One of the biggest missed opportunities among new business owners is email marketing. But as the market grows and social media advertising gets more expensive, creating an email newsletter becomes more and more essential. 

Luckily, email only sounds scary. Creating and implementing a newsletter strategy is a highly effective way to engage more potential customers, close more sales, and drive real revenue in your business. Whether you’re a service provider, want to sell digital products, or somewhere in between, an email newsletter is the path to profits.

This article covers:

• A simple framework to look at email marketing
• Three newsletter strategies to never skip
• 15 content ideas to help you write your next newsletter

A simple way to look at email marketing

Follower
You start with a lead magnet that gets people on your email list. Once they are on your list, they are now a follower.

Friend
Next, you send out weekly newsletters to turn each follower into a friend. No, this isn’t your best friend that you share every detail of your life with. This is the friend that you have something in common with and you catch up about said thing from time to time. There’s a certain level of trust around the mutual interest, and this friend typically comes to you for advice.

Customer
When you have a list full of friends that trust what you have to say about the mutual interest, you can have an email list full of customers. In conjunction with your newsletter, sprinkle in sales emails and launches to move your friends into customers. 

Three newsletter strategies to never skip

Email newsletters feel complicated. But really, you’ve just got to do three things to make sure your emails get

• opened
• read
• the conversions you need to create a financially stable business

Invest in your reader

Listen! No one is going to invest in you before you invest in them. Especially not an email subscriber. So let your audience know that you’re invested in their success and the vision you have for them. 

5 content ideas to show you’re invested in your reader:

1- share a book you’re reading to improve your knowledge within your industry

2- write about what you’ve learned in the last year that can help them

3- send outbound links to podcasts, webinars, or other content created by other people

4- ask simple yes or no questions about the reader and use the answers to guide the next piece of content 

5- tell your reader that you are invested in them and care about their progress

Yep! It’s that simple, friend.

Share in a relatable way

Don’t try to be interested. That’s really hard, so just leave it to professional writers and celebrities. Instead, just be relatable. Why? Because relating to someone is a surefire way to gain trust. 

When you’re doubting your skills and coming up with a newsletter strategy seems impossible, just remember that people want to connect with someone who understands them on a human to human level. So don’t skip over the little updates about life. You might think they’re boring, but guess what? That stuff is relatable…and that’s just what you need.

5 content ideas to show you’re relatable to your reader:

1- share a picture of your workspace and invite the reader to send a picture back

2- write about a recent tech snafu and how you handled (or didn’t!) it

3- send a list of things you still need to accomplish this week

4- talk about something silly that’s happened to you recently and ask if your reader has a similar story

5- tell your reader about a routine you have

I know. These content ideas seem simple and maybe even slightly trivial. But believe me when I tell you that people want to buy from people they trust. And the fastest way to gain trust is through relatability. 

Stay top of mind

Your customers cannot climb the Email Staircase and your newsletter strategy will never work if you don’t stay top of mind. So commit right now to consistently write a newsletter and show your subscribers that you are invested in them and that you are relatable. Those two things help you stay top of mind, even more than emailing daily.

Of course, I still recommend a weekly newsletter. This is a good rule of thumb and the general frequency needed to move people along the Email Staircase–from follower to friend to customer.

5 content ideas to help you stay top of mind to your reader:

1- share your #2 piece of advice in the form of a video instead of writing it

2- write a to-do list for your subscriber of little mini-tasks they can get done that day

3- send a coupon code for a product that doesn’t normally sell on its own

4 – talk about how you got into your current line of work and why you love it

5- tell your reader about an app or tool that they might find useful

Summary

Committing to email marketing will build trust and revenue faster than any other form of marketing. Doing this with a weekly newsletter strategy that shows you’re invested in your reader and relatable will be the thing that keeps you top of mind. Last, the simplest content ideas may have the largest impact on your reader.

Want to learn more about the Email Staircase and have the email newsletter templates for each of these content ideas? 

Check out Email Marketing Membership, a $9/month newsletter template subscription, delivered straight to your inbox every Monday morning. Complete with an already-uploaded library of over 100 email templates!

About the Author:

The Fresh Princess of Email Marketing, Liz Wilcox is an Email Strategist and Keynote Speaker showing small businesses how to build online relationships + make real money with emails. She’s best known for selling a blog, turning a $9 offer into multiple six-figures (without ads), and helping you untangle the email “knot” with her simple framework, the Email Staircase. She loves the 90s, headbands, and the beach.