Email Marketing Templates That Actually Work for Experience Businesses

The underrated power of great email marketing

Most experience businesses rely on last-minute phone calls, manual reminders, and generic newsletters. This can make conversion feel unpredictable and sporadic.

But email remains the most reliable lever you can control. A well-timed confirmation, reminder, or follow-up email can double retention, drive five-star reviews, and turn one-time guests into returning regulars.

The secret isn’t volume. It’s timing, personalisation, and automation. If these three aspects are mastered bookings are certain to increase.

In this guide, I’ll break down the email templates and triggers that actually work for experience businesses, plus how modern systems like Sailia make them effortless to set up and optimise.

Build your foundation: lifecycle emails first, campaigns second

Every operator wants to send better newsletters, but the best ROI comes from automated emails that go out at key customer moments. These are the emails that happen without you lifting a finger: confirmations, reminders, upsells, follow-ups, and reviews.

Then, once those are in place, layer on campaign emails, the ones you plan seasonally or around promotions (summer opening, off-peak deals, gift vouchers).

Platforms like Sailia make this easy with 30+ built-in triggers and drag-and-drop templates. You can create personalised automations for:

• Bookings created, cancelled, or abandoned

• Events approaching (e.g. “3 days before your course”)

• Events ending (e.g. “Time for stage 2!”)

• Cart abandoned

• Membership expiring or payment failed

• Group bookings awaiting details

Tip: All emails have the capacity to not only remind or nudge, but also to showcase your business. It’s always possible to put your best activity or product forward.

These emails are points of contact between you and your customers and without taking advantage of them you’re leaving revenue on the table. Whenever visiting an established operator it is expected that these points of contact exist and are branded, so by providing them in your business the nudge is there to push for the upsell or slightly higher price.

Write emails people actually want to open

An email only matters if it’s opened and that hinges on the hook, timing, and call-to-action.

Hook: the subject line is your headline and your promise

The best subject lines don’t describe an offer; they provoke curiosity or promise clarity.

For experience businesses, that means leaning into the emotions people book for: adventure, enjoyment and escape from the 9-5.

Forget:

“Booking confirmation - your sailing session”

Try:

“All set for Saturday’s wind and waves 🌊”

Forget:

“Autumn deals now available”

Try:

“Before the breeze disappears - autumn sessions just opened”

Good hooks follow three rules:

1. Urgency without panic. Use real triggers (weather, season, low spaces) rather than false countdowns.

2. Relevance over cleverness. Name the product, date, or outcome. “Your board’s waiting on the beach” beats “Don’t miss out!”.

3. Human tone. Write how an instructor would text a loyal guest, brief, warm, real.

These words in a subject tend to drive a higher open rate:

Timing is key

Send when your audience’s mind is already halfway there.

Based on our data, here’s the best times to send the following emails:

• 5 days before = prep list

• 24 hours before = location reminder

• 2 hours after = review + re-book nudge

• 24 hours after = re-book nudge

• 7 days after = re-book nudge + discount

Each message supports the next action in their journey.

Tools like Sailia’s trigger engine let you schedule relative to start time (“send 3 days before session”) so your emails always arrive in sync, even if the booking happens months in advance.

Putting it together

When subject, timing, and CTA align, the email that emerges is something that you’d want to open, not just spam that’s never going to be read

A Friday 8 p.m. email titled “Tomorrow’s wind looks perfect - 2 boards left” with a single “Book your spot” button outperforms any generic newsletter because it feels personal and timely.

Smart personalisation: beyond {{first_name}}

Personalisation is key, customers want to feel listened too and the best way to do this is to tailor every email to them. When this becomes an automated process it’s key that the system you’re using has a myriad of tags that you can choose from. All the way from the customers first name to their preferences to how many times they’ve booked or visited the site.

Use merge tags and product grouping to tailor content automatically. Examples:

• Locals → highlight memberships and weekday deals

• Tourists → include travel info and photo add-ons

• Families → emphasise safety, parking, and amenities

• Corporate → stress team-building outcomes

Sailia’s dynamic blocks let you save snippets (maps, directions, FAQs, kit lists) and reuse them across templates. It’s faster, more consistent, and eliminates copy-paste errors. It also means that your branding is uniform across all your comms leading to a much more unified experience for every guest.

Campaign emails that convert (when done right)

Once your lifecycle automations are running, focus your energy on seasonal campaigns:

• “Spring Launch - New Course Dates Added”

• “Black Friday for Adventurers - 20% Off Punch Cards”

• “Off-Peak Deals for Locals”

Use A/B testing on subject lines, preview text, and images. Studies from platforms like Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor show personalised subject lines can boost open rates by 26%.

In Sailia, you can send campaigns directly with no need for separate tools like Mailchimp or Klaviyo. It’s all under one roof, tied to live customer data and booking behaviour.

Measure what matters

Forget vanity metrics. The only numbers that count are:

• Click-to-booking rate (CTR → checkout completions)

• Repeat booking interval (average days between sessions)

• Review response rate

• Revenue per recipient (RPR)

And it’s important to track these metrics over time, not just on a per campaign basis. In tools such as Mailchimp, Brevo and Sailia it’s possible to track earnings from campaigns and then work out what is working long term and what isn’t working so well.

The takeaway

Email marketing isn’t just about clever copy it’s about consistently sending the right message, at the right time, with the right tone.

Modern platforms like Sailia give you the flexibility to build once and let automation handle the rest. Every message feels personal, timely, and on-brand - even when you’re out on the water. A day or two of work can uplift your business by 6 figures (it has for many companies that have used Sailia!). With anything in marketing it’s key to always question someone whose had experience in this if you have any questions at all, we’re always on hand at info@sailia.com.

If you’re ready to make email your silent growth engine, start by mapping your triggers and let the system do the heavy lifting.