5 Great Email Marketing Examples That Drive Results

Introduction

Email marketing may feel like an old friend in the ever-changing world of digital marketing, but it still quietly drives big results as a core email marketing strategy for brands of all sizes.

Even as social platforms evolve and new channels emerge, email remains one of the most direct, measurable, and cost‑effective ways to connect with your audience. 

And unlike social posts that quickly disappear into feeds, sometimes even missed by your own followers, emails land straight in your audience’s inbox, a place they check almost every day. That means you own your list and get to speak directly to the people who care about your brand.

The beauty of email lies in its flexibility. Brands can send email campaigns to educate, convert, remind, re-engage, and delight subscribers. These include personal emails, transactional emails, promotional emails, and lead nurturing emails. All of these support long-term growth.

In short, email marketing continues to deliver strong returns by combining personalisation, timely relevance, and clear calls to action that turn subscribers into loyal customers.

In this article, you’ll learn from five real and great email marketing examples that drive results, why they work, and how you can apply similar tactics in your campaigns, whether you’re a marketer at an agency or running your own small business.

So, do people still open emails today? The short answer is yes, and these successful email marketing campaigns prove it.

Example 1: Personalised Welcome Emails

Why First Impressions Matter

Your first email to a new subscriber sets the tone. It welcomes them, makes them feel seen, and tells them what to expect. This builds trust early and improves long‑term engagement.

Using Personalisation Beyond First Names

A strong “Welcome” email should do more than greet someone with “Hi [First Name]”. The best welcome campaigns personalize content. They do this based on how subscribers joined the list. They also consider the interests subscribers chose, their location, purchase history, and buying behavior. This level of relevance is what makes welcome journeys part of the most effective email marketing campaigns today.

For one of our clients, ECCO, a Scandinavian premium footwear brand, we designed a welcome-series EDM journey where personalisation went far beyond a simple greeting. 

Each touchpoint was tailored to feel considered and relevant, featuring curated modules such as “Our Favourite Styles for You” alongside product recommendations that mirrored a personalised in-store shopping experience, rather than a generic broadcast.

Setting Expectations and Encouraging Early Engagement

Great welcome emails often include a warm greeting, key benefits of staying subscribed, helpful links to your top content, and sometimes an incentive like a discount or free resource. These elements encourage your new subscriber to take the next step.

For ECCO, the welcome message itself was warm and clear, opening with “Hi [Name], Welcome to the ECCO Family” and immediately highlighting an exclusive 15% welcome offer, giving new subscribers instant value. 

With strong average open rates, this shows that subscribers were receptive from the start, driven by timely delivery, a clear incentive, and messaging that balanced warmth with purpose.

Why this works:
Welcome emails typically have some of the highest open and click‑through rates because subscribers are most engaged right after signing up. In ECCO’s case, automation proved especially effective, reinforcing that timely and behaviour-driven emails outperform general broadcast messages.

Example 2: Abandoned Cart Campaigns

How Timely Reminders Recover Lost Sales

Abandoned cart emails are a stellar example of email’s power to increase revenue. When someone adds items to their cart but doesn’t check out, a gentle reminder can nudge them back and convince them to make that purchase. Quick follow‑ups within hours of abandonment see the biggest returns.

Effective Messaging and Incentives

Your message should be friendly, clear and helpful. Mention the specific items waiting for them, and consider adding a small incentive, like free shipping or a limited‑time discount to give them that extra push.

We also supported ECCO in building a highly effective abandoned-cart email journey, demonstrating how automation can capture this critical moment of purchase intent. The messaging keeps things friendly and reassuring, opening with “Hi [Name], Your Cart is Waiting for You” and a gentle prompt to continue where the customer left off. 

By acknowledging the shopper’s choice with lines like “Looks like you’ve got great taste” and reassuring them that their selected items have been saved, the emails reduce friction and feel helpful rather than pushy. 

This indicates that quick follow-ups played a key role, where both open rates and total sales showed strong year-on-year growth from automated journeys.

Best Timing and Follow‑Up Strategies

Many brands send multiple follow‑ups: first within a few hours, another the next day with value such as review or info about that product, and a final reminder with urgency like discount a few days later. Each message should maintain a brand voice without sounding pushy.

Why this works:
These campaigns target warm leads, people already interested in buying, which makes them incredibly efficient for driving conversions. ECCO’s results clearly show that automated journeys driven by behaviour and timing outperform broadcast campaigns.

Example 3: Seasonal or Promotional Campaigns

Leveraging Urgency and Relevance

Campaigns linked to seasons, holidays or events tap into customer expectations and urgency. People plan their purchases around sales seasons like Christmas, Valentine’s Day or Black Friday, and emails are the perfect way to announce your offers.

