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Home Running A Business 10 Email Samples for Every Small Business Marketing Scenario
You know what they say: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.”
As a small business owner, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel with every email marketing campaign—you have enough on your plate already.
Instead, take what already works and make it better. This method accelerates your success by building off past victories—and they don’t necessarily have to be your previous victories.
Below, we’ve curated a list of 10 fantastic email samples you can use for various marketing use cases: shipping notifications, password resets, sales announcements, and everything in between.
Take these samples, tailor them to your brand, spice them up, and use them for your small business. Don’t just copy them—that’ll only make you a good marketer. Become a great marketer by stealing and improving on them.
Below, we’ve written out all the copy for a variety of email campaigns. However, your emails will need more than just words.
Direct mail legend Brian Kurtz claims that your marketing success will depend on the 41-39-20 rule:
Here, we’re just helping you with the creative. It’s up to you to build the list and justify the enticing offers.
Every purchase (whether it’s online or in-person) needs a receipt. Simple, right? Just insert the itemized purchases and the total.
But you can do more.
Society and trends have told us what’s always been done before is right—but don’t get caught up in the bandwagon. For example, your purchase receipt emails don’t have to be dull and boring.
Spice them up. Try adding some creative, on-brand copy to tell a story. Yes, you’ll need to include the itemized purchases, too—but that can come next.
Subject Line: Sit back and relax—we’ve received your order
Body:
Congratulations! You did it. You finished the hardest part: treating yourself.
It’s not easy putting yourself first, but we’re glad you were up to the challenge.
Now, sit back and relax. We received your order, and we’re getting it all packaged up nice and neat as we speak.
We’ll let you know when your order has shipped.
Go. Stop worrying. We got it covered. Go.
Treat yo’ self.
It’s best practice to verify every action someone takes online. Whether they make a purchase, subscribe, or even fill out a questionnaire, it’s important to let them know that their action has been executed and recognized.
When someone subscribes to your service, a recurring purchase, or your newsletter, you’ll want to verify this action with them. This informs them that the subscription went through, so they aren’t waiting around a month for the next newsletter to confirm it.
Take this confirmation opportunity to set expectations. What can they anticipate receiving in their inbox? When? What’s the value to them?
If your new subscriber likes the expectations, great! They’ll stick around. If not, they’ll unsubscribe—which is actually a great thing, too.
Unsubscribes are a lot better than someone signing up and (a) never reading your emails or (b) eventually marking them as spam. Inbox service providers don’t like either of those indicators, and they’ll start sending more of your messages to the spam folder if people stop reading or mark your messages as spam.
Subject Line: Welcome to the team!
Thanks for subscribing, [name]. Welcome to the team!
Here’s what you can expect with your newsletter subscription:
Ready to get a taste of the first-team action? Stay tuned for the next newsletter dropping Monday morning.
Talk soon,
Bandit Jones, CEO of TalkSoccerDeals.com
Use email to make your customers’ lives easier. Don’t make them dig through their inbox to find out why their package hasn’t arrived—give them step-by-step shipping notifications.
Item left the warehouse? Shoot them an email. Package arriving today? Shoot them an email.
Give them all the updates they’ll need to stop wasting their time searching through emails.
Here’s what one of those emails could look like.
Subject Line: Order Shipped. Get Stoked.
You stoked? You should be. Your order just shipped.
Go ahead. Camp out by the mailbox. We would, too, if we’d just made the same purchase.
Or use tracking number 1Z2R7V932019 to get live delivery updates.
The choice is yours—no judgment either way.
Here’s a list of what’s coming your way…
There’s a right way and a wrong way to tell all your friends about your business’s big upcoming party.
Get it right, and you’ll have the cool kids lining up out the door. Get it wrong, and you’ll just have the crickets to keep you company.
Here’s an example of how you might invite your email list to an upcoming event.
Subject Line: The Workshop of the Year Starts Soon
The workshop starts soon—don’t be the last to RSVP.
You have 7 days left to register for The Ultimate Shoe-Making Bootcamp. Here’s what registrants get:
Register now for 70% off! This deal won’t last long, so don’t wait until the last minute to sign up.
Your end-of-year sales campaign can’t fall short—you’ve got numbers to hit and goals to crush. Your email marketing sales announcement is where it all starts.
This is where you bring in the digital revenue and directly influence in-person sales. Bring it home!
Keep in mind that email recipients get a lot of email—and that means they get offered a lot of amazing deals, too. This has made them desensitized to brands screaming “deal! deal! deal!”
If you want to convince your customers you have the real deals going on, then you’ll need to prove it with the numbers. Twilio SendGrid’s 2020 Global Messaging Engagement Report found that discounts need to be deep (40% or more) to be perceived as worthwhile. If you can’t discount that much, it’s probably not worth blasting your email list—they have better discounts to worry about.
