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Deep Dive

I’ve spent thousands on writing courses that never taught me how to write.

Go ahead, feel free to judge…it’s really as dumb as it sounds.

And while it helps NO ONE to make writing feel like that 300-level college course you almost failed, you need at least some instruction — because it’s writing that builds your business.

I first came across this systematized process of writing emails from Kieran Drew.

If you haven’t heard of him, he’s a (very) charismatic, tea-guzzling Brit who built his entire 7-figure business around high-impact writing and what he calls, “Magnetic Emails”.

The whole point of writing, and thus email, is to have real conversations with people that lead to more relationships, reputation and revenue.

So let’s go through each step, look at some examples, and at the end I’ll give you a checklist you can use to write your own “Effortless Email”.

Structure

Almost every email you write will follow the same 3 part formula:

Part 1: Set the Scene

Don’t start your emails with wishy-washy, meandering statements. Notice my opening line for this email? Straight and to-the-point.

You got your reader curious enough to open your email (go you!👏), now we have to keep them interested enough to read more.

Part 2: Back It Up

As we say in the country, this is the meat and potatoes of your email.

The most important part in this section is to deliver on your promise.

If your headline promised the reader they would learn how to play chess in 5 minutes a day, then the body of your email needs to back that claim up. Otherwise you’ve fallen into the dreaded clickbait category and you’ve lost the reader’s trust. Which is something once lost, can be gone forever. No bueno.

Your job here is to reduce audience skepticism by giving them what they signed up for.

The internet is full of unsupported advice. Don’t add to the pile of…you know.

In a future newsletter I’ll share with you 7 tools of trust to make sure you end up on the right side of this fence.

Part 3: Ask For Action

While writing for yourself is nice, and for many of us is less expensive than a therapy session, ultimately we want our readers to DO something.

We want them to take action.

But how you ask is everything! You don’t want to come across as desperate.

In this section you need to smoothly pivot to a pitch and invite people to invest.

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6 Steps

Step 1: Prewrite

In a perfect world, we’d just sit down and start putting words to page.

And that works to a point — when we start, we just want to get all our thoughts down without worrying about things like sentence structure, grammar, spelling etc.

But, how do you know what you’re writing about?

Writing without a plan is like traveling without a map. You’re going to waste time, effort and (if you’re married and travel together) your sanity.

Instead, we start with the end in mind.

Before you start word-vomiting on the page, you must answer these 3 simple questions:

1. What’s the purpose?

2. What’s the problem?

3. What’s the plan?

The purpose is the action you want your reader to take. Beginning with the end in mind gives you a path to follow from A → B.

The problem is how you connect with your reader.

The secret to great writing is to always appeal to your reader’s self-interest.

If you talk about the topics your reader cares about most, they will open your emails every day of the week. Pick one problem from your Perfect Reader’s pain points and write about that.

The plan is your structure, or the bones of your email. Another way to think about this is: what’s the angle you’re going to write from?

I go into WAY more detail on each of these in my Rural Writer Workshop. Click here to join the waitlist for the next session.

Step 2: Set the Scene

In his bestselling book The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, world-renowned copywriter Joseph Sugarman said — the point of any copy is to get someone to read the first sentence. Because if they read the first, they’ll read the second. And if they read the second, they’ll read the third. And so on and so forth.

He calls this the Slippery Slide. Why is this important?

Two reasons:

1. Most people write first lines that are too long, hard to read or difficult to understand. This all causes friction, and friction sucks for sliding. If you grew up before the internet like I did, think of it like the kids who had wax paper on the metal slides vs. those who didn’t.
   

2. If someone reads your first line you’ve subconsciously triggered a commitment in them, so you stand a much better chance of getting them to read the whole thing.

Example:

“It’s been 15 years since I graduated college and one of the hardest parts about the whole thing is drifting apart from old friends due to a lack of consistent contact and distance.”

Are you still awake? Me neither.

Instead, make it short and snappy:

“I graduated from college 15 years ago. I love being an adult, but I hate one part: drifting away from friends.”