Aligning Campaigns with Holidays or Events

A seasonal email might promote a limited‑edition product, a year‑end sale, or even a themed content series. Align the timing and tone with what’s happening in the calendar so your message feels timely and valuable. 

For example, we supported Sa Sa, a beauty retailer with a strong regional presence across Asia, in activating this approach for seasonal campaigns such as Christmas, National Day, and double-date sales like 2.2. By delivering their promotional brochures in EDM format directly to subscribers’ inboxes, Sa Sa was able to translate in-store excitement into digital touchpoints that drove awareness and engagement during peak shopping periods.

Clear CTAs and Offer Presentation

Make sure your subject line and email content clearly state the offer, the benefit, and the action you want subscribers to take, whether clicking to shop, redeem a code or learn more.

Why this works:
Seasonal emails create anticipation and urgency, encouraging people to act quickly before an offer expires.

Example 4: Newsletter Content That Educates and Engages

Balancing Value‑Driven Content with Promotions

A newsletter that only talks about your products will quickly lose reader interest. The best newsletters balance educational content, storytelling, tips, insights and occasional offers that feel like a benefit, not a push.

Using Storytelling, Tips, and Insights

Sharing genuine stories, whether about customer success, behind‑the‑scenes moments, or helpful how‑tos, gives your audience a reason to open and read your emails beyond discounts. 

For example, a newsletter for a skincare brand might include seasonal care tips, ingredient guides, and then a soft promotion of related products.

Sa Sa has also used this approach by leading with key beauty concerns and then softly introducing relevant products, making the content feel useful and inspiring rather than purely promotional.

Building Trust and Long‑Term Engagement

Consistent, high‑value newsletters build trust over time and when your subscribers expect to learn something valuable, they’re more likely to open future emails, click through, and interact with your brand.

Why this works:
People stay subscribed because they feel rewarded and not only for promotions, but for educational values.

Example 5: Re‑engagement Campaigns for Dormant Subscribers

Identifying Inactive Subscribers

Not everyone stays engaged, over time some subscribers stop opening or clicking, often due to changing needs rather than lost interest. 

Identifying these inactive subscribers and grouping them into a dedicated segment allows brands to address disengagement intentionally, rather than letting lists quietly decay.

Win‑Back Strategies That Work

Re-engagement emails are most effective when they don’t feel like a sales push. For ECCO, we developed a “health check” EDM targeted at subscribers who had not engaged for a period of time, designed to reconnect through honesty and warmth rather than incentives or urgency. 

Instead of discounts or urgency, the message sounded like a long-lost friend checking in, acknowledging the silence and giving subscribers full control over what happens next. The copy was intentionally simple and emotional, reminding readers who ECCO is, what the brand stands for, and inviting them to stay connected without pressure. 

By allowing subscribers to either continue the relationship or opt out gracefully, the brand reinforced trust and authenticity, which is essential for long-term reactivation strategies.

When to Clean or Segment Your List

If a subscriber stays inactive after several attempts, it might be time to remove them from your main list or move them into a less frequent segment. This keeps your engagement metrics healthy and makes room for more responsive readers.

Why this works:
By reminding people why they subscribed in the first place, it gives you a clear picture of who still wants your messages. ECCO’s approach proves that authenticity matters, treating subscribers like people rather than data points sets the foundation for stronger win-back strategies in future EDMs.

Key Takeaways: What Makes These Emails Effective

Every high‑performing email campaign has a few things in common:

• Strong subject lines and personalisation that catch attention and make messages feel relevant
• Clear structure and compelling calls to action that show readers exactly what to do next
• Consistency, testing and optimisation to keep improving results over time

Whether you’re working with a marketing agency or handling campaigns yourself, these principles hold true.

For Agencies

For agencies managing multiple clients and brands, email marketing must be scalable, flexible, and measurable. The right email marketing platform allows teams to streamline campaign workflows, deploy advanced automation journeys, and track performance across different target audiences, all while maintaining brand consistency and personalisation at scale.

For SMEs / Small Businesses

For smaller teams, email remains one of the most cost-effective ways to grow and engage an audience. With the right tools, SMEs can build email lists, send personalised campaigns, and strengthen the customer relationship while driving meaningful customer engagement without the need for a large marketing team. A clear strategy combined with smart automation enables small businesses to achieve outsized results.

Use Case Examples

Here are practical ways to put email marketing into action:

• Automating welcome sequences for new subscribers
• Segmenting customers for targeted promotions and recommendations around a specific product
• Tracking campaign ROI with built‑in analytics

Actionable Insight

Choosing the right email marketing tool depends on your business size, budget and goals. Start with your core objectives whether that’s driving sales, building engagement or nurturing loyal customers, and pick a solution that supports automation, segmentation and reporting. With these examples as your guide, you’ll be well on your way to emails that actually deliver.

FAQ

How does email marketing help a business?