when you’re going to receive them.
Newsletter subject lines examples
And last, the subject line. It is the first thing customers read when receiving a newsletter, so whether they open it or not depends on it. In fact, 33% of email recipients open emails because of catchy subject lines, so make sure you apply some of the following techniques to make sure you send good emails and increase the chances of reading them:
Personalized them
Personalization againnnnnnn!
In emails it is key. You want to make an emotional connection with your customers, so make sure you use it in all your communications. They have more chance of the email being opened than those without personalization.
Make them urgent
Urgency is a powerful weapon if we mix it with the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), so use the appropriate words to make your clients want to read it.
They contain an offer
We all love offers, so if you add one to your subject line, the probabilities of customers opening them will be higher.
But don’t use the words “free” or “rich”; they may land you in the spam folder.
So, those are our recommendations and techniques to apply to your future newsletters. We hope you found them useful!
