Inspiring Newsletter Examples From 8 Industries

Thinking of newsletter ideas can be headache-inducing. Then, coming up with an appealing design can be nerve-wracking.

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As a business owner, you already know how important it is to include email marketing in your overall digital marketing strategy and strategic content marketing. Your audience has given you their personal email address. But you know it’s a competition between brands for the best, most attention-grabbing email in the subscribers’ inboxes.

You want to stand out with your design elements and be the one email subscribers are excited to open. You also want to make your message stand out and keep the audience coming for more ongoing value.

Yet, creating email newsletters has proved to be a daunting task. It doesn’t have to continue that way- it could be way easier.

In this article, we’ll show you some of the best email newsletter examples from 8 different industries to give you an idea of how to create effective newsletters.

What makes a good newsletter?

Many newsletters we receive daily have muddled-up content and whacky delivery. Most times, the content deliveries are bland because brands do not have clear ideas of what to send. Or they send anything just because they want to show up daily. You do not want to do this.

The goal of every newsletter is to be engaging, valuable, and outstanding. To ensure these, you have to consider some best practices when crafting your newsletter content:

• Set clear goals: What message do you want your subscribers to get when they receive your newsletter? Should they only be aware of your products and offers or also share them with others? You need to have a clear mission for sending out newsletters. This will help you deliver valuable content that takes your customers through a seamless and exciting journey.
• Don’t bite more than you can chew: How often can you come up with intriguing content? Do you want to create weekly newsletters or monthly newsletters? It is important to not spam your email subscribers with irrelevant content just because you want them to receive an email from you.

pro tip: create a calendar that fits your team’s strengths and schedule. This will allow you to send email newsletters that subscribers rush to open.

• Use outstanding designs: Your newsletter design should aim to be attractive and aesthetically pleasing. Avoid cumbersome designs. Use images, infographics, illustrations, or videos.

pro tip: use white spaces and avoid lengthy paragraphs. This makes your newsletter content more appealing to your email subscribers.

• Use clear CTA: The most effective newsletters have strong and clear call to action. This may be to share the newsletter content or click a link that leads to relevant landing pages such as a service page or YouTube channel.

pro tip: include this earlier on in your newsletter.

• Be Mobile-friendly: Bear in mind that most of your readers will read your email on their mobile phones. So, you should make sure that your subject line and every other content are friendly to mobile users.

pro tip: make your subject line 30 characters or less.

When your email newsletter does not include these elements, your email subscribers will automatically leave you unread or hit the dreaded unsubscribe from your newsletter. And you don’t want that for your business.

If you’re still unsure about how to craft your newsletter content. Let’s explain what your email newsletter should contain.

Email Newsletter Content

Since you’ve set your goals, the next thing is to ensure that create contents that match your goal and your brand identity. Your brand identity includes your brand voice, tone brand color, and general content length.

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If your brand is funny, you may generally want to include pop culture references in your content as well as emojis, GIFs, and memes. But you may want to avoid these when addressing a negative issue in your email.

If you are a formal brand, you wouldn’t want to use a sassy tone or quirky images when delivering a serious message. However, you may want to use emojis and memes when delivering the good news.

Once you’ve made sure that your goal aligns with your voice and tone, you can create your newsletter. Your newsletter content will include:

• Attention-grabbing subject line: Be clear and arresting in your subject line. Make it irresistible and avoid being deceptive. Remember to align your goal with your voice and the appropriate tone.
• Body: This is where all your important messages are. Ensure you keep your audience in mind. Consider their attention span and put the most important information (your CTA) first. We’ll explain the structure of the body in the following section.
• Personalized messages: Include your recipient’s name in the greeting and sparsely in the body, if possible. Personalize your newsletter to the age and interest of your target audience.
• Infographics/Illustrations: Use illustrations (images or videos) and infographics in your newsletter when presenting complex reports like statistics or user guides. This helps to make your content more readable.
• Unsubscribe link: It can be hurtful to your business if you violate spam laws. So, you should be aware of the spam laws in every country you are sending emails to. Most countries with anti-spam laws require an easy option for your readers to unsubscribe to your email newsletter. Check out the anti-spam laws of some countries below:
  • CAN-SPAM Act (United States)
  • Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (Canada)
  • General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) (European Union)
  • Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations of 2003 (United Kingdom)

Now that you know the contents to include in your newsletter and what is GDPR compliance, let’s show you the must-have newsletter design elements for your newsletter.

