Creating email templates – downloadable guides

Are you looking to get more results from your email marketing? These templates will help you determine your objectives, write effective calls to action and deliver content that your audience will love.

Why use a template to plan your emails?

It’s likely you send lots of different types emails to your audience and all of these will have a different purpose.

You might send a regular newsletter with your monthly/fortnightly update and also send a number of tactical emails focussing in on specific content such as announcements of new products or events. With any of these emails a key marker of success will be the number of people who take action and click through.

Whatever the purpose or call to action (CTA) is for your email, you want to make sure this is clear for the reader and easy for them to carry out this action. You might do this by thinking about:

• Your subject line – is it obvious what the email is about?
• Your call to action text – is it clear what the next step for the reader is?
• Your email design – is it easy to click on the CTA, even on a smaller mobile phone screen?

These downloadable templates prompt you with key questions to consider when planning your email content. You might find that once you start using them, you adapt them to your own purposes adding in new elements. Feel free to use these as a starting point and adapt them to suit your needs.

What kind of emails are these templates for?

You’ll probably start off by using these templates to plan your marketing emails, but don’t forget your transactional emails. Even if you have emails going out from your box office or donations systems, you should still be able to make edits to the copy. Consider pinch or pain points to use your transaction emails to address them. For example:

• People often turn up to your venue with their receipt instead of their eTicket. Does the email copy differentiate the receipt/confirmation from the eTicket(s)?
• A drop in people are renewing their membership. Are the membership benefits clear and is the link for renewal clear?

The templates

Single news story

This is your go-to template if you’ve got an important action you want people to take. The idea with this email is that you include one CTA, or a maximum of two. The template helps you think through your content and who you should send it to. This template is useful for both marketing and transactional emails and survey requests.

Email planning template – single news story [docx 52Kb]

News round-up

If you send a regular newsletter with different news stories, this one will help you decide the content hierarchy and purpose for each section.

Email planning template – news round-up [docx 52Kb]

Emailing non-segmented audiences

Email works best when you send the right person, the right information at the right time. It’s great to segment your mailing list so you can send relevant content to people, but we know that for some people this isn’t possible. If you have to send your emails to everyone on your mailing list, this template helps you plan your content so all readers can find what they’re interested in quickly and easily.

Email planning template – non-segmentable list [docx 53Kb]

What next?

Do you have an email that you would like to send that isn’t covered by these templates? We would love to hear from you. Drop us a line at [email protected] to let us know what you’d like to see.

The Digital Culture Network is here to support you and your organisation. Our Tech Champions can provide free 1-2-1 support to all arts and cultural organisations who are in receipt of, or eligible for, Arts Council England funding. If you need help or would like to chat with us about any of the advice we have covered above, please get in touch. Sign up to our newsletter below and follow us on Twitter @ace_dcn for the latest updates.

Original article by Peggy Naumann. Reviewed 2023.