5 Real World Examples of Effective Financial Services Emails
Erica Weiss
Nov 2, 2018
1 min read
Key Takeaways
Financial services emails work best when they connect to real human needs—not just financial tasks.
Seasonal or lifestyle tie-ins make dry topics feel inviting and relevant.
Visual simplicity and clear CTAs help reduce friction for tasks like mobile deposits or account actions.
Event-based campaigns (e.g., Giving Tuesday) build goodwill while driving participation.
Data-driven visuals help explain long-term value, especially for savings products.
Injecting personality or playful visuals can help differentiate traditionally serious financial messaging.
Q&A Highlights
Why do lifestyle tie-ins work so well in financial emails?
People rarely get excited about banking tasks—so pairing financial actions with things they already enjoy (vacations, shopping, seasonal moments) increases engagement and creates positive associations.
How can banks encourage adoption of new digital features?
By showing how simple and convenient the feature is. Clear visuals, short bullet points, and a CTA that leads directly into the user’s account reduce friction and encourage immediate action—especially on mobile.
Why are event-based campaigns like Giving Tuesday effective?
They tap into collective moments of generosity. When financial brands attach themselves to charitable events—and let customers influence the outcome—they boost engagement and strengthen emotional connection.
How does visualizing long-term savings improve conversions?
Charts and projections make abstract benefits feel concrete. For products like 529 plans, demonstrating how small contributions grow over time helps users understand potential impact at a glance.
Can financial services emails be fun?
Absolutely. Lighthearted visuals (like holiday GIFs) stand out in an industry known for seriousness. A little personality can make credit offers or promotions feel more approachable and less intimidating.
What do all effective financial services emails have in common?
They make complex or mundane tasks feel easy. Whether through emotional appeal, clarity, personalization, or visuals, each example removes friction and gives users a clear reason to engage.
Creating savings accounts, depositing checks, and getting business loans aren’t the kind of exciting activities that most people look forward to, but these emails demonstrate some ingenious ways to get people’s attention and prompt them to interact with a financial services business.
Tie Into Something Your Customers Like to Do
Acorns is an investment service that rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar and puts the leftover change into investment funds. It’s like a digital spare change jar that produces a return on investment, rather than sitting there waiting for someone to undertake the tedious task of counting all those coins.
Investing spare change may not be the most exciting thing to do, but Acorns puts some fun into the concept with this marketing message that ties into the upcoming summer travel season. Acorns will invest a little money into its users’ accounts when they make travel plans through the companies mentioned in this email, which encourages them to keep using the service while taking vacations.
Show Them How Easy it is
Connect With Events like Giving Tuesday
Toyota Financial Services (TFS) used these two emails to let users know that they could help them celebrate Giving Tuesday, which happens every year on the Tuesday following Black Friday. They earmarked $150,000 to give to four charities – Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Girl Scouts, Special Olympics, and the American Red Cross – and divided the money based on the number of clicks each organization received.
This was a great way for TFS to get involved in charitable giving while encouraging the participation of its users. The follow-up email was smart because it illustrated the impact of the giving initiative and encouraged customers to continue giving to those causes if they wished.
Give People the Big Picture View
ScholarShare 529 helps parents save for their kids’ college educations, or private elementary and high school educations, by setting up 529 plans, which are college savings accounts that are exempt from federal taxes. There are different kinds of 529 plans; their state tax benefits vary by state.
This email was sent out during the first week of January when many people make personal improvement resolutions and generally feel optimistic about getting a fresh start. It plays off that idea while also giving recipients a handy chart that demonstrates how quickly savings can add up, depending on the age of the child.
Sure, everyone knows that a few dollars tucked away each month can turn into a tidy windfall a couple decades from now, but it’s always helpful to see it displayed like this.
Have Some Fun
Fundbox offers short-term lines of credit to small and medium businesses (SMBs), but they base their decisions on a company’s health, not the personal credit scores of the people who own it. They only collect fees on payments made, not for loan origination or maintenance of accounts.
They sent out this holiday email to offer a credit toward fees during a two-week period in December, and they used a fun holiday-themed GIF to get people’s attention. It’s simple and invites people to click on the CTA button just below the skier’s destination.
While there is certainly no one right answer on how to create an effective financial services email campaign, these five great examples should get your wheels turning for your next marketing email! For industry-specific guidance, insurance providers can benefit from our 5 essential email tips for insurance providers, which addresses the unique challenges and opportunities in the insurance sector.
