Sizzlin’ hot summer newsletter ideas for 2024

Quite the opposite—summer is a time to bring new life into your email marketing campaigns!

Use this season to complete long-overdue email maintenance tasks, shake up your content, and play around with your summer newsletter design.

Go get a refreshment and find a shady spot. We’re about to summerize your newsletters.

There are as many summer newsletter ideas as there are ice cream flavors, especially when you take into account all of the bank holidays and special occasions. 

So when you’re running out of ideas, why not use an event to create newsletter content year-round?

The biggest summer happenings to mark on your email calendar are Father’s Day, the 4th of July, Labor Day, and the last and first day of school.

And if that’s not enough, no worries.

At some point in time, someone, somewhere decided that July would be Hot Dog Month, August 3rd Watermelon Day, and August 6th (wait for it) Fresh Breath Day.

Malaysian booze delivery service Boozeat celebrated our personal favorite, World Martini Day on June 19th, with this newsletter.

Summer newsletter events for June

Find 75 June content ideas here:

Summer newsletter events for July

Find 69 July content ideas here:

Summer newsletter events for August

Find August content ideas here:

We get it, surviving a day in your sticky office or home is already exhausting enough. That’s why we did you a favor and curated our favorite summer email subject lines for 2024. Some were invented by our customers, others taken from our inboxes.

Find more inspiration for creating awesome subject lines in this guide:

Your business might suffer from summer slow motion, but don’t give up on your email marketing efforts. Instead, take inspiration from these engaging summer newsletter ideas.

Summer is the perfect time for e-commerce businesses to engage customers with dreamy content and compelling offers. Here are some tried and tested campaign ideas that are sure to get your audience in the Summer spirit. 

1. Summer essentials guide

Create a guide of all the must-have Summer products on sale in your e-commerce store. You can make the guide more valuable and complete by including complementary products from other brands. For example, if you sell swimwear, include all your top-selling pieces along with the accessories that complete the look.  

2. Beat the heat promotions

Start a special promotion on all the products that will help your subscribers stay cool, calm, and collected during the Summer months. Sell custom water bottles? Give a discount for all water bottle purchases and include tips on how to stay healthy and hydrated. 

3. Summer DIY projects

Share tips, ideas and tutorials for Summer-themed DIY projects and blend in your products. You can share ideas for outdoor makeovers and decor, outdoor games, kid’s crafts projects, and more. 

4. Vacation ready campaign

Create a vacation guide with checklists, tips and recommendations for the most hassle-free vacation experience. Include your most popular Summer products as recommendations. If you sell clothing, put together your favorite beach resort looks. 

5. Summer fashion trends

Put together a lookbook of Summer fashion trends, incorporating your own products. Try to think outside the box and use your own unique interpretations of this year’s trends to stand out from the crowd. 

6. Healthy summer living

The change in season and warmer temperatures means that many people around the globe adapt their lifestyle during the Summer months to stay healthy. Whether it’s healthy eating using in-season ingredients, tips for staying hydrated, a guide on how to protect oneself from the sun, or how to maintain a healthy exercise plan even when the weather heats up, there are many ways you can provide value to subscribers while promoting your brand and products. 

7. Summer recipes

Do you love to share cooking and lifestyle content? Summer is the ideal time to create exciting new recipes for food and drinks and share them with your subscribers. You could even ask them to submit their own favorite Summer recipes.

8. Festival and event preparation

Summer is always jam-packed with festivals and events of all kinds, especially well-known and trendy music festivals. Create a guide on how to survive a multi-day festival, or share tips on how to stay safe, healthy and enjoy the experience. You can even throw in a downloadable checklist for everything someone needs to do and bring when they’re attending an event. 

9. Backyard fun ideas

Share your outdoor summer game ideas for keeping everyone occupied when at home during the summer months. 

10. Summer beauty essentials

Reveal your secrets on how to get the perfect, glowy Summer look with product recommendations for cosmetics products and, of course, all-important sun protection. Share your must-have products for the ultimate Summer beauty regimen.

You see this in magazines all the time: summer specials. Why don’t you shake up your content?

Talk about family-friendly activities, mouth-watering recipes or airy summer styles. With a bit of brainstorming, you’ll soon come up with 101 summer ideas for your newsletters.

