How to fall (back) in love with emailing your list. Start here.
As promised a series of posts dedicated to changing how you think about emailing your list so it’s meaningful (and effective), for you and your readers.
I know you stand for meaningful conversation.
For you, talking about your work with others, even in email, is about creating a meaningful dialogue or exchange, and guiding your readers (through a series of “ahas” or insights) to see how they may be able to improve their health or lives in specific, tangible ways.
That allegiance to meaning, depth, and relationship is why one-off emails (blog or social media posts) are so hard to write. Isolated, disconnected posts can feel like pure promotion that’s more about you than your reader—and leave you with an off taste, still wondering "what in the world should I write this week?”.
By contrast, we’ve all experienced, in our own lives, how meaningful conversation builds in an arc—it’s a series of connected thoughts that deepen to create something more powerful than the sum of its parts. So….
Stop writing emails, and start crafting campaigns.
Stay with me here. I know the word campaign can rub with its associations of conquest. But that's not the kind of campaign I’m talking about.
Simply, I’m encouraging you to email in an organized and active way toward a particular goal (whether it be more clients, appointments, downloads, book sales, or dream teaching opportunities). Each of these goals represents more healing in the world.
Campaign and conversation support each other.
When you say no to churning out individual one-off posts to feed the mailchimp or Facebook/instagram beast, you get to create meaningful exchange that genuinely serves your reader/viewer.
For your audience, it’s the difference between a disconnected set of one-act plays vs. one play in three or four acts with one powerful narrative thread that deepens from start to end.
So to recap (and persuade). Because you are planning from the beginning at least four posts out when you think about your communications as a series of campaigns, this style of working makes you proactive, rather than reactive, with time enough to exhale knowing exactly what’s on your to-do list. And this makes you feel organized, and in control of your core values + ideas, rather than always playing catch up.
Working this way campaign-style, for you, allows you to feel more creative, effective, and full of integrity. (I’ll show you how over the next few weeks.) And if you’re like me, all these things matter greatly. Integrity, effectiveness, and the art of healing are probably part of why you started your practice in the first place.
From the reader’s/prospect’s end, this way of working campaign-style builds trust and awareness, and takes away confusion (by making things cohesive). You’ll find that readers are loyal and consistent, and more willing to click on a link, because you’re reinforcing your message with each post that builds on the previous one. There’s less cognitive effort of getting oriented every time a reader opens an email post of yours. And it builds relationships, just like in the offline world, as the conversation accrues over time with a natural rhythm.
Like a story that hooks us, there is a beginning, middle, and end (and a rhythm) that leaves us wanting more.
So I’ll close today with the idea of a campaign offering a consistency of message, but variety in rhythm. (My “starting soon” email last week was deliberate, and meant to prime you for today’s message. And next week’s builds on this one, by showing you what’s possible with a campaign.)