Email newsletter design elements

While you can choose to get creative with your newsletter design, the layout will generally include:

• Your logo or masthead
• A featured image and other appealing visuals
• Call to action- CTA (“click here to buy” or “click here to view full post”)
• Top stories
• Additional content or promotional offers
• An email footer including social links and subscription information

From a design standpoint, this layout will have elements that align with your brand identity. This means that your newsletter must align with every other asset associated with your business in terms of color and shape.

Consider aligning the color of your newsletter to the color of your website to avoid confusing new subscribers.

Also, you should adopt a visual hierarchy in your layout. This will include using big-size shapes or bold fonts or underlining for important messages. This helps you guide your reader’s attention to the contents you want them to notice earlier on.

Now that you know a few best practices for email newsletter content and design you should be able to execute an effective email marketing campaign.

However, if you still feel stuck, we have some recommendations to help you get your creative juices flowing.

So first. . .

Where do you get newsletter inspiration from?

Your Audience: Your audience is your first point of inspiration. Since you’re creating the newsletter for them, you have to know their needs, aspirations, and their interests. Once you figure this out, you can create newsletters that speak directly to them.

You can figure out your target audience’s pain points by monitoring how they engage with your brand and other brands on social media. This will allow you to deliver valuable content to your subscribers. 

Your Competitors: Once you know your ideal audience, the next thing is to figure out who your major competitors are.

Many people ignore this but learning about your competitors can help you understand your audience better and what unique benefits you can offer them.

A brilliant idea is to group your competitors into three categories:

• Direct competitors: These include brands in the same category as you. They offer the same product or services you offer. Which means they give your audience a good reason to leave you. These are the people you want to pay the most attention to.
• Indirect competitors: These are brands that are in a slightly different category than you. They may be in your industry, but they offer products or services that are different from yours. For example, a restaurant vs online recipe providers.
• Replacement: These are brands that are in a completely different category but offer a substitute for your product or service. For example Netflix vs Playstation.

Once you figure out where your competitors fall in this group, you can learn from how they craft their subject line, how they execute their email campaigns, and also get inspired by their newsletter templates.

The aim is to know it and be twice as good when you structure your own content. Not to copy. You will also have to anticipate their moves so you can be steps ahead of them.

You can also monitor your collaborators, that is people who make your products easier and more effective to use. For example, Loom and Slack. Their emails can serve as a template for you to create newsletters that your audience wants to read.

How do you know what your competitors are doing? Keep an eye on their newsletters.

This may seem like a tedious thing to do— reading dozens of daily emails. No, it doesn’t have to be. There are several tools out there to help you automate the process.

Tools such as:

• MailCharts
• Owletter
• eDataSource
• Sendview
• Competitor.email

can help you monitor your competitors’ email marketing and content strategy. These tools send you email screenshots that help you see your competitor’s email design.

They also send you detailed information about your competitors’ audience and how your competitors segment them, and how often they send them emails.

You can also get information such as open rates, list sizes, and keywords to help you craft your subject line and body text effectively.

Amazing, yeah? Now, let’s look at some ideas. . .

Email Newsletter Ideas

• Weekly round-up of popular blog posts or recent articles or video content
• New job openings at your company
• New case studies or product launches
• Personal stories featured on other websites
• Industry expert interview
• New best practices or weekly tips
• Company news
• Summary of industry events
• Recent survey results related to your industry
• Internal employee news, including anniversaries, promotions, and birthdays
• A team spotlight with pictures and bios
• Social media posts
• Customers’ testimonials
• Upcoming event or webinars
• Behind the scenes at your company
• Showcase new sections of your website
• Latest industry news

The Best email newsletter examples

You may still need some further inspiration to help you create effective newsletters. We’ve gathered some of your competitors and collaborators here, so you don’t have to go looking.

