Beefree blog

Welcome Email Examples to Engage Your Subscribers

Beefree team
Beefree team
Feb 2, 2021
Welcome Email Examples to Engage Your Subscribers

First impressions are powerful, and that’s just as true when you’re marketing your brand as it is when you’re getting dressed for a job interview or getting ready for a first date. When you send a welcome email to new subscribers, that email is a first impression and a first step in creating a strong customer relationship, so it’s imperative that you get things off on the right foot. A welcome email campaign can start to build credibility and loyalty, showing benefits long past that initial message.Want to create lasting customer relationships? A strong welcome email should put your branding front and center, let subscribers know they’re valued, and give readers an idea of what they’ll receive as subscribers. To guide your welcome email design, here are a few welcome email examples and tips from our email marketing pros.

What is a welcome email?

A welcome email is simply the email you send to people when they first subscribe to your email list. These emails are usually brief and straightforward but they serve several purposes:

  • Confirming for subscribers that their sign-up was successful
  • Giving a warm welcome to new subscribers
  • Building on subscribers’ excitement about your business by telling them what they can look forward to from your emails so that they stay engaged with your brand

In these ways, your welcome email will set the tone for your future relationship with this new subscriber, so make it count!

15 Examples of great welcome emails 

Where do you start when crafting an effective welcome email that sends the right message and nurtures lasting customer loyalty? While every welcome email will be unique because it should be true to your brand, there are plenty of ideas and techniques you can use. We’ve curated 15 stellar examples of welcome emails to inspire your design process.

1. Sprouts

Type of welcome email: Brand introduction

One approach you can take to your welcome email is to use it to introduce the subscriber to your business. Give them an overview of who you are, why you’re a fantastic partner for them to have, and why they’ll love being a subscriber and customer. Check out how the grocery chain Sprouts tells new subscribers what makes them special in their welcome email.Subject line: Hey Hailey, welcome to Sprouts!This welcome email from Sprouts makes it as easy as possible for you to go shopping. The message gives you a peek inside the store complete with photos and an explanation of symbols used on their signage. For customers who have never shopped at Sprouts before, this welcome email example makes it simple to get started.Why it works:

  • Introduces the brand’s shopping experience and what it has to offer
  • Invites readers to engage further with text alerts
  • Tells subscribers what to expect from future emails
  • Makes the branding prominent by featuring the brand colors
welcome email design example

2. Le Prunier

Type of welcome email: Discount code

A discount code is a great component to add to your welcome email design. They give subscribers an incentive to shop while also making them feel appreciated as subscribers. Welcome emails with offers can boost revenue by 30% per email compared to welcome emails without offers. Try sending a simple 10% off discount code, like Le Prunier does here.

Subject line: Welcome to Le Prunier!Le Prunier uses the 10% discount to thank the reader for subscribing and to prompt them to shop the site, but its welcome email goes beyond this too. It puts its welcome message front and center so subscribers feel like they’ve been warmly embraced and it gives a brief elevator pitch too, introducing subscribers to the brand’s core product.Why it works:

  • Features a simple design that’s easy to understand and doesn’t overload the reader with information
  • Gives the subscriber the high points of the core product and its benefits
  • Offers enough of a discount to encourage subscribers to shop
welcome email example

3. KIND Snacks

Type of welcome email: Product features

We’ve already talked about using welcome emails to introduce a subscriber to your business, but you can also take a more detailed approach by offering an overview of your core products. This serves the purpose of not only introducing the subscriber to what you have to offer but also attracting their attention and enticing them to click through and shop. KIND Snacks does this by showing off some of its most mouthwatering snack bars.Subject line: Welcome to the KIND familyThis welcome email example provides a nice overview of KIND’s products. In a simple single-column layout, KIND lists four of its most popular products, providing a photo, simple description and CTA button for each. At the end of the email, readers also have the option to “Shop All Snacks” via a separate CTA button that leads to the entire store.Why it works:

  • Uses clever puns and relatable messaging to build familiarity with subscribers
  • Features high-quality images that are appetizing and appealing
  • Offers a discount to give subscribers more of a reason to click on their appetizing featured products
welcome email to customer

4. Yard House

Type of welcome email: Free gift

Customers can unsubscribe from your mailing list just as quickly as they subscribed, so it’s important to keep them engaged from the start. One way to do this is to reassure them that they have made the right choice by welcoming them with a free gift. Check out how restaurant chain Yard House has used this technique to generate enthusiasm from their subscribers immediately.Subject line: You’re officially a House Insider!After giving subscribers a warm welcome, Yard House lays out the perks for subscribers,like inside peaks at new menu items and an updated list of the latest beers on tap, but the main draw is a free appetizer for their next visit.It’s also important to note that Yard House sends this welcome email as soon as somebody signs up for the company’s newsletter. It’s best not to wait too long to send a welcome email to a customer. When they opt in to your emails, your brand is on their mind — they’re expecting to receive a message. So your welcome email is more likely to be opened and read if you send it right away.Why it works:

  • Features an appealing and on-brand design
  • Clearly articulates why the subscriber should be glad they signed up and should continue to subscribe
  • Encourages subscribers to visit the restaurant with the special offer of a free appetizer
welcome email design

5. Sephora

Type of welcome email: GIF

Many of your subscribers get dozens or even hundreds of emails every day. You want your welcome email to stand out so it delivers the message that you have carefully crafted. One clever and fun way to do this is with an eye-catching GIF. The movement of the GIF grabs readers’ attention and draws them in so they’re more engaged in the introduction to your brand.Subject line: Welcome to Sephora! 🎉Sephora uses the cute GIF at the top of the welcome email to snag the subscriber’s attention and then it uses other techniques to welcome the subscriber and tell them what the brand has to offer. It highlights a few of its exclusive products and its free rewards program. And we absolutely love the checklist at the bottom of the message: The “Your Sephora Welcome Series” lets readers see what’s coming to their inboxes next.Why it works:

  • Uses a GIF that’s attractive and engaging but isn’t so complex that it makes the email download slowly
  • Gives subscribers an incentive to take a step further and join the brand’s rewards program
  • Recommends products to encourage readers to shop
best welcome email example
welcome email gif

6. Monday.com

Type of welcome email: Social confirmation

Showcasing that other people are using a product is a great way to encourage new customers to sign up because they think, “if that many people use this, they must be enjoying it!” That’s an excellent strategy for a variety of different marketing projects including your welcome email. Let subscribers know that they’ve now joined a popular club (or could join it by taking the next step and becoming a customer). One brand that does this well in its welcome email is Monday.com.Subject line: Welcome to monday.comIn this welcome email example from Monday.com, the company includes a user statistic, tapping into the bandwagon effect to get more people to jump on board. To add even more reasons to enjoy the brand’s product, it provides a bulleted list of features, shining a light on the benefits of Monday.com’s services and letting you know how the platform works.Why it works:

