Who do you need to be to succeed with email?

👉 it's as important as what and how

Most everything written about newsletters and email marketing (including by me) is all about “what” and “how”.

What kind of emails you need to send to succeed. What you need to do to build the right beliefs so that someone will be ready to buy. How to write quickly and consistently and to improve over time. What subject lines to use. How to come up with ideas.

But just as important as what and how is who.

Who do you need to be to hold the attention of an audience and turn them into clients?

I've not done any kind of deep research into this, but these are my observations:

Firstly you need a Point of View.

If you want people to keep listening then what you say needs to be interesting and different to what everyone else is saying. And sadly, that's quite rare.

As recently as a decade ago it was a safe bet to just run with the crowd and use the same ideas and the same methods as everyone else. Your clients didn't really have access to what others in your field were doing or saying around the world, so you could be the "local expert" just by following common good practices.

That's rarely the case any more.

No one is going to pay attention if they've seen the ideas you share a hundred times before or they could find them with a quick google.

You have to earn their attention with an interesting and different point of view that's uniquely yours.

Secondly, you need a Personality.

People connect with people. Interesting people. Flawed people. Not-bland people.

The good news is we all have a personality.

The bad news is that most of us have been trained over the years to hide it. To communicate "professionally". To not say anything challenging in case it upsets someone. To not share personal stories or make jokes or weird analogies.

Our rough edges have been smoothed out. But it's our rough edges that make us interesting.

Having a personality in your marketing really means stopping hiding it. Letting people see the real you.

They're going to find out who you really are when they start working with you anyway, so better to swipe left or right early on in your marketing than to wait until you're working together to find out you can't stand them.

Finally, you need to Publish.

Actually, "need" is the wrong word. You need to get your point of view and your personality in front of people. There are lots of ways of doing that.

But for most of us without big ad budgets or old boy networks to rely on, our best bet is to get writing or making videos or podcasts.

It might not have much impact at first, but it'll grow.

Have somewhere you publish to the big wide world to get noticed (like writing on Linkedin or doing a podcast or guesting on other people's). And have somewhere you can bring people to where you talk only to your folks and get deeper (like an email newsletter).

Combine personality with a point of view and publish frequently so people see it and got the basics of a successful little empire in my experience.

It doesn't have to be much harder than that.

- Ian