15 effective email marketing campaign ideas to apply to your newsletters

Table of Contents

• Advantages of email marketing for your brand
• How to prepare an email marketing strategy?
• 14 email marketing campaign ideas that you can apply in your newsletters
•  1. Initial cleaning
• 2. Create a compelling design
• 3. Share blog updates
• 4. Announce the launch or improvement of a product/service
• 5. Follow up (on a sale, a course ...)
•  6. Conduct a survey
• 7. Request a review, assessment or opinion
• 8. Give visibility to your social networks
• 9. Make reference to actions in specific social networks
• 10. Offer a discount or exclusive advantage
• 11. Share a selection of products
• 12. Announce new collaborations or associations
• 13. Make a gift
• 14. Share a content compilation
• 15. Recover “cold leads”
• Conclusion

Today, we will talk about 15 effective email marketing campaign ideas to make a difference, improve your results, and build loyalty with your subscribers through your newsletters.

Businesses and brands have a wide range of ways to communicate with their public, especially thanks to social networks. However, email still represents a highly effective direct communication channel. It's capable of creating and consolidating relationships with the audience that businesses and brands should not overlook. At this point, the question is more than obligatory: Do you still not use email marketing?  Assuming your answer is no, it begs the additional question - why not?

Advantages of email marketing for your brand

Within the marketing strategy of a brand or company, email marketing is much more than a distribution channel. In fact, newsletter campaigns are a fundamental piece in charge of reinforcing your content strategy and connecting it with the other areas of your online marketing plan. But, in addition, there are other benefits added to the use of email marketing strategies:

• You can reach a global audience.
• It allows you to send fully personalized and segmented messages.
• The investment is minimal.
• The results are measurable. 
• It is a very powerful web traffic source.
• It is one of the most efficient ways to attract customers and induce conversions.

How to prepare an email marketing strategy?

Now, once you have decided to use email marketing for your brand, the main steps to follow would be:

1. Define and set clear objectives for your strategy.
2. Choose a good email marketing tool.
3. Create a subscriber list.
4. Start capturing leads.
5. Prepare and send your email and newsletter campaigns.

The first two steps are the foundation of any action you are going to take. An effective email marketing campaign ideas must go hand in hand with the right tool. Before taking action, you must have specific objectives to know where you are going and what you want to achieve. Do you want to attract new subscribers or increase the loyalty of the ones already subscribed? Is there anything else you want to do?

Once you have defined your objectives and have the right tool at hand, another key point in this strategy comes up. Capturing subscribers and starting to fill your list. At this stage, the generalized strategy would be limited to creating a subscription form, placing it on the website, or in the place where we want to capture those leads. Once we have a certain volume of accumulated emails, every time there is something to say, a newsletter campaign is sent to everyone equally and that's it.

This is undoubtedly a huge mistake. It would not be the right strategy if we really want to get good results. So, what to do to avoid falling into the same trap? One simple word - segmentation.

14 email marketing campaign ideas that you can apply in your newsletters

 1. Initial cleaning

Yes, you read it right. An initial cleaning, before launching with any other type of campaign, can help remarkably so that in the following your results are much better. If you have a good email marketing tool, you will have access to the results and statistics of your campaigns. With the right tool, you will be able to analyze two very specific metrics for this strategy that will allow you to detect which users show behavior that does not benefit you at all:

• Bounces:  (When an email does not reach the recipient's inbox).
• The «no openings»:  (When an email reaches the recipient's inbox but is not opened).

Once the users who show this specific behavior have been detected and segmented, prepare a campaign aimed exclusively at them. In it, give them the possibility to unsubscribe from your list openly and without obligation. Don't be afraid to "invite" your less active subscribers to unsubscribe from your list. After all, they weren't giving you anything. Try to use a sense of humor or a closer wink to prevent the subscriber from being offended.

Often, with these types of emails, they serve as a wake-up call and the subscribers show interest again. But, in any case, remember: What good is it to have thousands of subscribers if they don't open your emails? You are not interested in having a database with inactive subscribers.