  • Speaks to users’ desire to find out why the product is so popular
  • Keeps the email short and to the point, serving as a true introduction without overwhelming readers with information
  • Encourages ongoing engagement with a clear call-to-action to take subscribers to their accounts and explore the platform’s features
simple welcome email design

7. Purina

Type of welcome email: Getting to know you

Your welcome email doesn’t just tell subscribers about your brand - it can tell your brand about subscribers too. When you strategically use your welcome email to ask for more information, you can better serve your new customers. You’ll be able to use that information to segment your emails, sending each subscriber relevant, personalized content they want to read.You can create segments based on geographic location, purchase history, or other information about your customer. It’s all a matter of what you’re able to learn about your subscribers, and your welcome email is an excellent place to start. Take a look at Purina’s welcome email and how they use this strategy.Subject line: Bee, welcome to the Purina familyIn this welcome email, Purina asks new customers for more information about their pets. The “tell us about your pet” CTA button takes you to a page where you can check off whether you have a dog or cat and input their name, birthday, and size. All of these questions provide Purina with more opportunities to specifically market to individual customers.Why it works:

  • Uses a clear CTA to direct subscribers toward the customer profile
  • Maintains a simple design so the CTA doesn’t get lost in the clutter of too much information
  • Builds familiarity with the brand by highlighting the brand’s values with the three icons and statements at the bottom
welcome email example

8. Warby Parker

Type of welcome email: Keeping it simple

A welcome email doesn’t have to be overly detailed and complex. In fact, a simple, straightforward design with plenty of white space will allow your subscribers to take in your core message without being distracted by other information. One brand that does an excellent job of using strategic white space is Warby Parker:Header: "You're all signed up"

Warby parker welcome email examples

The brand also grabs their subscribers’ attention with a clever GIF:

warby parker gif

Warby Parker‘s mission is to make shopping for glasses simple, easy, and fun. The company’s welcome email reflects that brand mission with a simple message that’s easy on the eyes—clean and modern-looking with lots of white space—but still exudes a fun energy with the animated graphic right at the top. There is good support for GIFs in email clients (see this Litmus report on the subject), and they are a great way to put some fun in your messages.

Why it works:

  • Uses a simple design to keep the core message from becoming choked by clutter
  • Creates a positive association with the brand through happy and lighthearted messaging
  • Provides a CTA that invites subscribers to start shopping
  • Uses a GIF to engage readers and stand out

9. Rolling Stone

Type of welcome email: Social media engagement

Your welcome email is an introduction to your brand, so it’s an excellent place to let subscribers know where they can learn more about you. When you feature your social media pages in your welcome email and link to them for an easy user experience, you encourage the subscriber to become more invested in your brand and be part of your community. Check out how Rolling Stone does this:Header: "Thank you for signing up for the Rolling Stone Newsletter!"Rolling Stone doesn’t inundate subscribers with content right away. Instead, the magazine’s message is simple: “Thank you.” It confirms for subscribers that the newsletter will be on its way, and in the meantime lets them know where to connect with Rolling Stone on social media.Why it works:

  • Simplistic design keeps the focus on welcoming subscribers and highlighting the brand’s social media pages
  • Social media icons are recognizable but still within the brand’s color scheme, keeping them consistent with the brand’s image
  • Let subscribers know what they can look forward to in the newsletter
rolling stone newsletter welcome email

10. Everlane

Type of welcome email: Strategic imagery

Some new subscribers are learning about your brand for the first time while others might have been familiar with your brand for years before subscribing. In either case, using the right photography or imagery can immediately build more familiarity between the subscriber and your brand. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so featuring one powerful image in your welcome email can set the tone for the way new subscribers see your brand.Everlane knows the power of one fantastic photo and they put this to work in their welcome email.Header: "Hello"Everlane has one of the simplest top navigations we’ve seen, allowing the eye to go straight to the brand’s beautiful black-and-white photography. The photo is right at the top, with barely any overlaid text. Subscribers who want to shop or read more can click through to the website, but for those who can only spend a few seconds, photography sends an immediate message about the style of the brand and what to expect.Why it works:

  • The featured photo takes up most of the email and clearly communicates the chic yet simplistic nature of the brand and its products
  • The introductory offer in the header navigation stands out because of the design’s simplicity
  • Email is straightforward and to the point without trying to push subscribers in too many different directions
Everlane welcome newsletter

11. Lord & Taylor

Type of welcome email: Value proposition

When a customer subscribes to your mailing list, you get a more engaged customer who will see your brand routinely and will be more likely to buy frequently and become a loyal long-term customer. But what does the subscriber get? You can answer that question in your welcome email by listing out the perks and the value the subscriber is getting. This encourages them to not only stay subscribed but to open your emails when they come in. Check out how Lord & Taylor does this:

Lord & Taylor welcomes subscribers with a list of the three things you can expect from their emails: trends, brands, and deals. It’s the value proposition behind their campaigns, the “why” you made a good move by signing up. The message is coupled with great photography, a pop of brilliant yellow, and one takeaway: shop now. There’s no need to scroll on and on; in fact, there’s barely any reading to do. The shortlist says it all quickly and beautifully.

Why it works:

  • Articulates subscriber perks clearly and cleanly
  • Features on-brand styling and imagery
  • Grabs attention with a banner announcing free shipping
Lord & Taylor newsletter

12. Bumble and bumble

Type of welcome email: Exclusivity

Everyone wants to feel special and feel like they’re part of something unique. You can give subscribers that validation in your welcome email by making them feel like they’ve joined an exclusive club. Whether or not your subscriber list or your rewards club actually is exclusive or limited, you can use messaging and imagery that makes subscribers feel like elite insiders. Take Bumble and Bumble’s welcome email for example:

Header: "You Made The List"

The “you made the list” headline immediately makes subscribers feel wanted and included. Bumble and Bumble continue in that vein by showcasing the perks of being part of the club, like exclusive offers and backstage access. Subscribers feel more like a part of the community and more invested as a result.

Why it works:

  • Positions mailing list as elite and desirable so subscribers want to stay on the list
  • Uses imagery from the backstage of a fashion show to enhance the idea that the subscriber is now an insider
  • Guides subscribers toward the next step of shopping or visiting a salon with an online discount code and an easy way to find the nearest salon
Bumble and Bumble exclusive welcome email

13. Moo

Type of welcome email: Inviting entertainment

When a customer subscribes to your mailing list, it’s (hopefully) the start of a more engaged, active relationship with that customer. While many brands aim to encourage that added engagement in their welcome email by incentivizing the subscriber to go shop, you can also do it by enticing the customer to come to your site for entertainment. Intrigue them with the content you have to offer and beckon them to your site for an enjoyable read.

To see this in action, take a look at Moo’s welcome email:

Header: "Thanks for singing up to the MOOsLETTER!"