Subject Line: 50% OFF Winter Clearance
Spring is here, and we’re clearing out winter inventory. You know what that means…huge discounts!
Order now to save up to 50% on boots, jackets, scarves, hats, gloves, and more. Our cozy fur-lined products go quick—shop now before they’re all gone!
Use the Code SnowBGone at checkout to get your deep discounts.
Shop quickly while supplies last.
Newsletters come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—just like everything at Ben & Jerry’s.
There’s no one-kind-pleases-all newsletter email approach—you’ll need to tailor them to satisfy your audience’s needs. However, it’s important to lead with a strong subject line. Spend a good deal of time polishing this up, especially if you send more frequent newsletters (daily or multiple times per week).
Subject Line: Stimulus checks launch, PPP changes, and something wild…
Whew! Glad you’re here—you don’t want to miss this.
Stimulus Checks for You, and You, and You
Congress signed off on stimulus round #3, and that means money is on its way. Want to know what you’ll receive and when? Check out our new updated guide.
PPP Did What?!
Finally, PPP loans changed conditions—sole proprietors can now use their gross income (instead of net profit) to calculate their loan amounts. Thank goodness! Get all the deets here.
You Asked, We Delivered
You’ve been practically begging for more content—we hear you, we hear you. Our response: enjoy our brand-new podcast series: The Better Dollar Daily. Subscribe now.
Have a friend who needs this information, too? Forward this on and get them to subscribe so they never miss the latest-and-greatest small business financing updates.
Cooked up something special for your customers? Let them know about it with a punchy product announcement email.
Ditch the sales jargon and deliver on results, not features. No one cares what your product can do—they just care what it can do for them.
Subject Line: yTouch: Put More Music in Your Pocket
Introducing the yTouch!
Take more music with you wherever you go. Upload up to 20,000 songs, and do it all before breakfast with faster-than-ever download speed (0.25sec/song).
Ready to dance your way across the Alps to the sounds of music or to blast your pump-up jams to your next big promotion?
Do it bigger and better with the yTouch.
Reserve your launch-day tunes now with 15% off early bird rates.
Roll out the red carpet. When someone subscribes to your marketing emails, product announcements, newsletters, or email campaigns, it’s time to make a good first impression.
That first impression is your welcome email.
An excellent welcome email will do 3 things:
Subject Line: Welcome to BetterBiceps
Well done. You made it. By signing up to BetterBiceps, you’ve taken your first step toward bigger, stronger arms. We’ll do everything we can to support you along your journey to massive biceps.
First, start with the basics. Download the training routine here so you can follow along. Each morning, we’ll send your BetterBicep workouts to your inbox. On Sunday RestDay, we’ll send you nutrition tips for the upcoming week.
Download Training Routine
Our team of BicepEnthusiasts is here for you every step of the way. Reach out here or on Twitter to chat!
Welcome to the team. Get swole!
Abandoned cart emails are one of the most effective marketing campaigns of all time. No, that’s not hyperbole—we’re completely serious.
Customers ditch 77% of websites after adding an item to their cart without checking out. But abandoned cart emails have an average 43% open rate and 8% conversion rate.
Here’s an example of an abandoned cart email in action.
Subject Line: Whoopsie. You forgot your shoes.
You don’t find shoe discounts like this anymore. But, hey, let us sweeten the deal a bit. Complete your purchase in the next 24 hours, and we’ll give you free shipping.
Trust us—it doesn’t get better than this.
Check out now!
There’s a lot that goes into planning and executing a webinar. For email communications alone, you have invites, confirmations, reminders, and post-webinar recap emails—it’s a lot.
However, one of the biggest disparities for webinars is between registrants and attendance. Their attendance rate is less than 40%, meaning that fewer than half of those who show interest in your webinar will actually attend.
Change that percentage with a timely reminder email. 30 to 60 minutes before a webinar starts, send your registrants an irresistible email.
Subject Line: Throw Up the Away Message—The Webinar Is Starting in 30 Minutes
Fill up your coffee, put on your do-not-disturb-me headphones, and get ready for 1 hour of jam-packed copywriting inspiration.
We’re starting in 30 minutes!
See you in the webinar!
P.S.: Come with questions. We’re going to be having a live Q&A, so stick around ’til the end.
Don’t get stuck on a white screen. Copy/paste these email samples into your editor and start cutting, gluing, adding, and removing what you need to build the perfect email series.
And then start the process over again.
Remember, copy if you want to send good emails—steal if you want to send great emails.
Jesse Sumrak is a Social Media Manager for SendGrid, a leading digital communication platform. He's created and managed content for startups, growth-stage companies, and publicly-traded businesses. Jesse has spent almost a decade writing about small business and entrepreneurship topics, having built and sold his own post-apocalyptic fitness bootstrapped startup. When he's not dabbling in digital marketing, you'll find him ultrarunning in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Jesse studied Public Relations at Brigham Young University.
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