What Should I Say in My Email Marketing?
“I Feel Like I Never Know What to Write…”
Do you have a hard time figuring out when you should email your list, or what you should say? A few people have written to me because they’re struggling with exactly this.
Do you have a hard time figuring out when you should email your list, or what you should say? A few people have written to me because they’re struggling with exactly this.
We’ll go over 3 hard and fast rules for why you should send an email to your list. Using these rules as a guide will help you write emails that really connect with your list.
You’ll be surprised how giving yourself some simple guidelines will help kickstart your email creativity.
Then you’ll learn 2 simple tactics that will help you generate ideas for 5, 10, 15, and even more emails!
Finally, you’ll get 1 easy step you can take to make sure you never run out of emails again.
Let’s get started!
The Only 3 Reasons You Should Ever Email Your List
You may be wondering when you should send emails to your list.
I’m a big believer that you shouldn’t email your list unless you have a good reason to. How frequently you email them is only limited to how many good reasons you can create.
Why is it important to have a GOOD reason?
Often, when we approach our business’s marketing we’re thinking about our own profitability, our business’s revenue goals, our sales department’s closing rate, our leads generated, our products, our board’s opinions…
Starting from the inside and spiraling outwards until eventually we consider the customer. Oh yeah, that guy!
You’ll find it much easier to create emails if you work your way from the outside in.
When you start with your customer’s problems, wants, fears, likes, and needs it’s an easy, downhill battle to communicating why working with you is so great for them!
How do you know if you’re emailing your list for a GOOD reason?
The ONLY 3 Reasons You Should Email Your List
- To give value
- To educate about or around their problem
- To provide a solution
To Give Value
Things that fall under giving value are sharing your free content, delivering a content upgrade, sharing content from others, and otherwise building a relationship with them.
Email Ideas:
- Share a review of a book you’ve read in your industry. Intro with 1 or 2 paragraphs about your overall feelings, then have a bullet list of takeaway points you liked
- The classic “round up” email like Tim Ferris’s 5 Bullet Friday
- Share your latest blog, podcast, or video (consider writing bullets bullets about what’s covered in the content)
- Shoot your list a candid email about a post or video you’ve just read and found helpful
To Educate About Their Problem
The only way to get someone to change is to make them fear not changing more than the fear the change.
It’s also the way to get people to prioritize working with your business. First you have to convince them that they have a problem!
Just take a look at any anti-smoking campaign or public health announcement to see an extreme example of convincing people that they do have a problem.
You’ve got to paint the picture of what they’re missing out on or what stresses they’re heading for if they don’t change.
To Provide A Solution
The reason I called this step “providing a solution” instead of “making an offer” is to keep you focused on your customer when you’re thinking about your marketing.
Not just figuratively. I mean literally too.
You should also start the body of your offer emails with their problems!
Start your offer emails by restating that “I know you’re struggling with X” and how stressed out or bad it’s making them feel.
If you’re someone who struggles to come up with ideas for emails, starting your message off this way will roll pretty naturally into you talking about your solution to their problem.
So a (very basic) scene for a weight loss program could start off with:
“Hey Rick,
I hope you’ve enjoyed all of the great videos and guides I’ve sent you over the last few weeks.
I know that struggling with your weight is hard to deal with. You’re probably tired of feeling uncomfortable every day.
When you’re overweight just getting around takes so much out of you that most days you don’t even have the energy to play with your kids like you want to.
Do you feel like you’ve tried every single thing out there to beat this, but you just can’t manage your weight?
Well… (Lead into talking about how you designed your solution to help them)”
Using Questions
Just take a look at any of Buzzfeed’s headlines and it’s clear that curiosity is a driver of clicks. It’s been demonstrated time and time again that curiosity is the driver of most clickbait headlines.
So why not take that concept into your email marketing?
FAQ’s
If you’ve been working with clients or running your business for a while then one of your most valuable email idea resources is your email archive!
Rack your brain for 5 or 10 questions that you find clients asking you over, and over again. They’re perfect candidates for email messaging!
You should also check your email archive to review what questions people have actually asked you in the past. Make a note of slight variations on questions about the same topic.
