Product launch email tips + 12 examples to ignite your campaign

Email announcements are a powerful tool. They’re the best way to promote your new release to existing subscribers, and you won’t have to spend a penny on ads. 

But creating an effective product launch email campaign for the first time isn’t easy. The good news? This article is packed full of tips and examples to help. 

A product launch email, or new product email, is an email campaign that businesses send to their customers and subscribers to introduce or tease a new product, service, or feature. Their purpose is to create excitement and anticipation around the launch, encourage pre-sales and sales, and raise awareness about the new product.

One in five consumers buys new products immediately after they’ve been launched. Product launch announcement emails can help you take advantage of this because they alert subscribers to your upcoming or recently released product. This greatly impacts sales because your subscribers have a proven interest in your brand—they may even be existing customers. 

If they’ve bought once and continue to engage, there’s a good chance they will buy again. Plus, studies have shown that 63% of people actually like it when manufacturers introduce new products.

Products come in many shapes and sizes: from physical items to software, courses, and ebooks. Even new features and events can be marketed like a product. 

Here are 5 types of products you might consider promoting.

1. Physical product release 

Send an announcement email whenever you release a new e-commerce product. Include links to your listings and tell people why they should buy. Create high-quality images to show off the product.

2. Feature announcements 

Releasing new software features is the secret to keeping customers happy. Ensure they are aware of the update by sending feature announcement emails. Explain what the new tool does and its benefits. Include links to the feature and further information about its uses.

3. Event invitations

Announcement emails promote events to the people most interested in attending: your existing audience. Send an email when tickets go on sale and in the days before your event. Use an RSVP button to segment your list into people who are attending and not, then send follow-up emails to the former group.

4. Book launch

Book launch emails announce your new project and explain why it’s worth buying. Start promotion early in the release cycle to drum up interest. Send emails for cover reveals, sneak peek content previews, and pre-orders—you can even automate these book launch emails.

5. Courses

Use your course launch email to tell recipients how it benefits them and how to sign up. Consider using time-capped discounts to encourage early registrations. Mention extra benefits people get when they buy.

By now you should have some good ideas for your product launch emails. Take them to the next level by following these best practices.

📨 Design your product launch email sequence 

The above examples are effective ways to promote your product. But the secret to a truly successful launch is sending multiple product launch emails over time. This maximizes the number of people who see your emails. 

The average email open rate is 41.31%. If you send one email, less than half of your audience will hear about your product. Sending multiple emails increases this number significantly. 

People also receive product exposure multiple times. This cements the idea of the product in their mind, builds hype, and gives them more opportunities to buy. 

Common types of emails found in a launch sequence include:

1. Announcement email

2. Prelaunch email

3. Launch email

4. Reminder email

5. Last chance email

6. Update emails

This is a lot to think about but you can automate most of these messages. Use MailerLite’s email automation workflow builder to create them in advance and schedule them for predefined times. Then you won’t have to worry about sending emails when you’re busy with your product launch.

Looking for some professionally-designed, inspiring product launch email templates? Check out these awesome examples from our template gallery. 🤩

1. Announcement email

Your announcement is a teaser email that tells your audience about your upcoming product. Mention a specific release date, or simply list the product as “coming soon.” Consider offering a discount coupon or early access to people who register interest at this point.

2. Pre-launch email

Use pre-launch emails to officially announce your launch. Include a link to a landing page where people can find out more. Consider allowing early birds to pre-order your product to guarantee sales upon its release—encourage this by offering a discount or freebie to early signups.

3. Launch email

Send this email on launch day. Include links to your landing page and third-party platforms where people can buy your product (Amazon, Gumroad, etc.). All launches need to use this email.

4. Reminder email

Send a follow-up email a few days after your launch. Use it to re-establish the details mentioned in your first email and offer ways for potential customers to find out more. You can include interesting data from your sales process, like its position in best sellers lists. 

5. Last chance email

Send last-chance emails on the last day of your launch to encourage undecided people to sign up. Make it clear that people need to buy before the deadline, and stick to this rule.

6. Product update emails

Don’t stop sending emails once the launch period finishes. Sending regular emails will remind anyone who didn’t buy your product that it still exists. These emails should be less promotional than your earlier message. You can still promote the product, but you need to include value beyond this. 

At this point, you can also send emails to the people who did buy your product. Collect post-purchase feedback and ask for reviews on any relevant platform.

✨ Use a compelling subject line

A lot of emphasis is put on crafting email messages that engage and convert but really, the star of the show is the email subject line. Without an effective subject line, subscribers won’t even open your message to get to the main email content.

For a product launch email, your subject line should be attention-grabbing and enticing while also short (30-50 characters) and concise. Bonus points if you can squeeze a sense of urgency or FOMO in there too. Remember, you can always build on your subject line and add extra information in the preheader. 

