Today I want to dive deep on email content ideas.

You’re not into making excuses, are you? You take ownership for your business, and you take responsibility for your success! The #1 difference between entrepreneurs and everybody else, in my opinion, is that when you read this statement…

…you are excited, not terrified.

But, maybe you aren’t achieving the results you desire in your business yet.

I believe that email marketing is the most under-utilized marketing tool for small businesses. And I don’t want to see you leaving money on the table because you haven’t invested in this programming for yourself.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the top 3 excuses business owners make for why they haven’t started an email marketing program. Last week, I shared my #1 time-saving tip for email production. I’m excited to be diving deeper with this post into excuse #2:

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

If you sit down to write your email campaign and draw a blank, this post is for you. I’m sharing three basic email themes that I hope will inspire you and get those words a’flowin!

Email Content Idea #1: The Roundup

This is my jam, y’all! My email program value statement is “Tips, tools and resources to help email marketing suck less.”

And my every-other-Friday email is a “round-up” featuring recent blog content that might help you, resources like cheat sheets and swipe files, business inspiration from podcasts or books I’ve consumed recently, and a reminder to check in with me on the socials for my free Friday lunch hour training.

I’m not producing a ton of original content every time I write my email campaigns. I’m serving up a highlight reel, teasing out what you’ll get from each resource, and linking to the content with a call to action to dive deeper.

If you’re already producing regular blog content, or video content, or a podcast, shoot, even if you’re just posting pretty regularly on social media, the round-up is a great email content idea for you!

But Erica, this email content idea is just regurgitating my other content.

You might say that if you believe your subscribers follow you in all the places, and see all the things you share there. But do they?

Your social media posts are hitting a teeny tiny fraction of the people who want to engage with you (some say as little as 3%!). Average email open rates are more like 20%. Don’t assume your subscribers have seen it already. Help them find the valuable content you’re already producing with your weekly round-up email.

Email Content Idea #2: The personal letter

The personal letter is an opportunity to sit down and write as if you’re writing to a close friend who needs your inspiration and advice. It’s an opportunity to share your heart and serve your subscribers in a truly personal and profound way.

Jenna Kutcher is the queen of this one, and if you aren’t already fanning hard on her, please, check her out.

Why embrace this email content idea?

It’s not for every business, or brand, but I’ll tell you what I love about it.

The personal letter is so much different than what most of us are used to seeing in our inbox from businesses. We get the postcard with a giant % discount, or the look-book of top spring fashions. Email marketers have been thinking everybody’s attention spans are less than nanoseconds and that the only way to engage with people is through pretty pictures and flashy discounts.

So when I open an email from a business, and it’s almost like letterhead? That disrupts my day! I’m no longer glazing over, endlessly scrolling. And if the email content is able to hook me from the start, I’m going to read all the way to the finish.

Who should consider the personal letter?

Businesses with a person behind them. OH WAIT that’s literally any business. Who are the personalities behind your business, service, product? What words are on their heart that could bring value to the people who have opted in to hear from you? How can you encourage, coach, motivate and inspire?

It’s a harder route to go, but you just might find it is the most effective way to engage with the customers who have grown to know, like, and trust you and your business.

Email Content Idea #3: The Hero’s Journey

DAMN, I love a good story. And email campaigns (and more specifically, email series) are a wonderful place to consider injecting storytelling art.

Donald Miller has an entire book about this and how storytelling art is the most effective marketing, so please go buy Building a Storybrand.

I don’t get a cut of that, by the way. It’s just a terrific book, and I want you to have it.

Here’s an awesome way you could take storytelling art and create an email campaign or email series around it.

Email 1: Set the stage

Introduce the hero of your story, a hero who is a lot like your ideal customer. The hero has goals and dreams, but encounters a conflict.

–TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO LEARN HOW HERO SAVES THE DAY —

Email 2: Introduce the guide

The guide is you.

You are not the hero of your business. Your customer is the hero and you are the guide who helps the hero overcome the conflict. In this part of the story, you introduce yourself to the story and outline how you empowered the hero with the tools, resources, product, whatever they needed to defeat the conflict we introduced in email #1.

–TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO SEE HOW OUR HERO TRANSFORMS–

Email 3: the transformation

Armed with your product or service, our hero is a new person! What does life look like for the hero, now that they’ve overcome their conflict? Paint the picture vividly here, and your subscribers will start imagining their own life being transformed in this way.

Email 4: extend a call to action

Invite your subscribers to be the hero of their own story. Give them a specific action they can take right now to move them towards their transformation. That could be a discovery call with you, or a product you sell.

This is such a compelling way to share client testimonials, too. I love the hero’s journey email series for lead capture and nurture! You can just as easily create a series that spans an entire quarter as you lead up to a product or service launch. So many ways to use this one… make it your own and have fun telling your customers’ hero stories!

Summin’ it up

If you draw a blank coming up with content for your email campaigns, please borrow inspiration from some of the email content idea themes I shared today.

Sit down right now with a pen and paper and write 3 email ideas you could create from each of the themes I shared today. DO IT.

That’s 9 months of email marketing content if you only email once per month. And if these didn’t resonate with you, my spirit animal, Amy Porterfield, shared a TON of ways to fill in your marketing calendar on her podcast back in February. Check that out.

Love where this is headed, but still coming up empty? Get email content ideas from my monthly inspo posts!

Next week I’m putting the spotlight on July, so make sure you tune in for hashtag holidays, seasonal mindset themes, and authentic ways for you to show up ad serve your subscribers in the month of July.