Somewhere deep in the dusty corridors of an ancient Aweber account...
Covered in cobwebs and left to rot...
Are some of my very early email newsletters that I wrote to my StoryLearning list.
Emails about language learning... written in 2013.
I still have those emails, you know.
And when I look back at them today, I think two things:
First: "Aww... how cute!"
Second: "WTF were you playing at!??!"
It's obvious to me that I was trying hard to be "helpful and nice". But it's also obvious that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with email.
The proof of this was when I launched my first product.
The first time I ever sold anything to my list.
And I remember clearly the first reply I got:
"I'm unsubscribing! I'm going to follow a proper language learning blog!"
My big lesson?
If you send the wrong emails, you can build a big list of people who will never buy a thing from you, and will even get offended when you try to sell something.
Luckily, I picked myself up and dusted myself off.
Then, I set about spending the next 10+ year learning to write an email newsletter that builds an audience of buyers.
And today, I wanted to give you 17 specific tips to write in a way that creates a readership full of people who understand what you've got, and want it bad:
- Only cover one main concept in each email (a short email with a specific takeaway is better and more memorable)
- Demonstrate, don’t explain
- Tell stories, don’t teach
- Write to a specific person with a specific problem at all times
- Break up the text on the screen with short sentences, line breaks, bullet lists etc to make it easy to read
- Send more emails. (3-4 /wk is ideal, daily is even better)
- Know your USP and reference it throughout your writing
- Before sending, send yourself a preview email and read it on your mobile (that's how most people will consume it)
- Use images to help the reader visualise the transformation you offer with your product
- Write to the level of an 8-year-old (Seriously... it's much easier to consume information on a screen when you're not wading through Shakespeare.)
- Give copious examples of what you teach (from yourself and others)
- Whatever quirks, hobbies, idiosyncrasies you have -- use them in your writing! (Don't suppress them)
- Relate everything back to your proprietary system or method
- Routine point people to your other content online (e.g. YouTube videos) -- it builds trust fast
- Talk about your personal life. (It makes you real)
- Write the most fun, outrageous subject lines you can
- Dial up your personality to 11 (Be 2X the person you are in real life.)
There's a lot more than 17 things to get right in email, obviously.
But this'll get you started.
Namaste,
Olly