5 Top Types of Email Marketing That Get Replies (With Writing Tips)

An open red mailbox with multiple hand-drawn email envelopes flying away from it, illustrating different types of email marketing.

Some types of email marketing work better for achieving certain business goals than others.

For instance, a regular e-newsletter is ideal for sharing company news and blogs. Outside of a newsletter, to plug an event, a promotional email or “drip” campaign can build interest weeks ahead.

Based on 2024-2025 data compiled by Perplexity, these are the most common types of marketing emails service providers send.

1. Educational Emails: Newsletters That Inform and Promote

What they are: Thought-leadership content:

  • news
  • reviews
  • tips
  • blog posts
  • guides
  • case studies

Subject line example: How to improve your business’s online security.

Stats:

Newsletter example: Calm’s monthly Calm Down newsletter

Writing Tip: Break up text for scannability. Use bullet points, subheadings, or short paragraphs for quicker reading:

✅ Write clear, specific headlines. Summarize the key takeaway.
✅ Keep sentences short — 12-15 words max.
✅ Summarize content and link to the full article.

More in-depth business newsletter writing tips to boost your email success.

2. Promotional Emails: Writing That Sells

What they are: Emails that feature product or service sales, discounts, or events; product launches (drip campaigns/automated emails).

Subject line example: Get 25% off your next purchase!

Stats (from Sender):

  • 75 percent of marketers send emails highlighting specific products or features.
  • 72 percent send sales or promotional emails.
  • 71 percent send event announcements.

Email Example: Calm’s 50-percent off a one-year subscription

Writing Tip: Lead with benefits, not features: don’t describe; persuade in concrete language that “shows,” rather than “tells”:

❌ Our latest software update is here!
✅ Save time with our automated productivity tools!

3. Transactional/Behavioral Emails: Writing That Confirms

What they are: Order confirmations, loyalty rewards, password resets, abandoned cart, or appointment reminders.

Transactional emails are more personalized, sent in response to a user’s action. They often focus more on customer service, though they can sell subtly.

Except for product or e-commerce offers like courses, professional service firms rarely use them.

Stats:

  • Automated emails account for 46.9 percent of email sales (Omnisend).
  • Most transactional emails have an average open rate of 80-85 percent. They tend to be higher because people view them immediately or revisit them (Mailgun).

Email Example: RocketLawyer’s nudge to finish completing a bill of sale.

Writing Tips:

✔ Make every word count. Use clear, concise language to help users get the message quickly: “Your order has shipped!” versus “We wanted to let you know your shipment is on its way.”
✔ Use the recipient’s name.
✔ Add subtle cross-sells (e.g., “Need help with more legal documents? Explore our custom estate plans.”).

4. Relationship-Building Emails: Writing That Connects

What they are: Client success stories, holiday greetings, customer appreciation, or welcome emails designed to strengthen bonds.

Example: “Thanks for being a loyal client! Here’s a small token of appreciation.”

Stats:

  • 79 percent of marketers use welcome emails, and 62 percent use onboarding or “post-purchase” emails. (Sender)
  • Welcome emails achieve an average open rate of 83.63 percent (GetResponse).

Writing Tip: Add personality, yet write in your brand’s voice: “Hi, [Name]! We’re thrilled to have you — here’s what you can expect in your inbox.”

5. Survey and Feedback Emails: Writing To Request Information

What they are: Customer satisfaction surveys, net promoter score surveys to measure loyalty, or open-ended questions.

Example: “We’d love your feedback — share your thoughts and help others!”

Stats: The average email survey response rate is roughly 24.8 percent. (FluidSurveys).

Email Example: LegalZoom’s simple survey reminder.

Writing Tips: Keep it concise. Data suggests that if a respondent starts answering a survey, drop-off rates increase sharply with each extra question (up to 15). (SurveyMonkey)

Make it easy and enticing.

  • Easy: Use simple, conversational language and provide a clear call-to-action like “Take our 1-minute survey here!”
  • Enticing: Show a benefit, like “Help us improve to serve you better.” Adding a small incentive (e.g., a discount or giveaway) can also boost responses.

With shifting social media rules, algorithms, and ownership, more businesses are focusing on emails. Why? Regardless of your email platform, you own your subscriber list and can take it anywhere. And especially if your emails are set up properly and well-written, you have more control over who gets your messages.

