Email Newsletter Templates: How to Create and Use Them

Creating email newsletter templates can help you streamline your emails, increasing your both your efficiency and efficacy of your email marketing. And email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to connect with your prospects and customers. Overall, 77% of B2B marketers use email newsletters as part of their marketing, according to a study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). That puts email newsletters second only to blog posts/short articles as the most commonly used content type. Similarly, email marketing software is a top-three technology used by B2B marketers, finds CMI.

One of the reasons why so many marketers turn to email marketing software, and why insurance agents may want to leverage these tools, is because they provide and/or easily facilitate the use of templates. As you scale your marketing efforts, you don’t want to have to manually type out emails to every prospect or design a new newsletter every time you send out updates to your audience.  That’s where email newsletter templates come in handy. 

Email newsletter templates differ “from one-off emails because they can be reused across multiple campaigns. They’re normally saved in your email service provider (ESP) or in a code editor like Litmus Builder—and provide a base on which to add copy, images, and links specific to your email campaign,” explains Litmus, an email marketing technology provider.

If you haven’t already created your email newsletter templates, check with any email marketing tools that you may be using, such as Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, or Mailchimp. Many offer pre-built templates or make it easy to design your own. Or, you may be able to find templates in other types of marketing tools that you might not necessarily be using for email marketing yet, like Hubspot.  

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the general steps of how to create and leverage email newsletter templates. For more details, refer to your specific ESP. Meanwhile, insurance agents can at least get a sense of what to include in their standard templates.

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Types of Email Newsletter Templates

Before you start creating email newsletter templates, it’s important to know how you plan to use them. If a template is too broad, you may find that you still need to do a lot of work to get it in shape for different types of newsletters or marketing messages you send out. Instead, it often makes sense to create a few different email newsletter templates that you can regularly return to and just make small customizations if needed. Some of the more common types of templates insurance agents might use include:

“Welcome” Email Newsletter Template

When a prospect subscribes to your email list or becomes a new client, you might want to send out a “Welcome” type of email. Rather than typing this out each time you want to send one, you can create a template that thanks the person for subscribing or becoming a client and perhaps includes some other resources, such as links to your most popular blog posts.

If you want to customize these links based on the subscriber, you could always swap them out as needed, but at least with an email newsletter template you have a foundation in place. With some ESPs, you might even be able to automate this process, where a new subscriber automatically gets a “Welcome” email.

“Thank You” Email Newsletter Template

Similar to a “Welcome” email, you might also set up a “Thank You” email newsletter template that thanks subscribers after various events. For example, you might use this type of template to thank those who renew their insurance policies. Or you might have a “Thank You” template set up to use as a follow-up note if you host an event.

“Review/Referral” Email Newsletter Template

While you generally don’t want your email newsletters to be too salesy, at times you may want to leverage your email marketing list for more of a direct benefit. So, you can set up an email newsletter template to ask for reviews and referrals. For example, you might set up an email sequence where, say, a month after a customer signs up for a policy with you, they then receive an email from you that thanks them again and directs them to where they can review your business.

“News” Email Newsletter Template

If you’re using your email list to regularly send out traditional newsletters, such as those that include news stories or blog posts that you think your audience would find value in, then you may want to set up an email template that makes putting together these newsletters easier. You’ll still have to change out some of the text, images, and links most likely, but you can at least have a good starting point each time you want to send out a news-focused newsletter.

How to Structure Email Newsletter Templates

Knowing what type of email newsletter you want to create a template for is certainly important, but what are the building blocks that you need to include? Some of the more common components you might want to incorporate across your email newsletter templates are:

Subject Line

While you may think of subject lines as one-off lines you write in each email, they can often be more templatized than you might assume. For example, if you create a “Welcome” email newsletter template, that could have the same subject line for everyone. Or, you might create a general subject line framework, like a phrase related to thanking a renewing customer that differs slightly based on the type of policy they purchase.

Keep in mind that subject lines with seven words and an average of 41 characters have the highest open rate and click-to-open rate, according to Marketo.

Greeting

The opening greeting of your emails can also be built into an email newsletter template. For some emails, you might simply start with “Dear [NAME]” with your ESP automatically filling in the name based on the subscriber who receives the email. Or, you might include something more unique, such as a funny opening line related to asking for reviews in your “Reviews/Referrals” email newsletter template.

Main Graphic

Somewhere near the start of your email newsletter template you also may want to set up a spot for a graphic. In some templates, this might always be the same image, such as for a “Thank You” template. For other newsletters that you want to change the content for more frequently, you can still set up a spot for the graphic in your template so that you can easily swap a new one in without worrying so much about how it looks, such as whether it adapts well to mobile screens. You may still want to test it, but generally the template helps keep formatting consistent. 

Body

The main body of your email can also be set up somewhat in an email newsletter template. For emails that stay the same, you may be able to set up the text and images just how you want. For news-focused emails that regularly change, you can still set up the formatting so that you can easily swap images, text and links as needed.

CTA

The end of your emails might include a CTA, such as directing subscribers to review your business or check out your new blog post. The text of the CTA may change, but you could set up a button, for example, in an email newsletter template, and then simply change the text and link of that button depending on the newsletter.

Footer

Don’t overlook the footer of your email. Your ESP might fill this in automatically, but you also may be able to customize it. For example, you may be able to adjust the footer of your email newsletter templates so that your social media profiles are always included at the bottom, separate from your CTA. Or you might include some compliance copy there that may need to be tweaked for different types of email newsletter templates.

Improve Your Email Marketing

Overall, email newsletter templates can be highly useful for improving your email marketing. While you still have to put in the work to build your subscriber list and create engaging content, templates can help you increase your efficiency so that you have more time for these other aspects. Plus, email newsletter templates help give you the consistency needed to succeed. From establishing a subject line for repeatable emails that leads to more opens and clicks, to helping ensure that your emails look good across devices, using templates can help take your email marketing to the next level.