What a discount offer email is
A discount offer email gives the reader a price cut, a percentage or an amount off, and a reason to use it before it runs out. Most put the number in the subject line.
We collected 410 from 250 brands in two ordinary inboxes, sent between 2016 and 2026, and show 109 of them here, from 104 brands. The percentages on this page describe all 410. Why the rest are not shown is in the last question below.
Browse all 109 discount offer emails
Filter by who the offer is for, or search a brand or subject. Open any email to see it full length, with its subject line, notes on what it is doing, and a prompt that rebuilds it. The grid opens with three welcome discounts, three winback offers and four that end within a day.
Maximus
Unlock $120 off your first month
Earthing Oz
Your $10 off voucher is here!
The Original Organic Company
Enjoy a discount on your first purchase
Zoom
Offer Inside: 50% off your next 2 months
Skillshare
Final hours: take 40% off your membership
Youfoodz
🤩 You've scored up to 40% off!
KISS ACTIVE
🚨 40% OFF FOR 4 HOURS: NOW LIVE
Soak Bathhouse
$29 Soaks One Day Only 💫
sörzero
30% off for the next 24 hours! 🍻
Prenuvo
Final Hours: $400 Off Whole Body Scans Until Midnight
Glossier
Smells like 30% off
Under Armour
30% Off Almost Everything 🔥
PicMonkey
Last Chance! Return and Save 20%!
THE ICONIC
Here's $25 OFF your order! 🌟
Property Value by CoreLogic
Last day - 30% off Premium Subscriptions
Artifact Percussion
Til 8/1: Buy 3 pairs, get 1 pair free!
Hootsuite Academy
Certification that proves you’re the best, now 50% off.
Kronos VR
GRAB $20 NOW ON YOUR NEXT VR SHOP!
Crunchyroll
Ad-free anime for [AMOUNT] for 1 year
Lose It!
LAST Chance for 25% off Premium ⏰
i-ELEC
Easter Exclusive: $100 Off Any i-ELEC Service 🐣
Labify Health
3 Hours Left for a Health Transformation!
Drift
$24 for 24 hours 😊
Patreon
Authors & Dragons | Get 50% off your first month
Welcome, winback, flash sale and loyalty discounts
Four kinds of discount offer email in the 410
how we counted each, and one from the grid| Kind | How we counted it | Of 410 | One to open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome discount | Sent to someone who is not a customer yet, or has just joined | 67 | Maximus, 2026: "Unlock $120 off your first month" |
| Winback discount | Sent to a lapsed customer (29) or one gone quiet (4) | 33 | Zoom, 2023: "Offer Inside: 50% off your next 2 months" |
| Flash sale | Subject line says hours, today, tonight or midnight | 58 | KISS ACTIVE, 2026: "🚨 40% OFF FOR 4 HOURS: NOW LIVE" |
| Loyalty discount | Sent to someone who is already a customer | 307 | Glossier, 2026: "Smells like 30% off" |
Maximus puts the $120 in the headline and then prints both first-month prices in the body. Zoom's opens on a green "Come back to Pro" bar and offers two plans side by side, 50% off two months or 20% off a year, with the expiry date in the copy. KISS ACTIVE's says "You have 4 hours to save" under a full-width 40% off, and tells the reader no code is needed.
A send can sit in two rows: Skillshare's winback offer is also on a clock, and most flash sales go to existing customers. The loyalty row is the usual case: 307 of the 410, 75%, went to people who were already customers. Also here: Earthing Oz's welcome voucher, Skillshare's winback, and flash sales from Prenuvo and sörzero.
The template these discount emails follow
Take the most common choice in the 410 on each of four counts and you get the template this pattern follows. Only 56 make all four choices, so read it as a starting point, not a rule:
- Subject line: the offer as a number. 71% carry a percentage or a price.
- Layout: one column. 74% use a single column.
- Ask: one thing, as a button. 47% have exactly one call to action, against 30% of promotional emails, and 63% use a button.
- Tone: a reason to act now. 55% are written in an urgent tone.
How discount emails differ from other promotional emails
Discount offer emails against promotional emails and every other email
410 discount offer, 2,799 promotional and 12,301 other emails| What we measured | Discount offer | Promotional | Every other email |
|---|---|---|---|
| A percentage in the subject line | 54% | 6% | 3% |
| A percentage or a price in the subject line | 71% | 12% | 5% |
| Subject line says hours, today, tonight or midnight | 14% | 3% | 2% |
| Urgent tone | 55% | 19% | 11% |
| Sent to existing customers | 75% | 50% | 37% |
| Hero image | 18% | 24% | 12% |
| A button | 63% | 51% | 39% |
| Exactly one call to action | 47% | 30% | 30% |
| Plain text layout | 21% | 25% | 32% |
| Median calls to action | 2 | 2 | 2 |
The number is the email. 54% of discount offer subject lines contain a percentage, against 6% of promotional emails, and 71% carry a percentage or a price. 55% are written in an urgent tone, against 19%, and 14% put a clock in the subject line.
They also ask for less. 47% have exactly one call to action, against 30% of promotional emails. The "Every other email" column includes the promotional emails.
Next to this one
The same library, cut by the job the email does: promotional emails, sale emails, welcome emails, winback emails and abandoned cart emails, where a discount sometimes arrives in the second reminder.
That order is deliberate. A first cart reminder that opens with a question about what went wrong leaves the offer for the second or third, and the offer that fits is often shipping, since extra costs such as shipping, tax and fees are the most common reason shoppers give for leaving a checkout in Baymard Institute's abandonment survey. A code that works once per customer also stops a repeat buyer from leaving items in the cart just to be sent the discount again.
Questions about discount offer emails
In our inboxes the common ones are a percentage off, an amount off, a first month or year at a lower price, and buy one get one free. 54% of the 410 put a percentage in the subject line. Maximus offers $120 off a first month, Zoom 50% off two months, KISS ACTIVE 40% off everything for four hours.
One that states the offer and the deadline before the reader opens it. 71% of the 410 we collected carry a percentage or a price in the subject line, and 47% ask for one thing only, against 30% of promotional emails. KISS ACTIVE's says it lasts four hours and needs no code.
Mostly as a reward for staying. 75% of the 410 went to existing customers, 67 to new or prospective customers and 33 to lapsed ones. Most use a single column, 74%, and a button, 63%. Our subject line guide covers how the offer reads in the inbox.
A discount offer is one kind. In our inboxes the wider group reads differently: 6% of the 2,799 promotional emails put a percentage in the subject line, against 54% of discount offers. Launches, seasonal sends and sales are in the promotional email examples.
251 of the 410 have not been rendered full length for the library yet. Of the 159 that have, we left out 50: 30 repeat sends from brands already in the grid, 10 that did not render cleanly, 7 showing personal details such as a member barcode or a face, and 3 others. The percentages still describe all 410.