If you are just starting out in email marketing then you will not have the most valuable asset available to you: data. A lack of details on your individual subscribers lowers the effectiveness of your email marketing software. The good news, and it is very good, is that you soon start to build information. Your problem though is what to do in the meantime.
Your subscribers have shown an interest in your products, so much so that they have shared their email addresses with you. You do not want to irritate them but your problem is that you do not know enough about them to be able to tailor your offer specifically to them. Keep sending them emails they are not interested in is the best way to get them to unsubscribe.
Much will depend on your product of course but let us look at, for instance, wine sales. You need to tell your email marketing software whether a new subscriber prefers red, white, or has no preferences. You have a choice of offering them cases of wine but at the moment you do not know which to pick.
The general advice is that you should limit your emails to one main offer and experience shows that this is the best option. However, there are always exceptions. If we know little about a subscriber then any specific offer may well have no interest for them so this is one of the exceptions that, whilst it might not prove the rule, makes it obvious why we are ignoring it.
We want to get information on new customers so that we can use our email marketing software to target them. The first few emails should have the joint purpose of selling and gaining information. A good way of fulfilling both these needs is to have a, albeit restricted, number of offers in an email.
This does not mean that you should stick everything you have on your shelves all in one sort of bumper bundle pack and leave the subscriber to sort through them. Whilst we are breaking a rule its purpose should be considered all the way through.
If we return to the wine sales, otherwise identical boxes of red, white, and a mixture of both can be included in the same email. An introductory paragraph extolling the virtues of all your wines and the specific attraction of those displayed would unify the various offers and that would, to an extent, limit the clutter.
Further, the design of the email should make it look as if it was just one offer. Different landing pages for each individual item would bring in further specific information for your email marketing software.
If the product merits, it also includes the possibility of ordering two or all three items. The data retrieved from this one marketing email will be an invaluable start.
One of the good things about email marketing is that everyone starts at the beginning. Whenever a new subscriber comes on board they are all but transparent as they have little detail for the email marketing software to work on. Given the specifics, with new subscribers, an occasional sacred cow can be ignored.