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On any given day, most of our email inboxes are flooded with a barrage of automated email newsletters that do little else besides giving us another task to do on our commutes to work — namely, marking them all as unread without reading, or unsubscribing altogether.

But every now and then, we get a newsletter that’s so good, not only do we read it, but we click it, share it, and recommend it to our friends.

Exceptional email marketing campaigns need to be cleverly written to attract attention in busy inboxes. Marketing emails also need to be personalized, filled with interesting graphics, and designed for desktop and mobile devices. And above all, emails must contain a meaningful call-to-action. After all, if brands are taking up subscribers’ time — and inbox space — with another email, every message must have a point to it.

You probably receive enough emails as it is, and it’s tough to know which newsletters are worth subscribing to, so we’ve curated a list of some of our favorite examples. Read on to discover some great email campaign examples and what makes them great — or just skip ahead to the brands you already know and love.

1) charity: water

2) BuzzFeed

3) Uber

4) TheSkimm

5) Mom and Dad Money

6) Poncho

7) Birchbox

8) Postmates

9) Dropbox

10) InVision App

11) Warby Parker

12) Cook Smarts

13) HireVue

14) Paperless Post

15) Stitcher

15 Examples of Effective Email Marketing

1) charity: water

When people talk about email marketing, lots of them forget to mention transactional emails. These are the automated emails you get in your inbox after taking a certain action on a website. This could be anything from filling out a form, to purchasing a product, to updating you on the progress of your order. Often, these are plain text emails that marketers set and forget.

Well, charity: water took an alternate route. Once someone donates to a charity: water project, her money takes a long journey. Most charities don’t tell you about that journey at all — charity: water uses automated emails to show donors how their money is making an impact over time. With the project timeline and accompanying table, you don’t even really need to read the email — you know immediately where you are in the whole process so you can move onto other things in your inbox.

2) BuzzFeed

I already have a soft spot for BuzzFeed content (“21 Puppies so Cute You Will Literally Gasp and Then Probably Cry,” anyone?), but that isn’t the only reason I fell in love with its emails.

First of all, BuzzFeed has awesome subject lines and preview text. They are always short and punchy — which fits in perfectly with the rest of BuzzFeed’s content. I especially love how the preview text will accompany the subject line. For example, if the subject line is a question, the preview text is the answer. Or if the subject line is a command (like the one below), the preview text seems like the next logical thought right after it:

Once you open up an email from BuzzFeed, the copy is equally awesome. Just take a look at that glorious alt text action happening where the images should be. The email still conveys what it is supposed to convey — and looks great — whether you use an image or not. That’s definitely something to admire.

Without images:

With images:

3) Uber

The beauty of Uber‘s emails is in their simplicity. Email subscribers are alerted to deals and promotions with emails like the one you see below. We love how brief the initial description is, paired with a very clear call-to-action — which is perfect for subscribers who are quickly skimming the email. For the people who want to learn more, these are followed by a more detailed (but still pleasingly simple), step-by-step explanation of how the deal works.

We also love how consistent the design of Uber’s emails is with its brand. Like its app, website, social media photos, and other parts of the visual branding, the emails are represented by bright colors and geometric patterns. All of its communications and marketing assets tell the brand’s story — and brand consistency is one tactic Uber’s nailed in order to gain brand loyalty.

Check out the clever copywriting and email design at work in this example:

4) TheSkimm

We love TheSkimm’s daily newsletter — especially its clean design and its short, punchy paragraphs. But newsletters aren’t TheSkimm’s only strength when it comes to email. Check out its subscriber engagement email below, which rewarded fellow marketer Ginny Mineo for being subscribed for two years.

Emails triggered by milestones, like anniversaries and birthdays, are fun to get — who doesn’t like to celebrate a special occasion? The beauty of anniversary emails, in particular, is that they don’t require subscribers to input any extra data, and they can work for a variety of senders. Plus, the timeframe can be modified based on the business model.

Here, the folks at TheSkimm took it a step further by asking Mineo if she’d like to earn the title of brand ambassador as a loyal subscriber — which would require her to share the link with ten friends, of course.