Now that you know the top types of email marketing, once you have subscribers, don’t procrastinate — start creating! See how your emails can spark interest in your products and services.

See where to put your e-newsletter content–save time and gain results

Which types of marketing emails have proven most effective for you? Drop your thoughts in the comments.

QUOTES

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” ~ David Newman

“Good marketing emails are like good conversations: relevant, engaging, and worth responding to.” ~ Unknown

5 Email Marketing Trends to Automate Your Business Email Creation

Do you know how email marketing trends like user-generated content and personalization can enhance your messages and engagement? 🤓

You might be familiar with some of the latest advances, but others might be new to you because they’re not standard practice yet. These are among the trends that can reshape your email content landscape and conversion rates.

For an in-depth look into all five email marketing trends and how they can refine your content creation, see the videos in this playlist.
An example of an AMP-enabled email from email marketing platform AWeber.
An example of an AMP-enabled email from email marketing platform AWeber.

1. Interactivity: AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), a Google framework, brings activities like completing forms and game playing to emails. E-commerce and subscription sites like Finish Line and Booking.com have used it, but any business can leverage it for engagement. Another, lower-tech option (with or without AMP) is user-generated content (UGC).

AMP: With features like AMP List, you may automatically update product listings and remove old offers. AMP Accordion hides or expands content like FAQs and product information. AMP also animates “call-to-action” buttons.

Google offers AMP to software developers, but many email service providers/platforms (ESPs) don’t currently support it. (AWeber, MailChimp, and MailModo are among the AMP-enabled platforms.) AMP-capable ESPs often feature limited versions like design features in their template builders. Also, it’s incompatible with some non-Gmail clients.

UGC: With this and other creative email marketing trends, you may spur readers to act through methods like:

  • Requesting a review after a purchase
  • Asking readers to complete a survey

2. Personalization: Go beyond adding subscribers’ names to emails or segmenting your list by audience with custom customer-focused content. Amazon, Starbucks, and other vendors have used predictive personalization based on customers’ locations and other data to forecast content or products that appeal to them. 

Example: A sporting goods store emails a discount on a parka to a buyer who lives nearby and recently bought thermal insulated gloves.

AMP also enables personalization through collecting data directly from surveys, forms, and other content in emails. 

3. Accessibility: Emails continue to become more text than image-based. Easy-to-read fonts and complementary colors are among the elements that make them accessible, especially for readers with visual and cognitive conditions. 

Litmus reports that in 2022, an average of 35 percent of people read emails in “dark mode,” with dark backgrounds against lighter-colored text. 

To ensure everyone can read your messages, check if the text is clear. Browser add-ons such as WebAIM’s WAVE and tools like EXPERTE.com’s Accessibility Check test if the elements of emails meet accessibility standards. The EXPERTE.com tool works like the accessibility checker in Google’s PageSpeed Insights except it scores and assesses every major page at a website.

4. Automated content: Artificial intelligence (AI) tools in ESPs let people create images and email copy. Leading providers Constant Contact and MailChimp are among those that now offer AI assistants. (MailChimp’s Email Content Generator is available only to their standard and premium plan users.) Creators who cull content from other sources can use apps like: 

  • Wordtune: Summarize content from a website address. 
  • Claude: Cut and paste content into the platform and prompt it for a summary. 
  • FeedlyThrough its Leo tool, this RSS reader lets you pull online content based on your reading history and keyword alerts. 
  • Google Alerts: Save keyword searches for relevant news articles
  • Web browser extensions that aid content curation

5. Automated content curation: For a fee, ESPs like rasa.io and Futurescope offer in-platform content curation. 

Rasa.io pulls content from various sources like blogs and social media accounts. Its AI automation tool will then sift through the content, and based on users’ clicks, customize a message for them. Futurescope lets you choose a topic or industry to create brand-specific content.

What’s your favorite email marketing trend? Feel free to comment below.

QUOTES

“I see interactive as a huge shift in email development. Early analytics have shown far greater engagement from users who receive interactive messages.”

~ Mark Robbins, Email Developer, Rebelmail

“Content curation involves finding other people’s good stuff, summarizing it, and sharing it. Curation is a win-win-win: you need content to share; blogs and websites need more traffic, and people need filters to reduce the flow of information.”

~ Guy Kawasaki, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users