Summer Email Marketing: Ideas, Examples & Tips [2024]
Keeping email subscribers engaged during summertime can be tough. A stroll by the beach, a barbecue with friends, and a cocktail by the pool are more fun than checking your mailbox when summer’s in in the air.
Moreover, promoting products or services suitable for warmer weather and outdoor activities, such as swim clothes, traveling equipment, or vacation rentals can turn into a highly competitive task. What can email marketers do to face those challenges?
If you’re looking for summer email marketing essentials to keep conversions rising in this slow but fruitful time of the year, we got your back. Below, you’ll find everything you need to craft seasonal emails that let the sunshine in.
Pick one of the premade templates and find striking email examples and tips to stun your subscribers even when they lie chilled in the sun.
Summer Premade Email Templates to Gain Time
To nail your seasonal email marketing efforts, you need summer-themed and sizzling design elements. But what if you don’t have the time or resources to make them?
Here, we’ve gathered templates from Moosend’s library that bring summer vibes on. You can customize them using our user-friendly editor to match your brand voice.
Keep in mind that all templates are mobile-responsive, so you won’t have to worry about user experience. Plus, Moosend has a high deliverability rate of 98%, so your emails are not likely to land on the spam folder.
1. Summer Sales Email Template
Do you want to promote your summer deals and catch your customers’ attention for good? Use this great summer template with visual elements that serve the summer theme perfectly. The GIF sales banner at the top shows the reader what to expect, enriching the newsletter design. Complete it by adding relevant copy that sticks.
Plus, insert clear and beautiful images of your products followed by CTA buttons to get readers straight to the checkout page. You can also use this template for your end-of summer flash sales with a few tweaks.
2. Summer Promo Email Template
Here’s another template for businesses aiming to share an incentive like a coupon or promo code with customers and prospects to boost seasonal sales. It’s also great for travel bloggers who want to display summer holiday destinations.
Moreover, you can add phrases like “Hurry up” and “Save big” to create a sense of urgency and motivate readers to claim these offers fast.
3. Hotel & Resort Email Template
Get this template and explain why your place is what travelers look for to motivate them to choose your resort or hotel for their getaway.
Include all relevant information travelers and tourists need to know to make a choice, from nearby locations they can visit to summer activities you offer. Plus, it’s wise to add social proof, such as customer testimonials and ratings, to convince them faster.
4. Abandoned Cart Email Template
Most eCommerce businesses rely on abandoned cart emails to get the engine moving. Nudge visitors who’ve shown real interest in your products to give your summer ROI a booster.
This simple email layout is great for starters. You can change the color and add extra elements if needed. Plus, you can provide readers with links to social media and the customer service team to address potential concerns that may hinder them from purchasing.
5. Food Service Newsletter Template
If you’re in the food or coffee industry and want to display your summer menu to your subscribers, this template is for you. Replace the images with high-quality visuals of your products and invite your readers to shop online or make a reservation via the CTA buttons.
Ready to streamline your summer email marketing strategy? Sign up for a Moosend account, choose your favorite template, and tailor it based on your brand’s needs.
Top Summer Email Examples to Get Inspired
Here are some eye-catching summer email examples from top brands for different purposes to get smart ideas for your own campaigns:
1. Warby Parker’s Summer Essentials Campaign
Subject line: A shape that makes sense for summer
Warby Parker prepared their customers for the summer season by displaying their top product in different shapes and sizes. The CTA button lies at the top, under the powerful introduction that makes the readers sense the sun on their faces.
The subject line puts the reader straight to the point to boost open rates. Plus, they offer an incentive to motivate buyers to buy more than one items, in this case, a 15% discount.
2. Moment’s Last-minute Sale Email
Subject line: Our Summer Sale ends tomorrow!
Want to send a reminder to your subscribers to claim their offers and secure their summer savings? Then you can follow Moment’s example and create a last-minute email. Mention what the email is about on the subject line to form the right expectations.
This simple campaign is the ultimate summer newsletter, with a single and profound call-to-action. Plus, the “catch the wave” theme is transparent throughout the visuals and copy, creating a strong messaging for readers.
3. WildList’s Summer Giveaway Email
Subject line: The giveaway you’ve been waiting for…
Running a giveaway contest is a fantastic way to grow your email list and promote some of your seasonal products. Wildist invited their subscribers to post a summer photo with a specific hashtag to enter the contest and claim three amazing presents.
If you want to hold a similar initiative, mention the guidelines clearly to avoid confusing contestants. Plus, add the end date at a prominent place and consider placing a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency.
4. AllTrails’ Educational Summer Email
Subject line: 5 easy tips for better summer trips →
AllTrails found the perfect combo to nurture their audience during summer. They provided some quick tips for better trips and also took this email as an opportunity to cross-sell and upsell relevant features.