Moo does a great job of covering a lot of ground without overwhelming readers. They intrigue the reader with the promise of inspiring stories and helpful tips right off the bat. By using a large, easy-to-read font, keeping messages brief, including great images, and allowing for white space and breathability between sections, Moo also squeezes in multiple calls-to-action (go to the website, get 10% off, connect on social) without it feeling like too much.

Why it works:

  • Appeals to subscriber’s desire for entertainment and enjoyment rather than just pushing them to make a purchase
  • Uses a clean and simple design so the CTA and the promise of great content aren’t lost
  • Includes an appealing discount but doesn’t push a purchase as the only goal of the email
moo sign up email

14. Mario Batali

Type of welcome email: Exclusive content

When someone signs up for a mailing list, there’s always still a question in their mind about whether the emails will actually pay off and be the right choice. Even if your mailing list is free, customers have to ask, “Is the content I’ll get worth the burden of having more emails crowding my inbox?” You can show them immediately in your welcome email that they made the right choice by giving them exclusive and exciting new content right away. Chef Mario Batali, for example, does this in a seamless way:Header: "Thanks for signing up for Mario Mail!"Mario Batali doesn’t mess around with his welcome email. Open it up and readers find their first Mario recipe, front and center. By diving into quality content right away, Batali makes an instant connection with readers and provides them with exactly what they are looking for. Plus, the photography is gorgeous, the text is easy to read, and there’s no clutter.Why it works:

  • Presents valuable content without delays or making subscribers jump through hoops
  • Gives subscribers a preview of what they can expect to see in future emails and why they’ll be glad they signed up
  • Uses a navigation bar in the header to subtly invite subscribers to check out other types of content from the brand
Mario Batali email

15. West Elm

Type of welcome email: Urgency

So much of marketing can be described as capitalizing on opportunities when they arise, and your welcome email is an excellent opportunity. The subscriber is already engaged enough to sign up so you know they’re interested in your brand, making this the perfect time to offer a discount to encourage them to shop. But you can take advantage of this opportunity even more by creating a sense of urgency for that discount.A limited-time discount makes customers want to shop and save right away because, if it slips their minds later, they might miss out on the savings altogether. Check out how West Elm uses this strategy in their welcome email:West Elm truly motivates readers to jump over to their site and get shopping: they offer a coupon right at the top and a noticeable alert that the discount is only valid for one week. They also make it easy to take advantage of the deal by including a simple, clickable menu reflecting the offerings of their site (furniture, bedding, etc.). By using gorgeous photography and keeping the email simple and full of links, readers almost can’t help but wander right over to its website.Why it works:

  • The combination of a discount code and a very obvious time limit on that code prompts subscribers to shop now
  • Beautiful and inviting photography is visually appealing and makes subscribers envision how the brand’s products could give their homes a similar look
  • The email design is simple and straightforward, with enough detail to catch subscribers’ eyes but not so much to lose sight of the message and CTA
welcome to west elm email

Welcome Email Examples Key Takeaways and Tips

The examples above are all effective welcome emails but they each use their own strategies and designs to make subscribers feel included, encourage sales and conversions, and nurture long-term subscriber relationships. Any of these designs can inspire your welcome email development, but your design isn’t the only factor in your emails’ success. Use these tips and takeaways to make your welcome emails even more effective:

Put thought into your subject line:

Your subject line should be appealing and eye-catching but it should also make the intention of the email clear. Try customizing subject lines like these:

  • Welcome to ! Here’s a little treat.
  • You’re in! Welcome to the club.
  • Thanks for subscribing! Here’s 10% off to show our appreciation.

Be quick:

You want your welcome email to go out as soon as possible after a customer subscribes - ideally, you should set up automation that triggers the welcome email immediately when a new customer subscribes. This will capitalize on the subscriber’s engagement with and interest in your brand at that moment.

Consider a welcome email series instead of a single welcome email:

You could start with an immediate email that confirms the customer’s subscription and gives them a discount code to shop. A day or two later, you could follow it with a more thorough introduction to your brand or the features of your site, and another follow-up email could encourage further interaction by highlighting your social media pages and other ways to engage with your brand.

Quality counts:

Even if a customer already knows your brand well by the time they subscribe, your welcome email is an introduction to the value your mailing list brings. Use only high-quality images and valuable, interesting content to show subscribers that you’re worth the sign-up.

Personalize your welcome emails:

For example, you might have one design for the core of your welcome email but you can add personalized product recommendations or content recommendations at the bottom based on what the subscriber has viewed on your site. This both prompts the subscriber to shop and also makes the email feel more relevant to them.These tips and best practices can help you take your welcome email from a simple subscription confirmation to an excellent tool for strengthening your customer base.

Create welcome emails easily with a template

Now that you have all the secrets to creating an effective welcome email, let’s get to work! When you use the right tools, it’s simpler than you think. With the Beefree email editor, welcome email design is made easy. Our HTML email editor allows you to either create your own welcome email from scratch (with no HTML knowledge needed) or to start with one of our skillfully crafted templates. Find one of our welcome email templates that works for you, like this “Thanks for signing up!” template by Martin Nikolchev.

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

…or the “Hiring Simplified” email by designer Navid Nosrati.

Use this template in Beefree!

Use this template in Beefree!

Editor’s Note: This post was updated on September 2023 to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. 

Share this post with your friends! Pin it on Pinterest?

three email about welcome series

Related posts

Elevate Your Email Campaigns: Optimal Banner Size & Design Tips

Discover the perfect email banner size for your campaign with our comprehensive guide, including design tips, best practices, and inspiration to enhance your emails.
Beefree team
Apr 17, 2024

Every marketer knows that branding, visually engaging branding, matters. In a recent HubSpot survey, 20% of marketers reported to see a direct correlation between their design choices and an increase in email engagement.

In email marketing specifically, one of the first design elements a recipient views is your banner, making it crucial to grab the attention of the reader at first glance. An email banner should effectively convey your message, resonate with your audience, and be responsive regardless of what device your recipient uses to view your emails.

Let's discuss email banner best practice to follow that will ultimately lead to improve results of your email campaigns.

What is an email banner?

An email banner is a strategic design element element that appears at the top of your emails to catch the immediate attention of your reader. Sometimes called an email header, your banner is where you’ll introduce the main purpose of your email, like that amazing sale you’re advertising or the product launch of the century, and reel in customers’ so they scroll through the rest of the email.

Your email banner is your chance to make a fantastic first impression. Let’s explore the best email banner sizes and best practices to keep in mind.

Ideal email banner sizes

It is an outdated solution to automatically set all email banners to a width of 600px. With screen sized of both mobile and desktop devices varying so widely, it's important to ensure your email banner size is responsive for optimal viewing experience.

  • For desktop users, a banner 650-700 pixels wide and 90-200 pixels tall is ideal
  • For mobile users, the ideal banner is 350 pixels wide and up to 100 pixels tall

These updated dimensions follow responsive design best practices allowing email banners to render properly in a variety of email clients and devices.
Responsive design allows your email design to automatically adjust to the screen size of a customer’s device.

