I watched a zillion Christmas films

👉 here's what I learned about email

I’ve been watching a lot of Christmas films recently.

A lot.

(It’s a side-effect of my wife Kathy being the world’s most Christmassy person - the Hallmark Christmas Channel is on loop from about October in our house).

Christmas films tend to have one of two plots. Either a Scrooge-like “redemption” or a Comedy of Errors “mistakes resolved”. And you’d think with only really two plots to play with they’d get rather repetitive.

But it turns out not.

The characters are a bit different every time. The storylines a bit different. The jokes and little touches, all a bit different.

And weirdly, the message always seems to get across too. Even after watching the 17th Scrooge variant of the year I still end up feeling like I want to be a bit more generous and nicer to people.

When you’re writing emails you might begin to feel that you’re becoming repetitive too. That your audience has heard your key insights so many times that they must be bored with them by now.

But it’s just not true.

Every time you get across the same message in a slightly different way that message gets reinforced in your readers’ memories.

Once is never enough for people to “get” what you’re saying. Like revising for exams, you need spaced repetition.

And every time you get across that message you’re associating yourself with it. So that when your readers are ready to buy something related, they think of you.

You just need to vary the storyline. Vary the characters. Tell it a bit different every time.

If you got out a bit of paper right now and wrote down one of the key problems you help clients with at the top I bet you could easily brainstorm half a dozen different ways of explaining how to solve it.

That’s half a dozen emails you could send about the same topic, but different enough that your readers will enjoy them and learn from them.

Repeat that for all the key topics you focus on and you’ve got a year’s worth of emails.

Emails that will make sure your potential clients remember you when they’re about to become paying clients.

- Ian

PS if you want specific tips to help you do it faster (and with a bit less head scratching) I share 23 different “story prompts” to help you come up with different ways of explaining your ideas in the Effective and Engaging Email Newsletters Course.