Sample promotional emails, six you can copy, and the four lines United States law requires in every one of them

A promotional email has one job and four required parts. The job is to make one offer that one group of people can act on today. The four required parts, for anyone mailing to a United States audience, come from the Federal Trade Commission's CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide for Business, read on 31 October 2026: the message must be identified as an ad, it must tell recipients where you are located, it must tell them how to opt out of future marketing email, and the header information and subject line must not be false or misleading. Everything below is built on that floor, with six complete examples you can adapt.

One structural note before the examples, because it is what separates an email that sells from one that gets deleted. A promotional email is not an announcement. An announcement says what is happening; a promotion says what the reader gets, by when, and what to click. The six below all follow the same five part skeleton: one line of context, the offer stated as a number or a thing, two or three lines of substance, one deadline or limit, one call to action. Nothing else.

Example one, a seasonal offer for an online store

Subject. 20 per cent off the winter range until Sunday

Preview text. Includes the coats, excludes the new arrivals

Body. The winter range is 20 per cent off from today until Sunday at midnight. That includes every coat and all the knitwear. It excludes the new arrivals that landed last week, which are not in the sale. If you have been waiting on a size that was out of stock, the full size run is back. [Shop the winter range]. Offer ends Sunday 23:59. Discount applied at checkout, no code needed.

Why it works. The exclusion is stated in the preview text rather than buried in small print, which is both honest and a conversion improvement, because the most common reason a sale email underperforms is a reader who clicks, finds their item excluded and leaves.

Example two, a service business filling a quiet week

Subject. Three appointments left this Thursday and Friday

Body. We have three slots open this Thursday and Friday afternoon. If you were due a service and have not booked it yet, those two days are the earliest availability we will have before the end of the month. Thursday 2pm, Thursday 4.30pm, Friday 11am. [Book one of the three]. First come, and when they go the next opening is the week of the 17th.

Why it works. Scarcity that is true. Three named slots can be verified by clicking, which is why this performs and why an invented scarcity line does not survive a second use.

Example three, a product launch to an existing list

Subject. The thing you kept asking for is now a product

Body. Over the last year, the single most common request in our inbox was a smaller size. It is now available in 250ml, at 14 dollars. Same formula, same refill programme, about a third of the weight, which is the point if you travel with it. Existing customers get first access for 48 hours before we put it on the main site. [See the 250ml]. Early access closes Wednesday.

Why it works. The reason the product exists is the first line. A launch email that opens with the product rather than the reason has thrown away the only piece of context the reader needs.

Example four, a win back to lapsed customers

Subject. It has been a year, so here is 15 dollars

Body. It has been about a year since your last order. Two things have changed that you might not know about. Delivery is now next day as standard, and the range you bought from has eight new items in it. There is 15 dollars on your account if you want to use it, which expires at the end of the month. [Use the 15 dollars]. And if you would rather not hear from us, the unsubscribe link below works immediately.

Why it works. It tells the reader what changed, which is the only honest reason to come back, and it points at the unsubscribe link rather than hiding it. On a lapsed segment that improves the health of the list, which is worth more than the marginal order.

Example five, an event or webinar

Subject. Thursday, 30 minutes, the three mistakes we see most often

Body. On Thursday at 11am Eastern we are running a 30 minute session on the three mistakes we see most often in first year accounts, with a worked example of each and ten minutes of questions at the end. It is free, there is no recording, and if you cannot make it live there is no point registering. [Save a seat]. 40 seats, Thursday 11am Eastern.

Why it works. It tells people not to register if they cannot attend, which raises the attendance rate on a smaller registration number. Registration is a vanity metric and attendance is the one that produces conversations.

Example six, a promotion to a trade or wholesale list

Subject. Q1 order deadline is the 12th, and the new terms

Body. Q1 orders close on the 12th. Two things to flag. Payment terms move to 45 days for accounts above 5,000 dollars a quarter, which applies to you. And the display stand is now included rather than charged, on orders of 24 units or more. Order form attached, or reply with quantities and we will raise it. [Download the Q1 form]. Deadline the 12th, shipping from the 24th.