1. Summer fashion newsletter theme

MailerLite customer Pauline Alice shows readers in their summer newsletter how to make their own dress from the sewing patterns that they're selling (which looks awesome, btw).

Bikinis, shorts, shades, fun, sand and sun. Get fired up by these fashion newsletter examples designed in MailerLite.

2. Summer travel newsletter theme

Vrbo gets readers dreaming about a far-away summer vacation in their summer newsletter campaign showcasing the perfect international summer getaway rentals.

Take a trip to destination inspiration with these travel newsletter design examples.

3. E-commerce summer newsletter theme

Skincare brand and e-commerce store, Skin Rocks, takes an informative approach to their summer newsletter. Instead of pushing products in a summer sale, they provide extra value to readers by promoting a blog post on whether or not it’s safe to use retinoid products during the Summer. They also include a link to another Summer-themed skincare article and a call to action to shop sun protection products.

Got some cool content on your own blog? Check out these newsletter examples to inspire your own value-add campaign.

4. Summer music newsletter theme

Musicbed knows that summer is festival season, which means it’s time to curate a summer playlist in preparation for dancing the night away.

Get inspired by these music email design examples for your own summer newsletter line-up.

5. Hospitality summer newsletter theme

Hotel June makes the most of summer by offering late summer coupon codes. Painting a picture of poolside relaxation that makes you want to squeeze all the sunshine you can into the last days of summer.

6. End of summer newsletter theme

French Summer clothing brand Sundress pushes for end-of-season sales with an end-of-summer discount code.

Create a summer list to share with subscribers. What to pack for a solo trip to Asia, how to get in shape in 31 days, 33 must-read books to finish this summer—you can create a list about practically anything.

As downloadable PDF files (lead magnets), lists are a great way to collect new subscribers. Create a signup form that is linked to a welcome email. Then insert the URL to download the list in this email. Now you can promote this signup form on a landing page, in blog articles or as a website pop-up.

Look at Everyday Explorers, a website about travel, paper, and scrapbooking. Founder Christine Herrin created these super fun summer printables and offered them as a free download for her customers.

Thrillist curated a list of the 33 books they can't wait to read in the summer.

Ask readers to answer quiz questions, send their vacation selfies or team up with their friends to win prizes. This will surely boost your readers' engagement!

London’s Lovebox festival motivated visitors to send videos showing how they experienced the festival. This resulted in a super interactive and engaging newsletter.

Make sure your price is attractive enough for readers to take a break from tanning. Skincare brand Primally Pure nailed this. They gave away beauty products worth over $1700—an offer no mini-Kylie can refuse.

Just like we pack up our heavy jackets and fill our closets with more airy materials, it’s also beneficial to make your email newsletters summer-ready. These email template design changes will help brighten up your emails and keep your newsletter readers engaged!

Design

Color: Summer means COLOR! Bring out the brights, the lights, the tropicals, the neons, and the pastels. Summer is the ideal time to experiment with different color palettes and tones, just make sure that it fits your branding plus, choose a theme and stick to it to remain consistent. Here are some examples of Summer color palettes you can use.E

Using bright colors enhances your click rate. Try styling your buttons in yellow—this color not only gives off major summer vibes, it’s also recommended by psychologists to stimulate curiosity. This is why people tend to click yellow buttons more. Discover more color hacks in our blog post on what colors are best for email marketing. 

Typography: The fonts you use in your template designs are an excellent way to imbue your emails with the fun, carefree vacation vibes that make Summer so great. For best results, keep the main content of your templates the usual font that you use and experiment with the fonts used in your graphics or headlines. 

Background: Set the mood and inspire subscribers with Summery colors and imagery for your email template backgrounds. Yellows, oranges and blues are great if you want to go for a solid color, while tropical plants, beach scenes, and summer landscapes are images that make and impact.

Content

Summer is all about relaxing, having fun, and making the most of the beautiful weather—it’s a happy time! You want your email intro, headers and main content to use language that reflects this, connects with the reader, and inspires them.

