Both B2B and B2C marketers agree that email marketing is among the three most popular digital channels.
However, no channel works until you put in the work. Email marketing requires showing up for your audience consistently and regularly and building relationships with them, which can sometimes be hard, especially if you run out of email campaign ideas.
That's why we've gathered 12 tried and tested email marketing campaign ideas that you can use over and over again. Keep reading to learn more.
12 email campaign ideas to crush your marketing in 2024
Personalized content and recommendations
According to a recent survey, most marketers believe that emails are the area of digital marketing most impacted by personalization. Knowing that your competitors are probably relying on personalization to improve the performance of their email campaigns, you should embrace it as well.
That's why it's essential to create customer segments and track customer data, purchases and behavior. This way, you can use those insights to offer personalized recommendations and content.
Also, personalized product recommendations are one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate, as sending your audience highly relevant offers makes them more likely to purchase from you.
Check out how Goodreads created a personalized statistic for all their email subscribers – Your Year in Books – based on the books they've read this year.
Storytelling series
You've probably heard that your marketing emails shouldn't be too long because people don't have time to read them. There's some truth in that, especially now that our attention span is getting shorter and shorter thanks to social media platforms.
However, if you have an interesting and valuable story to share, why not create a series and send one short email every day?
Bite-sized email campaigns not only cater to shorter attention spans but also allow you to build anticipation and engagement. You're leaving your audience hanging and waiting for new emails to hear the rest of the story.
This approach can be useful for a welcome email sequence when you have much to share with your audience but don't want to overwhelm them. A storytelling email marketing strategy gives you space to share your mission, vision and story on how you've started the company and what you stand for without sounding pushy.
Interviews with SMEs and customers
If you run out of topics to write about, bringing a guest your audience can identify with is always a good idea. You can share their stories through a podcast, video or written form.
If you're working with small and medium business owners, you can invite them to share their stories and inspire your audience.
You can transform this content into a successful email campaign for several reasons. First, your audience can relate to guests and learn much from them and their expertise.
Second, interviews with your customers act as strong social proof and are an ideal way to explain how you can help your new customers achieve the same results.
Interactive content
If you want to boost engagement, interactive content is the key! Both young and old audiences love it, and even B2B customers, if it aligns with their business needs.
Here are some interactive email marketing ideas to get you started:
- Quizzes
- Polls and surveys
- Clickable images
- Games
- Countdown timers
- Clickable decision trees
- Contests and challenges
If you want to go above and beyond, you can create a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style email marketing campaign. We're talking about a campaign with multiple possible paths, and readers are creating their own experiences based on their choices.
A great thing about this type of campaign is that it allows you to add multiple call-to-action buttons depending on the user's preferences and the phase of the buyer's journey they're in.
Potential customers will get invited to purchase a product or service, others to sign up for a webinar or free demo. In contrast, those not ready to purchase will be redirected to explore more of your content.
Don't forget to get a detailed email campaign report so you can see where people clicked the most and what kind of content they interacted with the most.
Seasonal or holiday campaigns
Holidays are always a great occasion to get creative with your email marketing campaigns, connect with your customers on an emotional level and offer them special discounts and small gifts.
We'd suggest planning your email marketing content calendar ahead of time so that you have time to find all important dates and prepare seasonal campaigns in advance.
Here are some things you can offer to make their holiday season better:
- Time-sensitive offers
- Holiday discounts
- Gift cards and vouchers
- Product bundles
- Flash sale
- Bonus items or surprise gifts
Milestone celebration
Even though we shouldn't need special reasons for celebration, there are a few different reasons you should celebrate your company's milestones publicly.
First, talking about your wins can build trust, which is essential for boosting customer loyalty. Second, it's a perfect occasion to offer some limited promotions and special offers to celebrate!
The picture above shows how Canva celebrated its 100 millionth user, but here are some other milestones you can celebrate:
- Company's anniversary
- Product's anniversary
- Social media follower milestone
- Awards and recognitions
- Business expansion
- Achievement of a sales goal
- Employees' anniversaries
On the other hand, you should also celebrate users' milestones and anniversaries related to your product. This is a great way to retain customers and increase brand loyalty by showing that you care for them on their special occasions.
For example, apps like Grammarly, Duolingo and Booking.com tend to notify you whenever you hit a certain milestone or unlock a new level.
Event invites
You can host free events for your customers, both online and offline, depending on where your audience is located. For example, if your products and services target parents or children, consider hosting educative and entertaining events for kids.
However, bear in mind that your customers have busy schedules, and it's not enough to send invitations only once. You'd have to send them at least one reminder email as the date of the event approaches.
Check out this Kahoot event campaign for educators: they first sent early-bird notices, then an official invitation and finally a last-minute call for people to join.
Product sneak peek
Product sneak peeks are a great way to create anticipation and excitement before you launch the product.
In this case, a good subject line is the most important part of encouraging subscribers to click and view your offer, increasing your email CTR.