5) Mom and Dad Money

Think you know all about the people who are reading your marketing emails? How much of what you “know” about them is based on assumptions? The strongest buyer personas are based on insights you gather from your actual readership, through surveys, interviews, and so on, in addition to the market research. That’s exactly what Matt Becker of Mom and Dad Money does — and he does it very, very well.

Here’s an example of an email I once received from this brand. Design-wise, it’s nothing special — but that’s the point. It reads just like an email from a friend or colleague asking for a quick favor.

Not only was this initial email great, but his response to my answers was even better: Within a few days of responding to the questionnaire, I received a long and detailed personal email from Matt thanking me for filling out the questionnaire and offering a ton of helpful advice and links to resources specifically catered to my answers. I was very impressed by his business acumen, communication skills, and obvious dedication to his readers.

6) Poncho

Some of the best emails out there pair super simple design with brief, clever copy. When it comes down to it, my daily emails from Poncho — which sends me customizable weather forecasts each morning — takes the cake. They’re colorful, use delightful images and GIFs, and are very easy to scan. The copy is brief but clever with some great puns, and it aligns perfectly with the brand. Check out the copy near the bottom asking to “hang out outside of email.” Hats off to Poncho for using design to better communicate its message.

7) Birchbox

The subject line of this email from beauty product subscription service Birchbox got my colleague Pam Vaughan clicking. It read: “We Forgot Something in Your February Box!” Of course, if you read the email copy below, Birchbox didn’t actually forget to put that discount code in her box — but it was certainly a clever way to get her attention.

As it turned out, the discount code was actually a bonus promo for Rent the Runway, a dress rental company that likely fits the interest profile of most Birchbox customers — which certainly didn’t disappoint. That’s a great co-marketing partnership right there.

8) Postmates

I’ve gotta say, I’m a sucker for GIFs. They’re easy to consume, they catch your eye, and they have an emotional impact — like the fun GIF in one of Postmates‘ emails that’s not only delightful to watch, but also makes you crave some delicious Chipotle.

You too can use animated GIFs in your marketing to show a fun header, to draw people’s eyes to a certain part of the email, or to display your products and services in action. 

9) Dropbox

You might think it’d be hard to love an email from a company whose product you haven’t been using. But Dropbox found a way to make its “come back to us!” email cute and funny, thanks to a pair of whimsical cartoons and an emoticon.

Plus, the email was kept short and sweet, to emphasize the message that Dropox didn’t want to intrude — it just wants to remind the recipient that the brand exists, and why it could be helpful. When sending these types of email, you might include an incentive for recipients to come back to using your service, like a limited-time coupon.

10) InVision App

Every week, the folks at InVision send a roundup of their best blog content, their favorite design links from the week, and a new opportunity to win a free t-shirt. (Seriously. They give away a new design every week.) They also sometimes have fun survey questions where they crowdsource for their blog. This week’s, for example, asked subscribers what they would do if the internet didn’t exist.

Not only is InVision’s newsletter a great mix of content, but I also love the nice balance between images and text, making it really easy to read and mobile-friendly — which is especially important, because its newsletters are so long. (Below is just an excerpt, but you can read through the full email here.) We like the clever copy on the call-to-action buttons, too.

11) Warby Parker

What goes better with a new prescription than a new pair of glasses? The folks at Warby Parker made that connection very clear in their email to a friend of mine back in 2014. It’s an older email, but it’s such a good example of personalized email marketing that I had to include it in here.

The subject line was: “Uh-oh, your prescription is expiring.” What a clever email trigger. And you’ve gotta love the reminder that your prescription needs updating.

Speaking of which, check out the clever co-marketing at the bottom of the email: If you don’t know where to go to renew your subscription, the information for an optometrist is right in the email. Now there’s no excuse not to shop for new glasses!

12) Cook Smarts

I’ve been a huge fan of Cook Smarts‘ “Weekly Eats” newsletter for a while. The company sends yummy recipes in the form of a meal plan to my inbox every week. But I didn’t just include it because of its delicious recipes — I’m truly a fan of its emails. I especially love the layout: Each email features three distinct sections (one for the menu, one for kitchen how-to’s, and one for the tips). That means you don’t have to go hunting to find the most interesting part of its blog posts — you know exactly where to look after an email or two.

