11 great examples of lead nurturing emails
Lead nurturing emails help you build trust and convert prospects into customers. But successful lead nurturing can be tricky. With so many different types of emails you could send, it can be difficult to know where to begin.
Exploring examples of lead nurturing emails can help you create great ones of your own. In this guide, we’ll offer examples of lead nurturing emails to inspire your next campaign. At the end of this guide, you’ll have a better understanding of the types of lead nurturing emails and what makes each so effective.
In this post, we’ll give you 11 examples of email lead nurturing, including emails that:
- Welcome new customers
- Introduce your brand
- Offer a discount to new customers
- Celebrate customer anniversaries
- Announce new products
- Send customer surveys
- Remind customers who abandoned their carts
- Inspire and educate customers with product tutorials
- Recommend related products or services
- Request reviews and feedback
- Entertain with quiz content
Writing successful lead nurturing emails
Email nurturing is the process of establishing deeper relationships with subscribers through relevant, timely emails tailored to their needs and expectations. The purpose of email nurturing is to familiarize leads with your brand, with the ultimate goal of persuading them to convert.
However, writing effective lead nurturing emails can be tricky. While every campaign has its quirks, you should keep these best practices in mind to write better lead nurturing emails:
- Personalize your emails with the recipient’s name and other relevant details. Consider that 90% of marketers believe personalization is imperative to overall business strategy, and 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a brand that provides a personalized experience. At a minimum, include the recipient’s name and other details like their business name, past purchases, or anniversary dates to grab their attention.
- Address your target audience’s needs and pain points in the copy. Your emails need to solve some kind of problem for the recipient. That might mean offering a discount to leads who abandoned their carts or providing a free webinar to B2B leads who want industry best practices.
- Use specific and clear CTAs. Don’t let your emails end without a call to action (CTA). Tell recipients exactly what you want them to do, whether that’s reading a blog, watching a video, using a discount code, or submitting a review.
- Keep the design simple. It’s unlikely that your subscribers will read long, complicated emails. Use simple templates that load quickly and are easy to read.
- Use a marketing platform to automatically send emails based on users’ actions and behaviors. Marketing platforms can help you send timely, personalized emails without overwhelming your marketing team. Trigger-based emails allow you to be there at the right time for all of your subscribers without the need for manual effort.
Lead nurturing email examples
While email lead nurturing best practices will get you far, best practices alone won’t help you actually write effective emails. Businesses need to use a variety of different types of lead nurturing emails to connect with their various buyer personas. If you’re looking for inspiration, check out these examples to jump-start your own email lead nurturing campaigns.
1. Welcome new customers
This email from mattress brand Casper welcomes new subscribers to its list. Since the brand touts its ability to help its customers fall asleep and stay asleep, it makes sense that the company leans into sleep-themed messaging for this lead nurturing email.
The Casper email uses a simple yet effective design template that ties into the email’s sleep theme. The welcome email is also successful because it highlights the fact that Casper’s community is 1 million people strong — social proof that Casper is a trusted brand.
The CTA “Let’s get sleepy” is another clever nod to Casper’s differentiator as a brand that helps people get better sleep. When email recipients click on the CTA, they see a range of content from Casper about sleep hygiene. Instead of going in with a hard sell about its products, Casper provides value in the form of informative content that solves its customers’ biggest pain points. This helps the brand deepen bonds with its subscribers.
2. Introduce your brand
A brand introduction email is similar to a welcome email, but instead of focusing on the subscriber experience, it leans more heavily into the story and benefits of your brand. This nurture campaign example comes from Tuft & Needle, another mattress brand, which combines humor, storytelling, FOMO (fear of missing out), and social proof into one effective introductory email.
This intro email works because it acknowledges a Tuft & Needle buyer pain point — making a decision when buying a mattress online is not an enjoyable or easy experience.
Instead of pushing subscribers to immediately make a purchase, Tuft & Needle connects subscribers with a buying guide. It also sets the expectation that shoppers will receive more emails from the brand over the next few weeks, which can decrease unsubscribes significantly.
3. Offer a discount to new customers
Approximately three-quarters of customers open emails just to look for discounts. If you want to boost open rates and conversions, consider a nurture campaign like this example from Farewill, a UK company that helps consumers write their wills. While that normally isn’t a cheerful service, the high cost of will-writing makes the discount promising, especially to Farewill’s new list of subscribers.
The Farewill discount email works beautifully because the discount expires quickly. By offering a discount code until Sunday at midnight, Farewill creates a sense of urgency that encourages subscribers to take action before they miss out on a 20% discount.
The button “Get 20% off my will” in Farewill’s cheerful yellow color draws recipients’ eyes toward the CTA, which encourages subscribers to take action.
4. Celebrate customer anniversaries
Customer loyalty is a valuable asset to your business — so don’t take it for granted. Anniversary nurturing emails can encourage subscribers to stay loyal to your business. This lead nurturing email example from Grammarly shows how easy it is to honor each customer’s anniversary with your business.
While acknowledging the anniversary itself can foster loyalty, this email is also effective because it offers a discount on a Grammarly upgrade. By offering 40% off Grammarly premium and using the CTA “Claim this Gift,” the brand makes it easier for customers who already use its tools to upgrade their subscriptions.
