May 25, 2022

Summer Email Inspiration: 10 Best Summer Newsletter Ideas to Boost Sales

Reading time about 15 min

Warm up your email marketing strategy with a summer newsletter campaign to meet your summer sales targets and grow your mailing list.

Summer is all about fun in the sun. Win over subscribers with these summer newsletter ideas and topics to get your customers opening, clicking, and buying all season long.

Summertime Holiday Newsletter Ideas

Check out the best upcoming events, dates, and holidays to produce a bumper crop of newsletter ideas for summer. Focus on adding value to stand out from the crowd. How can you make this summer email the most helpful one in their inbox that day?

Memorial Day (May 30th)

As the unofficial start of summer, Memorial day is the perfect time to kickstart your summer email campaign.

If you have a new summer range or product category, now is an excellent time to build some hype and encourage early sales. 

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Appeal to feelings of patriotism with red, white, and blue colors just like Williams Sonoma did in its Memorial day email campaign. 

Help your audience plan a family get-together or have them enjoy a shopping spree over the long Memorial Weekend. 

Remember to reward your customers for loyalty to your brand and kickstart the warmer months with one-off promos and product roundups. 

Make your offer easy to find by including them in your Memorial Day email subject line.

You can also toss in an uplifting message or an encouraging quote to lighten the mood.

Further reading: 5 Memorial Day Email Examples To Kickstart Your Summer Marketing

Flag Day (June 14)

This one might come as a surprise. Flag Day, which falls on June 14, isn’t often in roundups of America’s favorite holidays. 

But small business owner, John Ross of Test Prep Insight, suggests you’re missing a trick.

“Flag Day is such an obscure holiday. Play it up as if it’s the most important holiday in the world to add lightheartedness and humor. The day also lends itself to emojis in subject lines, which always increases open rates.

“Our open rate for Flag Day is north of 40 percent, which is high compared to normal. The click-through is north of 20 percent — another major win.”

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Clothing brand Bearbottom created their own bear flag to mark the occasion.

So, find the most obscure holiday you can and design a newsletter to give your customers some memorable fun in their inbox. National Donut Day, anyone?

Father’s Day (June 19th)

Father’s Day is a natural opportunity to get in touch with your readers and show them your warmer side. Focus on a Father’s day gift and family outings that Dad will love to make your newsletter stand out. 

AO’s email taps into how hard it can be to find Dad a gift he loves. 

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Use a fun quiz format to showcase your products while solving your customer’s problem.

Further reading: Father’s Day Email Marketing Tips & Subject Line Examples

Juneteenth (June 19th)

Is also known as Freedom Day and commemorates the emancipation of African-American slaves. 

47 US states recognize Juneteenth as a festive occasion, although it’s only a federal holiday in Texas where it’s also known as Emancipation Day. 

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Highlighting the work of African Americans is the best way to celebrate diversity.

Bring in Afro-fusion colors or African-American art to really nail your Juneteenth email design. 

Include a hopeful message and highlight any efforts you’ve made, or charities you support, that advance racial justice or equal opportunity.

Juneteenth falls on the same day as Father’s day, so if you’re looking for a unique occasion to show your support for diversity, this is it.

4th of July – Independence Day

The 4th of July is the peak of summer’s holiday season. Your customer is gathering family and friends to celebrate and have fun. Get in the holiday spirit with a short and upbeat newsletter. 

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Use a combination of red, white, and blue alongside popular emojis 🇺🇸 to keep the tone lighthearted. 

Many of your customers want to treat themselves or loved ones, so special offers or discounts are happily welcomed.

Further reading: 4th of July Email Inspiration: Newsletter Ideas to Celebrate Independence Day

Ideas for Summer Sale Emails

Create a special edition of summer bestsellers from your product inventory. Start promoting the sale early to build anticipation. Send your subscribers an exclusive discount code and run a series of flash sales to encourage impulse purchases and pre-orders. 

Here’s a template to show you how to plan and design an attention-grabbing summer sales campaign:

  1. Newsletter 1 – Three weeks to go: Announce the dates of your sale
  2. Newsletter 2 – Two weeks to go: Tease some products
  3. Newsletter 3 – One week to go: Exclusive subscriber code or link
  4. Newsletter 4 – 24 hours to go: Reminder email
  5. Newsletter 5 – Launch: Links to best-selling products, specify a time limit

Save time by designing and scheduling your promotional emails beforehand with a free email marketing tool like Brevo.

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Email announcing summer sale from Everlane

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As summer fades, your thoughts turn to fall stock. A summer clearance sale is a great way to thank your customers and make a fresh start. 

Your end-of-summer sale campaign should give feel-good summer vibes, like this Everlane newsletter design. It builds a natural sense of urgency.

Your customer will want to take advantage of summer deals to enjoy the last days of the season.

Summer Newsletter Themes

Holiday marketing isn’t the only way to develop your email strategy. Newsletter content based on classic summer themes is a perfect fit too. 

Keep your newsletters and your summer product selection relevant to your customers’ lives with seasonal offers. 

Timely and relevant marketing is much more likely to make a sale. 

Vacations

The excitement around summer vacations peaks as the weather turns warm and sunny. 

Tap into positive, fun imagery with a light-hearted tone of voice (if it’s right for your brand) and vacation-themed offers.

When the weather’s good, people spend less time on their screens and more time outdoors. Stay top of mind by curating fun summer activities that tie in with your brand.

Jeff Vogl of ClassicCarStereos recommends creating a playlist on Spotify and promoting it to your newsletter readers. Readers can connect to your playlist of summer anthems or road trip classics as they live their best lives this summer.

