Make a newsletter that people would miss
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I’m always telling you to have an email list, but it’s only going to be helpful if your newsletter is worth opening.
Is your email showing up like those messy grocery store flyers we all get in the mail?
That’s the sort of noise we easily tune out, knowing we won’t really miss out on anything if we ignore it.
But those vinyl record deliveries, that package of zines, artwork, or art supplies we ordered - those feel different, right?
These are things we’re looking forward to. We ordered something, and then we keep an eye out for those shipping updates. Delivery confirmations.
But then we all get emails like this everyday.
”New merch in our store”
”Deals ending soon”
”New workshop announced”
Sure, these can work. They’re serviceable. “Don’t ask, don’t get.” I get it!
But consider this email from Lauren Denitzio, of the band Worriers, with this subject line: ”Tips for tour and life.”
Everyday we get emails asking for something; buy now, book soon, pre-orders available.
But how many emails are we getting that are giving us something, too?
How many creative beings send out emails of stories, unraveling the wonders of life by way of their unique viewpoint?
Like Lauren above, sharing tips for life while also promoting their hand written lyric sheets.
Like
sharing how they got XC skiing equipment for free during their spending ban while also promoting a limited edition version of their new book.Like
and who decided to live blog the making of their latest photographic art drop.
You’ve already done the hard part; you’re a photographer, a painter, a professional mountain biker, a comic book maker.
We just need to use that same creative vision to talk about the work we do in our own unique way.
If our newsletters stopped acting like product catalogs, maybe our newsletter becomes something that people won’t want to miss.
🚨 Ditch Gmail and switch to Fastmail (I’ve been a customer since 2014): get a free 30-day trial and 10% off your first year here (affiliate link).
Join me and some other creative people later this week on my Escape Pod Zoom call, where we’ll talk about how to write a better newsletter (among 100 other things).
Become a paid subscriber and join our next Zoom call (Thursday, Dec 12 at 2pm ET) and you’ll probably walk away with 2-3 good ideas, concepts, and/or strategies that you can apply to your own work.
It's such a hard needle to thread, because we do need to sell things to keep a roof over our heads. And it takes a lot of work to write something that hasn't been written before. But to put something out there of value and expect people to pay attention to it, to want to open the e-mail, perhaps even to anticipate the arrival of the email, it has to be as great as you can possibly make it. You can't phone it in.
I do agree with you, Seth, though I feel like I'm going to go nuts with all this conflicting advice about social media or not social media. I'm almost completely burnt out.