“I hate writing emails!”

… spilled from Cynthia’s lips as she clicked open a tab to her dusty MailChimp account.

“What are you smiling about stupid monkey?” She griped.

Cynthia, was a graphic designer and amateur blogger. Every week she’d try to write a blog post,  her potential clients would find useful. A hack in canva there, a how to pick fonts that match there and why branding matters in the first place too.  Of course she’d create beautiful pins for each of her articles. (That was her favorite part).

But emails. Ugh. That was a different story.  

You see, Cynthia was trying to grow her side business into her full time gig so she signed up for a ton of freebies. She couldn’t go a day without opt-ing for another free gift on growing her audience, launching a course or Facebook Ads.

Which meant Cynthia’s inbox was stuffed to the brim with newsletters, webinar invites, free summit sign ups and of course – sales pitches.  

She didn’t want to bother her subscribers by adding another piece of email to their inboxes.

But here’s the (not-so) crazy part her subscribers actually wanted to hear from her!

You see, Cynthia created an amazing free 5 day course all about branding basics so reader’s blogs would never look cheesy but then she never emailed people again. Not even when she published new meaty blog posts.

She was too afraid to hit the send button. She didn’t want to annoy them.

But writing emails don’t have to be that hard. In fact in this article I’m going to go over 4 emails your subscribers are dying to read but first let’s address the pink elephant in the room unsubscribes.

Dealing with unsubscribes especially if you have a small list

Unsubscribes are going to happen.  #sorrynotsorry

It doesn’t mean you suck or your content isn’t valuable. It just means that one of your subscribers cared enough to open your email and actually click your unsubscribe button to make room for a new perfect subscriber.   One who will devour all your newsletters, scoop up every paid offer and sings your praises to everyone who will listen.

The people you should really be annoyed with are the ones who have been hanging around your list for six months but never open your emails. Those people aren’t only dragging down your open rate but they could be causing your messages to go into the spam folder.

So every time you see an unsubscribe think to yourself thanks for making room for someone who I can help better .

The 4 emails your subscribers can’t wait for you to send.

1.You’re greatest hits in a fire-red dress

While we’d all like to think our readers have devoured every single blog post we have ever written chances are even your most active community members have only read a handful.

But instead of dropping 12 links to 12 different blog posts (3 for each of your main blog categories) and overwhelming people….

You’re going to create 4 pages on your site, that roundup your top/ favorite blog post on that topic and call it  the Ultimate Guide To _________________________.

Let’s look at Ivory Mix website she covers:

• Growing Your traffic
• Making More Money
• Creating a Stunning Brand
• Starting an online business
• Improving your life

For her Ultimate Guide to Creating A Stunning Brand page Kayla could include:

• A link to sign up for her free stock library (you claimed your free 300+ stock photos already right?).
• A little blurb about why branding is important and it’s benefits

Then little summaries and links to…

• HOW TO CREATE A MOOD BOARD TO INSPIRE YOUR BLOG AND BRAND
• What you need to know before designing a logo
• 6 Steps to Make Your Stock Photos That Sell
• 8 Ways to Start Acting like a brand on your blog

If Kayla really wanted to go crazy instead of creating a web page she could create a downloadable  PDF with everything listed above. (She could cut and paste the full blog posts in the pdf or just keep the summaries and link to the full blog post for more traffic.)

But here is where your email is going to outshine everyone else’s.

Instead of saying….

Try something like this….

Instead of just info slapping people we’re calling out real-world situations that are happening in their lives because of the problems we solve on our blog.  

For example in Improving Your Life Kayla talks a lot about productivity, beating procrastination and tech hacks to make your life easier.

A symptom of never having a spare minute means you’re constantly working on your computer and barely have time to eat. When you do it’s always a sandwich, a handful of almonds or let’s be real, a donut you’re eating over your keyboard. Instead of sitting down and enjoying a nice meal with your family stress-free

2. How I achieved this….

The best piece of marketing advice I’ve ever heard was from Gary Vaynerchuk – “Don’t create content, document.”  