Adjusting your tone of voice to be more casual and friendly is a nice way to do this, but only if it’s appropriate for your brand! You’ll also want to sprinkle in Summer-themed language, references—and if you’re a bit cheesy like we are—some fun Summer puns.

Imagery

Your images, icons and patterns should all play into the Summer theme. Use beautiful photos to make your subscribers feel warm and fuzzy. There are plenty of great photos online that you can use for free (check our blog post about the best free resources for beautiful newsletters). Our tip? Use your own photos to be more personal. Some ideas for imagery include:

• The beach/sea

• Swimming pools

• Plants/flowers/palm trees

• Fruit

• Swimwear

• Sunglasses

• The sun/sky

• Cocktails

• Grilling/al fresco cooking and dining

• Ice cream

• Travel

Interactive elements

Swimming, jogging, dancing, hula-hooping—summer is all about movement! Put some action into your summer newsletters and play around with GIFs, videos and countdown timers.

Accessibility

A lot of people already read their newsletters on mobile devices. Once the temperatures rise, this number will only increase. Make sure your newsletter is responsive and uses bright, contrasting colors so the content is easy to read outside. Check out this email accessibility guide to learn more.

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, it’s easy to forget about email maintenance.

When was the last time you sat down and took a fresh look at the different aspects of your email marketing? How’s your subscriber segmentation, the health of your email list, and your subscriber forms?

Use the Summer season to get your email marketing back into a healthy shape.

1. Segment your readers

How can you get more personal with your readers? Analyze your list and group subscribers based on things like location, previous purchases, gender, age group, interests, and so on.

Marketers who use segmented campaigns note as much as a 760% increase in revenue, so this task is definitely worth getting sweaty for.

For example, when you know your reader’s location, you can send them flight offers for nearby airports or suggest weekend trips to neighboring cities.

Missing this information? Ask! Ulta Beauty does this in an engaging, interactive way in their monthly recap emails.

You can also gain customer insights by asking for feedback. This is easily done by embedding an email survey into your summer newsletter template. 

Now that things are a little quieter, you'll have the time to really go through the survey answers, listen to your readers and brainstorm ways to strengthen your brand.

Revolut shows how to gather feedback in the newsletter below.

2. Verify subscribers: Dust off your email list

Regularly cleaning your email list ensures that you’re protecting your sender reputation and improving your deliverability.

With a tool like MailerCheck, you simply need to upload your email list to verify subscribers. Once your emails are analyzed, you can import your cleaned email list and enjoy subscribers that are in top shape. This will save you money when sending your next summer campaign.

3. Refresh and optimize your landing pages and forms

Summer is a good time to check your stats and see what works best for your landing pages and which metrics you can improve. Maybe the wording can be more convincing or your images could use a touch-up. Small tweaks can make all the difference.

If you don’t believe me, ask copywriter Cole Schafer.

4. Send your newsletters at the right time

Have you experimented with the best time to send emails to your subscribers? Looking at our own data, we found that Thursday is the best day of the week to send, as this is the day emails get the most opens. We also found that most opens occur between 11 AM and 12 PM. You’ll want to test out different sending times to see what works best for your audience.

In MailerLite, you can also use the Smart sending feature, which allows you to send out your newsletter individually to each subscriber at the time they are more likely to open it.

Check out our guide on the best time to send emails to learn more.

5. Split test your emails

Carrying out A/B tests for your emails allows you to see which content, subject lines, CTAs, and design elements perform the best among a small selection of your audience. The winning email is then sent to the remainder of subscribers. Continuously split testing emails over time allows you to keep optimizing your emails based on real performance, so you can make informed decisions about what color buttons to use, whether to use emojis in your subject lines, and much more.

6. Use AI to help

AI is a wonderful thing, as long as we remember that it’s there to help us, not replace us! Use AI to help with content ideas, creating newsletter copy templates, or creative subject lines that you might not otherwise think of.

Use the summer to get your email marketing strategy in excellent shape and surprise readers with fresh content and eye-catching newsletter designs.

If you do, you won’t need to stress about your business suffering from summer fatigue. On the contrary, your readers will want to engage with your newsletters and celebrate summer with you.

How will you brighten up your newsletter this summer? Share your strategy in the comments.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2019, but has been updated with new subject lines and summer newsletter examples.