What never to write in your emails

Truth is, you can write anything you want…

And the one thing I don't want to do is discourage innovation.

But as a general guideline...

If you want to write “binge-worthy” emails, the kind that keep your readers on the edge of their seat, eagerly awaiting every next written word… so that by the end of the piece, they’re like, “damn, this is awesome” — yet still hungry and thirsty for more… (because in a world littered with marketing-ese, honesty becomes refreshingly valuable).

So if you want to write emails like that..,

Then I’ve got a very important lesson for you today:

“Beware of the overnight expert.”

Well, what do I mean by that?

You may have heard a story at some point in your career if you interact with the marketing world at all about how during a gold rush, it’s much better to be the person selling shovels than the person digging for gold.

And the thinking is that, very few people will strike it rich doing the actual thing.

But if you’re selling shovels, you can cash in on everyone’s hopes and dreams of getting rich.

Sounds like a rotten way to live if you ask me.

But a lot of people do it. And this happens with any trend. But since I’ve been banging on about the past decades newsletter gold rush, I’ll bang on that one again, since it’s causing a lot of confusion for people in the their newsletter and email marketing efforts.

But the point is, with any new trend you get a lot of “overnight experts”.

“Shovel sellers” you could say…

And in the newsletter world, you get a lot of people talking about how if you just give a ton of value, and grow your list real big, and then everything will work out all fine and dandy. But the truth is, they’re skipping layers and layers of nuance that go into making your own offers work online.

Most of the confusion, I believe, surrounds what actually counts as value in written content.

So, if you write emails or you write a newsletter, take a look at your metrics, your click-through-rates, and most importantly your sales. Are you getting the kind of results you think you should be getting at this point?

For example…

If you sell high-ticket services, are you averaging at least $20 per subscriber per month?

If not, it’s possible some spillover from these overnight newsletter experts might be getting in the way. Here’s what happens… when a trend is operating at full force, it’s the message with the lowest common denominator that gets amplified the loudest. And with newsletters that sounds like “just give a bunch of free value, build trust, and people will buy.”

But that’s where things get lost in translation.

Most people confuse “value” with “information”.

And so they try to put as much “information” as they can in an email or newsletter, and think, “voila! value!”

Not true.

That’s something you should never do in your emails or your newsletters or whatever you want to call it (basically, the same thing unless it’s a newsletter with a paid subscription — that’s different). But the point is, if you really want to add value to people’s lives, there’s something you should never do in your emails.

Don’t over-teach.

In school, spoon-feeding content leaves students feeling passive and overwhelmed. In toddlers, demonstrating even a limited number of uses for a toy completely destroys their curiosity. This the nature of human interest at it’s finest. People don’t want to explore the known, they want to explore the unknown.

But the unknown is scary.

So it’s your job to get people excited about what’s on the other side.

Then leave the rest up to your readers and their imagination.

And that’s how you give value.

Not with step-by-step how to’s and information.

But by inspiring people to take healthy action to improve their lives.

Anyway, that’s how we roll in the Email Sales Accelerator (waitlist link below).

We don’t just douse you with information, we give you the confidence to move forward with what you already know (and I might be a bit biased, but I am told there’s useful information in there too).

https://kevinhood.me/accelerator

Best,

Kevin Hood