2. Create a compelling design

Creating an idea for an email marketing campaign is one thing - making it visually attractive is something completely different. When it comes to designing the email, you need to make sure that it's not only easy to read and scan through, but it also has a graphical potential to make recipients stop and spend a little bit more time on it. Nowadays, you can't create a generic graphic and be done with it. Actually - you can. But it won't resonate with public, won't be in line with your brand voice and ultimately won't make much impact.

Luckily there is a whole base of beautiful email design inspirations for every single occasion - from official business emails down to holidays and fashion-related topics.

3. Share blog updates

This email marketing campaign is more common but no less effective. You can use your emails as an extension of your blog. Every time you have new content, let your subscribers know and give them access from the comfort of their email. It is a good way to prevent your subscribers from forgetting about you. If you also offer them valuable content adapted to their characteristics, you will reinforce the reasons why they wanted to subscribe. There are various ways to share your latest updates with your subscribers. You just have to get creative, for example, you can do it in a more engaging way by using an interactive newsletter and catch your audience's attention.

Remember, you have their previous interest and that's why they wanted to be part of your list. Take advantage of it. Prepare powerful content, and give them reasons to want to stay committed to you. You can use these free autoresponders for automating your emails to build such an effective email marketing campaign.

4. Announce the launch or improvement of a product/service

Notifying your subscribers of the launch of a new product or service of your brand is a very good way to keep them up to date with everything you offer as a brand. If you use this strategy before this novelty is officially implemented or made public, you can generate excitement about it and make it even more attractive.

Another option you can consider is to give your subscribers the opportunity to have exclusive access to this new product or service before anyone else. In most cases, this is very well received and increases the value of being on your list. In this example, Apple takes the opportunity to announce the launch of its new product and, in addition, gives the possibility to reserve it exclusively.

5. Follow up (on a sale, a course ...)

With this example of an email marketing campaign, we have a lot of maneuvering options, especially in the case of e-commerce. There are many email marketing strategies for online stores. With the help of retargeting, they are usually very effective when looking for precious conversions.

In the following example from Knockaround, we see a cool cart abandonment tracking strategy. In it, in addition to reminding you that you have a product that you showed interest in and that you finally did not buy, they give you an additional discount to motivate that final purchase.

 6. Conduct a survey

This may be one of the most effective emails you send. You can use it to collect more information from your subscribers, adding even more value to your database and allowing you to create new segments. This type of strategy can help you to:

• Find out what the most specific tastes or interests of your audience are to optimize your lists.
• Check the degree of satisfaction of your customers with the service offered and use it to improve.
• Obtain new ideas for your business that, in addition, are adapted to the tastes of the consumer so they have more possibilities of achieving satisfactory results.

PRO TIP: Using a survey campaign can help you intercept negative comments or ratings in time before they reach other public channels.

7. Request a review, assessment or opinion

Here is a great effective email marketing campaign ideas. You should consider is to ask your subscribers to value their experience with your brand and thus promote recommendation marketing. You can, for example, ask to leave a review or evaluation on your Google My Business file, on your Facebook page, or even on your own website.

In this type of strategy, unlike the previous one, it is advisable to do it with caution. Make sure that whoever you ask for that assessment or comment does so to do it in a positive way. To do this, detect and segment your "best" subscribers or your brand ambassadors and send them this campaign. If you also offer them "something in return" such as a discount, a free downloadable, or some other type of incentive, they will be more likely to agree and leave that assessment with pleasure.

8. Give visibility to your social networks

Another way to encourage your audience's commitment to your brand is by referring to your other social channels and allowing them to connect with you on these platforms. You can prepare an exclusive campaign for this purpose or include in your other campaigns, elements that favor interaction with your other channels: social icons, share buttons, Instagram feed, phrases to tweet, etc.

In this way, we are allowing our audience to become part of our brand and get involved through other channels than those they already know, we will contribute to strengthen that community and, in addition, increase our visibility in these channels. 

