How to Write a Discount Offer Email + 3 Copy/Paste Templates

Giving discounts to clients or customers via email can be a great marketing strategy to spark a little energy into your business and drive sales for the month.

But writing an email for giving discounts to customers and clients can be a bit tricky at times:

• On the one hand, you want to grow sales or get more clients.
• On the other hand, you don’t want to cheapen your services or cut into your profit margin by offering discounts via email to customers who were going to buy anyway.

You also don’t want to annoy your email subscribers by sending so many discount emails that you make them unsubscribe and leave forever.

It’s such a fine balance.

I’ve personally used email to drive hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue to my own small business (and millions when I used to work for someone else). You can learn more about building a business using cold emails in my course: Cold Emails that Convert.

In today’s article, I’ll share with you my best advice (based on 15+ years of marketing experience) for sending an email offering discounts to customers or clients.

This article will focus on the words (or the copywriting) you’ll use when sending emails offering discounts to your customers or clients. Before diving into the how-to, I’ve also included a small free email template/sample for offering a discount.

Free example email templates for offering a discount

If you need a quick sample email for offering a discount to loyal customers or clients, here’s a few that could work well.

Whether it’s for new customers, potential customers, existing customers or long-time loyal customers, you can find many ways to tweak this template and provide a special offer to them.

Keep in mind, these are written for a freelancer or service-provider, but can be modified to fit your business needs.

Discount offer email for loyal customers

SOURCE: TheFreelanceFiles.com

Discount offer email with a coupon code

SOURCE: TheFreelanceFiles.com

A Discount offer email for new customers

SOURCE: TheFreelanceFiles.com

As you can see, each email template has offered a special discount with a sense of urgency, so that your customer is encouraged to act sooner than later. Putting a deadline on this offer is also important, so that someone doesn’t see this 2 months later and expect to redeem their special offer still.

How to write an email for giving discounts to customers & clients

Learning how to write an email for offering a discount to clients or customers is a real art. Some people go to school for years (and then work in agencies for much longer) before they finally master the art of copywriting.

If you have a huge amount of money riding on your special offer email, I’d recommend using sites like Upwork to find a high-rated copywriter who can bring in fantastic results.

But if you have to write your email offering a discount on the cheap, I understand. So here’s some of my best advice for writing your own email.

Don’t waste your subject line

When sending an email offering a discount to loyal customers, your subject line is probably your most valuable asset.

Why? Because if they never open the email in the first place, how will they click the discount offer? And if they never click the offer, how will you ever drive sales?

I’ve written a whole mini-course on improving your subject lines, but here are a few quick tips for better open rates:

• Incite curiosity by not giving away everything in the subject line. Instead of saying “25% discount inside” use “25% or 35%? Open to see this month’s special discount.”
• Be honest and avoid spammy-sounding words like “you won’t believe” or “click to open”—both email providers (like Gmail) and customers themselves will punish you for those.
• Add value by promising a good return for opening the email. Something like “Immediate savings inside” will help them see it’s worth their time to open your discount email.

Tone is everything

First of all, tone is everything when using email for giving a discount to customers.

We’ve all experienced a misunderstanding when we communicate via words on a screen.

To avoid that, use language that matches your usual conversation with clients or customers when sending a discount offer via email. Anything that sounds too much not like you, can be a deterrent — and that’s the last thing you want when trying to drive sales.

Consider the difference in tone between these 3 options:

• “We are pleased to offer you a discount…”
• “We’re saying ‘thanks’ by sending a discount your way.”
• “You’re about to save some major money this month!”

Get to the offer quickly!

I recently received an email giving a discount on a service I was actually looking for. But honestly, I almost didn’t see the offer because the person writing the email was so long-winded.

Every email you send should have a purpose—in fact, it should have one purpose.

You’re not sending an email to show off, to entertain, or even necessarily to foster a relationship. You’re sending an email for offering a discount to a client or loyal customer — not to educate them with a mini-blog in your email.

Create a clear call to action

When styling your email, make your offer stand out — like a call to action. Bold the text, underline it, or italicize. Something that will help your discount stand out so that those who just scan emails will see the discount offer quickly and easily.

So many nowadays don’t read emails in full — it’s just a habit of digesting online material.

By adding a clear call to action in your discount offer email, you will make it very easy for your customers and clients to know exactly what they have to do to redeem the discount.

Add urgency or scarcity

You probably know as well as anyone else: once an email gets marked as “read,” it almost never gets opened again. Particularly not a marketing email offering a discount.

The harsh reality is: if you don’t get your client or customer to open their email and use their discount immediately, you probably won’t get them to use it ever.

To remedy that you’ll want to use two copywriting tools marketing writers have been using for ages: urgency and scarcity.

In short, a sense of urgency (real urgency, not the fabricated, fake kind) forces your customers to act now for a limited time or miss out on the offer forever. Scarcity helps your customers understand that your discount isn’t unlimited and, if they want it, they need to be among the first to take action.

To learn more about urgency and scarcity in copywriting, you can start here.

Try using a coupon code

It may sound out-of-context for your business, but using a coupon code can actually be benefical for your special offer.

As with e-commerce, we are all accustomed to using coupon codes — don’t you love applying it to the cart and seeing your instant discount?

If you incorporate a coupon code with your special offer, it can make customers feel like they have access to a discount that others don’t.

In your email template, try something like: “Reply to this email and mention coupon code “GET10OFF” to lock in your discount!” Or, if your business does utilize online checkout, such as selling digital products, you can actually create a discount code for them to use at checkout.

Combine this coupon code with a sense of urgency and scarcity, just like we mentioned above, and it can really push them to act.

Good luck with your email offering discounts to clients/customers

That’s all for now.

I wish you the best of luck as you use email to offer discounts to customers and clients.

I’d love to hear what kinds of things you’ve done to improve your open, click, and conversion rates when offering discounts to clients or customers.

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