You decide how much to share. Some people prefer maintaining an air of mystery, offering only a hint or quick preview without revealing everything.
Visuals and videos can be a powerful tool to showcase key features of the product. In the picture below, you can see how one meal kit delivery service uses this strategy to showcase the meals of the week.
Social proof
The best way to build trust and credibility is to integrate different forms of social proof throughout your marketing funnel. Seeing positive feedback and reviews from others encourages your potential buyers to make a decision and purchase your product.
You can use different types of social proof in your email campaigns, such as:
- Testimonials
- User reviews
- Screenshots with user ratings
- Case studies
- Statistics
- Client logos
- Number of subscribers, clients or followers
- Endorsements from celebrities, experts or influencers
Check out how Duolingo combined customer testimonials with the total number of users to give us double reason to download their app.
Industry news
Your audience will appreciate you sharing valuable information and helping them stay up-to-date with industry trends.
It can be a good idea to take a short break from promotional emails and dedicate at least one newsletter a month to sharing relevant news that is trending at the moment.
Gary V is a prime example of someone who positions himself as a thought leader by frequently sharing news about marketing strategy, trends and new tools.
Whether you're building a personal brand like him or sending marketing emails on behalf of your company, this is a great way to build trust and meaningful relationships with your target audience.
Product or company updates
It's a good practice to send an informational email and keep your existing customers up-to-date with any updates in your company's policy or your products and services.
Canva regularly informs its users about new features they've added to the app, allowing them to be among the first ones to try them.
“Best of” roundup
People love reading lists and recommendations! If you've run out of email campaign ideas, you can always repurpose some old content and create content roundups.
You can do this in many ways:
- You can create a roundup of your best content (blog posts, videos, newsletters) from a particular period
- You can create a roundup of the best products for a specific category and offer your recommendations
- You can encourage customers to vote and create top lists of the products and services they liked the most
Many companies and websites do this every year. For example, Goodreads publishes a roundup of the most popular books of the year every December and sends it to its subscribers.
Don't forget to check out our email marketing best practices to make the most of these email campaign ideas.
Email campaign ideas: How can SEINō help boost your marketing efforts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXjes7j4PcY
If you want to improve your email marketing campaigns, it's essential to track their performance and optimize them with the insights you gather. That's where a good email analytics tool like SEINō can do wonders, helping you spot the patterns and see which campaigns convert better.
Here are some of the things we can help you with:
- Segmentation and A/B testing: With SEINō, you can test every element of your campaign (subject line, CTA, visuals etc.) and get real-time insights that will help you optimize your next campaign. You can send two different campaigns to the same audience and compare which one performed better, but you can also send the same email to different audiences or segments and compare how they react.
- Advanced analytics: With SEINō, you can track all your email marketing KPIs in a single dashboard. From metrics such as email bounce rate, open rate, CTR and conversion rate to metrics related to transactional emails such as average order value, revenue per email, total revenue and others.
- Targets and alerts: You can set specific targets for every metric and get real-time alerts about your campaign's performance.
- Campaign benchmarking: You can compare and benchmark multiple campaigns in the same email marketing report to discover what gave you the best results.
- Data explorer: You can visualize all your data in one place through our user-friendly visuals and graphs, making it easier to understand, even if you don't have a lot of experience in email analytics. It's also possible to analyze large data sets very quickly, thanks to our advanced grouping, pivoting and filtering options.
SEINō integrates with most major email marketing platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Deployteq, Selligent, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and many others, so there's no need to switch your current email service provider – consider this as an add-on to enrich your data and get in-depth insights.
Conclusion
We hope you found our email campaign ideas useful. For more tips on all aspects of email marketing, check out our blog.
But the best way to learn what type of content resonates with your audience and converts the most is to constantly test and optimize your email campaigns.
SEINō can help you with segmentation, A/B testing and advanced analytics, uncovering insights, patterns and trends that will help improve your performance and boost your results.
Book a free demo and see what we can do for you.
Email campaign ideas: FAQ
What should an email campaign include? An effective email marketing campaign should include valuable content together with compelling email subject lines, visuals and CTA.
What is an email campaign with an example? An email marketing campaign is an email or a series of emails you send to your target audience with a specific purpose: education, sales, lead nurturing, upsell, cross-sell, re-engagement etc. For example, if you're launching a new product, your email campaign may include teaser emails and sneak peeks, followed by details to boost product familiarity and a final CTA encouraging subscribers to purchase the product.
How can I create an email campaign? To create email campaigns, start by identifying your goals and target audience and create compelling content that resonates with them. If you want to automate your email campaigns or send them to multiple people at the same time, you'll have to use one of the email marketing tools.
How do I come up with email marketing ideas? Keep up with industry news and trends and do a competitive analysis to discover the topics that are currently trending. Analyze the most effective email marketing campaigns you've ever had, and don't hesitate to repurpose the content. Ask your audience for feedback and suggestions.
