The 9 Free Email Marketing Templates You Need to Execute Everything

Email marketing is complex. From planning to execution to measurement, there are tons of things you need to build an effective strategy. Even producing one piece of email content requires several steps. Here’s a short list of line items to create an email newsletter:

• Ideation.
• Writing subject lines.
• Customizing preheader text.
• Crafting body copy.
• Design.
• Adding tracking codes.
• Editing and review.
• Selecting email list segments.
• Scheduling delivery time.
• Hitting send.
• Reviewing performance data.
• Reporting.

That’s quite a number of things to take into account, and this is for just one piece. So, it’s a good thing you’ve found this post. In order to help you work as efficiently and effectively as possible, it includes a roundup of nine email marketing templates and other posts you need to learn how to use each one. Plus, it also covers other tools (free and paid), resources, and templates you can use to get everything you need to get done.

Which Templates Does This Post Include?

There’s something here for every step of the process, from planning, to execution, to measurement. Here’s everything you’ll find in the free bundle below: Download them now, then get the low-down on how to use them.

Email Marketing Calendar Template

Plan your work, then work your plan. That’s a common mantra heard around the CoSchedule office. There’s a good reason for that, too. It’s easier to work efficiently toward meaningful goals when you’re not frantically scrambling. The best way to plan email marketing is on a calendar. Here are some of the benefits behind using one:

• Being intentional about what you send.
• They keep deadlines visible to all team members.
• Managing delivery times and scheduling.

Without a calendar, email marketing often descends into chaos. So, with this template, you can organize:

• Send dates and times.
• Email owners.
• Email type.
• Target / persona.
• Source.
• Buying season.
• Email list.
• Lead stories and email content.

It’s a simple spreadsheet that’s easy to update, too. There are three rows for each month, but it’s easy to edit if you need to plan more emails per month. Start with your send date and time, who’s creating this email, which category it falls under, and which persona or customer segment it targets: Next, fill in the source (which might be a blog post, campaign brief, or anywhere else to find more information about the content this email will promote), buying season (if seasonal buying cycles are relevant), and the name of the email list segment that should receive the email: Finally, list which pieces of content the email will promote. These could be headlines, general ideas, or anything else that’s helpful for indicating each type of content that will be dropped into the newsletter:

Email Marketing Strategy Template

Without a strategy, you’re just winging it, and hoping for the best. It’s tough to achieve much success that way. Even harder to sustain it, too. So, why risk failure when you plan to succeed? While hitting your goals is never guaranteed, developing a sound strategy is an essential starting point. Any type of marketing strategy effectively revolves around four ideas:

• Who are you trying to reach?
• How will you try to reach them?
• What do you want them to do?
• How will you measure results?

Documenting your strategy can dramatically improve your results, too. For evidence, a CoSchedule study found marketers with documented strategies were 538% more likely to be successful. Using the PowerPoint-based template in this post, you’ll start by identifying your target audience: Next, you’ll figure out ways to build your email list: That list will then need to be broken into specific audience segments: Then, you’ll plan your execution and schedule: And what you’ll measure to gauge success:

Email Newsletter Template

Your email copy needs to be clean, crisp, and persuasive. It also helps to keep your content organized and easy to edit. Handing off a Word doc to an editor is easier for review purposes than immediately writing directly into an email editor. This template includes everything you need to document the following:

• Subject line options.
• Preheader text.
• Intro copy.
• Lead story content blocks.
• Call to action.

Those are all the elements included in most email newsletters, but since the template is a simple Word doc, it’s easy enough to edit to fit your needs.

Email Marketing Report Template

Marketing without measurement is a fool’s errand. You need to know which actions produced which results. More than this, though, you also need to be able to explain how you made an impact to your company and your clients. If you can make that data look appealing and easy to understand, so much the better. That’s what this template is intended to help you achieve. It’s a well-designed PowerPoint deck that makes it easy to present data and numbers in a way that isn’t super dry.