9. Make reference to actions in specific social networks

In relation to the previous strategy, we have the option of referring to specific actions on our social networks. For example:

• A contest or giveaway
• A participation action: game, riddle, survey...
• A debate
• A live broadcast
• Etc.

With this strategy, we can help give our publications greater visibility and help them generate much more participation, taking into account how difficult it is sometimes to "make ourselves seen" on social networks such as Facebook, for example, where time and weight factors are decisive for the algorithm to take us into account. We can launch this campaign in advance, even in stages, to make sure subscribers are aware. And, in addition, once the content is published on the corresponding social network, notify it also through this route.

This strategy can help us to achieve greater visibility in our actions on social networks, to help them generate much more participation and, consequently, to further strengthen our community. How's that for some effective email marketing campaign?

10. Offer a discount or exclusive advantage

Occasionally, it's okay to consider the option of sharing some type of exclusive discount/offer with your subscribers or some other (always exclusive) benefit for your subscribers. This strategy is especially suitable especially at a stage in which the activity of our business or brand is weaker, in low seasons, or it can even serve as reactivation of less active subscribers or cold leads.

11. Share a selection of products

First of all, let's remember that excess commercial content can have negative effects on our email marketing strategy since it can generate some rejection. Therefore, let's not abuse this content! In the case of e-commerce, it is a common route, but for other brands or businesses, being too commercial can be harmful. However, we can use this strategy occasionally or every X time to remember to avoid our subscribers forgetting about us, show them new products, seasonal products, star products with testimonials, products with special discounts...

12. Announce new collaborations or associations

With this other example of strategy, you can take advantage of the specific association or collaboration with a "friendly" brand or one that compliments you and thus offer your subscribers a product with added value Thanks to this, you can make yourself known to a different audience. Although, yes, you must make sure beforehand that this audience has similar interests to yours.

The key is that both brands carry out the campaign in parallel and in a joint and organized way so that both of you get the most out of it.

13. Make a gift

Who doesn't like to be given a gift? Offering your subscribers a gift, in the form of a free downloadable (a template, an ebook, a checklist ...) or another type of gift, is a great way to show your subscribers that you value their presence on your list. Whether it is to thank and reward their loyalty,  celebrate some achievement of your brand, or because you feel generous, this type of campaign is very effective.

Of course, if you need to think hard about what type of downloadable content fits the specific characteristics of your subscribers and prepare a specific one for each segment, if applicable. Make sure this free content is something that really works for them and they will use it.

14. Share a content compilation

This other strategy can be especially effective for several reasons. On the one hand, you are adding value to your subscribers and reminding them that you have something good and useful to offer them. On the other hand, it can be used to recycle older content and bring it back to light.

Whether in the form of blog articles, videos, events related to your sector or your brand, tools, or other useful resources, it is recommended that these compilation emails be focused on previously created segments and directed based on them to offer subscribers content that fits their interests.

15. Recover “cold leads”

When working with email marketing, we often target those active subscribers who we also called "hot leads,". We forget about those who are more distant, "cold leads ", who shouldn't be neglected. In order to recover those "less active" subscribers, it is interesting to send a recovery campaign directed exclusively at them.

For this, we would have to segment those subscribers who, for example, have not opened your latest campaigns, who have not made any purchases or used any of your services for a long time and send them a campaign to capture their attention again. If you also accompany your campaigns with some type of incentive, you will have more chances of success.

If your offer is attractive, the most normal thing is that they "give signs again". Otherwise don't worry. If you detect that any of these emails don’t even get opened, nothing happens! In fact, we return to the point commented initially. Are you interested in having subscribers who are not curious in what you offer them? Absolutely.

Conclusion

Don't underestimate the power of an effective email marketing campaign. Many bloggers and digital businesses see this channel as a very interesting way to increase and retain their followers and customers and also generate income. You have tons of options besides the ones we just saw. The key is to know the audience you are targeting very well and generate good content.

Take your time to create a good hook capable of capturing subscribers, segment your list well based on the specific characteristics of these subscribers, prepare truly valuable content for your audience and plan email campaigns without leaving anything to chance. Go for it!