The social media share buttons also make it easy for customers to publicly celebrate their anniversary with Grammarly, which gives the company additional exposure at no cost.
5. Announce new products
Chubbies is a men’s clothing company that’s known for its quirky sense of humor. In this product announcement email, Chubbies combined its fun brand voice and innovative product features to get subscribers excited about its new line of shorts.
This nurture email example works because it details the product’s features in an engaging way that sounds like your best friend is telling you about their new pair of shorts. It also leans into product differentiators, like hand embroidery, to subtly tell subscribers why Chubbies shorts are better than other options on the market.
The eye-catching and humorous product photo also helps to turn more heads.
6. Send customer surveys
Headspace is a mental health app that primarily offers guided meditations. As a software as a service (SaaS) business, Headspace needs to source user feedback regularly, but many people are hesitant to spend time on a survey that doesn’t benefit them. This lead nurturing email example features the brand’s famous flat, iconography-heavy style that engages readers the moment they open the email.
The contrasting colors between the CTA button and the header also draw your eyes toward the button. Headspace encourages people to click by placing the CTA button not at the bottom of the email, but at the top.
Beneath the CTA, Headspace explains why it needs to collect feedback. It also emphasizes that the survey is very short, which increases the odds that customers will be willing to complete it. While Headspace doesn’t offer any perks for filling out the survey, it’s fairly common for businesses to offer exclusive access to new content or discounts on future purchases in exchange for feedback.
7. Remind customers who abandoned their carts
As many as 80% of all customers will abandon their carts during the ecommerce checkout process. Abandoned carts cost companies a lot of business, which is why it’s critical to create an abandoned cart flow for your shoppers.
That’s exactly what outdoor clothing company Columbia did. The large header saying “Great News!” certainly gets subscribers’ attention. Not only does its abandoned cart email highlight the exact item in the customer’s cart, but it also announces a price decrease for that item.
Instead of revealing the product’s price in the email, Columbia encourages customers to click through to their cart with the “Reveal New Price” CTA. This is a clever way to encourage shoppers to check out their cart once they land on the Columbia website.
8. Inspire and educate customers with product tutorials
Regardless of whether you have a B2B or B2C business, customers will appreciate informative emails that help them get more value out of your offerings.
Baggu is a reusable bag company that sent an instructional email to shoppers showing them how to care for Baggu products. In this email, Baggu shares simple tips that help customers get more life out of their bags.
Instead of creating a text-heavy message that many subscribers might not read, Baggu created a visual, infographic-style email. Its simple icons and headers quickly tell customers how to get more out of their Baggu products without the need to read through a long list of instructions.
9. Recommend related products or services
Promoting related products or services is an easy way to upsell and cross-sell your existing customers.
This email from Chairish not only celebrates a shopper’s anniversary with a discount code, but it also includes a “See What’s Most Loved” section. The heart-shaped graphic made up of Chairish products also grabs readers’ attention and draws them in.
By including a miniature buying guide in this email, Chairish increases the chances that a subscriber will add these items to their cart. The promotional code is only valid if a shopper buys $150 worth of items, so the related product section can help shoppers take advantage of the promotion — while boosting Chairish average order values.
10. Request reviews and feedback
Unlike a survey email, a review request email asks customers to share their feedback publicly. This is a more significant request because it usually requires people to answer more questions or create an account on a review site. Even so, brands should ask customers to share reviews to boost their online reputation.
Pet brand Yappy does a great job of asking existing customers to share a review. The email tag [additional.pack_name] is where the business drops in the name of the customer’s dog. By asking “Did Fido ‘woof’ our shop?” Yappy cleverly puts the customer’s pet at the center of the conversation. The business thanks the customer for their order and makes it easy to review Yappy with a connection to Reviews.io.
Yappy doesn’t offer anything in exchange for the review, but through a clever use of humor and gratitude, it encourages plenty of customers to do it a favor.
11. Entertain with quiz content
If you offer a range of products or services, customers might not be sure which options are right for them. Instead of requiring your sales team to manually customize a plan for each shopper, use email quizzes to guide buyers through the process.
That’s what Harry’s, a personal care and grooming brand, did with its skincare quiz. Better yet, the one-question quiz makes it a cinch for shoppers to view customized product lineups just for their skin type. This significantly increases the odds of email subscribers viewing the different skincare products and converting.
Harry’s also includes a section in its email for people who don’t want to fill out a quiz. This displays Harry’s full range of products, which gives subscribers yet another way to engage with its goods.
Creating effective lead nurturing emails
Sending lead nurturing emails to prospective customers builds trust, which hopefully increases the likelihood they complete a conversion. When you’re ready to get started, select a type of email that might be good to kick off your next lead nurturing campaign.
While the examples in this guide can provide inspiration for your next nurturing campaign, you also need the right tools in your corner to succeed at email lead nurturing at scale.
A marketing automation platform like Adobe Marketo Engage helps you generate high-quality leads and gives you the tools necessary to convert them into customers. Marketo Engage allows you to respond to customer behaviors in real time so you can personalize their experience and build relationships.
Watch an overview to find out how Adobe Marketo Engage can help your next lead nurturing campaign succeed.