In a nutshell, you don’t need to run seasonal sales or share special offers to nail your email marketing efforts. Find additional summer marketing ideas, such as offering free content, and display them organically and beautifully as AllTrails did.
5. Etsy’s Back to School Email
Subject line: Back-to-school 101 ✏️📒🎒
Etsy created a great back to school email for one of the highest sales seasons for businesses with school supplies. They offered a free shipping incentive for customers who exceed $35 to boost sales.
Apart from the “Shop Now” button at the top, they added different product categories to help customers find what they need fast. Finally, the playful email design and emojis on the subject line make it more attractive.
6. Soho House’s Travel Email
Subject line: Introducing Room No.5
Want to invite your subscribers to your resort or hotel? Craft a similar email to this one by Soho House with beautiful images that depict relaxing vibes. The email design is simple yet powerful, driven by minimal aesthetics.
Plus, the copy shows readers that they won’t be treated as guests, but as part of the community. This is an excellent choice for VIP members and loyal customers. All you need is a few powerful words to convince your customers to make a reservation.
Best Practices for Converting Summer Email Campaigns
If you’re new to summer email marketing or need a refresher, here are seven tips to streamline this digital marketing tactic effectively:
1. Write an engaging summer email subject line
Want to secure a high open rate? Then you need a great summer-themed subject line to intrigue subscribers. It should be within 30 to 50 characters and reflective of the email content to work out.
Here are summer subject line ideas from top brands:
- A hot summer treat! FREE gift (MAC Cosmetics)
- Buy-Buy, Summer Sale | 40% off 👋 (Happy Socks)
- Favorites for endless summer fun (Patagonia)
- Start dreaming about summer ☀️ (Airbnb)
- End-of-summer savings never felt so rewarding (Marriott)
You can also use a free subject line tester like Refine to get suggestions based on your industry and email list size.
2. Add summery visuals
How can you design the perfect summer email that leads to high conversions? Add relevant visuals, gifs, and videos to inject the summer mood into your readers.
Plus, select a more vivid color palette, for example, with light blue, yellow, and green to steal the show. Adjust your existing brand tone to cooler summer vibes to make your subscribers summer ready.
Here’s my personal favorite by Otherland. The amazing design elements and colors take you to places, and you can almost tell how these candles smell:
3. Personalize your email content
To boost your email marketing conversions during summertime, you should personalize your email campaigns. Send tailored content to your target audience based on specific factors, such as demographics and website behavior.
One of the easiest ways to do this is by using email segmentation. Divide your subscribers into different sub-lists based on shared characteristics, such as location or age, among other criteria.
Keep in mind that summer content is not relevant to everyone based on location. So, if you have subscribers both in Europe and Australia, you should create different campaigns to target them at different times throughout the year.
Moreover, you can use dynamic email content to streamline highly converting email types, such as abandoned cart emails or product recommendations.
4. Leverage summer holidays
There are many holidays during summer you could add to your marketing calendar. Consider which ones to target based on your business type and create relevant email campaigns.
Here are some important dates to consider:
- Memorial Day (Last Monday of May)
- World Environment Day (5th of June)
- Father’s Day (3rd Sunday of June)
- Independence Day (4th of July)
- Labor Day (1st Monday of September)
For instance, here’s a Father’s Day email example by Hush Puppies:
5. Conduct A/B testing
If you want to ensure that your emails will appeal to your subscribers, you can use certain methods that secure better results. A/B testing is one of them and is available in most email marketing services.
Here some of the email parts you can test:
- Subject line
- Email content
- Sender name
- Design elements
- Sending time
For example, you can insert two subject line variations. The winning version will be sent to most of the subscribers to secure higher open rates and ultimately conversions.
6. Plan re-engagement campaigns
Many subscribers lose connection with their mailboxes over the summer, and it makes sense. If this happens for your industry, it’s best to rekindle that relationship and schedule re-engagement emails as autumn approaches.
For example, you can share educational content to warm them up or share an incentive with customers who are inactive for a long time. This way, you help reduce your churn rate and secure a healthy email list and a good deliverability rate.
This a nice example by AILLEA:
7. Analyze and optimize
Finally, it’s important to keep track of important metrics to unveil patterns that either boost or hinder your summer email marketing performance. Here are some email metrics to watch:
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Spam complaints
- Conversions
- Unsubscribes
- Bounce rate
Plus, it’s wise to keep an eye on competitors and explore seasonal trends to create campaigns that will make an impact.
Make Summer Email Marketing Count
Ready to send summer emails that stick? Pick one of the templates and design fresh campaigns hard to skip. You don’t have to go the extra mile; just follow the best practices above and you’ll be ready to shine brighter than the sun.
Lastly, to streamline your email marketing efforts successfully, employ an email marketing service with features that suit your business. You can sign up for a free Moosend trial today to see what this platform can offer you.