At Emplibot, we know that crafting killer marketing emails starts with powerful ideas. That’s why we’ve compiled eight top brainstorming techniques to supercharge your email marketing creativity.
These methods will help you generate fresh concepts, overcome writer’s block, and create emails that truly resonate with your audience. Get ready to transform your email marketing strategy with these innovative brainstorming techniques to write marketing emails.
1. Mind Mapping: Visualize Your Email Ideas
Mind mapping is a powerful visual technique for brainstorming email ideas. Write your main email topic in the center of a blank page or digital canvas. Draw branches to subtopics, and continue branching out with related ideas. This method helps you explore connections between concepts and uncover new angles for your email content. Digital mind mapping tools (like MindMeister or Coggle) offer user-friendly interfaces and collaboration features, which allow you to organize, rearrange, and expand your ideas as they flow.
To transform your mind map into compelling email content, try these steps:
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Focus on main branches as potential subject lines or key sections
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Use smaller offshoots to develop supporting points or calls-to-action
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Identify unexpected connections between branches for unique perspectives
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Keep your audience’s needs and interests at the forefront
With practice, mind mapping will become an invaluable tool in your email marketing arsenal. It will help you generate fresh, engaging content that resonates with your subscribers. Now, let’s explore another powerful brainstorming technique that will take your email ideation to new heights.
2. Rapid Fire Idea Generation with 6-3-5
The 6-3-5 Brainwriting method is a structured brainstorming technique designed to enhance idea generation in groups. Six participants write three ideas in five minutes, producing 108 ideas in just 30 minutes. To apply this to email marketing, gather your team and focus on specific challenges like subject lines, content themes, or call-to-action strategies. The process starts with a clear prompt, such as “Ways to increase email open rates,” and participants let their ideas flow freely.
This technique excels in collaborative settings, fostering diverse perspectives and encouraging equal contribution from all team members. The 6-3-5 method’s strength lies in its speed and volume, bypassing overthinking that often stifles creativity. For email marketers, this results in a wealth of concepts to refine and test. The method also eliminates the dominance of louder voices in traditional brainstorming, ensuring a more balanced ideation process. Teams that implement 6-3-5 regularly maintain a fresh pipeline of ideas, keeping their campaigns innovative and engaging.
To maximize the benefits of this technique, follow these steps:
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Set a clear, specific prompt related to your email marketing goals
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Ensure all participants understand the rules and time constraints
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Encourage wild ideas and discourage criticism during the session
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Review and categorize ideas post-session, identifying promising concepts for further development
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Test the best ideas in your email campaigns and track their performance
Now, let’s explore another powerful brainstorming technique that will help you transform existing concepts into fresh email marketing ideas.
3. SCAMPER Your Way to Fresh Email Ideas
The SCAMPER technique transforms existing email campaigns into fresh, engaging content. SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This method helps you generate ideas for new products and services by encouraging you to ask seven different types of questions. When applied to email marketing, it can yield remarkable results.
To apply SCAMPER to your email campaigns, select an existing email that needs a refresh. Then, work through each element of SCAMPER systematically. Ask questions like: Can we substitute the subject line with a question? How can we combine our promotional offer with a customer story? Could we adapt our call-to-action to be more personalized? The goal is to push beyond usual thinking patterns and discover innovative approaches that resonate with your audience. Try these SCAMPER-inspired ideas in your next email campaign:
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Substitute: Replace text-heavy content with infographics
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Combine: Merge your newsletter with a customer success story
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Adapt: Tailor your email design for mobile devices
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Modify: Change your email frequency based on subscriber preferences
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Put to another use: Repurpose blog content as an email series
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Eliminate: Remove unnecessary links to focus on one clear CTA
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Reverse: Flip your email structure (e.g., CTA at the top)
Now, let’s explore a quieter approach to brainstorming that caters to diverse team dynamics.
4. Brainwriting: Silent Creativity Unleashed
Brainwriting transforms the brainstorming process by prioritizing silent, individual ideation before group discussion. This technique excels for email marketing teams with diverse personalities. To conduct a brainwriting session, give each team member a worksheet to write ideas for email subject lines, content themes, or promotional offers. Set a timer for 10-15 minutes of silent ideation. After the time expires, team members pass their worksheets to the person next to them, who then adds new ideas or builds upon existing ones. Repeat this process 3-4 times.
This method creates a level playing field, allowing introverts and extroverts to contribute equally without the pressure of immediate verbal presentation. It also eliminates groupthink, where early ideas dominate the conversation. The silent nature of brainwriting encourages deeper, more focused thinking, resulting in more refined concepts for email campaigns. After the silent phase, facilitate a group discussion to evaluate and expand on the most promising ideas, ensuring a comprehensive approach to email marketing ideation. This technique sets the stage for our next brainstorming method, which flips conventional thinking on its head.