What’s great about these subject lines is that:

• They are short but descriptive

• Many of them use emojis to stand out in the inbox

• The language and tone of voice are tailored for their audiences

Check out these email subject line tips for more examples and inspiration.

📝 Include these email elements in your message

Effective product launch emails tend to have several things in common. When writing your campaign, include the following elements. 

• Product highlights: Including the main features and benefits of your product helps subscribers understand why they need it and how it addresses their pain points. It also helps to build excitement around your launch by giving people a sneak peak of what they can get  Clickable, compelling call-to-action: CTAs encourage people to click through to your offer. Create effective calls-to-action by making yours the climatic point of your email. Use buttons that stand out with a contrasting color and keep the text short and sweet but easy to understand. 

• Social proof: Social proof builds trust and shows your product benefits. Use pre-release beta testers to generate reviews or highlight results from past campaigns.

• Sense of urgency: You want people to buy now. Create a sense of urgency with the language you use—think time-related words or reference availability and scarcity,  limited offers, and email countdown timers. 

You don’t need to use all these elements in each email. But putting several of them together in a cohesive unit creates impactful messages.

🌅 Showcase your product with impactful imagery

Humans are visual creatures. Sure, it’s a great idea to include detailed information about the highlights of your new release, but you should also use detailed imagery in the form of images, gifs, and videos to support your offer. What’s more, strategically placing some well-designed images alongside your copy allows your product to take the spotlight. After all, that’s what your launch is all about!

Using beautiful imagery will make your email more engaging and eye-catching and will improve the flow of your message, taking the reader’s eyes along to what you want them to pay attention to. Gifs and videos will give subscribers an even better idea of how your product works and how it will be useful for them.

⌛ Nail your timing

The timing of your product launch emails is key to building anticipation and maximizing sales.  

Send the first announcement email in your launch sequence early in the process. This could be weeks before you plan to launch—just make sure to set up a landing page and start collecting email addresses. 

You can then continue building anticipation with further emails closer to your release date.

You’ll also want to consider the best days of the week and best time of the day to send your emails for maximum impact. Analyze your own data to estimate when the best time is for your audience. Our data suggests the best day and time to send an email is Thursday (closely followed by Monday) from 11am-12pm. Check out this article on the best times to send emails to see more insights. 

If you’re still not sure, you can use MailerLite’s Smart sending feature. Smart sending is an AI tool that analyzes your past campaigns and predicts the best time to send your email to every single subscriber. All you have to do is select smart sending and hit send when you’re ready and MailerLite will do the rest.

💌 Resend your campaigns to subscribers who didn’t open

Remember we said that the average open rate is 41.31%? That leaves more than half of your subscribers who opted in for your emails who haven’t opened your message. Maybe they weren’t interested, or maybe they didn’t have time, got distracted, or simply didn’t see your product launch announcement in the flood of emails that most people get every day. 

Whatever the reason, you can give your email a second chance at being opened and maximize its audience by resending your campaigns to subscribers who didn’t open it. 

In MailerLite, this is made super easy with the auto resend feature. All you need to do is select Auto resend campaign when you go to create a new campaign.

👥 Utilize segmentation

Email segmentation allows you to specifically target groups of subscribers in your email list based on certain characteristics. This enables you to create more personalized messaging that subscribers will find more engaging and relevant to them. 

Because you’ll be able to send product launch emails to people who are more interested in the specific product release, you’ll be able to improve customer satisfaction and increase conversions and ROI (Return On Investment). 

For example, let’s say you’re releasing a new feature for the Premium version of your app. You could create a product launch email for: 

• A segment of subscribers who have a Premium subscription and therefore have access to the feature, with content tailored to them encouraging them to use it 

• A segment of subscribers who have a free or lower value subscription and therefore do not have access to the feature, with content tailored to them encouraging them to upgrade

• A segment of subscribers who are not users of your app, with content tailored to them to show them what they are missing out on, encouraging them to sign up

📢 Cross-platform promotion

Your new product launch emails are essential to your launch, but they shouldn’t be the only part. Promote your product on multiple platforms to maximize the number of people who see it. 

Use your email to promote these different channels. Include social sharing buttons or embed social posts in your email to increase engagement on social networks.

Include links to your listings on other platforms where you are promoting your product. These platforms may collect customer emails and alert subscribers when products are released, which can help boost sales further.

📊 Track your results

Monitoring key metrics for your product launch email campaign will allow you to determine the success of your efforts and highlight any potential opportunities for improvement. It will also help you to identify what works well in your campaigns, allowing you to further develop these elements to ensure you’re consistently delivering the most impactful messaging and maximizing results.

