I have an idea for you to engage with your clients and prospects this time of year – send them a year-in-review email.

An effective year-in-review email strengthens confidence in your business, shows your growth while reinforcing your market position.

Think of your year-in-review email like an annual review of your company’s top highlights over the past year and a recap of your best blog posts, articles, webinars and other client-centric content.

Many brands use an annual report to brag about their successes, and that’s why they fall flat.

You’ll have so much more engagement if you keep the content client centric and not boastful.

This is not the place to tout your rankings or brag about why you are the best. Always ask yourself “why would my audience care about this piece of content?” “does it educate or help them?” and if you can’t answer that, omit it.

• If you provide a product solution, use the email to remind your audience how much your product or service helped them achieve success and inspires them to accomplish even more next year.

• You can also share stats and facts that show milestones and how you’ve grown, such as: reached x customers, welcomed x new team members, opened a new location, moved to a bigger office, product and partnership launches, mergers, anniversaries, a rebrand or lateral growth. You can also highlight specific clients. Just avoid vanity metrics.

• Take a look at your behavioral data and identify trends within your audience, like top-selling products, most popular blog posts and client alerts, most shared social media posts, etc.

• Consider recapping some top stories or interesting stats of the year in your industry and for each one, share a brief reflection, action you took or a relevant tip.

• You can also look ahead to 2022 – discuss industry trends, highlight upcoming 2022 events or upcoming launches.

• Add personalization, if possible – pull stats unique to each customer and incorporate into the content.

• At the end of the email, thank your readers and make it easy for them to share the content with others.

• Create a call to action depending on your business goals. Drive readers back to your website, promote sign-ups for your newsletter or encourage following your social channels.

Year-in-review emails are great for generating leads and conversions, engaging your audience, and retaining clients and are often overlooked.