Sizzlin’ hot summer newsletter ideas for 2020

While summer can be a slow time for business with lower newsletter engagement, it's definitely not the time to stress. Quite the opposite — summer is a time to bring new life into your email 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 summer’ize your newsletters.

With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, you easily 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 season to get your email marketing back into its healthy shape.

1. Segment: Group 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.

In 2018, 93% of businesses grew their revenue using advanced personalization strategies (Monetate and WBR Research), 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! KLM does this in an engaging, interactive way in their welcome email.

You can also gain customer insights by asking for feedback. This is easily done by embedding a 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.

CurleeMe shows how to gather feedback in her newsletter below.

2. Verify subscribers: Dust off your email list

Cleaning your email regularly 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. Optimize: Refresh your landing pages and forms

Summer is a good time to check your stats and see what numbers 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.

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 newsletters are for something special

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.

Our 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).

Topshop showcases their favorite dresses with an interactive GIF that makes their readers want to dress up for a summer night out.

Man Repeller helps their readers to put together the perfect outfit for traveling, making sure you're all cozy up in the air.

Summer, summer, summertime. Time to sit back and unwind! Our customer, clothing shop The Fresh Prince, announces their bright new collection in a colorful email. 

By making it a limited capsule collection with an end date for sales, customers are more prone to take action and click the CTA button within the summer newsletter. Smart!

Downloadable lists: Ready, prep, go!

Create a summer list. 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, 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 of '19.

Tip: Not sure how to design a good-looking downloadable? Online programs like Canva and Venngage make it easy to design like a pro.

Engaging summer contests

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.

There are as many ice cream flavors as there are summer newsletter ideas. 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 around?

The biggest summer happenings to mark on your email calendar are Father’s Day, Independence Day, 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 favorite, #worldmartiniday on June 19th, with this newsletter.

And there’s even more to celebrate this summer! Check out the calendar underneath, and don’t forget about the events and festivals happening in your area.

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

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 2019. Some invented by our own customers, others taken from our inboxes.

Fun fact: Hearts and sun emojis are beloved in the ecommerce industry, as well as promoting discount percentages and low prices in the subject line (with the word OFF often capitalized).

Use the summer to get your email marketing 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.