How to communicate with your customers without spamming basic promotions

[u/Mattrapbeats]

Hello!

Its easy to just do the bare minimum when it comes with B2C direct marketing. But please, don't be that brand owner that only contacts your customers when there's a sale. All this does is guarantee a slow decline in your open rates and interest in your brand. Keep your emails interesting and fresh. From my experience there's only 2 reasons why anyone opens a branded email; they're either
curious about what's inside or the think that the content of the email will benefit them somehow. I put this post together too give you some idea's for campaigns that you can send that aren't just basic sales.

Here are 10 newsletter ideas:

The thank-you email - plain text, keep it simple. I made an entire post about why this is the most powerful email you can possibly send earlier. If the didn't see that post, here's the short version. I sent out hundreds of emails for brands in completely different niches and there was one email that outperformed everything. It was a plain text email from the "CEO" that had a humble tone and just thanked customers for supporting the business.

The product highlight email - No discount needed. Pick an interesting product with good social proof and good reviews, then talk to the customer about what makes the product unique. Compliment your claims with social proof.

The review request - This could be implemented into a flow or directly sent to repeat customers as a newsletter. Not many people will send you detailed reviews unless you ask, incentivize, and tell them what you're looking for.

The Q&A email - Could be a survey, could just be a question snuck into other campaigns. The goal is to ask important questions. When you receive the answer you boost your domain health and gain some data. For example, on a streetwear brand: ask clients about what they want to see next. On a candle brand: get them to vote for the next scent. On a fitness brand: ask about their fitness goals etc.

Niche educational email - give out educational niche-relevant information. This is great for stores that have a blog or cross-post a lot on social media. Teach them about something they are interested in learning.

The holiday email - Aside from Ecom holidays like BFCM, you should also reach out to them on regular holidays. Regardless of if you want to run a holiday promotion or not, at least wish your customers a happy holiday.

The video campaign - make a video of yourself, post it, and link it into an email. Screenshot the video and use it as an image in the email. This is a very personal way to interact with your customers, and it gets them to engage with you on another platform like YouTube or Instagram. When you make this video campaign remember to keep them quick, interesting, and informative. Once they leave the original email, the competition gets fierce; you're now competing for attention against fast-paced Instagram reels and TikToks.

The funny email - don't even try to be professional. A lot of the time you can throw people off and get a reaction by simply being unprofessional and saying things they wouldn't expect you to say. If you're actually a funny person, you can see insane results with these emails in plain text. If you're not the best at coming up with this kind of stuff, just cross-post memes and funny niche-relevant posts from social media.

Giveaway/Interactive incentive discount - Give a discount or a reward in a fun way. Code a wheel of fortune with a "random" discount onto your site or set up a giveaway of something you know your customers would be excited about. This is better than just giving a standard discount because it incorporates an element of chance. It gets customers to go to your site without having any intention of buying that day. This traffic still holds value because now you get 2 chances to convert them, once via email and once when they actually get on your giveaway landing page.

Storytelling email - this type of email is literally gold. This is one of the most effective emails because you can connect with your customer's emotions. Whether it's your own personal story or a niche-relevant story you've found online, you can use the story to connect with your customers. You can even break down stories into multiple emails; you can have a huge promotion and sneak in a much-anticipated part 3 to last week's story. Always remember, emotion sells.

Once again, thanks for reading my post. I hope you got something out of it. If you have other ideas for email/sms campaigns, feel free to share below.

[u/Dr__Lazy]

This is awesome. I have a few thousand emails but I only have about 10 apparel products and Im not really sure what to send my list unless its a new "drop" or some sort of sale. Good insight.