Feel how much easier it is to get sucked into the second example vs. the first one?

The last job in the “Set the Scene” section is to make a quick promise.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but no one cares about you. Ok, that’s not entirely true, but think about this email you’re reading right now.

Are you reading it because I wrote it and you care about me? Maybe (I love you too friend!). But that’s probably not the No. 1 reason you opened it.

You opened it because you care about what it could do for YOU. And that’s totally ok!

Most emails fail because they speak to the writer’s self-interest.

You will get way better results if you make an immediate promise to either remove pain or achieve pleasure for your reader.

Step 3: Prove Your Point

I go much more in-depth on this in my Rural Writer Workshops, including the 7 trust-building tools every writer needs to know. But for today, let’s get one universal truth out there about writing:

It’s not just enough to make a point. You have to PROVE it.

It’s like the saying, “Unless you’ve done it, you can’t have it.”

People are becoming more and more skeptical these days, especially when shopping online. Every one of us has been scammed or bought a product that underwhelmed or under-delivered for us. Our hard-earned money POOF!

Trust is the name of the game in any industry, but especially in writing online.

If you write about something, you need to be able to show proof that it’s real, and that you know what you’re talking about.

Step 4: Ask for Action

Again, writing into the void is fine if you don’t want to make any money. But if you want to make support your craft, you’re going to need to ask people for something.

I feel it goes without saying but:

NEVER sacrifice genuine connections or your reputation for the sake of money.

Here’s 5 simple steps to writing a good pitch without coming across as salesy or spammy:

1. Pivot, don’t turn — ease into the sale. Don’t just abruptly stop talking about one point only to then ask someone, “hey wanna buy my stuff?” BIG turnoff!

2. Don’t be desperate — being needy sucks. You might actually need money, but don’t act like it. Don’t ask your audience to buy, give them the opportunity to invest. Feel the difference?

3. Apply pressure — humans are inherently lazy. We won’t act unless you give us a reason to. Your job in your email is to explain why now is better to invest than later.

4. Give a reason why — no reason = no action. No one said it had to be a good reason, but there has to be one.

5. Finish as a friend — usually, <5% of people will click your email links. Finishing as a friend leaves things on a good note, while maintaining better relationships and therefore future sales.

If you want specific templates and examples of how to execute these principles, join the waitlist for the next Rural Writer Workshop.

Step 5: Polite P.S.

If you’re like me, you may not read the entire email, but you will always read the P.S. line.

The P.S. is important for two reasons:

1. People skim emails and often skip to the end. If they like your P.S. they may just go back and read the entire thing.
   

2. You get another chance at winning the click.

Avoid generic sendoffs like “when you’re ready here’s 3 ways I can help”. Again — boring. The best P.S.’s are specific to the email themselves.

The P.S. has two jobs:

• Summarize to intrigue

• Crank up the curiosity

Step 6: Subject Line

Some people write their subject lines first.

I prefer writing them last because I find the line often reveals itself while I’m writing.

There are 9 rules of subject lines you should follow if you want more people to open your emails or read your articles.

And while subject lines aren’t the end-all-be-all of getting people to read your stuff (you actually need to write well), a bad subject line can really hurt you.

Let’s go through them:

1. Shorter is (typically) better

2. Finish what you start

3. Don’t be boring

4. Be careful with curiosity

5. If in doubt, pick relevance over reach

6. Do Not Use Caps At The Start Of Each Word In Your Email Subject Line

7. Use [FIRSTNAME] sparingly

8. Use preview lines

9. Split test — but don’t be blinded by numbers

And that’s it!

6 simple steps to writing better emails that help you convert more people from casual observers into loyal fans ready to open their wallets (or whatever action you want them to take — see Step 1).

So what are you waiting for? Go write that first draft! Reply to this email and let me know how it went.

And if you want to go into more detail on these steps, including the exact templates I use, real-world examples etc., join the waitlist for my next Rural Writer Workshop. I only do these once every quarter, so if you miss this one you’ll have to wait until fall. It’s virtual so you can join from anywhere!