PRO tip: using an email design template that is already built to be responsive makes following this best practice a breeze.  

Impact of email banner size on campaign performance

A banner that’s poorly sized could become distorted when customers open it in their Gmail, Outlook, or whatever email platform they use.

This makes your email look less professional and it can also be harder to read so it doesn’t get your message across as well. A poorly sized email banner can also affect the user experience. If the banner is too wide, for example, it forces customers to scroll horizontally and it doesn’t allow them to see the entire banner in one view.

Not only do these issues affect the overall experience customers have with your email but they can also squander the excellent engagement opportunity that a well-designed email banner can be. According to Opensense's data, email banners can have 5-10% engagement rates,  a significant enhancement compared to the average click-through rate of 1.4% in emails.

Best practices for email banner design

Your banner size is an important part of designing an effective email banner, but it’s one of many. Check out these best practices to make your email banner even more powerful in garnering the engagement of your recipients.

  • File size: Any image in your email, but specifically your email banner, should be of high-quality. The ideal image should be download as a PNG at a resolution of 72dpi at 40kb or below.
  • Inverted pyramid: This "rule" in email design relates to adding the most important information at the top, working your way down to the least important information. When designing your email banner, make sure it clearly communicates the most important message in your email.
  • Brand consistency: As important as it is that your email banner makes a positive impression and communicates the main purpose of your email, it also should align with your brand. Make sure the design uses your brand colors, logo, or other aspects that make it consistent with your brand’s visual identity.
  • Text: Your banner needs to communicate your message, but less is more. Keep your copy sparse so it isn’t visually overwhelming and so the focus stays on your core intention. Ideally, 45-75 characters on a line is the sweet spot.
  • Email-friendly fonts: Make sure you use email-safe fonts that render reliably on major email platforms.
  • Accessibility: You want your banner’s message to reach as many customers as possible, and that includes customers with disabilities. Make sure to include accessibility features like using alt text so viewers with visual impairments can understand your message and using color combinations that viewers with color blindness can see.
  • Interactivity: Your email banner doesn’t have to be just a plain image or text. Consider making it interactive, such as with a GIF or a video that grabs your viewers’ attention.
  • Testing: You can follow all the rules for proper email banner size and design, but it’s still important to test it in action to make sure it shows up the way you want it to. Always send yourself a test email and see how that test email looks on different devices and platforms before you send it to your subscriber list.

For inspiration, check out these excellent email banners. This one from Beefree's template catalog clearly communicate the purpose of the email, remains consistent in branding throughout and plays with visual and text hierarchy to guide the reader's eye.

color of the year beefree email template
Use this template

This other email banner uses a navigation bar to keep the reader in the brand's ecosystem allowing readers to learn more about the marketing agency. This simple, yet effective email header communicates clearly the purpose of the email using imagery and text and has a clear CTA to lead the reader to complete the desired action without needing to scroll.

free beefree webinar email template
Use this template

Common mistakes in email banner design

When creating a strong email banner, it’s just as important to avoid doing the wrong things as it is to do the right things. Watch for these common pitfalls in email banner design:

  • Over-designing: Your email banner is prime real estate in your email, so of course you want to make the best use of that real estate. If you try to cram too much into that banner, though, you may lose your core message entirely because viewers don’t know where to look. 
  • Hard-to-read fonts: Your email banner is a wonderful place to get creative and build visual appeal, so of course you want to use fun design elements and fonts.
    But at the end of the day, the purpose is to send a message, so make sure the ornamental fonts you use are still clear enough that they’re easy to read.
  • Lack of responsive design: We’ve touched on this above but it’s also a common misstep that’s worth mentioning. Considering that 46% of emails are opened on mobile devices, every email and banner you create must be responsive to maintain its visual quality on any email platform.

Leveraging Tools for Email Marketing Banner

There’s a lot to consider as you’re designing an email banner, but we have great news: there are tools that can make it easier.

Take Beefree for example. Our extensive email template library has over 1,700 pre-built templates that already use banner design best practices like responsive design, minimal text for maximum impact, and proper sizing. Our HTML email editor makes it easy to customize these designs for your brand and messaging.

Start designing with ease and sign up for a free account today! 

Beefree's acquisition of Really Good Emails: here’s why we're excited and you should be too

As of April 15th, 2024, Beefree has acquired Really Good Emails to bridge inspiration and creation: here’s why and what’s next.
Massimo Arrigoni
Apr 15, 2024

If you’re in the email space, you’ve visited reallygoodemails.com

I’ve been a fan for years. There’s nothing like seeing fantastic messages designed by some of the world's best brands to inspire you. Perhaps as well-known as the website are the newsletters from Really Good Emails: witty, funny, and packed with great articles and best practices.

So when Mike Nelson, one of the founders of Really Good Emails (RGE), reached out to me months ago, I was all ears.

Mike and his partners had been volunteering their time on the RGE project for almost ten years and had decided that it was time to switch gears. To deliver more value to their millions of visitors, RGE needed more time, money, and full-time focus.

One thing they found in surveys is that RGE users wanted to “turn saved emails into customizable templates” and use them in any email tool. As it turns out, that’s exactly what people do with Beefree’s no-code email builder: create millions of emails monthly for all sorts of use cases in virtually every industry. They even create those emails inside hundreds of other applications where our tools are embedded. 

Mike clearly had the right idea, and I’m so glad he and his co-founders reached out. 

We started talking and sharing ideas and a vision for the future of RGE. There was a lot of alignment. We believed then—and even more strongly today—that a collaboration between RGE and Beefree could make the art and science of email creation more accessible, more inspiring, and simply, more fun.  

Our plans for the future

If you’re an RGE fan and have never heard of Beefree, our goal is to shorten your path from inspiration to creation. Over the next several months, we will work on various ways to make that happen.

If you’re a Beefree fan, we will add more inspiration to your email design process. You’ve seen the 1,700+ templates in our catalog. Now, we’ll leverage the 15,000+ designs on the RGE site to give you creative superpowers.

If you’re involved in email creation at all, the key point is this: by bringing together RGE's vast email catalog with Beefree's intuitive design tools, we will provide new ways for you to close the gap between finding inspiration and creating something valuable from it.

I've always believed that inspiration is the precursor to creation. Seeing a design that clicks with you, that sparks that "Aha!" moment, is crucial. And Really Good Emails has been that source of "Aha!" for many, including myself. Incorporating RGE's treasure trove into Beefree's ecosystem feels like a natural step toward enhancing the creative process for our community.

Bringing Beefree and RGE together

From a product point of view, you will start seeing integrations between RGE and Beefree. We’ll start small and get fancier over time. They will start shipping soon, and we’ll keep you posted. 

While that’s in the future, there are things we can deliver to you today.

  • First, the Pro features on reallygoodemails.com become FREE for all, starting immediately. At Beefree, we love removing friction and agreed with our friends at RGE to start there. So, create new collections, add your favorite emails, and use the Chrome extension. It’s all free now.