A clever opener for your email is just to list 3 questions around the topic if that email.
So if you had a weight loss system you could open with 3 questions like:
“Will this really work for me? How do I know this isn’t snake oil?”
“How can this work for me if I have a chronic medical condition like diabetes?”
“What if I’ve tried everything already?”
And then lead into your answer by transitioning with “I’ve been getting a lot of questions about X recently, Lisa (or reader’s first name)”
Questions Clients Should Ask
On the other hand, are there questions that you’re surprised nobody has asked you yet?
Or maybe you’ve gotten some good questions over the years, but they’re questions that you don’t often get asked.
These are perfect candidates for email marketing too!
You’re the expert.
You have way more experience with your area of expertise than any of your one individual clients.
So sometimes you can help steer them in the right direction by bringing to mind things that they may not be considering, but you know are important.
One example is that a spice company could write an email based off of how more people should be concerned about fillers in their spices, and answer all of the reason why they choose not to include fillers in their products.
3 Part Story Telling
Want to see some crazy email open rates from your list? Tell a story in 3 parts using cliffhangers.
Russell Brunson teaches a method of doing this called the Soap opera sequence. It’s a sequence of emails that helps you warm up your new subscribers to your brand, but you can use the framework to just create regular email blasts to existing subscribers too.
You tell your story of how you came to work in your industry.
Keep in mind that whatever you’re doing now, you probably didn’t start off doing this…
Because you weren’t born into the role you’re in now, you have to tell the story of change about where you were before and how you got here.
Remember earlier when we talked about how someone has to fear the consequences of not changing more than fearing the actual change if they’re going to change their behavior?
Building on that concept, you’re going to want to want to start with the low point in your life first.
Russell says that starting with your lows creates high drama.
When you start with high drama that grabs the prospect’s interest!
It also just makes sense narratively, doesn’t it?
It would be a little silly if you started off your story in a good place and wound up… Also in a good place?
Stories require motion, and changes for character development.
And if you start off somewhere good and wind up failing, that’s not going to sell very many products will it?
So while your story may have many twists and turns, you’ll want to start off Email #1 with a point of high drama.
A sample part of an Email #1 written by my friend Dan
Email #2 you can backtrack. Think of it like a flashback that explains more of the context as to how you got to your low point.
A portion of a sample Email #2 written by my friend Dan
Finally, in Email #3 you can resolve the tension you set up by talking about your low point in Email #1 by telling them how the situation resolved. This should naturally lead you into talking about either what drove you to develop your skills in your area of expertise or enlighten the reader on the journey how you developed your product/solution.
You can just leave it at these 3 emails if your only goal is to give value to your list by forming a relationship with them.
If you wanted to use this sequence to promote your product, then you could add a 4th email.
Email #4 can then explain how it will work for them. The intro paragraph or so can summarize how you turned your personal success into a system that works for others.
Then you will summarize all of the benefits they will be able to have from working with you or buying your product (while trying not to specifically focus on the product, you only want to focus on what it will do for them).
At the end of the email you write your call to action to click out to the landing page where they can actually buy the product.
How To Never Run Out of Ideas Again
As helpful as these tactics are, what if I told you there was a way you could have unlimited email marketing ideas?
Well, with one simple technique you can have a constantly updating resource of email ideas to reference.
Enter the Swipe File
The Swipe File is a place where you can stash proven email marketing campaigns to reference later!
It’s important for anyone who needs to come up with lots of ideas to have a go-to jumping off point for any new project.
I have mine in Google Docs so it’s not taking up space on my desktop, and so I can access my swipe file from any computer I’m using!
How can you get yours started?
Action Step: Go into your inbox and find emails that caused you to go buy something.
Find these emails and “Print as PDF”, then drop them into your new Google Docs swipe file!
Do you subscribe to the list of any industry through leaders like Neville Medhora, Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, or Russell Brunson?
Whenever you notice that they’re sending you an email promoting one of their products (or you suspect one of their emails is part of an email marketing funnel for a product) then print it as a PDF and drop that into your swipe file!
That way you’ve got a constantly updating resource of ideas for any new email marketing campaigns you might create in the future.