- A haircare brand's product launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders, about $79 an order.
- In that launch month, email's share of the brand's total revenue jumped from 23% to 47%.
- Give every launch email one job and one CTA destination: the new product.
- Tell your email list first. Ads are rented. Your list is owned, and it's full of people who already buy from you.
What can a product launch email do?
Launches are news, and news is what people open email for. Across 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns I pooled for subject lines, news beat brand voice. A new product is about the clearest news a consumable brand has.
The haircare brand is the best example I have. One launch email, $31,059, 395 orders. Email's share of total revenue that month went from 23% to 47%, which means email roughly doubled its slice of the business in a single month.
I can't promise yours does that. Your list, your product and your price all change the math. But it shows what a launch can be when the list is ready for it.
Why should your email list hear about it first?
Because they're your warmest audience and you don't pay per view. Ads are rented. Your list is owned.
Your existing customers already trust the product. If you launch a new flavor or a new size, they're the ones most likely to buy it in the first 48 hours. Giving them first access does two things: it makes them feel like insiders, and it gets you early orders and reviews before you spend on ads.
So my order is usually: customers first, then the rest of the engaged list, then ads and social. Even a few hours of head start counts.
The product launch email sequence: tease, launch, follow-up
Here's how I'd structure a launch for a consumable brand. Timing is a starting point, not a rule.
- The tease (2 to 5 days before). Short. Something's coming, here's a hint, watch your inbox. No button to a product page that doesn't exist yet. If you want, add a link to join an early access list so you can see who's interested.
- Early access (launch day, customers first). Your customers, plus anyone who joined the early access list, get the launch email a few hours before everyone else.
- The launch (launch day, engaged list). Same news, to everyone who's engaged. One product, one reason to buy, one button.
- The follow-up to clickers (1 to 3 days later). People who clicked but didn't buy. Answer the question that stopped them: what it tastes like, how it's different, who it's for. Reviews if you have them.
- The last call (only if there's a real deadline). An intro price or a launch bundle that actually ends. When there is one, I send 1 to 2 final reminders near the end, on consecutive days. If nothing ends, skip it. Fake urgency costs you trust.
Split the paths for customers and non-customers if you can. A customer needs to hear how the new product fits with what they already use. Someone who's never bought needs to hear why this is a good first order.
Brief every launch email before you write it
Every campaign on my calendars gets a brief before anyone writes copy, and launches are where skipping it hurts most. Mine covers the date, campaign type, name, primary and secondary product, offer, goal, core angle, key points, subject line options, preview text options, the main CTA and the email direction.
The brief is also where I set how loud the offer is. My rule is that not every email should feel like a sale, even when a sale is live. If there's an intro offer, the tease and any educational follow-up mention it softly near the button. The launch email leads with the product, with the offer close behind. The last call makes the offer the main message.
It also helps to give the new product a partner. I give every product on a calendar a role, and one of those roles is trust: a proven best seller that lends credibility to something nobody's tried yet. "From the people who make your favorite" does a lot of work for a new flavor.
What goes in the launch email itself?
Keep it simple. The launch email has one job: get people to the product page and buying.
- A subject line that says the news. "New: Peanut Butter is here" beats a clever pun. Vague questions were the worst-performing subject line pattern in my 7-brand data. I write subject lines from a brand's past winners, not from scratch.
- What it is, in one line. Flavor, size, use. Don't make people scroll to figure it out.
- Who it's for and why now. One or two short sentences.
- One CTA destination. Every button and image links to the same product page. Two destinations split the click.
- A trust bar. Reviews, shipping, easy returns, whatever makes the first order feel safe.
- A short P.S. Restate the news and the link. A lot of people skim to the bottom.
In my tests, plain-text and designed emails have performed about the same, so a single-product launch can go either way: plain text with one highly visible CTA ships faster, and a designed email helps if you're showing several flavors or sizes. If you design it, my rules are 600px wide, one CTA destination and a trust bar. More in plain text vs designed emails.
Who should get the launch email?
Not "everyone, all at once." Here's how I'd split it:
- Customers who bought a related product. Highest intent. They go first.
- All other customers. Same day, a few hours later.
- Engaged subscribers who haven't bought. People who've clicked recently.
- Everyone else. One send, maybe two. Don't run the whole sequence on people who never click.
Audience matters a lot here. At a fitness tech brand, an engaged-segment send earned $0.19 per person and a full-list blast earned $0.04. Launches tempt founders to blast. Resist it for anything past the main announcement.
Click every link before it goes out
This sounds basic, and it's the mistake that costs the most on launch day. A fitness gear brand sent a restock email that got a 0.40% click rate, double its other sends, and made $0. Across the portfolio, about 20 sends showed opens and revenue but zero clicks, which meant tracking was broken.
On a launch, the product page might not be live yet when you build the email. Click every link after the page goes live and before you send. Clicks with no sales means something broke.
What to do after launch day
The launch email is the spike. The flows are what keep the product selling after.
- Add the new product to your post-purchase flow so new buyers learn how to use it.
- Build a reorder reminder if it's something people run out of. That flow sits on top of the core flows and, across 4 consumable brands, reorder reminders earned about $2.23 per person.
- Set up back in stock if it sells out. When something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month.
- Put the follow-up moments on your email campaign calendar: a reviews email, a bundle, a "now in a bigger size."
Where these numbers come from
The subject line finding comes from 7 brands and 2,821 campaigns. The reorder reminder figure comes from 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. Both are small samples, so treat them as directional. The single-brand numbers each come from one brand I've worked with, described by category instead of name.
FAQ
How many emails should a product launch include?
For most consumable brands, 3 to 5: a tease, the launch (customers first, then the engaged list), a follow-up to people who clicked and didn't buy, and a last call only if there's a real deadline.
Should I offer a discount on a new product launch?
You don't have to. The newness is the reason to buy. If you want an incentive, a launch bundle or an intro price with a real end date usually works better than a sitewide code.
When should I send the tease email?
I'd start 2 to 5 days before. Any earlier and people forget. Keep it short and don't link to a page that isn't live.
Should I send the launch email to my whole list?
The main announcement can go wide. The follow-ups should go to people who showed interest. Running the whole sequence on people who never click lowers revenue per person and can hurt deliverability.
What's a good result for a product launch email?
It depends on your list size and price. One haircare brand's launch email made $31,059 from 395 orders. Judge yours by clicks and revenue per person against your normal campaigns, not opens.
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.