Rifle Co. highlighted a collection of summer tourist destinations in their vacation-themed newsletters.

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The great outdoors

Associating your brand with adventures in nature is a great way to encourage sales. 

Summer can feel so short after a long winter. It’s easy to create a sense of urgency around the long days and warm weather.

A newsletter template like this one from Brooks will let the product and the call-to-action button do the talking. 

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Learn the most effective ways to use images to drive conversions in your email designs with our best practices for newsletter images.

Family time

Summer is a time for family. With that in mind, offer discounts your customers can share with loved ones or special deals on family-size purchases.

It will show your brand’s appreciation of family values and win over new customers through referrals and reshares on social media.

Home improvements

As the weather improves and people get the chance to socialize more, thoughts naturally turn to getting the home in order. 

Help your customers out by running a summer home makeover promotion. Think of ornaments, paint, and wallpaper to cozy up a family home or summer cottage. 

Offer tips for creating the perfect outdoor dinner party.

If your brand is there to support customers, you’ll remain trusted and memorable long after the summer ends.

The halfway point

Christine Glossop, SEO manager at Looka, takes a novel approach to summer marketing.

“Summer is the midpoint of the year. If your business is selling anything productivity, self-improvement, or work-related, this is your chance to re-energize your subscribers.” 

Looka used the subject line ‘Get ready for the second half of 2020⚡’ on one of its summer newsletters when Covid was at its peak.

The email campaign above had a 21 percent open rate —  better than four out of five of their most recent newsletters. And had a 4.5 percent click-through rate, with more conversions than any of their summer newsletters.

For even more inspiration as you plan for your summer marketing efforts, check out our best email newsletter examples

Summer Email Content Ideas

So you’ve got your summer email campaigns all set up.! You’ve designed marketing campaigns around summer cook-outs, home improvements, and road trips. Good work.

Next, find out how to fill your emails with valuable content your customers can’t help but click through.

Make it useful

Make your customer’s life easier and you will gain their trust and improve open rates long term. Cost saving is an obvious way to create value. Flash sales, coupons and promo codes are almost always effective in this regard. 

But there are so many more ways to help them out. 

Get creative by offering fun activities, advice, recipes, tips, or to-do lists — anything to give your customers their best summer yet. 

Like the ultimate recipe for barbecued corn, a ‘must bring’ list for a day out, or indoor craft ideas for that one rainy day while they’re on vacation. 

The easiest way to embed video in your email is to simply add a static image or video still with a link to the content.

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Act Blue helped their customers out with a handy guide to summer fundraising. 

This will have inspired NGOs and nonprofits to look to Act Blue for more advice and support.

Add video

If you sell premium products in beautiful packaging, an unboxing video might entice your readers. For more practical products, a video showing it in action could be just the encouragement your consumer needs. 

If you’re selling a service, your video could show the results of that service and even include testimonials from satisfied customers. 

Contests and giveaways

What makes contests and giveaways so effective? 

According to Ray Ko, senior ecommerce manager at ShopPopDisplays, reader participation “starts community dialogue between you and your customers,” helping them bond with your brand. 

Try an essay writing contest for kids on Father’s Day or a competition to guess the number of candies in a jar. This personal touch on your summer email marketing campaign will help it stand out in a sea of mass-market newsletters. 

Competitions generate low-cost, high-return content for your email marketing and social media efforts. Announce contests and giveaways in your newsletter and on social media channels.

Starbucks’ Summer Game competition is jam-packed with fun prizes and is a smooth tie-in to their customer loyalty program.

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Customer testimonials

If things are a little quiet in your product category over the summer, there’s still some user-generated content you can share. 

Product reviews in an appealing format make for a high-impact summer email campaign. Build credibility and induce FOMO as your reader sees what a great time everyone else is having with your product. 

With Brevo’s email template builder, all you need to do is copy and paste reviews into the drag-and-drop boxes. Save the layout down and create an updated version every month with your latest reviews.

In the following example, Prose included snapshots of the most positive customer testimonials in its newsletter. 

The CTA encourages customers to explore community reviews which is an excellent way to use social proof to generate sales.

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Personalization

Personalization is an essential part of any summer email newsletter campaign. Try segmenting your subscriber list by purchase history to send out relevant product promotions that sell well. 

Promote a special offer on cocktail glasses for all customers who bought a cocktail shaker. Or tell customers who recently purchased a patio furniture set that your patio heaters are on sale. 

Show you care

Consumers are more interested than ever in what their favorite brands are doing to give back. 

Your newsletter is an opportunity to talk about your community initiatives, sustainable development programs or carbon-positive processes, or other policies designed to have a positive impact.

Summer email newsletter from a company promising to plant trees.

This could be as simple as thanking your customers for sticking with you. As Max Harland, CEO of Dentaly, says, “In the past year, we’ve been through volatile times. Thanking your customers for being by your side adds warmth and enhances your connection.” 

Summer Email Subject Lines

Now you’ve got your content nailed down, here are our top tips for sizzling summer email subject lines:

  • Create FOMO on your amazing deals by letting customers know they won’t be around for long
  • Add humor and positivity if it feels right for your brand
  • Use emojis: one or two in your summer subject line help your email stand out in a crowded inbox

Final Tips for Summer Newsletters

Now your content calendar is loaded with holidays, themes, and content to keep your customers clicking.

As you prepare your newsletters, remember,

  • Get straight to the point so your customer can get back to enjoying the summer
  • Include a compelling call-to-action to tell your reader what you want them to do next
  • Plan ahead and schedule your newsletters to save time
2023 Holiday Marketing Calendar
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