  • Secondly, Unspam is back. It was hard for an all-volunteer team to host and grow this special email event. We have zero intention of changing the nature and objectives of the event, but we’re excited to support it and help it grow. Justine Jordan - Head of Strategy & Community at Beefree - took the lead on that, co-hosting Unspam 2024 in her own, authentic way.

  • Third, I'm super excited to welcome Mike Nelson and Matt Helbig from RGE to the Beefree team. They have a lot of innovative ideas around the future of Really Good Emails, and we can’t wait to collaborate with them. Matthew Smith and Matt Cook will help as strategic advisors.

We live in a world where email continues to be the favorite channel for companies to communicate with their subscribers and for people like you and I to hear from our favorite brands (e.g., here and here). In this world, you - email creators - play such a crucial role.

You are the key stakeholders for both RGE and Beefree. Hundreds of thousands of you use our tools every month. Through Unspam and many other initiatives, we want to increase investment in email makers and creators. 

We need to do so to continue building products that make sense and are truly helpful: successful products only come from a lot of deep listening. We want to do so because we are part of the same community, and there’s no healthy RGE & Beefree without a thriving community.

I know it’s cliché to say it, but we truly believe this is a case where the whole has a real chance of being greater than the sum of the parts. Our tools - combined - will deliver a greater amount of value to you. Our efforts - combined - will have a greater impact.

Give us a bit of time to execute all of this, and keep us honest as we do so. If you have questions, we maintain a FAQ here and welcome your comments and feedback by emailing community@beefree.io

With heartfelt enthusiasm, optimism, and anticipation for what’s to come,

Massimo Arrigoni 

CEO, Beefree

Best Practices in Email Marketing for Digital Agencies

Delve into the email marketing best practices that can empower digital agencies to harness the full potential of emails. From crafting compelling content to leveraging automation and segmentation, these practices are essential for driving engagement, nurturing leads, and achieving remarkable results
Beefree team
Apr 10, 2024

For fast-paced digital marketing agencies, it's common to focus on nurturing and expanding your clients' businesses, that you leave little room to promote your own services. While this is unintentional, this oversight may be hindering your agency's growth potential.

That's where email marketing comes in as a game-changer forbusy agencies. With email creation becoming more intuitive, powerful, and 37% of brands increasing their email budgets it's clear to see that email continues to grow as an effective marketing solution.

Let's delve into the best practices that can elevate your agency's email marketing game and unlock new avenues of success.

Why email marketing benefits digital marketing agencies

With 4.3 billion email users, email continues as a sustainable, cost-effective, and high-converting solution to effortlessly balance client acquisition and client retention.

This single strategy enables targeted outreach to engage and move audiences through different stages of the buyer's journey. For new audiences, email marketing can be used to show them your work, promote services, and reasons to work with you. For customer loyalty and retention, email can be used to upsell and/or communicate the consistent value you bring to your clients.

Email marketing presents a lucrative opportunity for marketing agencies of all sizes to thrive and grow. By consistently engaging potential clients and ensuring your presence remains prominent, you establish top-of-mind recall for marketing services.

#1: Segmentation to keep the balance

As your organization grows, you will notice that your audience has a wide range of interests depending on their demographics, business, and needs. Segmentation involves dividing your email list into different groups based on specific criteria, such as industry or stage in your client acquisition journey.

Segmentation enables you to send targeted and personalized content to each group, increasing the relevance and effectiveness of your campaigns and ROI. For example, if you have a segment of subscribers who are interested in social media marketing, you can tailor your emails to provide them with valuable tips and resources in that area.

Seer Interactive, for instance, is a digital marketing agency serving a variety of audiences from digital marketers who need to stay up to date on best practices to prospective customers. You can see in the example below how Seer differs their emails based on the audience.

Email for digital marketers:

Focuses on speaking to digital marketers who are interested in learning more about how to improve their services, what's new in the industry, and new tools and solutions.


Email for potential clients:

The second email targets potential clients who are likely in the discovery phase of what an agency does. Seer provides some insights to help the reader make more informed decisions with comparisons, a checklist, and an article with what to expect. This email, while does not directly promote Seer's services, let's the reader know that this agency is here to help keeping them top of mind.

Segmenting your audience using the customer journey funnel

As mentioned earlier, one of the most beneficial aspects of email marketing for agencies is the ability to maintain balance between client acquisition and customer retainment. In our professional experience, the best way to do this is to map out your customer journey and plan out how each stage serves your audience and of course moves them through the journey. While your client’s journey may vary depending on your services, but typically it entails the following: 

  • Awareness: In this stage, prospects have heard your name but are just getting to know who you are. This is where you can create a sequence of emails for them to get to know your agency, the services you offer, and what makes you unique. 
  • Consideration: This audience is weighing their options about the best marketing agency for them. This is where you will likely begin to provide statistics about the returns you’ve achieved for other clients or share testimonials. 
  • Decision/conversion: This is the stage when prospects just need that final push to take action and sign on as clients. In this stage, you can offer incentives or a free trial of one services.
  • Loyalty: This is the stage when a business has signed on as a client or made a purchase and your goal is to retain them. You’ll want to send these clients loyalty-boosting content like announcements about new products, appreciation for their support, and informative content that is helpful to them.

Ultimately, segmentation is a great way to keep your subscribers engaged and drive client acquisition and retention. Once you have a clear understanding of your client journey and the goals at each stage, now it's time to grow your email list.

#2: Building and growing your email list

To maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns, it is essential to first start building a quality list of people who are interested in what you have to offer and say.

  1. Make it easy to subscribe: Whether you're using a form on your website or a landing page, make sure that your process is simple. Only ask for only essential information, ideally only up to three. Some suggestions are name, email address, and a question that could help you segment them into groups such as "are you looking for an agency?" This simple question could help segment new subscribers to cold vs. hot leads. Don't forget to use a clear CTA that communicated what the next step is.  
  2. Leverage social media: Promote your email list on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Twitter/X to reach a wider audience and encourage sign-ups.
  3. Offer valuable incentives: Provide something of value, such as appealing discounts on a client’s first service or exclusive content like a guide to social media marketing in exchange for people signing up to your email list.
  4. Regularly clean your list: While building and growing your email list, it is important to regularly examine your subscribers and remove those who are not engaging. This helps maintain a healthy list and ensures that your metrics accurately reflect subscriber engagement.
  5. Don’t forget existing clients: Add your existing clients to your mailing list so they can stay up to date on your latest services and offers. Additionally create a segment of former clients who have not engaged with your agency in a while. This segment is perfect for targeted emails meant to re-engage them, like personalized information about where they left off in the process and a call-to-action button for them to jump back in.
  6. Provide compelling content consistently: Deliver content that is interesting, informative, and valuable to keep subscribers engaged and to make them more likely to tell others about your mailing list. The friends they tell may become subscribers and eventually clients.