I also love Cook Smarts’ “Forward to a Friend” call-to-action in the top-right of the email. Emails are super shareable over — you guessed it — email, so you should also think about reminding your subscribers to forward your emails to friends, family, or coworkers.

13) HireVue

“Saying goodbye is never easy to do… So, we thought we’d give you a chance to rethink things”. That was the subject of this automated unsubscribe email from HireVue. We love the simple, guilt-free messaging here, from the funny header images to the great call-to-action button copy.

Not only are the design and copy here top-notch, but we applaud the folks at HireVue for sending automated unsubscribe emails in the first place. It’s smart to purge your subscriber lists of folks who aren’t opening your email lists, because low open rates can seriously hurt email deliverability. 

14) Paperless Post

When you think of “holiday email marketing,” your mind might jump straight to Christmas, but there are other holidays sprinkled throughout the rest of the year that you can create campaigns around. (Download these email marketing planning templates to keep yourself organized throughout the year.)

Take the email below from Paperless Post, for example. I love the header of this email: It provides a clear call-to-action that includes a sense of urgency. Then, the subheader asks a question that forces recipients to think to themselves, “Wait, when is Mother’s Day again? Did I buy Mom a card?” Below this copy, the simple grid design is both easy to scan and quite visually appealing. Each card picture is a CTA in and of itself — click on any one of them, and you’ll be taken to a purchase page.

15) Stitcher

As humans, we tend to crave personalized experiences. So when emails appear to be created especially for you, you feel special — you’re not just getting what everyone else is getting. You might even feel like the company sending you the email knows you in some way, and that it cares about your preferences and making you happy.

That’s why I love on-demand podcast/radio show app Stitcher‘s “Recommended For You” emails. I tend to listen to episodes from the same podcast instead of branching out to new ones. But Stitcher wants me to discover (and subscribe to) all the other awesome content it has — and I probably wouldn’t without this encouragement.

I think this email also makes quite a brilliant use of responsive design. The colors are bright, and it’s not too hard to scroll and click — notice the CTAs are large enough for me to hit with my thumbs. Also, the mobile email actually has features that make sense for recipients who are on their mobile device. Check out the CTA at the bottom of the email, for example: The “Open Stitcher Radio” button prompts the app to open on your phone.

These are just some of our favorite emails. Don’t just follow best practice when it comes to your marketing emails. Every email you send from your work email address also can be optimized to convert. Try out our free email signature generator now, and check out some more of our favorite HubSpot marketing email examples.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2013 and has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

 

May’s talk on #modernwaystogrowanagency came from Dave Parkinson – a 26 year veteran of Nissan and digital – from IT Manager to EMEA Head of Digital.  From managing a digital transformation to initiating the social media plan (and launching the Qashqai on the way) Dave knows the brand person’s world. So what are they really thinking at pitch time?

Since the word ‘digital’ crept into marketers vocabulary the gap between doing a digital project and actually becoming a digital business started to form, and brands and agencies have debated how business strategy can and should link to digital plans.  From inside and outside a brand it can be difficult to understand what the appetite and indeed capacity to be a fast paced digital business is. Ask yourself this, if your favourite retailer is so fast moving and digitally nimble – why don’t they have contactless payment in their shops yet?

Here are Dave’s key insights into how a brand person judges your pitch:

 Money

• Brands have a 5 year plan but marketers have a 12 month budget. That budget is requested once a year and can be cut at any time.  Having an understanding of where a brand is in its cycle should guide your conversation. 

 People

• It’s age old to say that ‘people buy people’ so appreciating both the business objectives and the personalities of the people in the room will contribute to the success of the conversation. Know about any highs or lows the company’s marketing team have had recently, but before telling them where they went wrong remember the people in the room probably signed off on what you’re about to rubbish.
• Remember everyone in a brand moves role every 2 – 3 years so they’re generalists not specialists. Appreciate the knowledge they have across the board and bring them specialists who will impress.
• Expect that they may have researched you too, does your digital profile stand up to the scrutiny of a digital marketer?

 Politics

• Brands have a lot of politics. Right down to where people sit and who you have to ask to get something done. It’s always worth checking what politics might prevent the pitch you’ve been asked to take part in – are you really going to be allowed to beat their global incumbent however great your single market idea is.

