Digital marketing email templates

Six emails that get sent constantly. Each one includes the subject line, the body and a note on why it works — because the reasoning matters more than the wording, and you should be editing rather than copying.

Five rules that apply to all of them

1. One purpose per email. If it contains two asks, it gets neither.
2. The subject line should say what the email is about, not what type of email it is. “Monthly report” trains people to read it later, which means never.
3. Put the ask in its own line near the end, with a date.
4. Shorter than you want it to be. Nobody has ever complained that an email was too brief.
5. Never send a template unedited.

1. Cold outreach to a prospect

Subject: Quick note on [company]‘s [specific thing]

The whole email depends on one thing: a concrete, checkable observation about their marketing that they can verify in ten seconds. Not a compliment, not a generic “I noticed your site could rank better” — that is what every ignored cold email says.

State what you noticed, say what it might be costing them as a possibility rather than a certainty, then offer the two things you would change first with no call required. Offering value without requesting a meeting is what makes a reply cheap.

2. Replying to an inbound enquiry

Subject: Re: your enquiry — a couple of questions

Speed matters more than polish here. Two questions, and the second is the one people skip:

• What made you start looking now — is something specific not working?
• Who else needs to agree to this, and by when?

The second question predicts whether the deal closes better than anything else you can ask. Ask it in the first reply, not in month two when you discover there is a committee.

3. Sending a proposal

Subject: [Company] — proposal, and the one decision in it

Name the single decision you are asking them to make, and give your recommendation with a reason tied to their objective. Proposals sit unanswered mostly because the recipient cannot tell what is being asked of them.

Then offer to reshape the scope if the budget does not work. That converts “no” into “not like this”, which is a conversation.

The proposal template is what this email attaches.

4. Sending the monthly report

Subject: [Company] — [month] report: [the headline result]

Putting the result in the subject line is what gets the report opened. Then three bullets — the primary metric against target, the main change and why, and the one thing happening next — followed by whatever you need from them, with a date.

If the email needs more than three bullets, the report itself should be carrying that detail.

5. Following up on silence

Subject: Closing the loop on [company]

Offer to close it off rather than nudging again. “Shall I close this for now and check back in [month]?” gets a reply far more often than another follow-up, because saying “yes, later” costs the recipient nothing — and that answer is genuinely useful to you.

Send it once. A third follow-up gets you marked as spam, not as persistent.

6. Raising your rate with an existing client

Subject: Change to our fee from [month]

The email marketers most often put off. Four parts: the new figure and the date, the honest reason, what stays the same, and the alternative — a reduced scope at the current fee.

Offering the scope reduction is what keeps the conversation about value rather than about discounting. Most clients accept the increase; the ones who genuinely cannot get a real option instead of a negotiation. Work out the number in the pricing calculator before you write it.

Common mistakes