Let’s go!

Technology and Product newsletter examples

For the tech and product industry, newsletters are a great way to announce sales, discounts, and product updates. They are also good to announce new products.

Automated emails are popular in the tech and product industry for new customers’ onboarding.

Great tech and product email newsletters often:

• Highlight the product and its features
• Give how-to instructions to use products
• Showcase how it can solve customer pain points
• Use high-quality images of the product
• Announce new features

Now let’s look at some great examples of product-oriented email newsletters to get you inspired.

Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the best when it comes to email marketing. It’s an amazing tool for writers. It helps give your writing that professional feel.

When onboarding new users, Grammarly communicates the features of its product and how it can solve the user’s pain point.

In its weekly newsletter, Grammarly sends its subscribers updates that summarize their activity on the app. This weekly update is an interesting way to keep an audience on the app and make them open the email newsletters.

Usually, the email subject line is always the first point of attraction- “You were epically productive last week!” Then, the body consists of numbers that tell the story of the user’s activity, quality of vocabulary, and accuracy in comparison to other app users–“you were more accurate than 70% of Grammarly users.”

The summary also shows top tones the user had used during the week as well as top mistakes. Grammarly’s weekly email is a great example of top-notch personalization!

Grammarly newsletters sometimes also include promotional information and writing tips. All these are sent in a short, easy-to-read format. We also love this newsletter example because of how it uses colors for visual separation.

Food and restaurant newsletter examples

The food and restaurant industry knows how to use attention-grabbing newsletters.

Generally, food and restaurant newsletters use tantalizing and enticing product images that make their subscribers want to purchase. This is a good way to boost brand awareness and engage customers.

Great food and restaurant newsletters often:

• Use high-quality, mouthwatering images
• Communicate reservation offers
• Announce menu updates
• Announce discounts and limited menu offers
• Share customer reviews

Let’s see some stomach-rumbling newsletter examples from this industry that can inspire you.

Munchery

Munchery used to be an online food ordering and meal delivery service before it shut down abruptly in 2019. Now they share easy-to-follow recipes only but their newsletter is still worthy of inspiring you.

Munchery’s newsletter is a great example of an easy-to-follow design.

At the very top, the subscribers get a welcome email that makes them know exactly why they are getting this email. This makes the subscriber feel at home.

Another thing to notice in this newsletter example is how the email efficiently uses as little as three blocks and a few words to invite the subscribers to check out their website.

Snap kitchen

Snap is the go-to meal delivery for busy people. They provide healthy, fresh, and fully prepared meals weekly for people who want to spend less time preparing food and overall kitchen management.

Check out this newsletter example from Snap.

This newsletter is also a simple structure with a few blocks. The first block introduces the brand to its subscribers before it shows crispy meal images.

It ends with a clear call to action that offers the subscriber a $60 promotion offer. Way to go, Snap!

BBq Bus

BBQ BUS & Smokehouse is a little restaurant in upper northwest D.C. They offer different tasty meals to their customers.

In this example, they showcase a tantalizing image of wings, ribs, pulled pork, and more which are available for delivery. They end with a clear call to action encouraging subscribers to “order now!”

This is another great newsletter example that packs a heavy punch in a few words.

Education and school newsletter examples

For the education sector, newsletters are a great way to engage faculty members, students, and alumni. Newsletters are especially important in this sector following the growth of online learning and bridging the distance between the school and its students.

Typically, messages in education newsletters targeted at prospective students and their parents will include updates on admission application opening and deadline, scholarship offers, information about the school, courses available, webinar invites, and so on.

Education newsletters can also be used to update current students and alumni about the happenings on campus. This may include registration deadlines, school fee updates, and semester round-ups.

For faculty members, email content would include campus events, meetings, conferences, or information on courses they’re teaching. It’s an endless pool of content opportunities.