 Timing

• It’s not just budget that changes over the year, with so many job moves the team you’re working with/ pitching to/ have just been hired by, might change. Be prepared and ask the right questions to ensure you’re talking to the right people.

 Need

• We, as agencies, need to fix brands problems. Often that’s a business problem, a specific long term objective, but it might be that your brand person needs a quick win to show their boss. Do what it takes, but be honest about why you’re all doing something.

So Dave, we’ve considered all that – what are your top tips for falling at the final hurdle, or getting this project over the line:

 Bad ideas

• Putting the clients picture in an idea for an Instagram post
• Free lunches 
• Presents – most people can’t accept them anyway!

 Good tricks

• Honesty – we’ve looked at what you asked for and we think you need this
• Simplicity – this answers your need, and we can explain it succinctly
• The right people – Don’t put a sales person in if they can’t bring something to the party
• Practice – Know your pitch timings, who is saying what and when, and what’s the story, then prepare for questions

 Understand and remove the barriers to buying and your brand person will buy.

The importance of revenue attribution is just one of a number of factors that marketing agencies need to track in order to measure their performance.  

Factors such as cost-per-lead, customer value, traffic-to-lead ratio, and others let marketing agencies know how they’re doing—and how to tweak their performance to become fine-tuned revenue generating machines.

How to Track Cost Per Lead

Leads aren’t an unmitigated good. Getting a new lead is good, but the goal is to get inexpensive leads that turn into lucrative opportunities. Doing this the wrong way around is a short path to insolvency.

HubSpot has already done a bit of helpful research that details the average cost of a lead by industry. The cheapest is media and publishing, with costs ranging from $11-$25 per lead, and the most expensive being financial services with costs of $51-$100.

Calculating your cost per lead is as easy as taking one month’s marketing spend and dividing it by one month’s new leads. If your cost per lead is wildly under or above the numbers in the linked chart, however, it’s not necessarily cause for either worry or celebration. Other corroborating factors will help determine whether there is a problem.

Corroborating Cost Per Lead with Customer Value

If you’re spending more on average for leads than is customary for your industry, you may also want to take a look at the value of your customers. After all, it may be worth spending more per lead if you’re also bringing in business with a higher than average lifetime value.

Again per Hubspot, calculating customer value is outwardly simple. At a minimum, you’ll know that it will be equal to the amount you charge per month, times the number of months in their contract, but there are other sub-factors that can make this much more accurate.

• Modeling the behavior of similar customers will show how often they renew contracts
• Add a shrinkage factor to understand how many customers will leave early
• Project-based and contract-based clients will have slightly different equations

Upselling project-based clients and renewing contract-based clients is the best possible way to improve customer value. It’s worth paying more for leads that result in lucrative long-term customers.

Converting Leads with Your Site and Landing Pages

Leads cost money—and time is also money. If it takes a lot of time to generate leads relative to the number of people visiting your website – that can be a sign of a problem. Perking up your traffic-to-lead ratio may depend greatly on where your site’s visitors end up.

In one example, research shows that websites with up to 40 landing pages generate 7 times more leads than sites with just 1-5. You should find more ways to create offers, such as creating more gated content, more webinars, content kits, in-person events, and other media that would inspire someone to fill out a contact form.

On the other hand, your site’s architecture may be to blame. One of the most commonly cited statistics in marketing is that a delay of one second will push conversions down by 7%. Find ways to optimize your site with lightweight images, or invest in a CDN that can accelerate your loading times.

Buying Signs: Converting Leads to Customers

Generally, if a person has signed up for an event, requested to be contacted by a representative, or proactively contacted the business, that prospect is ready to be contacted directly by the sales department—they’re a sales qualified lead.

On the other hand, if they’ve completed a low-interaction process, such as downloading a white paper, the lead will probably need a few more touches before he or she becomes an opportunity. Marketing should coordinate with sales in order to determine how best to approach both kinds of leads, but they should be most concerned with the rate at which their MQLs convert.

Remember that your conversion rates are all part of a linked system. Converting leads to customers is essential, but it’s most important when those customers provide a high lifetime value. Similarly, it might make sense to scrutinize how much you pay per lead, but if those leads result in high-value customers, they could be worth the cost.

