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Make these New Year’s 2023 email resolutions stick

email ideas

Holiday hangover? Well, toughen up because right now some upstart is working on their New Year’s email ideas and resolutions. And one of them is to steal your subscribers. Egad!

I’ve got your back and I own two keyboards and one bayonet. So let’s keep your subscribers focused on your email campaigns and keep their eyes off the competition in their inbox.

We are about to lay out how to plan campaigns for the New Year. Including newsletter ideas, ways to amp up promotional emails, lead generation options, and more. 

2023 Planning Stage

Why do New Year’s resolutions fail? Because instead of actionable, doable plans, people take on mission impossible.

Nobody is going from sofa to a two-hour workout 4x a week. Yet, anybody can go to the gym 30 days straight if that’s the sole goal – walk in the gym doors. 1-minute is as good as 60 when building a habit.

Keep this in mind when planning 2023’s email campaigns. Grand plans often fail. Grand goals are great, but easy-to-implement plans get you there. Simple plans can fail. But failing is fine and way better than giving up on the plan because it overwhelmed you.

New Year’s Newsletter Email Ideas

Thanks to Constant Contact for sparking this post, btw. They even have a list of January holidays to prompt your brain with email ideas and content. But my advice, if you make the wise decision to use a content calendar? Kill your darlings…

Be willing to scribble out less important items (crap). You’ll never get to all the items on a content calendar – or any calendar. Rank your content ideas when you need to weed something out. Weed out weak ideas – in case that wasn’t clear.🤐

Below is a list of ideas to include in your newsletter in 2023:

  • Weird holidays like Constant Contact mentioned are an easy go-to
  • Section highlighting “best of” prior newsletters
  • Audio version of written newsletter – Bot voice artists work free
  • Question of the Day section – get email replies, give direct advice
  • AMP surveys (read about AMP technology)
  • Regular contests (Small budget? Source freebies / use partnerships)
  • Interview-a-subscriber section (who they are, what they do) – find cool people😎
  • How-to section where customers show how your product makes their job / life easier
  • Good News Section (tip, bury the lead until the end, else good news goes unread)
  • Constant Contact idea – Create positive news for your campaigns. Ex. Partner up to raise funds for a local nonprofit
  • Comic drawing – to illustrate concepts, use cases for your products

Those should warm up your audience for promotional emails…

2023 Promotional Email Ideas

Promotional emails can be just as welcomed as newsletters. How? Personalize the message and offer something that matters to the reader. Combine those two things and you have a winning email idea ready to land in inboxes.

Example: “Dana Jones” is your most consistent customer. She’s worth a closer look. Her IG may reveal she serves as a K9 rescue. A promo email with a PS that you’re donating to your local shelter will be appreciated by one of your biggest fans.

What would ten personalized promotions do for your organization? How about 50?

More promotional email ideas for 2023:

  • Use more than one CTA button
  • Use CTA early in emails
  • Is your PS worth writing a PS? Make sure.
  • Use simpler designs for max clarity
  • Test AMP for booking meetings and demos
  • Create a loss-leader product
email ideas

Moving on to promotion without selling.

Hello Emails

Guess who wants to open your emails even if it’s not full of knowledge or offering a cool discount? Your most engaged subscribers.

It’s ok to shoot them an email saying hello. Asking them what’s happening in their business.

How do you think semi-famous creators all seem to know each other? Gretchen Rubin may not have emailed Chris Guillebeau to start a friendship, but there was an outreach of some kind. It was probably a personal one.

Saying hi is easy, effective, and if it’s wrong, I don’t wanna be right. (and I love being right 😋)

Getting Replies

How great is it when a fan, follower, or subscriber replies to something you talked about in your newsletter? I like it… even when Gina in Indiana emails me 7 days a week.

Sure, a reply is a little boost to your deliverability. But email is still a tool for communication. And communication is part of a relationship, or did I miss that memo?

AMP email interactivity excites me – but someone can hit “reply” just as easily.

