The Gist: Too many marketers stay out of their subscribers' inboxes unless they're promoting something. Don't be that person - here are some email newsletter ideas to stay in better touch!
When it comes to email marketing content, everybody and their best friend is talking about launch emails and sales funnels.
And yes, they’re important for closing the deal.
But email marketing is SO much more than that.
How can you send out email content consistently, without selling all the time or talking about nothing? With email newsletters, and I love them. 😍
So today we’re talking all about email newsletter ideas so that you can stop ghosting your subscribers until you want them to buy something. 👻
Watch the video
Why send email newsletters?
Expert after expert always says, “the money’s in the list.” If I had a dollar for every person who said that, I wouldn’t even need email marketing.
But so much of the advice out there is about selling to your email list, not nurturing it.
And you know you can’t just email them when you have something to sell. You need to stay in touch consistently. So what do you the rest of the time?
Here are eight email newsletter ideas for online B2B businesses that you can get started with.
Too many marketers stay out of their subscribers' inboxes unless they're promoting something. Don't be that person - here are some email newsletter ideas to stay in better touch!
8 newsletter ideas to keep in consistent contact with your audience
1. New content announcements
Let’s start simple. The first thing that you can send emails about is any new content, anywhere.
New blog posts, podcasts, infographics, YouTube videos…anything.
Whenever you publish new content somewhere else, your subscribers need to know about it.
With this repurposing tactic, there are two popular approaches:
- Send a conversational story email relating to the main content topic, linking out to that main piece at the end.
- Repurpose the introduction or part of the full content and put that as the email copy, linking out to the main piece at the end.
The best option for you will depend on your content, your audience, your brand voice, and more.
Try both and see what works!
Plan your perfect repurposing strategy
Download my free content repurposing planning worksheet to figure out the most strategic and intentional way to reuse and recycle your content.
2. Answer frequently asked questions
The next idea is to use emails to address frequently asked questions. This works both to stay in touch with them between promotional emails, and more importantly, answer questions that’ll need to be addressed before someone buys.
Again, there’s multiple approaches, so you can do what works for you.
One option is to use newsletters as sort of advice column to address a different FAQ each week. This is a great way to build up your website FAQ or help section a week at a time, while creating email content while you're at it.
Another approach is to send one newsletter now and then addressing a bunch of questions around a theme, or recent questions, or something like that.
3. Curate a link roundup
Your third email content idea is a curated link round-up, and it’s one of my favorite ways to run a newsletter. This is what I do 99% of the time with the newsletter in my other business, Work Brighter.
You can curate a handful of content, either your own, published by someone else, or a mix of both. Then throw them together and add a few comments to add context, your opinion, or other notes.
That last piece is important: curation can be tricky. You need to give people a reason to get content recommendations from you and not just go straight to the source.
The context you add is how you do that.
4. Share a teachable moment
And my fourth email content idea is sharing a teachable moment.
Think back to a moment from your week or month, any part of it, and tie it back to a lesson that’s related to your niche or industry.
This is just like when I spend the weekend binge watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and then send an email to my list about business lessons from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
It’s a great way to mine your life outside of work for ideas, because to paraphrase Nora Ephron, everything is content
5. Remind subscribers about an event
Another idea is that you can share information about an upcoming event, either online or IRL.
So if you’re hosting an upcoming webinar, a workshop in person, a networking event, or whatever, use your newsletter to give them one more nudge to show up.
6. Go behind-the-scenes of your business
The sixth newsletter topic idea is going behind the scenes into a specific project or process in your business. Subscribers LOOOOVE a good peek behind the curtain.
Pick anything you’re working on right now, and share part of it with your audience.
This could be giving a sneak peek of a work in progress, reflecting on a recent project or campaign, or sharing how you do things to some at your expertise.
For example, in this post I talk about how I remix content in my own business since I'm always talking about how you can do it in yours.
7. Pass the mic with social proof
Next, you can always share a good testimonial or highlight from your portfolio. Gotta love that social proof!
This is a great way to remind subscribers that, yeah, you’re good. 
But without actually saying it.
Either someone else is saying it for you and you’re quoting them, or you're showing them work that makes them say it themselves.
8. Ask for a reply
And finally, if you’re really, really convinced that you have nothing to say...fine. I still don’t believe you, but it’s okay.
Because there’s still a great option that doesn’t require any creativity on your part:
Shut up and let your subscribers talk.
Just send a super short and quick email asking them one question that’s very specific to what they’re struggling with right now. And ask for a direct reply.
Then sit and wait for the audience feedback and voice of customer data to start rolling in.
This will give you amazing insight into your audience and who is actually engaging with your emails.
Plan your perfect repurposing strategy
Download my free content repurposing planning worksheet to figure out the most strategic and intentional way to reuse and recycle your content.
