17 Email ideas for when you’re not sure what to send

When you are consistent in your email marketing activities you may reach a point where you run out of steam, or you feel a bit creatively tapped in between all the other marketing activities you are managing. Don’t get discouraged. Below you’ll find some ideas for content you can create to help you connect with your audience and keep creating exceptional email campaigns. Let’s start filling that email schedule for the month!

1. Back in stock

If you’ve run out of stock on a popular product range, a great campaign idea is to create an email campaign that informs your subscribers that you’ve got the product back in stock. You could even create some excitement in terms of your restock by creating a teaser campaign that informs your subscribers that you’ll have the product/products stocked again by a certain date.

2. Upcoming events

A great campaign idea is to promote upcoming events. You may not be hosting your own events, but that doesn’t mean you can’t add value to your subscribers by promoting events that are in line with the product or service you offer. Using email campaigns to let people know what’s happening in and around their area is a great way to connect with your audience.

3. Feedback

Staying in touch with your email list is the best way to learn more about them. Utilising email marketing to solicit feedback from your audience is an easy and effective way to learn more about them and to enhance their overall experience with you. People love to feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves and also love sharing their ideas or experiences.

The easiest way to get feedback from your audience through an email campaign is to create a survey with questions your subscriber can answer. Make sure to set the expectation for the survey by telling subscribers upfront how long the survey will take to complete. Keep it short. ;)

4. Video

Video is booming with the launch of IGTV and Reels on Instagram and tons of easy-to-use video creation tools. If you’ve spent time creating epic videos, start using them in your campaigns. We don’t recommend embedding your videos into your email campaigns, but you could create a thumbnail in your campaign that links to videos on your website or YouTube channel. Distribute your videos in a targeted way by using the power of email marketing to get more views.

5. Update

Recently updated your premises, your website, service offering or something simple like your staff uniform? Create a campaign about it! Giving your subscribers an update on new and exciting things that are happening within your business is a great way to connect with them.

6. Highlight Top Sellers

If you’re stumped on what to send, do a campaign highlighting your top sellers. This is a great way to show your customers what other customers are liking and encourage them to buy these products too. If you have any customer reviews about these products, you can include them in the campaign or even offer a bundled offer on the top selling products.

7. Sneak Preview

Create excitement by running a teaser campaign or a sneak preview. Sneak previews are meant to tease new product or service offer launches and build anticipation. Sneak previews are great as they encourage your subscribers to keep an eye on their emails from you to find out more.

8. Share your social media feeds

You’re probably already sharing your social media channel links in the footer of your campaigns, but why not switch it up by showing actual photos of your social media feeds. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing your social feeds, you could highlight fun comments on posts or interesting interactions if it suits your brand. This is a great way to build your community on other channels and engage with your audience.

9. Outreach/ Connect

Outreach/ Connect is a simple campaign idea where you try and elicit feedback from your audience by really connecting with them. Start your email by setting the scene. Talk about a problem or decision that you need to make and ask your customers to provide input. Your call to action button could simply direct your subscriber to your email address where they can help you make decisions or provide input.

Asking for input creates connection, building brand affinity and making your audience feel part of something bigger. Make sure you follow up this campaign with a thank you-campaign to thank people for their input and support.

10. Birthday/ Anniversary

Is it your founding member’s birthday? Or are you celebrating a certain number of years in business? Create a campaign about it, you could go back to basics and remind your subscribers why you started your business, what you’ve learnt along the way. If there are certain milestones you’ve reached over the years, you could also create a timeline of events in your campaigns. This is storytelling at it’s best and a great campaign idea.

11. Share your Knowledge

If your product or service requires a bit of “training” or knowledge, it’s a good idea to use your email campaigns to share the knowledge you have gathered over time. Especially if your purchase relates to help or would need some sort of explanation on how to use the product, a campaign can help a potential buyer go from consideration to purchase.

12. Highlight customers

Customers can be super valuable to promote your business for you. If you have “superfans” you can give them a shout out and get up close and personal in terms of how their lives have changed or been impacted by using your products. People buy from people and showing a more human side by showing actual customers who buy from you is a great way to build trust and credibility.

13. Reviews

Do you have some fantastic reviews on Hello Peter or Trustpilot? Use these to your advantage. Create a campaign showcasing your reviews. Showing your audience what other customers say about you is a great way to encourage them to buy. If you don’t have many reviews yet, you could create a campaign to ask for reviews. If you’d like to review Mail Blaze, you can review us on Trustpilot here.

14. Training option

If you’re in the business of educating your audience, or offer complementary services like a free “Get to know your camera” training session with your purchase, you could focus on these added benefits in a carefully crafted campaign.

If you’re not in the business of training people, you could offer 30 min free consultation services where you can help your subscriber get the most out of your product as a nice freebie. This works really well if you are an online-only business.

Don’t be scared to inform subscribers about training offers that don’t come from your business. At the end of the day you want to always provide value to your audience and providing knowledge on opportunities for them to improve in the space you are in, isn’t a bad thing. Be careful however to not create campaigns that have nothing to do with your business where your audience may feel like “why are they sending me this?”

15. Utilise blogs

This one is a goodie. If you’re not sure what you’d like to send, why don’t you create a round up of blogs you’ve posted recently. You could even combine different blog posts from one blog category to “theme” your campaign. This kind of campaign is a great way to get people onto your website.

16. Freebies

Who doesn’t like a freebie? When most people think of freebies, they think it’s going to cost them a lot of money to execute. Freebies can come in many shapes and sizes. It could be a chapter from your book, a downloadable desktop background, a simple checklist, a shopping planner, etc. The ideas here are endless. (Keep your eye on this page, we’ll dedicate an article to this)

17. Frequently asked Questions (FAQ)

The aim of frequently asked questions are to help your website visitor easily find the information they are looking for, but also to answer some questions they may have upfront. It’s a really useful tool to improve your customer experience and with this being said it can be used to create a campaign. You could focus on one frequently asked question or combine a few.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our campaign ideas to help you fill out your email planning calendar. Let us know if you’ve tried any of these ideas in the comment section below.