Why it works. A trade promotion is an operations email, not a marketing one. Dates, terms and quantities in the first four lines, and no persuasion at all.

The four things United States law requires, quoted

From the FTC's CAN-SPAM Act Compliance Guide for Business, read on 31 October 2026, the requirements include "Don't use false or misleading header information", "Don't use deceptive subject lines", "Identify the message as an ad", "Tell recipients where you're located", "Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future marketing email from you", "Honor opt-out requests promptly" and "Monitor what others are doing on your behalf".

Two mechanics in the same guide decide whether your footer is compliant in practice. The opt-out mechanism must keep working for a period: the guide states you "must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message". And once somebody uses it, the guide states opt-out requests must be honoured within 10 business days. On the consequence of getting it wrong, the guide states that "Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $53,088", in dollars, noting that it was edited in January 2024 to reflect inflation adjusted amounts. Read that as per email. Nothing here is legal advice, and if you are mailing at volume it is worth having your footer and your opt-out flow checked by somebody who can look at the actual setup.

The practical footer that satisfies all of this is short: who is sending, a real postal address, a one click unsubscribe that works without a login, and a line saying why the recipient is receiving it. The last one is not required and it reduces complaints more than anything else in the footer.

What makes the difference between these and the ones that get deleted

• One offer per email. Two offers halve the response to both, because the reader has to make a choice before they can act and the easiest choice is to close it.
• The offer in the subject line, not a tease. Curiosity subject lines raise opens and lower clicks, and clicks are what you are being paid in.
• A real deadline. Not "limited time". A date, and one you intend to honour, because a deadline that passes without consequence trains the list to ignore the next one.
• The exclusions up front. Whatever the offer does not cover belongs in the first two lines.
• Segment by behaviour, not by demographic. Last purchase date, category bought, whether they opened the last three. Those three fields outperform any persona split.
• Plain text where the message is operational. The trade example above should not be a designed template. A designed email signals marketing and an operational email should signal operations.

If you want the long form versions of this, the structural teardown of campaigns that worked at scale is in the structure behind the most successful email campaigns, and the role based programme design for business audiences is in one list per buying role and four programmes.

Questions about writing a promotional email

How long should a promotional email be?

Short enough that the offer, the deadline and the button are visible without scrolling on a phone. Every example above fits that, and the ones that need more context put it after the call to action rather than before it.

Do I have to say it is an advertisement?

The FTC guide lists "Identify the message as an ad" as a requirement. In practice a clear commercial message from a sender the recipient subscribed to satisfies the spirit of it, and the safest implementation is a short line in the footer. Get the specifics checked rather than guessing from a blog post, including this one.

What is a good open rate for a promotional email?

Your own last six sends to the same segment are the benchmark, because published averages mix industries, list ages and consent models that have nothing to do with each other. Watch the click rate and the unsubscribe rate together; opens have become the least reliable of the three.

How often can I send promotions?

As often as you have something worth acting on, which for most businesses is less often than the calendar they set. The reliable signal is the unsubscribe rate on the third and fourth send of a month.

Should the discount be in the subject line?

Yes, if there is one. A reader deciding in half a second needs the number, and holding it back to create curiosity trades a click you would have got for an open you did not need.

Can I email customers who never opted in?

For a United States audience, existing commercial relationships are treated differently from cold prospecting, and the requirements above still apply either way. For recipients in the United Kingdom or the European Union a stricter consent regime applies and the answer is usually no. Segment by jurisdiction before you send.

The email that gets opened because somebody already recommended you

Every example above assumes the hard part is already done: the person on the other end knows who you are and has agreed to hear from you. That list is the asset, and the question nobody is tracking is where the next hundred people on it come from. An increasing share of first contact now happens in a conversation rather than a search, where somebody asks an assistant who to buy a thing from and gets two or three company names back with a line of reasoning each. If your name is not in that answer, the list stops growing and no amount of subject line work shows it, because the loss happens before anyone reaches your signup form. That is a measurement rather than a tool, and it is what AI Knows Us does: it asks the buying questions your customers ask across the main assistants and records which companies get named and which sources each answer came from. It does not send email and it is not an email platform.