In this email, I lay out step by step how you accomplished a goal or result  your ideal reader also wants.

For example, if you’re a fashion blogger this email could be “How I got the latest designers fashion for free.” Then inside the email you lay out the 4-5 steps you did. Bonus points for visuals.

If you teach people about blogging, send an e-mail of how you got your first 1000 likes on Facebook when you were a complete nobody. While it doesn’t tie directly into blogging it’s something every new blogger would love to know.  

If you’re a health coach, document how you lost your first 15 pounds of baby weight. Include pictures. Notice, it wasn’t how you lost 100 pounds. Why? Because if your readers need to lose 150 pounds and seeing your first baby steps gives them hope too.

3.  Go Go Gadget Emails

In this email, write about three or four useful tools, apps or resources you’ve used to achieve a very specific result that your ideal reader is yearning for too.  But make sure it relates to your blogging topics.

If you’re a mommy blogger who focuses on recipes,  organization, and homeschooling.  Don’t send links to your bluehost account because it pays well. Readers aren’t coming to you for blogging advice they want to be told what to do with their kids all summer.

Now you could send  “4 Apps every stay-at-home mom must know about” but lets spice it up a bit how about…

• 3 Free Educational Apps I Couldn’t Survive a Trip to the Grocery Store with My Kids Without
• The Best Investments I made for My House in 2017 – Hint they cost less then $99
• My Top 5 Secret Places for Getting Free Colorful Printouts for my Kid’s Homeschooling

This is also a great email to include affiliate links. Just be sure you check your affiliate program’s terms of services.  For example: Amazon’s affiliate program  doesn’t allow you to send their affiliate links through emails however you can send people to your resources page with that has the Amazon affiliate links on it.

4. Struggles, Goofs and Gilmore Girl References

Want to stand out in a sea of vanilla noise?  Start sharing about you!

Share your struggles, your stories, your favorite guilty pleasure songs  but always tied it back to the reason why someone joined your list in the first place.

Giant shocker – people join my email list to learn about email marketing and sales funnels. I’m not the only person in the world who talks about this. Heck I bet this is the third article you read about email marketing today.

But how many of those other bloggers ever sent you a message called The  Gilmore Girls’ Guide to Email Marketing???? When I sent that email  to my list I received an avalanche of replies. Because I know my person and she would have definitely watched Gilmore Girls. (For the record I’m #teamjess)

The other thing I want you to do is start collecting stories of your day-to-day life.  Now I can actually hear the audible ::sigh:: coming through the computer screen that your life is super boring and nobody would care but trust me you would be surprised how you could turn a ho-hum trip to the grocery store into a teachable moment  about fashion ( You’ve seen the people of Walmart website right?)

And don’t be afraid to share when things go wrong too. It’s shows you “get” where people are coming from.  You understand them. Heck you were them.

Just hit send

So when you sit down and pop open that tab to MailChimp, Convert kit or Active Campaign instead of thinking to yourself “What should I write today?” ask “What does my friend need to hear ____________________ today.”

Because when you find yourself so disproportionately passionate about helping a group of people sew their own clothes or take better photos on Instagram or save money on their grocery bills everything you write will be electrifying.

Author Bio:

So you’re not just sending these emails to your mom click here  to unlock your free copy of Kate’s most popular mini-course –  “Freebies that Serve and Sell” Which shows you how to create spine-tingling free opt-in gifts in less than 30 minutes that attracts a tidal wave of new subscribers eager to sing your praises and pop open their wallets without coming a cross like a lameo cheeseball.

Oh, right more about me…. Well, when Kate Doster isn’t writing about herself in the third person  you can find her dishing out dangerously practical tips for turning  internet randos into subscribers with benefits. You know the kind that throw fistfuls of cash at you. For your courses and your services not like anything shady –  on her hit podcast Inbox Besties or chasing around her two small girls while secretly wishing she was watching 30 Rock.