What ploys have you seen companies do to try to get you to come back to their sites?

Myself I've seen:
1. Site Contests
2. Birthday Reminders
3. "Reset Your Password" items which include "We hope to see you soon" and a prominent link at the bottom.
4. "We haven't seen you" mailers.

Gee, I don't do anything and I probably should. So I'll be interested to see what others have done too.

The birthday emails for 7.2 will be good.

I've seen others use 1 + 4. I'm going to start using 2 on my forum.

new version

Birthday messages will be great

I send emails out about once every 3 or 4 months.

It would be nice also to have some sort of detection on the site that would prompt people to post if they haven't posted in say 2 months and would show a box at the top of the page encouraging them to post

I used to with cassic and HTML e-mails
send out a news letter Every month.

Funny

I send out a newsletter every month - I wonder how many bin it without reading...?

Not sure what you mean by "Reset Your Password" items

E-mails are only any good if the users keep their e-mail addresses up-to-date.

I have registered users that have e-mail accounts with ISPs that don't even exist anymore.

98% lol

But i use it in a sales pitch, sounds good that a sponsor
is getting 1k e-mails going out to local members.

It's an opt-in newsletter - but still, I know I don't read half of the ones I subscribe to. (Obviously spending too much time in here, recently )

But you're correct on the sales pitch - I use it also