Ideas for getting more replies:

inbox mailers demo triggered emails

Demo Inbox Mailers for up to 70% open rates and improved deliverability

Without cheating, hit reply if you know what the rhyme-as-reason effect is (psychology / marketing)

Closing in on the wrap-up…

More Readers → Lead Gen Ideas

email ideas

(((Another newsletter idea to test is super-concise sections)))

Old school vs. New School Lead Gen

Get your first (or next) 10 leads

1-option landing page example

Incentivize word-of-mouth leads

CRM Notes / Greeting Cards via The Greatest Salesman

2023 Email Ideas Wrap Up 

New year, new angles for your email campaigns. Nothing can stop you except writer’s block and forgetting to give the audience what they want. 

Coming up with content won’t be a problem if you use holiday dates, news items, and events as seeds for newsletter ideas. Use analytics and CRM notes (write & read notes) to constantly get to know your customers and subscribers better. 

Oh, and as you implement new campaign plans for 2023, don’t forget to look back. Take what worked best in 2022 into the new year with you.

Knowledge Base

Knowledge isn’t power without motivation but a laugh helps when getting back on the hamster wheel after holidays.

How to get leads via YouTube – (skip down to article’s “Funnel” section).

15 lead generation techniques (my 2 favs → personalized forms like this and giveaways).

Do your New Year’s marketing campaigns include your “Best of 2022” offers? See AWeber’s tips + watch ESPN’s year-end top-10s for how to do “highlights.”

Self  Help 

This Washington Post article didn’t do email marketers any favors.

Or did it?

The story highlighted the onslaught of holiday shopping email campaigns. 

Brands mentioned in the story were too embarrassed to comment on the metric ton of emails they blasted recently (Bath & Body Works, so dirty).

One interviewee had 86 promotional emails land in her inbox during her 25-minute drive to work!

Another shopper loved a wallet he bought but then developed a hatred for the brand after getting two emails a day from the company afterward.

This guy also noted endless wallet ads in his social feeds.

He should call the cops on the person forcing him to look at social media all day.🤐

The main point is this though. Don’t bug subscribers with meaningless messages. 

Especially during the busiest time for emails. 

Customers don’t need 4 updates on shipping!

Make your email sends count. Like Amazon does.

A survey showed Amazon sent the most commercial emails but customers welcomed those since the messages were personalized and had good news (like tiny refunds, 71 cents in one case).

71 cents means little but is more valuable than a made-up reason to update a buyer about shipments.

*Shout-out to Inbox Hacking Subscribers → Hannah @ Hfalliance (marketing) & Brooke @ Conway (Chamber of Commerce)

Facts & Stats  

  • CRM survey 44% of users estimate poor data quality costs their company 10% of annual revenue
  • 75% of CRM users fabricate data to tell the story they want decision-makers to hear
  • Salesforce expects about 13% of the 1.4 billion online holiday orders will be returned

*Pre Inbox Mailers Quote Circa 1980… “Best time to jump multiple buses? After you’ve met your insurance deductible.” ~ Billy ‘Bones’ Jones (Evel Knievel’s Chiropractor)

Marketing Musings

Cutting out the noise.

You try to do it every day I bet.

And fail like I do.

Still, little things here and there help, right?

Little hacks help protect your time and become integrated into your life to avoid death by information.

It’s not just you and me.

Your subscribers are looking for ways to drown out the noise also.

Help them protect their time… and minds.

Why? They’ll stay subscribed to your emails when they get in the mood to drown the noise in their inbox.

2 tools to cut noise and clarify your messages:

  1. Writer’s Diet
  2. Hemingway App

Get Hacking

Today’s the day you rid your list of duplicates. Two Jim Shadys are jacking up your customer service, marketing, and sales opportunities with the real Jim Shady. 

Duplicate contacts are a problem for anyone with an email list, big or small. One-person operations get slowed down by duplicates. Larger brands risk team members having no idea which data set is the one they should use, so they guess. 

Plus, when you send two emails to one person, they won’t open both. That hurts your open rates. Please stand up, delete the duplicate Jim Shady and other duplicate contacts. 

Don’t have duplicates? ALT hack → improve the weakest email in your automated series. Change the subject line in the email with the lowest open rate.

Get going, don’t wait on me to prompt you with a bayonet or something!

PS: Here’s how to implement Inbox Mailers with your ESP

📝Please click on the quick survey below. I’m not allowed to bribe anyone btw 😔