Some metrics you’ll want to track for your product launch emails include:

• Open rate: This metric will give you enable you to understand how relevant and engaging your email subject line and preheader are. Although the overall average based on our data is 41.31%, it varies from industry to industry.

• Click-through rate: Click-through rate, or CTR, measures the number of people out of everyone the campaign was sent to who clicked on a link in your email. It allows you to gauge the performance of your messaging and CTAs. We found the average across all industries to be 3.01%.

• Click-to-open rate: Perhaps a slightly better performance indicator of your messaging and CTAs, CTOR is the number of people out of the subscribers who opened your email and clicked on a link. It’s more accurate because it only measures the people who actually saw your message. The average across all industries is 7.38%.

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate is important because it tells you the percentage of people who completed the desired action as a result of your product launch email. It can also help you identify shortcomings in other areas of your overall launch campaign. For example, if your email has a high CTR but low conversions, the reason could be that your landing page isn’t effective or presents a barrier to people looking to convert.

For a deeper dive into the metrics covering all aspects of a product launch strategy, check out 13 Critical Product Launch Metrics to Track by Product School.

Curious about how your metrics measure up against the average in your industry? Check out these email marketing benchmarks by industry from our own data.

The best way to create an effective e-commerce email marketing strategy is to learn from what others are doing. Get your creative juices flowing with our favorite examples of product release emails.

E-commerce prelaunch email: Saysky

This prelaunch email from Saysky informs subscribers about an upcoming collection release. It explains the benefits and ties them in with aspirational language, selling a lifestyle in addition to their clothing. They use a laid-back approach to a product launch, with more of a focus on their product and branding which fits nicely with their brand personality.

E-commerce product launch email: Nikon

This product launch email example from Nikon perfectly fits the company’s branding with 2 images: one more aesthetically pleasing for the photographer audience and the other more inline with typical product images. The clear and concise copy effectively highlights the benefits of the product.

E-commerce product launch feedback email: The Brighton Beard Co.

This email introduces several new additions to The Brighton Beard Co.’s product line and takes a unique approach by asking for thoughts and feedback about the lineup. While we love this idea, along with the casual, friendly language used in the message, we think this product launch email could be even better with additional images to support the content, along with a more eye-catching CTA for subscribers to submit feedback.

Feature release email: Bubble

This email announces a major update on the software platform Bubble. It highlights why the new functionality is important and invites recipients to a live stream demo where they can learn more. The email has links to third-party site listings to increase engagement on these channels.

Feature release email: Typeshare

This email from Typeshare has all the elements of a good launch email. It introduces the new product and explains how it helps users. The offer to unlock a template pack is attractive to the email recipients and is showcased with clear CTAs.

 Course release email: Copyhackers

This course release email from Copyhackers opens and closes with strong social proof. The main body is filled with the benefits of the course, and an embedded video provides more information.

Course release email: VeryGoodCopy

This email from VeryGoodCopy announces a new course. It provides an approximate release date, information about the contents, and the opportunity to join the waitlist. The email encourages signups by highlighting that early supporters receive a steep discount.

Ebook release email: Freelancer

This book release email has a strong offer: the first 1,000 people to buy get the book for free. If your mailing list isn’t as large as Freelancer’s, try the tactic with a smaller number of free books so you don’t lose out on sales. Or offer a discount to the first people who buy.

Reminder email + webinar invitation: Justin Cooke

This email from Empire Flippers starts with a reminder about the signup deadline. It provides a link to a webinar that interested parties can use to learn more.

Last chance event email: AppSumo

This example from AppSumo has many elements of an effective last chance email. These include a countdown timer, a 10% discount offer, clear CTA buttons, and well-written copy.

App launch email: CoSchedule

This email from CoSchedule introducing their new product, HireMia, makes excellent use of graphic design to showcase the product, make the message more engaging and impactful, and direct the reader’s eyes toward the CTAs. They also split the main features and benefits into easily digestible sections.

App launch follow-up email: articleforge

This email from Article Forge works by providing further insight into a common question people have about the product. It doesn’t push the software too hard, but the information may convince people to buy.

Looking for the right words to get started with your product launch announcements? Here are some sample product launch email copy templates you can use. Feel free to copy them directly or use them to inspire your own messages.

Physical product release

New feature announcement

Event invitation

Book launch

New course

You’ve created your product, which means your journey is half done. A well-planned launch keeps you going in the right direction.

The two main takeaways from this article are:

1. Don’t just send a single email. Create an entire campaign to build anticipation and increase awareness. 

2. Tailor your emails to your product type, you audience, and the stage in your launch. An email announcing a new physical product differs from a course signup reminder.

Get these two things right, and you’ll be well on your way towards creating product launch emails that sell.