The thing to stress here is “could be.” The important part about tracking metrics isn’t the numbers themselves—it’s context.

In order to get the right context for your metrics, you need to keep a close eye on all of them. That’s the one surefire way for your marketing organization to become a successful business.

When a video pops up on your Facebook feed, what do you usually do first? My guess is that you take a peek at its length, ponder whether it’s worth your time, and let that thought process influence whether or not you press play.

Once you do actually press play, how many times have you abandoned the video just a few seconds in and scrolled down to the next post? I know I have. I don’t finish half the Facebook videos I start.

It seems impossible to hold people’s attention nowadays. Phones buzz with distracting notifications and promise instant gratification, tempting people to check their screens every five minutes. This has diminished the human attention span so much, some studies claim it’s now shorter than a goldfish’s.

Video marketers know we lack patience. So they’re starting to tailor content for our dwindling attention spans. In fact, 56% of all videos published in the last year are less than 2 minutes long.

But marketers must innovate further because users expect different video lengths on different platforms. Odds are, they’re more willing to watch a 2 minute long video on YouTube than on Twitter.

If you don’t customize video length for each platform, then you’re not fully catering to your audience. Sooner or later, the attention they give to your brand will wither away.

That’s why we decided to create this handy, bookmarkable infographic about the optimal video length for the most popular video channels. To help you better engage your audience on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, we extracted insights from HubSpot’s own social and YouTube data, and combined it with exisiting research in the area. 

We also provided a video example for each channel, if you ever need some inspiration.

So check out the infographic below and start creating optimized videos for these four native video platforms!

HubSpot Video Examples for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube

Instagram: State of Inbound

 

A post shared by HubSpot (@hubspot) on May 17, 2017 at 6:21am PDT

The original State of Inbound video on YouTube is two and half minutes long. We cut it down to 30 seconds on Instagram so it would meet our audience’s time length expectations.

You might wonder how a video that’s ⅕ the length of the original version could successfully promote our annual research report. Well, it’s because our audience couldn’t keep their eyes off such a clear, concise, and dynamic video.

Viewers who watch the first 3 seconds of a video are most likely to finish it, so we made sure our video hooked them with a vivid first frame.

After that, we held our audience’s attention by constantly cutting to new frames and animating the video’s graphics. The voiceover and subtitles also conveyed the video’s main takeaway well.

Twitter: Summer Startup

Imagine winning $100,000 + mentoring from @JaySimons (@Atlassian), @PattyMccord1 (@netflix), @dharmesh (@HubSpot)? Enter on Facebook now 👉 http://pic.twitter.com/kI1yF3oUkE

— HubSpot (@HubSpot)
June 27, 2017

Our Summer Startup video on Facebook is 1 minute long. But we cut it down to 44 seconds on Twitter, which is right under the optimal video length we discovered in our research.

This video resonated with our audience because they felt a personal connection to each of the faces we presented. People respond well to the human face. It captures their attention, builds familiarity and trust, and evokes emotion.

And since enthusiasm is contagious, the thrilled faces we showcased injected a lot of excitement into our viewers.

Facebook: Monthly Social Media Round Up: April Edition

When we analyzed our Facebook data, we discovered our audience engages the most with videos right under one minute. So we decided to cap most of our Facebook videos at around 60 seconds.

We also discovered that 95% of viewers watch our videos on mute. This meant we needed to ensure they understood each video’s key point without hearing a single word.

We crafted a lot of our Facebook videos like the one you just saw because the subtitles clearly communicate the video’s insights while the visuals provide context and absorb our viewers’ attention.

YouTube: Topic Clusters: The Next Evolution of Content Strategy

On YouTube, our audience engages the most with videos right under two minutes. So we try to keep them around 120 seconds.

That might not seem like enough time to dig into a substantial topic, but the two minute video above explained a concept that could take a blog post 1,000 words to describe. Watching a two minute video instead of reading a ten minute blog post saves our audience time and heaves a mental load off of their shoulders.

Short but potent videos aren’t just a recording of yourself reading a script, though. Since the human brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text, you need to leverage dynamic graphics and visual storytelling so your audience can quickly grasp your message. If you don’t, your video will elapse the optimal length and wilt your viewers’ attention.