6 Easy-As-Pie Steps To Start Writing Emails

You know what you don’t want when you spend 20+ minutes creating a post in Facebook or Instagram? The cheery sound of crickets.

Nada.

Nothing.

Zero engagement.

Or worse, your Ma gives it a thumb’s up and then private messages you to let you know you’re doing it wrong by starting a sentence with ‘And’.

Maybe that’s just me.

Yeah, it’s totally frustrating, but it doesn’t mean your post sucked.

It means your reach does.

The problem with marketing yourself on Facebook and Instagram is that when people don’t engage regularly and with gusto with your posts, your reach is limited. People don’t see the new posts you work hard to create, and because no one sees them, no one engages.

It’s one big nasty circle.

With email, you don’t have the nasty circle.

The only circles that happen in email marketing are fabulous ones:

Website to email to website to email.

For those of you who are particularly impressed by stats, here’s a good one: emails have an average reach of 79%. That’s huge compared to Facebook’s meagre average reach, which is between 1% and 6%. Campaign Monitor.

So, if we’re still thinking of numbers: basically, if being proper dosh is on your vision board, you need to embrace email marketing with both your arms and a little bit of leg, like a koala.

But, for many conscious, careful, considerate businesswomen, the concept of sending emails regularly is a little bit scary.

I get that.

We don’t want to be sleazy, sausage-y, Spammy McSpammy Pants.

But there’s an easy-as-apricot-pie series of things to make the whole shebang easier for yourself. Even if you’re right at the beginning.

1. Don’t send boring emails. Nail your brand voice and understand some Copy 101.

People want to hear from you. Sure, some people subscribe to get their hands on your latest freebie. But most of the time, those freebie hunters unsubscribe right away.

As long as you survive ‘The Unsubscribe’, you’re golden.

These are the people who made the decision to let you hang out in their inbox whenever you want. They welcome your emails, and often have those, “Oh yes, I wanted this” moments when you email them your latest offer.

But how do you survive the “unsubscribe?”

Firstly, again, you won’t always want to. Those freebie hunters? Send them on their way. No harm, no foul. We only want qualified, ready-to-love-ya subscribers. So, it’s OK if some of them unsub when they get your first email after they sign up to your list. That’s a good. thing.

Once we’ve gotten over trying to make everyone happy we’re going to focus on making the right people happy.

This is the truth:

You have to send emails people want to read.

No boring stuff.
No business-y speak.
No complicated explanations.

How do you know what words to use to make those right readers feel like they’re it? You’ve got to nail your brand voice. If you haven’t done my free mini word bank lesson, you can download it right here. It’s step 1. For everything. Every single time you sit down to write copy.

Use your brand voice guidelines and a few simple copy rules (like writing in a conversational tone) to write words that keep your audience reading. Then, sprinkle your brand and benefit statements in your emails so your subscribers feel compelled to take action – even if it’s simply to hit reply and tell you they love you.

And treat your email copy like all copy – know your basics. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, start here.

2. Don’t ignore your subscribers

It sounds a little obvious, but this is what every. single. businesswoman. who is scared of starting a regular conversation with their email subscribers does:

Starts a list.
Doesn’t email them.

Let me drop a bit of a truth bomb for you:

The people on your email list want to hear from you.

If these subscribers have chosen to stick around they are probably going to be your people — your biggest fans. And eventually, if you nurture them and love on them and give them the value they need, they’ll be waiting, credit card in hand, for you to send an email to let them know they can finally purchase your latest course, product, or service package.

According to Oberlo, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. That’s huge. But you won’t see ROIs like that if you ignore your subscribers.

Commit to sending a nurture email to your list when they first opt in. This is a series of emails that gently welcomes them into your community and tells them what to expect from you, how best to work with you, and what they can expect from being on your list.

Then, try to email people on the regular.

Even if it’s once a month, be consistent. Once a month is way better than never!

Every word you write establishes a connection and builds a deeper relationship with your audience. You want people to see emails from you regularly so you, your business, and what you do stays fresh in their mind.

Remember, your audience only shows up for you when you show you show up for them. So if you email your list consistently, your subscribers are more likely to buy your stuff from the sales emails you send.

3. Skip the fancy-shmancy layouts

When it comes to email, copy trumps visuals every time (unless you have an e-commerce business).

If what we’re trying to do is build an intimate connection and conversation with people we hope become clients and then advocates, why not ‘talk’ to them over email as you do with a friend?

When you email your friend, you don’t add 72 images, mention their name 5 times throughout the copy, or create snazzy visual buttons. Nope, your email is usually in plain text. It’s super friendly, quite relaxed, familiar and casual.

It says, “I can be trusted, you know me, we’re a bit friendly” to your readers.

And it’s more than that. According to Hubspot, emails that don’t properly load on mobile devices are typically deleted within a couple of seconds. Makes sense, right? No one wants to wait for emails to load. It’s annoying and wastes your data.

4. Keep it short and sweet

No one has ever unsubscribed from an email list because the emails were too short. Rein in the jibber-jabber when you write.

Or don’t. Hit your people with a long ramble once in a while and see how they react.

But, if what’s holding you up is feeling as if writing a blog-length email is all too hard, don’t do that. Write a short one.

Every email you send should be short, clear, and concise — like this section of this blog.

5. Testing and tweaking is an absolute must

Copywriting is one part creative, one part structure, and one part data. It doesn’t matter how much time you spend reading email marketing stats on your fav blogs if you aren’t testing and tweaking your own stuff.

What if the best day to reach your audience is on Tuesday, but you’ve been sending all your emails on Wednesdays because that’s what ConvertKit’s latest blog post advised? You’d be missing out on a lot of sales.

Wondering what you should test?

Everything. One at a time.

Test your email frequency, the day and time you send your emails, your subject lines, your copy, and your CTAs. Then, tweak them a bit and test them again.

And don’t forget anecdotal evidence. If a whole lot of people who sign up to work with you mention a particular email, try to duplicate what they loved about it.

Because although ‘data collection’ is the least sexy sounding job on your copy task list, it’s actually one of the most helpful.

And repurposing already great copy is sexy as heck.

6. Lastly, ‘email’ is a doing word.

Like ‘copywriting’.

You can read all my blogs and then lean your head on your laptop in either despair or an attempt at knowledge osmosis but that won’t really do it for you.

You have to go send an email.

And then another.

And send an email.

Do the thing.

No, I mean it.

Go do it. Right now.