Overall, when creating your institution’s newsletter, make sure:

• you use clear and concise content delivery
• specific and not muddled up
• has helpful content for the audience

Let’s check out some informative education email newsletter examples to inspire you.

ie university

Not only does IE offer a quality teaching experience, but IE also does one of the best email marketing in education. It is a top international uni in Madrid and Segovia, Spain.

This newsletter example carries information that speaks to prospective students of the school.

It uses a simple design and clear CTA.

udemy

Udemy is a prominent online learning and teaching platform meeting the growing need for digital learning and development.

Their newsletter includes a lot of helpful content handpicked for the subscriber yet they are carefully placed for easy access.

Ecommerce Newsletter Examples

Ecommerce websites are well-known for using an email newsletter to communicate new products, promotions, discounts, contests, check out or recommend products and share testimonials.

But you could do even much more. You want your email newsletter to draw your customers to your website or act fast on purchasing a product or completing an ongoing purchase. How do you do that?

You can do that by:

• Creating a sense of urgency in your headline- “promo code expires in 30 minutes!”
• Add clear call-to-action (CTA) in your newsletter.
• Sharing helpful tips on how to use items.
• Reminding the target audience of an abandoned shopping cart.
• Sending season-based products– “7 best winter coats for you”

Great email newsletters from e-commerce websites are usually beautifully crafted, showcasing high-quality photographs of products to stand out. See the eCommerce newsletter examples below.

HARRY’S

Harry’s run an eCommerce site for men’s shaving and grooming products, and they send some of the best education emails to their subscribers. Harry’s deserves an award for best in email marketing.

Unlike the general approach of pushing salesy email newsletters to subscribers, Harry’s instructional content related to its business to nurture its readers.

The subject line of this example is a question that makes the reader know this is relevant content– “Are you doing this AFTER you shave?”

Then, the simple email design with enough white spaces to capture readers’ attention also makes this a great newsletter example to use as a template.

It ends the content with a CTA that carries a link to Harry’s blog post.

Fossil

Fossil carefully represents its stylish nature in the newsletter example here.

They create a sense of excitement in the subject line by emboldening a discount offer sale. They also include a sense of urgency by indicating that a product is limited (“only 300 made!”).

This newsletter example also shows you why you should include your CTA buttons earlier on, so people can act on your offer quickly.

Bombas

For a sock company, Bombas is great with its email marketing. In the newsletter example below, they use a relatable subject line- Free Socks Are NOT A Myth. The email header is also straightforward.

This newsletter example effectively makes use of colors to highlight the sections, the main CTA, the free shipping offer, and the money-back guarantee.

Blog newsletter examples

Email marketing and blogging are like the perfect couples. Combining the two is a great content marketing strategy that allows you to build better relationships with your target audience.

Blog newsletters are effective to keep your readers up-to-date and also drive traffic to your recent blog posts.

Typical blog newsletters will include:

• interesting subject lines
• link to blog posts
• excerpt of blog content
• CTA buttons for subscribers to share content on their social media accounts

Let’s see some newsletter examples that match.

story matters

From their monthly emails, you don’t need to be told that Story Matters is a storytelling blog. Their use of language tells it all.

Their monthly newsletter features headlines and excerpts of articles, poems, stories, and podcasts that have been featured on their blog.

In this newsletter example, they use a simple newsletter design that allows subscribers to have an idea of the content before clicking.

Smooth stuff!

SHRM HR DAILY NEWSLETTER

SHRM is a renowned international Human Resource organization that keeps its subscribers updated on industry news in its daily newsletter.

In this newsletter example, they use an intriguing subject line, “8 Ways HR Can Overcome Return-to-Office Pushback, CEO Pay up 16%, The Role of AI in Retaining Top Talent, more”

This subject line summarizes the top contents of the newsletter. Then, at the top is a CTA that draws the subscribers in on the organization’s offer.

The content is then structured in sections including excerpts of each blog post, publication dates, links, and CTA buttons.

