The beverage industry is filled with a multitude of energy drinks, coffee, teas, smoothies, milk products, soft drinks, alcohol, and more.
One of the key ingredients to having success in this highly competitive sector is of course to have a product that tastes good and that customers will enjoy. However, there is also a lot more involved to maintain success and get your product to the customers who you want to buy it - and even more important in this industry, how to get a customer to repeat its purchase. You need to try different marketing strategies to find the one that works best for your brand.
With the help of our benchmarking tool Panoramata, we track the most popular Beverage brands and their marketing strategies for inspiration - on what they do best and how they do it with their email marketing.
Beverage marketing comes down to a few repeatable moves. Below are 5 strategies the best beverage ecommerce brands use with 15 real email examples. Here are important things we noticed that they have in common when it comes to their email campaigns:
- Appeal to health-conscious consumers
- Partner with key influencers
- Create subscription boxes
- Show the faces behind your brand
- Make good use of color and design
- Our major takeaways
Appeal to health-conscious consumers
General health and well-being are the most frequently cited reasons for purchasing food and beverage products. Consumers are most likely to seek specific benefits and be familiar with relevant ingredients when they intake something. Here’s where functional beverages come in. A functional beverage is a conventional liquid food marketed to highlight specific product ingredients or supposed health benefits.
Take the following marketing emails for example.
This one is from Soylent, a food/beverage brand known for its plant-based protein shake. What we love about this email is the banner that itemized the vital ingredients that consumers are expecting to get out of the drinks. They also didn’t forget to mention one awaited benefit, that is, it’s Delicious!
Subject line: Can Plant-Based Protein Be As Good As Animal-Based?
Here’s another example from the energy drink brand Tenzing. It is presented with a simple yet huge banner text FUNCTIONAL + FRESH which directly implies what the drink is all about. It is also good that they show the list of ingredients, their specific benefits, and the image on the side.
Subject line: Real ingredients, with real functional benefits ✅
Why it works: Health is the #1 reason people buy food and drink, so leading with ingredients answers the buyer's first question. So, put your ingredient list and its benefits in the email banner, like Soylent and Tenzing.
And if you’re looking for a dairy product, you definitely won’t get guilty about your diet when you see this email from Good Mylk. It clearly presents the composition of its product, what it includes and what it does not - so they can highlight their product benefits clearly and in two different ways.
Subject line: Only 5 (or less) ingredients here🥛
Partner with key influencers
Influencer marketing is a rising strategy that utilizes key leaders to drive your brand’s message. Most people trust brand or product recommendations from someone they trust. The following are examples of brands that partner with influencers and bloggers who have huge followings – a great way to easily reach more customers.
June Shine is a brand known for its hard kombucha and classic canned cocktails. It has some series of collaborations with sports enthusiasts like Evan Mock, Sage Kotsenburg, and Cody Ko. The brand shows real faces like these Ambassadors - a great way to show how these people support their brand,which will encourage more customers too.
Subject line: Meet ambassador, Cody Ko 👋
Sunwink introduces its muse who happens to be a host, DJ and advocate in pop culture. This email tells a lot of things about the key personality – her passion, advocacies, and her charity of choice. This is a powerful way to get your message to your audience. You’ll get to encourage even more buyers once they feel a connection with a real person, someone to who they can relate.
Subject line: Meet Our Muse 🍋
Super Coffee takes an expert in the field of healthcare to showcase its product. At the bottom part of the email copy, it displays specific products as top picks of the partner influencer. It is like saying “take it from the expert”.
Subject line: Meet our new expert partner
Why it works: People trust a recommendation from someone they follow far more than a brand claim. These "Meet our ambassador/expert" emails (June Shine, Super Coffee) — let the person do the selling.
But of course, a large following is not proof of fit. June Shine, Sunwink, and Super Coffee give you three creative formats to study, but before you brief a creator, check these two things at least:
- Audience fit: Do their followers match the people who can buy your drink?
- Use-case: Is there a believable moment when this person would use the product?
Create subscription boxes
In most cases, the goal of a subscription offering is to increase customer retention and lower customer acquisition cost. Food and beverage are the most popular types of subscription products. This demand makes a food subscription box both exceptionally competitive. So, if you’re thinking of joining this crowded space, it’s critical that you make your box stand out from the crowd.
Intelligentsia is a beverage brand that offers fresh roasted coffee. In this email, they offer 3 things - 1. free ground shipping on subscription orders, 2. multiple subscription options to choose from, and 3. subscription features where customers can easily manage, swap, and deactivate/reactivate their account. This is one good practice to take note of. Why? The more options and flexibility you give to your customers, the more convenient it is for them to accept your offer and stick with it in the long run.
Subject line: Named One of the Best Coffee Subscriptions for a Reason
Firebelly Tea announces its subscription package with an emphasis on the savings you can get from subscribing. It has a simple CTA “Subscribe and Save” at the banner and within each of the products they offer. For this to work, having goodies shipped to you in a subscription box should be cheaper than buying each of those items separately.
Subject line: Just Dropped: Firebelly Subscriptions
Grounded is another beverage brand that offers protein milkshakes. Currently, it only has 2 flavors but still manages to offer a subscription box to the customers. As long as you can curate products that are useful to your audience, you can bring them convenience and personalized experience.
Subject line: Get our mixed pack of shakes, now on subscription!
Why it works: Drinks are repeat-purchase by nature, so subscriptions lower acquisition cost and raise retention. Make it flexible (swap, pause, cancel) and cheaper than one-off — Intelligentsia's model.
