The first thing I looked for was contacts when I started up. If, during the first week or so, an e-mail went to the individual when a message was sent to them or activity happened like looting, this could quickly give the new player a better sense of the timeing of what was going on as well as acting as a catalyst to remind them of the game. Of course this assumes they check their e-mails more often than they check the game. Perhaps twitter or facebook posts might be better for some.
Yup, there could be something here. I'd say potential things to e-mail about would be: private messages, mentoring messages, oath offers, army assignment, messages from your liege (even realm-wide ones, maybe, because lieges matter), orders, turn warnings (the sun will set in 1 hour), turn reports (during the day/last night, this happened:). I would rather them not to have the message contents in them (except maybe oath offers and army assignments, with a link to go check it out), for people to go read them in game.
Some of them, I'd signup for myself even today (PMs, orders). Looting and other activities that can happen too many times during a turn would potentially spam someone's inbox, and would probably annoy more than do good.