Real estate newsletter example

Realtors benefit a lot from using newsletters. If you are in the real estate industry, you can promote your properties effortlessly, educate your audience, and keep them posted about new listings.

You can also do much more by:

• Sharing tips on packing and unboxing
• Providing solutions to homeowner problems
• Informing prospective homeowners about dos and don’ts

Below is a great email newsletter example from a popular real estate company. Let’s go!

Zillow

This newsletter example focuses on promoting listings and educating homeowners on the future of their properties. This is a great example of how a realtor provides solutions to homeowners’ problems.

The subject line- ‘Quiz: Fix it up or give it up?’

Makes the subscriber knows this is helpful and engaging. It is also a relatable line that uses a playful tone.

In this newsletter example, Zillow uses high-quality images of the real-life property to attract its readers. It also makes use of white spaces to make the email more unique, readable, and enjoyable to its recipients.

The body texts in this newsletter example are short and specific to the audience’s problems.

Right before the CTA which is made to stand out in blue, there is a question that piques the readers’ curiosity to take the quiz and find answers to their questions.

This is a simple yet powerful newsletter example that can inspire you to create effective newsletters.

Entertainment newsletter example

As you would expect, the entertainment industry is home to the most exciting newsletters. this is the reason why most entertainment newsletters are paid. They come with the premium gist!

Great entertainment newsletters include cool stuff like YouTube documentaries, smart tweets, funny TikToks, movie recommendations, movie reviews, industry gossip, and many more.

They may also include serious topics like upcoming events, book reviews, insightful opinions, and recipe recommendations.

Newsletters from this industry are made to give the audience lief while also making them feel excited.

The tone in entertainment newsletters is usually:

• Exciting
• Fun
• Gossip-oriented

Let’s check out an amazing entertainment newsletter example

Accelerate weekender

Accelerate is a digital lifestyle and entertainment platform that focus on film and music in Africa.

This newsletter example is a weekly newsletter titled Accelerate Weekender.

It features an interview with a popular entertainment persona before sharing links to movies and YouTube videos.

It also features announcements of events, TV shows as well as promotion of a media school. All of these are put under specific headings that make it easy for readers to navigate. Download your free banner templates at All Time Design.

Nonprofit newsletter examples

Finally, we’ll check out nonprofit newsletters.

Nonprofit organizations often need to seek support from their audience. But before then, newsletters are a good way to build credibility and build rapport with the audience.

If you’re working in a nonprofit company, newsletters are a great way to share your mission and build trust before asking for support.

You would initially want to talk about your cause and what makes it so important. You may also share reports on people affected by the problem your cause addresses. This helps you build credibility as you grab your reader’s interests.

Having built credibility, you can be able to use your newsletter to ask for support in any form. Be it time, money, or other resources.

Overall, with your newsletter. you can share:

• Updates about your organization
• Relevant stories and developments related to your core mission
• Upcoming fundraising events and promotions
• Where and how to donate

Let’s check out some relevant examples.

Global Citizens

Global citizen is a nonprofit organization that addresses several causes concerning everyone in the world.

The example below is a weekly email from Global Citizen to its subscribers

Global citizen’s weekly digest

This newsletter example makes use of stories related to the organization’s cause. These stories help to build the brand’s credibility and tell the subscribers why they should act.

It also makes use of great visual hierarchy to help steer the reader’s attention to the most important content.

UNICEF

Unicef is concerned about the well-being of children all over the world. In this newsletter example, they make use of personal stories to make their newsletter more captivating.

They also put the ‘DONATE NOW’ button in a blue color to make it easily accessible. Check out some funny Zoom backgrounds.

Conclusion

We have shown you helpful tips that can help you create an effective newsletter as well as shown you newsletter examples for inspiration. WE CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU NAILING your email campaigns with efficient designs and attention-grabbing headlines!

If you still feel stuck, you can hire a professional design agency to help design your newsletter templates. You can also hire a professional email editor or use software that can help you with email templates.

We’re rooting for you!