Keep these best practices in mind to build a high-quality subscriber list who are genuinely interested in your brand. 

#3: Designing high-converting emails

The effectiveness of your email campaigns is directly influenced by the design choices you make. Research shows that visually appealing designs can significantly enhance engagement rates.

Email design best practices

Strategic design choices not only make your emails more appealing, but also drive higher conversions.

  1. Personalize your emails: HubSpot ranks message personalization as one of the most effective strategies for email marketing. Tailor the content based on their interests or past interactions with your brand, such as by including a section for recommended services. This increases engagement and makes your emails more relevant.
  2. Use professional and high-quality visual design: Use high-quality images and graphics that support your message and reflect your brand's identity. A visually appealing email is more likely to capture attention and encourage click-throughs. In fact, according to Campaign Monitor, communications with visuals receive 650% more engagement than those without.
  3. Include a clear call-to-action (CTA): Wordstream found that one CTA in your email can garner 371% more clicks and over 1600% higher sales. Your CTA should be prominent, concise, and action-oriented. Make it easy for recipients to understand what they need to do next, whether it's making a purchase, signing up for an event, or downloading a resource.
  4. Maintain consistent branding: Ensure that your email templates align with your brand's colors, fonts, and overall visual style. Consistency helps build recognition and reinforces trust with your audience, and according to GaggleAMP, customers who feel connected to your brand account for 37% of revenue and spend twice as much.
  5. Design for mobile devices: According to eMarketer, over half of emails are opened on mobile devices. Be sure your emails are mobile-friendly so they still look clean and engaging for your recipients.

Leverage email templates

Email marketing templates are a great asset for your email design. Many email marketing tools offer pre-designed emails that you can easily customize to suit your needs and brand guidelines.

By using pre-built templates, your agency can significantly reduce the time and effort required to create engaging emails, ultimately boosting your return on investment (ROI) by maximizing the impact of your email marketing efforts.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/9921CTHL

Ensure responsive, mobile-optimized, HTML email design

When designing your marketing emails, designing in HTML helps ensure that your emails will be readable in nearly any email app (like Gmail, Outlook, and so on) and device. Fortunately, you don’t have to be an HTML coder to create HTML emails.

Now a days, there are many tools that offer an easy-to-use design interface so you can design your emails and export the HTML the solution builds for you. These tools, streamline and make the design process more efficient, without the need to have any knowledge on HTML or CSS.

By utilizing an HTML email design tool, such as Beefree, not only can you enjoy the peace of mind that your emails will render well, but you also benefit from a solution that helps you and your agency save time, increase productivity, and get more done with less resources.

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/7845FVNE

However, not all HTML email builders are made equal.

#4: Choosing the right email marketing software for your agency

A stellar email campaign starts with effective and productive email marketing software. When choosing email marketing software, it's important to consider factors such as ease of use, customization options, integration capabilities with other tools, and more.

Factors to consider when choosing email marketing software

How do you determine which of the many email marketing tools is the best fit for your agency’s needs? Here are some important factors to consider while you weigh your options:

  1. Check out the features: Every software has its own collection of features like scheduled sending, automated options for sending a series of emails, personalization, design capabilities, and so on. Compare tools and their features against your list of must-haves.
  2. Examine the pricing: Cost matters in your ROI. Pick a service that fits your budget.
  3. Consider other capabilities: Some tools offer email marketing along with other helpful services like social media ads, website analytics, and so on. Consider whether there are email marketing tools that will also replace some of your other software.
  4. Try A/B testing: If you’re able to try out multiple email tools at the same time, consider sending a few campaigns with each tool to see if one performs better than the other.
  5. Weigh the integration capabilities: Consider email marketing platforms that may integrate with some of the other tools you use, like your client management system. This applies to email tools that integrate with other email tools too, like BeeFree which provides a user-friendly way to design your emails and smoothly send them with nearly any email sending platform
  6. Preview emails: Check out examples of what other businesses have created using each email tool.
  7. Read reviews and research: See what other businesses (and especially other marketing agencies, if possible) have to say about each tool.

Recommended email marketing tools

Here's a quick rundown of some recommended email design tools that can help maximize your ROI:

HubSpot

  • Key features: AI-driven marketing automation, built-in analytics, advanced segmentation, customizable templates.
  • Benefits: Targeted emails improve ROI and overall marketing strategy. HubSpot's AI can help with segmentation and crafting tailored emails for each recipient.

MailChimp

  • Key features: Easy usability, broad template selection, robust automation, analytics.
  • Benefits: Good for beginners and seasoned marketers alike, MailChimp offers an intuitive platform with high flexibility.

Constant Contact

  • Key features: User-friendly interface, diverse template library, event management tools, social media integration.
  • Benefits: Great for small to midsize businesses. It offers a range of features that can help streamline and automate your email marketing processes.

GetResponse

  • Key features: All-in-one platform, landing page builder, advanced analytics, webinar hosting
  • Benefits: If you're looking for more than just email marketing, GetResponse offers a suite of tools including landing page and webinar solutions.

ActiveCampaign

  • Key features: Advanced automation, CRM integration, messaging features, customer behavior tracking
  • Benefits: ActiveCampaign is ideal for businesses with a focus on customer relationships. It offers extensive automation and tracking capabilities for a more personalized approach.

Beefree

  • Key features: Specializing in HTML email design, with an extensive catalog of email templates to use and a drag-and-drop email editor for complete customization
  • Benefits: While emails cannot be exported via Beefree like the above, Beefree integrates with all major email sending platforms for easy use with your favorite software. Additionally, the application offers free and cost-effective plans to help you get started.
source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/2327OLKA

To ensure you're choosing the right tool, consider your organization's unique needs, the tool's capabilities, and how well it integrates with your existing marketing tech stack.

#5: Automating Your email marketing efforts

Leveraging automation in your email marketing strategy can significantly enhance your outreach efforts and improve your email marketing ROI. By automating certain aspects of your email campaigns, you can ensure timely and targeted communication with potential clients, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Automation allows you to schedule emails to be sent at optimal times and personalize content based on user behavior. This not only saves time and resources but also maximizes the impact of your emails. There are several ways that your agencies can incorporate automation, but here are some:

  • Sending an email to clients who started but didn’t complete your inquiry process.
  • Automated welcome series for new clients that introduces them to your work process.
  • Automated follow-ups for webinars, events, or meetings.

Benefits of email marketing automation

  1. Increased efficiency: With automated emails, you can reach a larger number of clients or reach clients more reliably without having to manually send individual emails.
  2. Engagement and lead nurturing: Marketing automation sometimes offers advanced features like lead scoring and nurturing. You can segment your audience based on their behavior or interests, ensuring that they receive relevant content tailored specifically for them.
  3. Advanced user segmentation: Automation allows you to segment your email list based on various criteria such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement level. This enables you to send personalized messages that resonate with each segment of your audience.
  4. Increased conversions: By sending targeted and timely emails through automation, you can significantly improve conversion rates. Whether it's encouraging a purchase or promoting an upcoming event, automated emails can help drive more conversions for your agency.

