Although not new, email marketing is considered one of the most effective marketing tools. Still, this tool requires a sound approach and an ability to find the right balance between letting your contacts forget about you and being overly intrusive.

Sometimes, companies create email campaigns only to inform people about the sales or discounts they offer. More than that, they initiate sales and discounts to have a viable reason to reach out to the audience. Such an approach is flawed for a number of reasons. First, people don’t like it if you only want to sell your product or service to them. Second, constant sales might send a negative message about the product, as if you are ready to give away half of the price, your product is either not worth the full price or no one wants to buy it. Last but not least, overlooking other topics, you miss the opportunity to establish closer relationships with your subscribers who might otherwise see the value and human face of your company from your emails.

Our Virtual Assistants have decided to help you brainstorm ideas for your email campaigns so that you leverage all the benefits it can bring. Here are the top twelve ideas we recommend to use:

1. Share the recent blog post with few words about why it is topical and useful;
2. Tell about the post, which has been read the most times or has received the most comments;
3. Share statistics or infographics about the content you have provided (how many posts have been written, how many topics have been covered, how many people have read the posts, how many likes and shares the content has received, etc.);
4. Present a list of the most helpful posts on a particular topic;
5. Share a survey to find out what people like about your blog/product/service or ask them to vote for what they want to read or how you can improve your product/service;
6. Share the insight into the history of your company or create a chart with the milestones you have reached so far;
7. Include a personal message from a CEO or tell how you understand and implement your mission statement;
8. Tell about nominations you have been awarded, your participation in thematic conferences, articles about your company, etc.;
9. Share a how-to video or give tips on how to leverage all the available features/benefits of the product/service;
10. Present use cases and success stories;
11. Share customer feedback or experts’ reviews.

Of course, your marketing campaigns will depend on your specialisation, company size and the relationships you have established with your mailing contacts (specifically, whether you target a cold audience with little knowledge about your company or your long-term trusted partners). Still, it means that you should look for the right content, not skip email marketing overall. After all, you do remember about the rule of seven touches, right?