5. Flip the Script with Reverse Brainstorming
Reverse brainstorming turns traditional problem-solving upside down. Instead of improving email marketing, teams ask how to worsen it. This counterintuitive approach uncovers hidden issues and sparks creative solutions. A major e-commerce company tackled low click-through rates by asking, “How can we ensure nobody clicks our links?” This revealed unclear CTAs and irrelevant offers, which they addressed to boost engagement by 23%.
To implement reverse brainstorming, teams start with a specific email marketing challenge. They flip it to its negative counterpart and generate ideas to achieve that negative outcome. Then, they reverse those ideas to find positive solutions. This technique excels at addressing customer pain points, improving subject lines, and enhancing overall email strategy. The Ridge uses Northbeam to better understand customer journeys, resulting in decreased CAC. They identified ways to confuse new users, which helped them clarify instructions and simplify the onboarding process (a win-win for both the company and its customers).
Reverse brainstorming proves particularly effective for teams stuck in conventional thinking patterns. It forces marketers to view their strategies from new angles, often leading to breakthrough ideas. This unconventional approach sets the stage for our next technique, which uses targeted questions to fuel creativity in email marketing.
6. Starbursting Ignites Email Creativity
Starbursting is a question-centric brainstorming technique that ignites creativity in email marketing. Write your email topic in the center of a star diagram. Add the questions Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How at each point of the star. For each question, generate specific queries related to your email campaign. This method ensures comprehensive coverage of all aspects of your email strategy.
To create compelling content from starbursting responses, prioritize the most insightful questions and answers. Use these to craft attention-grabbing subject lines, personalized content, and strong calls-to-action. The key to starbursting success lies in asking probing, specific questions that challenge assumptions and uncover new perspectives on your email marketing approach. Try this technique to refine your email strategy.
Starbursting proves particularly effective for teams stuck in conventional thinking patterns. It forces marketers to view their strategies from new angles, often leading to breakthrough ideas. This question-driven approach sets the stage for our next technique, which uses unexpected word combinations to fuel creativity in email marketing.
7. Spark Creativity with Random Word Association
Random word association injects fresh perspectives into email marketing brainstorms. Use online random word generators to produce unexpected terms, then challenge your team to connect these words to your email campaign objectives. This technique breaks conventional thinking patterns and uncovers unique angles for your email marketing strategy. For example, the word “telescope” could inspire an email campaign about “zooming in” on customer benefits or “expanding your vision” with your offering.
To maximize results, set a timer for 5-10 minutes per word and try to generate as many ideas as possible. Encourage wild ideas and avoid criticism during the process. After generating a pool of concepts, evaluate and refine the most promising ones. Apply this method to various email elements:
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Subject lines
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Content themes
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Call-to-action phrases
This technique proves particularly effective for teams stuck in conventional thinking patterns. It forces marketers to view their strategies from new angles, often leading to breakthrough ideas. The next technique we’ll explore takes creativity a step further by putting you directly in your audience’s shoes.
8. Step into Your Audience’s Shoes with Roleplay Brainstorming
Roleplay brainstorming transforms email marketing by immersing your team in the customer’s perspective. Set up scenarios that mirror your target audience’s daily challenges and aspirations. For example, a fitness equipment company might roleplay a busy professional who struggles to find time for exercise. This exercise uncovers pain points and desires that fuel compelling email content. Empathy-driven brainstorming can lead to more resonant messaging.
To translate roleplay insights into engaging emails, focus on the emotions and motivations you uncover during the exercise. Craft subject lines that speak directly to these feelings, and structure your email content to address specific pain points you identify. Use language and tone that matches your audience’s mindset, and offer solutions that align with their goals. Test different approaches based on your roleplay findings to optimize your email performance over time. Consider these elements when crafting your emails:
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Subject lines that resonate with audience emotions
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Content that addresses specific pain points
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Solutions tailored to audience goals
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Language and tone that mirror your audience’s mindset
This roleplay technique helps you create emails that truly connect with your subscribers. As you master this method, you’ll find yourself naturally thinking from your audience’s perspective, leading to more effective email marketing campaigns overall.
Final Thoughts
These brainstorming techniques to write marketing emails offer a wealth of creative potential. Each approach brings unique strengths to your email marketing strategy, unlocking fresh perspectives and innovative ideas that resonate with your audience. You can combine these methods to maximize your creative output (e.g., start with mind mapping, then use the 6-3-5 method for specific ideas).
We encourage you to experiment with these techniques and find the perfect fit for your team. You’ll likely see a marked improvement in the quality and effectiveness of your email campaigns as you implement these methods. Your innovative ideas will help you break free from conventional thinking patterns and discover new ways to engage your subscribers.
For businesses looking to streamline their content marketing efforts, Emplibot offers an automated solution that handles keyword research, content creation, and distribution. This powerful tool can complement your brainstorming efforts. You’ll be well-equipped to create compelling, engaging marketing emails that drive results with these techniques and the right tools.
