Abandoned cart ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Bring them back to the product page with one useful thing they did not have.
Write a plain-text browse abandonment email from [BRAND] to someone who looked at [THE PRODUCT] and left without adding it to a cart. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
They did not choose anything. They looked. Write accordingly.
Rules:
- 80 to 120 words. Three short paragraphs.
- Do not say "we noticed you were looking" or anything else that describes the tracking. Nobody enjoys being told they were watched.
- Lead with the product and one genuinely useful thing about it: [THE USEFUL THING]. That fact is the reason this email is allowed to exist.
- Do not offer a discount. They have not shown enough intent to be worth margin.
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it, pointing at the product page.
- Mention at most one alternative, and only as an aside. A grid of six alternatives says you did not understand what they came for.
- Never invent a number, statistic, rating or review count. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters about the product, not about their behaviour. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Transactional ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Stop the where-is-my-order email before it gets written.
Write a plain-text order confirmation from [BRAND] for [THE ORDER]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
This email exists to answer the three questions a buyer has the moment they finish paying: did it work, when does it come, and can I still change it.
Rules:
- 90 to 130 words on top of the order details themselves.
- Confirm in the first line, with the order number. Do not open by thanking them at length; one short thank-you can go at the end.
- Say [WHEN IT SHIPS] concretely. "Leaves us Tuesday" beats "3 to 5 business days", because the second is a range the reader has to convert into a date and will get wrong.
- Say [WHAT HAPPENS NEXT] — the next email they will get and roughly when. A buyer who knows a dispatch email is coming does not write to ask where the order is.
- Give [HOW TO CHANGE IT] its own line, including the cutoff. Address corrections are the most common support request and the cheapest to prevent.
- No cross-sell, no discount for next time, no review request. Those come later and they make this email harder to scan for the information it exists to carry.
- Never invent a number, date, tracking reference or delivery estimate beyond what I have supplied.
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters carrying the order number. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Product launch ·Ecommerce ·Luxury
Get the reader to the product page while the launch is still new.
Write a plain-text launch email from [BRAND] for [THE PRODUCT]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
One product. One story. One action.
Rules:
- 100 to 150 words. Unhurried sentences, but not long ones.
- Open with [THE STORY] — why this exists — rather than with the announcement. "We made a thing" is not a reason to read; the reason it exists is.
- Include [THE DETAIL] somewhere in the middle. One concrete specific the photographs cannot carry. Concrete detail is what separates a launch from an advert.
- No superlatives. No "finally", no "we are pleased to", no adjectives doing the work a noun should do.
- Do not mention other products. A launch email that cross-sells is not a launch email.
- Do not invent scarcity, an edition size or a sell-out risk. If the run is genuinely limited I will give you the number; otherwise say nothing about quantity.
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it.
- Never invent a number, statistic, price, edition size or review. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters naming the product plainly. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Promotional ·Ecommerce ·Salesy
Get the reader to shop the sale before it ends.
Write a plain-text sale email from [BRAND] announcing [THE OFFER]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
The single action this email drives: shopping the sale.
Rules:
- 90 to 130 words. Short sentences. The offer is the message, so nothing should delay it.
- First line is the offer and the deadline, together. Not a greeting, not a season, not a story about the year we have had.
- State [THE EXCLUSIONS] plainly in the body. Burying them in a footnote is what turns a good sale into a support queue.
- Write the deadline as [THE DEADLINE], in the body and again beside the ask. "Ends Sunday at midnight", never "limited time" and never "act fast".
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it, repeated once at the end in the same words.
- Do not stack urgency. One deadline is urgency; a deadline plus a stock warning plus a countdown is noise, and readers discount all three.
- Never invent a number, statistic, discount, stock level or customer count. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters carrying the offer and nothing else. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Re-engagement ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Get one signal back — an open, a click or an unsubscribe. All three are better than silence.
Write a plain-text re-engagement email from [BRAND] to a subscriber who has not opened anything in [HOW LONG]. Write the words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
The single action this email drives: [THE ASK].
Rules:
- 100 to 150 words. Short sentences.
- Name the gap in the first line. Do not open with "we miss you" and do not pretend this is an ordinary send.
- Give one honest reason to look again: [WHAT CHANGED]. One. A list of five reasons reads as a catalogue and gets skipped.
- Make leaving easy and say so in plain words. Put the unsubscribe sentence in the body where they will see it, not only in the footer. A clean list is worth more than a name that never opens.
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. No buttons, no second ask.
- Do not apologise. Do not offer a discount unless I gave you one to offer.
- Never invent a number, statistic or figure. Where a figure belongs and I have not given it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case throughout.
Write a subject line under 40 characters that names the situation rather than baiting the open. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Review request ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Get one honest review, positive or not.
