Prompt · Promotional

Seasonal sale email with a real deadline

Get the reader to shop the sale before it ends.

Email type: Promotional
Business: Ecommerce
Tone: Salesy
Length: 90-130 words

The promotional email prompt

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.

What to fill in first

[BRAND]: Your shop name as a customer would say it.
[THE OFFER]: The exact terms. "30% off everything", "buy two get the third free". No "up to" unless it is true.
[THE EXCLUSIONS]: What is not included. Saying it up front costs one line and saves every support ticket.
[THE DEADLINE]: A real date and time. If there is no deadline, cut the urgency rather than inventing one.
[XX]: Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.

When to send it

At the open, with at most one reminder in the last day. The reminder is the email that earns most of the revenue and also the one most likely to burn the list, so it should be shorter than the announce and carry no new argument — just the deadline.

What to change first

[THE EXCLUSIONS]. It is the field everyone leaves for the footnote, and it is the difference between a sale that converts and a sale that generates refund requests. A reader who finds out at checkout that their basket was excluded does not just abandon; they stop trusting the next email too.

What good output looks like

Subject: 30% off everything until Sunday

Preheader: New season included. Gift cards are not.

Everything is 30% off until Sunday at midnight. That includes the new season, which we do not usually discount.

Not included: gift cards and anything already marked down. No code needed, it comes off at checkout.

Here is the shop.

Sunday at midnight, then prices go back.

The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.

Generate your own

Last-chance reminder before an offer closes Convert the people who already decided and did not get round to it.
Promotional email for a local service offer Get the reader to book the offer before it ends.
Last cart reminder before it clears Recover the cart or release the reader. Both beat a third unanswered email.

In the studio

A model writes copy. It does not write email.

Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.

Generate your own See how it works