Struggling to keep your Email campaigns fresh? Not sure how or where to start? Running out of ideas? 

Sometimes it can be somewhat challenging to come up with ways to send the right message that will connect with your subscribers and promote your products. 

Lots of you may be having trouble grappling with email ideas.  But I challenge you to look at Emails to your subscribers not as an external entity but rather as introductions or trailers to each of your blogs. Now you’ll never run out of ideas.

Think Email Marketing is old hat? Think again. The facts don’t lie….

• 80% of retailers agree that email marketing drives acquisitions and retention.
• 77% of consumers prefer to receive a promotional via email.
• 86% of consumers want to receive emails from their favorite brands.
• 59% of online marketers say that email is the best for revenue growth.

Use Your Existing Content

Already have several blogs? Don’t let them go to waste. You can easily use what you already have to build out your email campaigns. 

Make an outline of your blog post and choose two or three points. Then write a short email about those points in your email and include a link to the original post. 

Make It Personal

Another great way to connect with your subscribers is to write about your own personal journey. You can compose several emails discussing certain challenges you faced and how you overcame them. 

Here are some ideas:

• Not knowing what to blog about
• Mistakes you’ve made
• Choosing a niche
• Time management
• Choosing affiliate products to promote
• Finding time to blog
• Expanding on someone’s comment to one of your blogs

Copy From The Best

It’s a good idea to look at other more successful bloggers use their email marketing and model yours similarly.  For instance, Angie’s list often sends a Top Ten list out to its subscribers.

Now think of what Top 10 lists you can use similarly. If your blog covers more than just one specific topic or you have several subtopics, this would be a great way to pull some of your existing (and even older) blogs together that drive traffic to them.

Use Social Proof

You’ve heard of using social proof in your marketing and landing pages, right? Well, consider using it in your emails as well. Consider using your blogs comment section.

If you’ve got some compliments in there or even a good testimonial, think about using it to promote your brand and move your subscribers a little further in your corner.

Craft Your Emails With Purpose

Now I get a ridiculous number of emails on a daily basis. I’m guessing you do too! So what determines which one you’ll open and read? It’s all in the subject title, isn’t it? If it piques my interest, chances are more likely that I’ll open it. 

• Personalized
• Tells A Story With An Object Lesson
• Attractive Imagery
• Attractive Template/Design
• Includes a Call To Action (CTA)

Get Emotional

The best content tells a story and evokes emotion. Emotion is the best trigger that inspires action from your subscribers and customers.

Five out of the six top email campaigns below focus in on generating emotion: 

• Campaign throwing a fun pun. 
• Giving a free product  
• Campaign provoking temptation. 
• Email template copy provoking curiosity. 
• Campaign with a touching message. 
• Survey email campaign with money reward.

Make It Easy To Buy

Want to land more sales? Do what the pros do and make it ridiculously easy for them. You can design your emails in a way highlights some of your products.

Let’s take a look at a few different examples:

Stitch fix really knows how to maximize their marketing. Their layout is clean and simple with good size images to choose from. There’s one big call to action in red at the bottom but also notice what’s below that. There are two opportunities to share (with a friend and on social media) as well as a button to Help Center or Contact Us. Consider incorporating one or more of these extra clickable opportunities in your email template layout design.

Toyotas email marketing incorporates the use of buttons that highlight specific inventory such as New Specials and New Inventory, etc. Their style is more simplistic in its layout and design with surprisingly, no images. It also adheres to the company colors of red, black and white consistent with its branding.

Grammarly incorporates one large main image in the header to highlight it’s promotion. The promotion is again repeated in the last paragraph followed by a big green call to action below.

Using these different styles you can easily incorporate at least one of them or perhaps an element of each into your new email template. Make your email templates appealing and in line with your website’s branding and colors, just like the pros do.

Hurry! Times Running Out

Southwest Airlines uses large, bright images taking up most of the space and less text. In this example, they are using the element of limited time and pricing to inspire their reward members to act now. The call to action here is the yellow button “Book Now”. Again, we see the use of branding in the logo and sticking to the company colors of blue, white, red and yellow used in the borders, the texts, buttons and images.

Another example is to use the same time crunch to build anticipation for an event such as in the following example:

Although you can’t tell in the screenshot above, the numbers are counting down continually. Adding small amounts of animation such as count downs or animated emojis will give your emails a little extra “salsa”.

Send A Summary

As bloggers, we write a lot of content. Writing daily emails can be time-consuming as well. If you’re not into a daily email, then why not send your subscribers a weekly wrap up. You could also add a monthly overview such as MacPaw does below.

Followed by Tips & Tricks section below…

So who doesn’t like tips and tricks? Notice that they are limiting the number of links to five total. Keep this in mind when crafting your layout. You don’t want to overwhelm your subscriber. Better to keep it short. You can always include a different set of links in the next one.

Share The Good News

Have you reached a goal or milestone? Why not share it with your audience? You can also use this idea to promote an exclusive offer to only the first 100 responders (or something like that).

Your Two Cents Here

I hope you’ll take these examples and tips to heart and that I’ve helped inspire you to build up your email campaigns similarly. If you don’t already have an autoresponder, I strongly suggest you get one yesterday! It’s an absolute must, like wheels on a car, you won’t get far without it.

Feel free to leave me your questions and comments. I love hearing from each of you. – Anne