Write a plain-text review request from [BRAND] to someone who bought [THE PRODUCT] about [HOW LONG THEY HAVE HAD IT] ago. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
The single action this email drives: writing one review.
Rules:
- 70 to 110 words.
- Name the product and roughly how long they have had it in the first line. A review request that could have been sent to anyone gets a review that could have been written about anything.
- Ask [THE SPECIFIC QUESTION] rather than "how did we do". A specific question produces a specific review, and specific reviews are the ones other buyers read.
- Do not indicate what a good answer looks like. No "we hope you love it", no five-star imagery, no "if you were happy". Steering the sentiment is how a review section becomes worthless, and on many platforms it is against the rules.
- Do not offer anything in exchange. A discount for a review buys reviews, not honesty.
- Give them a way to reply directly if something went wrong, in one line. Some of these emails should end as a support conversation instead of a review, and that is a good outcome.
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it.
- Never invent a number, statistic, rating, review count or customer figure. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave a bracketed placeholder.
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters referencing the product. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Welcome ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Get the new subscriber to open the next email, not to buy today.
Write a plain-text welcome email for someone who just subscribed to [BRAND], a shop selling [WHAT YOU SELL]. They gave their address at [SIGNUP PLACE] and have not bought anything yet.
Write the words only. No HTML, no layout notes, no design suggestions.
The single action this email drives: [PRIMARY ACTION]. Everything else is context.
Rules:
- 120 to 180 words in the body. Short sentences. Let them get shorter as the email goes on.
- Open with what changed for the reader, not with how pleased we are. Say what they joined and what arrives next.
- Name the sending rhythm concretely: [CADENCE]. Never write "regularly" or "from time to time".
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. No second ask. No button language. Do not write "click here".
- Put one short reassurance line directly after the ask — how to leave the list, or that the address goes nowhere else. One line, no more.
- Write a subject line under 45 characters, then a preheader that carries the subject forward instead of repeating it. The preheader is a real sentence, not a fragment.
- Sign off from [SENDER]. A person, not the shop.
- Never invent a number, statistic, figure or customer count. Where I have not given you one, leave a bracketed placeholder such as [XX] and let me fill it in.
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case throughout.
Return it in this order, each on its own line: Subject, Preheader, Body, Sign-off.
Abandoned cart ·Ecommerce ·Spartan
Recover the cart or release the reader. Both beat a third unanswered email.
Write the last plain-text cart reminder from [BRAND] about [THE ITEM]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
This is the final email in the flow. Two have already gone unanswered.
Rules:
- 60 to 90 words. Two or three paragraphs. Shorter than the emails before it.
- Say plainly that this is the last one. A closing email that does not admit it is closing has no reason to exist.
- State what actually happens next: [WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS]. If nothing happens, say the cart will just sit there. Do not invent a countdown, an expiry or a stock level I did not give you.
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it, pointing at the cart.
- End by making it easy to walk away. One line, no guilt, no "we will miss you".
- Never invent a number, statistic, discount or scarcity claim. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters that is honest about being the last email. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Transactional ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Get the tracking number in front of them and set the arrival expectation.
Write a plain-text dispatch notification from [BRAND] for [THE ORDER]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
Rules:
- 70 to 110 words.
- First line: it has shipped, with [TRACKING]. The tracking number is the reason this email is opened and it should be the first thing found.
- Give [THE WINDOW] as a range across named days, not as "3 to 5 business days". A reader should not have to count weekends.
- If the order was split, say what is in this shipment and what is still to come. An unexplained partial delivery is a support ticket every time.
- Give [IF IT DOES NOT ARRIVE] in one line, with a threshold. Telling someone when to start worrying stops them worrying earlier.
- No cross-sell, no review request, no discount. The reader is tracking a parcel.
- Never invent a number, figure or date of any kind — that includes the tracking number, the carrier, the window and any delivery estimate. Use only what I have supplied.
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters saying it has shipped, with the order number. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
Abandoned cart ·Ecommerce ·Friendly
Get them back to the cart. No discount on the first email.
Write a plain-text abandoned cart email from [BRAND] to someone who left [THE ITEM] behind an hour ago. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes.
Assume they got distracted, not that they hesitated. This is the first email in the flow.
Rules:
- 70 to 110 words. Three short paragraphs at most.
- Open by naming the item. Not "you left something behind" — say what it was.
- Do not offer a discount, and do not hint that one is coming. Discounting on the first touch trains the list to abandon on purpose.
- Give exactly one reason to come back that is not price: [THE REASSURANCE].
- One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. Send them to the cart, not the homepage.
- Do not manufacture scarcity. Write about stock or a deadline only if I gave you one.
- Never invent a number, statistic, review count or rating. Where a figure belongs and I have not supplied it, leave [XX].
- No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case.
Write a subject line under 40 characters that names the item rather than the behaviour. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.