Email Subject Line Template

Without a good subject line, nothing else in your email matters. However, writing them well is easier said than done. If you need a spark of inspiration, these fill-in the-blank templates should help: Then, you can score your subject lines using CoSchedule’s free Email Subject Line Tester:

Email Subject Line A/B Testing Template

Now, writing subject lines is an art. One of the best ways to improve your skills is to A/B test subject lines. Over time, this will help you understand what works best with your audience. Most email service providers have built-in A/B testing functionality:

• MailChimp
• Campaign Monitor
• ActiveCampaign
• Constant Contact

Then, use the template to track your results:

Welcome Email Newsletter Template

What’s the first thing your new subscribers see when they sign up for your email newsletter? If it’s not a well-written welcome email, you might be missing out on an opportunity to retain more subscribers, and convert more customers. With this template, you’ll be able to craft effective welcome copy that makes a warm introduction. To put it to full use, check out Scott Cohen’s blog post on writing them, and follow the great examples curated by Michael Quoc in this post, too.

Email List Building Guide

Before you can succeed with email marketing, you need to have a list. After all, without recipients, an email newsletter is worth much. But, how do you start building a list? Fortunately, there are tons of ways to start building email contacts before you have a list going. And that’s exactly what this brief PDF guide will help you get started with.

Best Email Send Times (Guide)

Every time you send an email, you want to make sure you’ve optimized every variable to tilt the odds of success in your favor. One simple factor you can control is your email delivery times. According to curated data from 10 different studies, here are the best days to send email: And the best times: So, this is what curated research shows. But, how do you determine what works best for you? That’s where this free PDF guide comes in, included in your template bundle. It’ll walk you through how to use your own data, to help determine your own email schedule:

Other Places to Find Email Templates

So far, you’ve seen all the templates the CoSchedule team has built to make email marketing easier. But, what if you need something that’s not listed here? Don’t worry, check out these other resources.

Campaign Monitor

If you’re a Campaign Monitor customer, they’ve made tons of templates available that you can use to quickly create your email newsletter.

Envato Templates for MailChimp

MailChimp is massively popular, and lots of third parties have built templates that work on the platform.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers a robust marketing automation platform that includes an effective email platform. If you’re a customer, you may have seen their complete lineup of templates, too:

Theme Forest

Constant Contact customers aren’t left out here, either. The folks at ThemeForest have several paid templates available for the platform (as well as others):

3 Sources for HTML Email Templates

Modern email marketing platforms make it easy to create marketing emails without needing to learn code. But, what if you’re old-school and prefer hard-coded HTML? There are plenty of sources to find helpful templates for you, too. Raw HTML emails do still offer some advantages some marketers like, such as design flexibility and editability. If this type of template is what you’re after, check out the following places.

ColorLib

Making HTML emails mobile-friendly and responsive can be tough. These 25 templates, frameworks, and layouts meet both of those criteria.

Litmus

The team at Litmus knows email marketing inside and out. Naturally, they have an array of templates available for creating different types of email content. What’s great about theirs is how they’re organized by industry and use case:

HTMLEmail.io

These HTML email templates are compatible with most major email service providers, and they’re responsive too. Keep in mind they aren’t free, though ($49 for a single client license, or $299 for an unlimited license). The lineup of compatible ESPs these templates work with includes several familiar logos:

Keep Email Marketing Organized With CoSchedule

Before you go, take a minute to check out CoSchedule. It’s an industry-favorite marketing calendar platform, and it now integrates with popular email service providers to keep all your email marketing organized (alongside all your other projects). With CoSchedule, you can:

• Integrate your marketing calendar with your email service provider:
• See deadlines and publish dates for every email: Add email content on your calendar and get visibility into everything, all in one place.
• Manage your email marketing process: With Task Templates and Discussion Threads, you can easily collaborate with your team and manage workflows more productively.

Create your free marketing calendar now.

Go Put Your Templates to Use

Now that you have tons of different resources available, it’s time to get down to work. Here’s a quick recap of what you’ve just read:

• You’ve downloaded your free template bundle.
• Then, you’ve gotten a brief summary on each post explaining how to use each one.
• Finally, you took a look at other sources for more templates you might need.

Hopefully, this will all help make doing better email marketing, easier. Best of luck.