7 emails to send when you’re out of ideas

Using the power and convenience of email marketing should be a key part of your online marketing strategy. Email is the perfect communication medium because it is low cost, low effort and extremely effective. Email marketing can be used to entice new customers or reconnect with old ones. Below are seven emails to send when you’re out of ideas.

1. Send a Newsletter

A monthly or weekly newsletter is a great way to keep your customers engaged and involved in your business. You can take the more traditional route and include full articles or include headlines with links back to your website and blog.

A short newsletter, also called a digest, is the popular way to go. Your customers are busy, so don’t waste their time and make it simple and quick. Sending out a long-winded set of articles can defeat the purpose altogether.

Be sure to include eye-catching headlines and pictures and short descriptions of all referenced content. Use a template that pulls it all together without making your newsletter look clunky.

The Newsletter type of email can be used to let them know about everything from a specific product or service sprinkle in some coming events.

Click here for a great guide on how to create an email newsletter people actually read.

2. Tell them about your new product/service

A newsletter is a great way to keep customers interested but should not be your only emails to them. The release of a new product or services requires its own email. Otherwise it might get drowned out, in the surrounding noise of your monthly updates.

When composing an email about your soon-coming product, you should be thinking of current AND new customers. If it is a physical product, show them how it looks, yes include pictures. Add a short description along with copy that will entice them even further.

The descriptions could highlight its features, but rather think about why people would be buying it in the first place. That means “upgrading” your communication to the needs, uses and wants. What is the reason they can’t live without your new product or service?

Current customers, you can remind why they enjoyed your previous products and services. Make sure to include an amazingly smashing CTA, a link that will take the recipient to a page where they can directly purchase or learn more.

3. No new products? No problem!

You may feel uninspired to send emails out to customers when nothing new is happening with the business. Take the downtime as an opportunity to re-acquaint consumers with your most popular services and products.

Whether you write about an old standby that your company is known for or a lesser known product that deserves its time in the spotlight, the featured content is front and center. Featured products should be the focus of the email but the structure could be similar to that of a new release. Try to time your featured announcements with relevant events or seasonal changes to make them seem less random.

Going a bit deeper in consultative selling mode, you can turn this completely upside down and send a content based email that talks about how to solve a problem – then in the story your original product is used (or not yet, depending on how long your sales cycle is).

4. Get your customers involved

If the reason to utilize email marketing is to engage your customers. Why not get some direct feedback or get them to participate in content co-creation? You can set up a survey on your own site with a form or use one of the survey SaaS sites available.

It is strongest if focused on one particular Topic, (like customer service or company reliability) in your email clearly state how long the survey will take. Just be sure that the survey platform can handle mobile devices as well as desktops.

Most of your customers will be checking their email on their smartphones and if they can’t fill in the survey, the email itself is pointless. People will be more inclined to participate if there is an incentive. For instance, offer them a free sample, discount on their next purchase or an entry into a giveaway. In B2B, early access to a report you are making is GOLD.

5. Giveaways

A giveaway is not only a great incentive to take a survey but it is a reason within itself to contact your customers. An email regarding a product giveaway should definitely not be the first move. Don’t train your recipients to  become “slaves to the stuff music”, or look too needy. Make it a Wow moment,  so when they don’t expect it and a few steps into building up the relationship.

You can use incentives on your website and social media to gain interest and to increase awareness of your brand. Announcing a giveaway on social media is a great way to entice potential customers. Once they submit their email addresses as part of the sign up you can add them to your list of future email recipients. Most important, the giveaway itself should be related to your service or product to bring in potential interested customers. Below are great giveaway ideas that you can use:

• Offer a FREE ebook related to your industry
• Offer limited signups for a webinar
• Give a discount or coupon code for your product or service
• Offer your product or service for free to a limited number of people

An email announcing a giveaway should be exciting and should have a link to your site to act on. Make sure you let them know it is not indefinite, get some in there .

6. Inactive Customers

Bringing in new business is exciting, but keeping business is what fuels growth. Brand loyalty should be rewarded. Take a look at your database, find the  customers that have bought from you previously, but not in a while. These are ready for some (renewed) action. So we do some emails directed specifically at that group.

Let them know that you acknowledge and miss them with a short message followed by a coupon or discounted sale opportunity. Give them the opportunity to reactivate their account with your website. Include links to new products or lines that have launched since their last purchase.

Never bore your subscribers to death

Email is very efficient and effective, but if you keep sending only no-reply emails or boring content, it won’t get you anywhere. You’ll get ignored, your messages will be filtered, and your deliverability will drop.

As long as you are creative with the content creation strategy of your emails they can be the powerhouse lifting you to reach your intended goals. Mix it up to maximize a variety of email (types) and email strategies in rotation. People love GOOD and INTERESTING email marketing, those will get you those results.