With the New Year well underway, you may be looking for fresh ideas to keep your 2018 email campaigns interesting to your prospects and customers -- and successful for your business. Here are my six top suggestions for creative campaign ideas that your audience will love:

1. Extend special offers to warm leads: The beginning of the year is always an ideal time for your prospects to reset their business strategies. This includes taking advantage of new tools or services that will help them be more efficient, profitable or successful. Along these lines, did you have any product or service discounts or offers in play at the end of 2017 that might be worth revisiting? If these offers have expired, perhaps your prospects were too busy to convert on them during the holidays. Think about an email campaign directed at an exclusive list, such as the warm leads in your pipeline, that focuses on extending those deadlines.

2.Send a letter from your CEO: Sometimes a simple “thank you” message from your leader can go a long way toward making your customers or audience feel appreciated. This type of message serves to build loyalty and trust. Perhaps your CEO can thank your customers for making 2017 so successful -- while also targeting warm prospects -- to inform both groups about a new initiative or campaign that might serve them well in the New Year. Keep the message appreciative (and not salesy) and the design simple.

3. Look ahead to what’s next: With the hectic holidays now behind us, many of your targets haven’t had a chance to think about what’s coming up. Remind them of upcoming webinars, events, conferences and product news, and help them plan out their year. Encourage them to plan ahead or register early, with a goal of getting on their calendars.
4. Get creative with tie-ins: A good way to capture your audience’s attention is to play off of popular holidays and important dates with your email campaigns. With your content, find fun and creative ways to tie your company mission or offerings into these holiday themes. Examples include Groundhog Day (Feb. 12), Mardi Gras (Feb. 13), Valentine’s Day (February 14), President’s Day (Feb. 19), Academy Awards (March 4), St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), Easter (April 1), Income Tax Due Date (April 15), or Earth Day (April 22).
5. Promote your other channels: While the majority (61%) of people prefer to hear from businesses via email, you can create additional touch points and nurture additional engagement for your brand by encouraging your prospects to check out your other channels, such as your social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn) pages, apps or video (YouTube) content. Be sure that wherever you direct them, the content is fresh and updated. You may wish to time this campaign with a social media contest or a new video to add greater interest. Remember, email often works best when used in concert with other brand touch points.

6.Check-in on your prospects: The first quarter of a new year is an ideal time to send a re-engagement email campaign. Check-in with prospects or subscribers who haven’t clicked or engaged with your brand in a while. Do they no longer wish to hear from you? If not (or no response), move them to an inactive list. You’ll not only improve the quality of your list and associated campaign results for the rest of the year, but also improve your sender reputation with internet service providers (ISPs).

It’s important for marketers to not get complacent or trot out the same messages year to year. Dedicate yourself to staying fresh, creative and interesting, and your audience will almost certainly appreciate this and respond in kind. Have an interesting or unique campaign idea for 2018? Tell us about it!

Outward Media’s accurate, targeted email data can help you achieve better email marketing ROI and convert more prospects into customers. Take a look at our case studies to find out more.