Show the faces behind your brand
People like to buy from real people. Seeing a face behind the brand shows your community and audience that you are in fact human -- just like them. You are real and raw which will build up your relatability and trust. The faces and their stories help humanize the brand and make it feel more accessible to the customers. Seeing the people behind the brand helps the customers feel more at ease, knowing that they're in capable hands.
Let’s get to know the faces behind some of the beverage brands.
Empathy Wines likes us to meet its winemaker Brandy. This email copy goes with a little introduction about her – her background and experiences as a winemaker. Later on in the email, it tackles 3 big questions for her along with answers to them, all pertaining to her being a winemaker. The email does not just introduce a person as part of the company, but a person as an expert in the field.
Subject line: Have You Met Brandy? 🍷🌟
In this email from Olipop, a soda brand, its co-founder and formulator tells a bit of a story about his experiences and emotions while creating the flavors that we enjoy today.
Subject line: Oh, hey. It’s Ben again. 👋
Recess also wants to pay tribute to the person (and people) behind its great and unique flavors. Here, it shows images of its mixologist on the actual creation of mixes. It also tells some fun facts about him.
Subject line: who makes Recess taste so good?
Why it works: A real face and story make the brand relatable and trustworthy — people buy from people. A founder or maker email ("Oh, hey, it's Ben again" — Olipop) beats a faceless promo.
Make good use of color and design
In emails, color plays an important role in guiding the reader to important messages and calls to action. Too many colors can be distracting. Using single or dominant color emphasizes important information that you want audiences to retain in their minds. So, the email design along with its background and image colors can be considered a marketing tactic as well.
Spritz Society used the color green for more than 75% of its email content. It implies its new flavor pickle which is also green. Aside from being attractive to the eyes, it promotes memory retention of the product.
Subject line: Meet our newest flavor!
This time, the color of lavender and cucumber are being used in this email copy from Aura Bora.
Subject line: The Famous Flavor
La Di Da is a brand that offers oat milk latte products. It has a wide variety of flavors, among which is coffee latte. This email perfectly patterns with the color of a coffee latte. Again, it retains the particular product in mind as it helps your memory by effective use of color in design.
Subject line: NEW FLAVOR ALERT!
Why it works: One dominant color guides the eye and locks the product into memory (Spritz Society's green = pickle flavor). Match the email's color to the product or flavor you're launching.
Of course, color picks shouldn't be causing accessibility issues. Check the email on mobile and on desktop: can you read the headline, offer, and button without effort? Is the CTA still clear for someone just taking a glance?
15 beverage email subject lines to swipe (by strategy)
- Functional / health:
- 1. "Can Plant-Based Protein Be As Good As Animal-Based?" — Soylent
- 2. "Real ingredients, with real functional benefits ✅" — Tenzing
- 3. "Only 5 (or less) ingredients here 🥛" — Good Mylk
- Influencer / ambassador:
- 4. "Meet ambassador, Cody Ko 👋" — June Shine
- 5. "Meet Our Muse 🍋" — Sunwink
- 6. "Meet our new expert partner" — Super Coffee
- Subscription:
- 7. "Named One of the Best Coffee Subscriptions for a Reason" — Intelligentsia
- 8. "Just Dropped: Firebelly Subscriptions" — Firebelly Tea
- 9. "Get our mixed pack of shakes, now on subscription!" — Grounded
- Faces behind the brand:
- 10. "Have You Met Brandy? 🍷🌟" — Empathy Wines
- 11. "Oh, hey. It's Ben again. 👋" — Olipop
- 12. "who makes Recess taste so good?" — Recess
- Color / new-flavor launches:
- 13. "Meet our newest flavor!" — Spritz Society
- 14. "The Famous Flavor" — Aura Bora
- 15. "NEW FLAVOR ALERT!" — La Di Da
Our major takeaways:
- Be as detailed as possible when showing the ingredients of the product. Aside from health benefits, it helps a lot to mention something good for the taste buds like its yumminess.
- Online shoppers are naturally hesitant to buy drinks they haven’t tried before. But, an expert in the field or a popular personality is sometimes all it takes to convince many people.
- Subscription boxes can be both beneficial to the business and its customers. It promotes convenience and a personalized experience. You can also use the element of surprise by adding different extra freebies to every box delivered.
- When you show real faces behind your business, you’ll more likely to develop a sense of lasting relationship and brand loyalty among your customers.
- Visuals can catch your audiences’ attention and help with the retention of the message. You can always use design and color to your advantage.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best marketing strategy for a beverage brand?
There isn't one — the strongest beverage brands combine five: functional/health messaging, influencer partnerships, subscriptions, founder stories, and strong color/design. Pick the one that fits your product first.
How do you market a beverage on a small budget?
Lead with your ingredients and benefits, partner with a micro-influencer your audience trusts, and use one bold brand color consistently. All three are close to free.
What is a functional beverage?
A drink marketed for specific ingredients or health benefits beyond basic nutrition — added protein, vitamins, adaptogens or probiotics.
Do subscription boxes work for drinks?
Yes — food and beverage are among the most popular subscription categories because they're repeat-purchase by nature. Make yours flexible (swap, pause, cancel) and cheaper than buying items separately.
How do beverage brands use influencers?
They partner with people their audience already trusts — athletes, hosts, experts — and let that person recommend the product, like June Shine with Cody Ko or Super Coffee with a healthcare expert.
