- A wellness brand that sent only educational emails for a month saw campaign revenue drop from $3,146 to $110, down 96.5%.
- A fitness tech brand sent 12 educational campaigns in one month, some with 6 to 10% click rates, and made $547 total.
- Content gets attention. It doesn't close the sale unless the email asks.
- The fix isn't fewer content emails. It's giving every content email a reason to buy and one clear place to click.
What happens when you only send content emails?
The money drops. Fast.
A sleep-focused wellness brand had a month where every campaign was educational, with no offer in any of them. Campaign revenue went from $3,146 to $110. That's a 96.5% drop.
I see why brands do it. Content feels good to send. It's helpful, it's on-brand, and it never feels pushy. But helpful and profitable aren't the same thing.
Are content emails a waste of time?
No. They do a real job. They just don't do the whole job.
A fitness tech brand sent 12 educational campaigns in one month. Some of them pulled 6 to 10% click rates, which is strong interest. All 12 together made $547.
People clearly wanted to read them. They clicked. But the emails didn't give them anything to buy or a reason to do it now, so the clicks didn't turn into orders.
That's what I mean when I say content warms people up, but somebody has to ask for the sale. Those readers were warm. Nobody asked.
Content emails vs promotional emails: how I'd mix them
I don't think about it as a ratio of content to promo. I think about every email needing two things: something worth reading, and a reason to buy.
Here's how I'd frame it:
- Pure promo (a sale, a code, a deadline) works, but if that's all you send, you train people to wait for discounts.
- Pure content (tips, stories, education) builds trust, but as the numbers above show, it can leave a lot of money on the table.
- Content with an ask is where I'd spend most of your sends. Teach something, then connect it to the product and give people a reason to buy now.
The "reason to buy" doesn't have to be a discount. For a consumable brand, some of the best reasons are already sitting in your calendar.
What counts as a reason to buy?
Here are the reasons I'd reach for first, before a discount:
- A restock. When something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month. A snack brand doing about $650K a month made $48,771 from one restock email to 30,498 people, its best campaign ever. More on that in Klaviyo back in stock emails.
- A new product. A haircare brand's launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders, and email went from 23% to 47% of total revenue that month.
- Reorder timing. If your product runs out, "you're probably running low" is a reason to buy that needs no discount.
- A bundle or subscription. A better way to buy what they already use.
- A real deadline. A sale that actually ends. Never a fake one.
Notice what the restock and the launch have in common: they're news. Across 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns, news beat brand voice in subject lines too. I go into that in email subject line best practices.
How to structure a content email that still sells
Here's the shape I'd use for a content email on a consumable brand. Take it as a template, not a law.
- Subject line that promises one useful thing. Specific beats clever.
- Open with the useful part. One idea, a few short paragraphs. Don't make people scroll past a hero banner to get to it.
- Connect the idea to the product. Not a hard pivot. "Here's what we use for this" or "this is why we made X" is enough.
- Give the reason to buy now. Restock, new flavor, bundle, subscription, reorder reminder or a real deadline. Pick one.
- One CTA destination. Every button and link in the email goes to the same place. Two destinations split the click.
- A trust bar. Reviews, shipping, whatever makes buying feel safe. My design SOP also keeps emails 600px wide so they read cleanly everywhere.
- A short P.S. Restate the reason to buy in one line. A lot of people skim straight to the bottom.
Say you sell a protein bar. A pure content email might be "3 easy pre-workout snacks." The version that sells keeps those three tips, makes one of them your bar, and adds "our peanut butter flavor is back in stock" with a single button to that product. Same email, same value for the reader, plus an ask. That's a made-up example, but it's the shape I'd build to.
How do you know if your content emails are working?
Look at clicks and revenue per person, not opens. Across 4 consumable brands I pooled data from, click rate tracked revenue at 0.65 and open rate at 0.32. Apple Mail auto-opens make opens look better than they are.
Then compare your content sends to your promo sends on revenue per person. If your content emails get great clicks and almost no revenue, like the fitness tech brand's 12 campaigns, the email isn't asking. If they get great clicks and zero revenue on an email that did ask, click every link. Clicks with no sales usually means something broke. I go deeper on the metric in revenue per recipient.
Where these numbers come from
The 0.65 vs 0.32 figures come from 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. The subject line finding comes from 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns. Both are small samples, so read them as directional. The single-brand numbers each come from one brand I've worked with, described by category instead of name.
FAQ
Should I stop sending content emails?
No. Keep them, but give each one a reason to buy and a clear place to click. Content builds trust, and trust makes the ask land.
How often should I send promotional emails?
There's no magic number, and it depends on your segments. What I'd avoid is long stretches with no ask at all. One wellness brand's campaign revenue fell 96.5% in a month of only educational sends.
Does a promotional email have to include a discount?
No. For consumable brands, restocks, new products, reorder timing and bundles are all reasons to buy that don't cut your margin.
Why do my content emails get clicks but no sales?
Usually because the email doesn't ask for anything, or the click goes somewhere with nothing to buy. If an email with a real offer gets clicks and no sales, check your links. Something may be broken.
What's a good click rate for a content email?
It varies by list. One fitness tech brand saw 6 to 10% on some educational campaigns, which is strong, but those campaigns still made little money. Judge content emails by revenue per person, not clicks alone.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.