#6: Tracking and measuring for success

To ensure the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts, it is crucial to track and measure key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This data helps you recognize trends, such as what designs or content resonate the most with your clients, and help make informed decisions for your next campaign.

Important metrics to track

Here are some key metrics that you should track throughout your agency’s email marketing campaigns.

  1. Open rate: Shows the percentage of recipients who opened your email out of those who received it. It gives insight into the effectiveness of subject lines and sender names.
  2. Click-through rate: Measures the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link within your email. It helps you evaluate the effectiveness of your email content and call-to-action.
  3. Conversion rate: Tells you how many recipients took the desired action after clicking through your email. In the case of a marketing agency, that action could be filling out your website’s contact form.
  4. Bounce rate: Tracks the percentage of emails that were not delivered to recipients' inboxes due to invalid or non-existent email addresses.
  5. List growth rate: Allows you to assess how quickly your email list is expanding so you can adjust your acquisition strategies accordingly.
  6. Email sharing/forwarding rate: Measures how often recipients share or forward your emails to others. It can indicate whether your content resonates with your audience and has potential for increased reach.
  7. Unsubscribe rate: Monitors the percentage of recipients who unsubscribe from your emails after receiving them. High unsubscribe rates may indicate issues with targeting, content relevance, or frequency.

To learn more about how to measure and make informed decisions based on each metrics read: 8 Email Metrics That Actually Matter in 2024

Unlocking the power of email marketing for agencies

Digital marketing agencies have a unique business model and a unique use for email marketing. Unlike many businesses, you aren’t trying to use your email marketing to make a quick sale or appeal to impulse buyers. You’re trying to establish a genuine and ongoing connection with potential clients and show them the concrete value you can bring to their businesses. Agency-specific strategies like those above can help you make the most of every email you send.

Want a more efficient way to create compelling marketing emails? The Beefree "Business" plan is the perfect solution for growing agencies to scale their email marketing processes and campaigns. Start your free 15-day Business trial today

source: https://app.userevidence.com/assets/2651YKEJ


Frequently asked questions for agencies

1. How can email marketing help digital agencies maximize their ROI?

Email marketing helps digital agencies maximize their ROI by allowing them to reach a targeted audience, build relationships with clients, and drive traffic to their website or landing page.

2. What are some best practices for email marketing in digital agencies?

Some best practices for email marketing in digital agencies include segmenting the audience according to interests or needs and other factors, personalizing emails, creating compelling subject lines and content, optimizing for mobile devices, and analyzing campaign data to make improvements.

3. How often should digital agencies send emails to their subscribers?

The frequency of sending emails will depend on factors such as the industry, target audience, and goals of the campaign. However, it is generally recommended to maintain a consistent schedule that provides value without overwhelming subscribers.

4. What metrics should digital agencies track to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns?

Digital agencies should track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates to measure the success of their email marketing campaigns.

5. Are there any legal considerations when conducting email marketing for digital agencies?

Yes, there are legal considerations when conducting email marketing. Digital agencies need to comply with anti-spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States and GDPR in Europe by including clear opt-in/opt-out options, providing accurate sender information in each email sent, and following other guidelines.

Elevate Your Email Campaigns: Optimal Banner Size & Design Tips

Discover the perfect email banner size for your campaign with our comprehensive guide, including design tips, best practices, and inspiration to enhance your emails.
Beefree team
Beefree team
17 Apr
2024

Every marketer knows that branding, visually engaging branding, matters. In a recent HubSpot survey, 20% of marketers reported to see a direct correlation between their design choices and an increase in email engagement.

In email marketing specifically, one of the first design elements a recipient views is your banner, making it crucial to grab the attention of the reader at first glance. An email banner should effectively convey your message, resonate with your audience, and be responsive regardless of what device your recipient uses to view your emails.

Let's discuss email banner best practice to follow that will ultimately lead to improve results of your email campaigns.

What is an email banner?

An email banner is a strategic design element element that appears at the top of your emails to catch the immediate attention of your reader. Sometimes called an email header, your banner is where you’ll introduce the main purpose of your email, like that amazing sale you’re advertising or the product launch of the century, and reel in customers’ so they scroll through the rest of the email.

Your email banner is your chance to make a fantastic first impression. Let’s explore the best email banner sizes and best practices to keep in mind.

Ideal email banner sizes

It is an outdated solution to automatically set all email banners to a width of 600px. With screen sized of both mobile and desktop devices varying so widely, it's important to ensure your email banner size is responsive for optimal viewing experience.

  • For desktop users, a banner 650-700 pixels wide and 90-200 pixels tall is ideal
  • For mobile users, the ideal banner is 350 pixels wide and up to 100 pixels tall

These updated dimensions follow responsive design best practices allowing email banners to render properly in a variety of email clients and devices.
Responsive design allows your email design to automatically adjust to the screen size of a customer’s device.

PRO tip: using an email design template that is already built to be responsive makes following this best practice a breeze.  

Impact of email banner size on campaign performance

A banner that’s poorly sized could become distorted when customers open it in their Gmail, Outlook, or whatever email platform they use.

This makes your email look less professional and it can also be harder to read so it doesn’t get your message across as well. A poorly sized email banner can also affect the user experience. If the banner is too wide, for example, it forces customers to scroll horizontally and it doesn’t allow them to see the entire banner in one view.

Not only do these issues affect the overall experience customers have with your email but they can also squander the excellent engagement opportunity that a well-designed email banner can be. According to Opensense's data, email banners can have 5-10% engagement rates,  a significant enhancement compared to the average click-through rate of 1.4% in emails.

Best practices for email banner design

Your banner size is an important part of designing an effective email banner, but it’s one of many. Check out these best practices to make your email banner even more powerful in garnering the engagement of your recipients.

  • File size: Any image in your email, but specifically your email banner, should be of high-quality. The ideal image should be download as a PNG at a resolution of 72dpi at 40kb or below.
  • Inverted pyramid: This "rule" in email design relates to adding the most important information at the top, working your way down to the least important information. When designing your email banner, make sure it clearly communicates the most important message in your email.
  • Brand consistency: As important as it is that your email banner makes a positive impression and communicates the main purpose of your email, it also should align with your brand. Make sure the design uses your brand colors, logo, or other aspects that make it consistent with your brand’s visual identity.
  • Text: Your banner needs to communicate your message, but less is more. Keep your copy sparse so it isn’t visually overwhelming and so the focus stays on your core intention. Ideally, 45-75 characters on a line is the sweet spot.
  • Email-friendly fonts: Make sure you use email-safe fonts that render reliably on major email platforms.
  • Accessibility: You want your banner’s message to reach as many customers as possible, and that includes customers with disabilities. Make sure to include accessibility features like using alt text so viewers with visual impairments can understand your message and using color combinations that viewers with color blindness can see.
  • Interactivity: Your email banner doesn’t have to be just a plain image or text. Consider making it interactive, such as with a GIF or a video that grabs your viewers’ attention.
  • Testing: You can follow all the rules for proper email banner size and design, but it’s still important to test it in action to make sure it shows up the way you want it to. Always send yourself a test email and see how that test email looks on different devices and platforms before you send it to your subscriber list.

