5 go-to sources of great ideas for emails

👉 one of these WILL work for you

There are only three certainties in life:

Death, taxes, and the fact that at some point you’ll run out of ideas for your newsletter and find yourself staring at a blank screen.

Whether you win or lose with newsletters is largely determined by what you do when that awful moment hits. And it will hit - time and time again.

Faced with the blank screen of unspiration, my go-to sources of ideas are:

• What I’m thinking about right now. Am I working on something or worried about something or inspired by something that my readers might find interesting?

• Did something funny or interesting happen to me in the last week or so?

• Did I see something funny or interesting on the TV? (today’s post was almost a reference to something I saw in the Kominsky Method - that’ll have to wait for another day).

• Can I write about a mistake I made earlier in my career that I can help my readers avoid today?

Usually a quick trawl through those topics floats up something.

But if not, I pull out my master list of topic prompts where I have another 19 triggers for coming up with ideas for emails.

And if that doesn’t work, I crack open a beer grab a coffee. Read for a bit and come back to it. Eventually, something will pop up.

Not everything you write in an email or newsletter has to be earth-shatteringly insightful. This one certainly isn’t.

But it might just help someone who’s struggling.

And most people - I think - will find it a little bit useful and a little bit funny. Death, taxes and [something very mundane] is an old comedy trope but it usually raises a smile. As does the honest admission that I sometimes reach for a beer to loosen the old noodle.

And the joy of newsletters is that they don’t all have to be home runs.

Nobody is capable of writing a work of genius every time. And nobody is capable of reading a work of genius every time.

Send me something that makes me smile, makes me think, gives me something useful I can do…and I’ll hang around for the next one.

Throw in a few home runs every now and then and suddenly you become the person your readers would most like to work with or buy from.

That works for me.

And speaking of buying, if you want an in-depth guide to coming up with ideas for newsletters - and then writing them so they have impact - then my new Effective & Engaging Newsletters course may well be for you.

I’ll be spilling the beans on:

• What it takes to succeed with emails and newsletters

• The different types of newsletter - how to make each one work - and which will work best for you

• How to choose the best niche and topic for you

• How to tap into an infinite supply of ideas for your emails and newsletters

• How to make your emails engaging and persuasive through stories - and how to easily craft your own unique stories that build credibility and trust

• How to structure emails so they get opened, read and acted on

• How to persuade in emails: the long game and the short game

• Example emails and templates you can use to get a fast start

It’s currently available at the special launch price of just £97 (+VAT in the UK)..

Just click below for details and to sign up.

I’ll see you on Friday - hopefully with an email unaided by prompts or beer :)

- Ian