For inspiration, check out these excellent email banners. This one from Beefree's template catalog clearly communicate the purpose of the email, remains consistent in branding throughout and plays with visual and text hierarchy to guide the reader's eye.

color of the year beefree email template
Use this template

This other email banner uses a navigation bar to keep the reader in the brand's ecosystem allowing readers to learn more about the marketing agency. This simple, yet effective email header communicates clearly the purpose of the email using imagery and text and has a clear CTA to lead the reader to complete the desired action without needing to scroll.

free beefree webinar email template
Use this template

Common mistakes in email banner design

When creating a strong email banner, it’s just as important to avoid doing the wrong things as it is to do the right things. Watch for these common pitfalls in email banner design:

  • Over-designing: Your email banner is prime real estate in your email, so of course you want to make the best use of that real estate. If you try to cram too much into that banner, though, you may lose your core message entirely because viewers don’t know where to look. 
  • Hard-to-read fonts: Your email banner is a wonderful place to get creative and build visual appeal, so of course you want to use fun design elements and fonts.
    But at the end of the day, the purpose is to send a message, so make sure the ornamental fonts you use are still clear enough that they’re easy to read.
  • Lack of responsive design: We’ve touched on this above but it’s also a common misstep that’s worth mentioning. Considering that 46% of emails are opened on mobile devices, every email and banner you create must be responsive to maintain its visual quality on any email platform.

Leveraging Tools for Email Marketing Banner

There’s a lot to consider as you’re designing an email banner, but we have great news: there are tools that can make it easier.

Take Beefree for example. Our extensive email template library has over 1,700 pre-built templates that already use banner design best practices like responsive design, minimal text for maximum impact, and proper sizing. Our HTML email editor makes it easy to customize these designs for your brand and messaging.

Start designing with ease and sign up for a free account today! 

Beefree's acquisition of Really Good Emails: here’s why we're excited and you should be too

As of April 15th, 2024, Beefree has acquired Really Good Emails to bridge inspiration and creation: here’s why and what’s next.

If you’re in the email space, you’ve visited reallygoodemails.com

I’ve been a fan for years. There’s nothing like seeing fantastic messages designed by some of the world's best brands to inspire you. Perhaps as well-known as the website are the newsletters from Really Good Emails: witty, funny, and packed with great articles and best practices.

So when Mike Nelson, one of the founders of Really Good Emails (RGE), reached out to me months ago, I was all ears.

Mike and his partners had been volunteering their time on the RGE project for almost ten years and had decided that it was time to switch gears. To deliver more value to their millions of visitors, RGE needed more time, money, and full-time focus.

One thing they found in surveys is that RGE users wanted to “turn saved emails into customizable templates” and use them in any email tool. As it turns out, that’s exactly what people do with Beefree’s no-code email builder: create millions of emails monthly for all sorts of use cases in virtually every industry. They even create those emails inside hundreds of other applications where our tools are embedded. 

Mike clearly had the right idea, and I’m so glad he and his co-founders reached out. 

We started talking and sharing ideas and a vision for the future of RGE. There was a lot of alignment. We believed then—and even more strongly today—that a collaboration between RGE and Beefree could make the art and science of email creation more accessible, more inspiring, and simply, more fun.  

Our plans for the future

If you’re an RGE fan and have never heard of Beefree, our goal is to shorten your path from inspiration to creation. Over the next several months, we will work on various ways to make that happen.

If you’re a Beefree fan, we will add more inspiration to your email design process. You’ve seen the 1,700+ templates in our catalog. Now, we’ll leverage the 15,000+ designs on the RGE site to give you creative superpowers.

If you’re involved in email creation at all, the key point is this: by bringing together RGE's vast email catalog with Beefree's intuitive design tools, we will provide new ways for you to close the gap between finding inspiration and creating something valuable from it.

I've always believed that inspiration is the precursor to creation. Seeing a design that clicks with you, that sparks that "Aha!" moment, is crucial. And Really Good Emails has been that source of "Aha!" for many, including myself. Incorporating RGE's treasure trove into Beefree's ecosystem feels like a natural step toward enhancing the creative process for our community.

Bringing Beefree and RGE together

From a product point of view, you will start seeing integrations between RGE and Beefree. We’ll start small and get fancier over time. They will start shipping soon, and we’ll keep you posted. 

While that’s in the future, there are things we can deliver to you today.

  • First, the Pro features on reallygoodemails.com become FREE for all, starting immediately. At Beefree, we love removing friction and agreed with our friends at RGE to start there. So, create new collections, add your favorite emails, and use the Chrome extension. It’s all free now.

  • Secondly, Unspam is back. It was hard for an all-volunteer team to host and grow this special email event. We have zero intention of changing the nature and objectives of the event, but we’re excited to support it and help it grow. Justine Jordan - Head of Strategy & Community at Beefree - took the lead on that, co-hosting Unspam 2024 in her own, authentic way.

  • Third, I'm super excited to welcome Mike Nelson and Matt Helbig from RGE to the Beefree team. They have a lot of innovative ideas around the future of Really Good Emails, and we can’t wait to collaborate with them. Matthew Smith and Matt Cook will help as strategic advisors.

We live in a world where email continues to be the favorite channel for companies to communicate with their subscribers and for people like you and I to hear from our favorite brands (e.g., here and here). In this world, you - email creators - play such a crucial role.

You are the key stakeholders for both RGE and Beefree. Hundreds of thousands of you use our tools every month. Through Unspam and many other initiatives, we want to increase investment in email makers and creators. 

We need to do so to continue building products that make sense and are truly helpful: successful products only come from a lot of deep listening. We want to do so because we are part of the same community, and there’s no healthy RGE & Beefree without a thriving community.

I know it’s cliché to say it, but we truly believe this is a case where the whole has a real chance of being greater than the sum of the parts. Our tools - combined - will deliver a greater amount of value to you. Our efforts - combined - will have a greater impact.

Give us a bit of time to execute all of this, and keep us honest as we do so. If you have questions, we maintain a FAQ here and welcome your comments and feedback by emailing community@beefree.io

With heartfelt enthusiasm, optimism, and anticipation for what’s to come,

Massimo Arrigoni 

CEO, Beefree

Stay informed on all email trends

From the latest creative design strategies that inspire your next campaign to industry best practices and tech advancements, our newsletter is the go-to for all things creation.

By clicking Subscribe you're agreeing with our Privacy Policy