Why most people (really) fail with newsletters

👉 maybe this is true for you too?

We all know the theory.

Send a regular newsletter and you can build credibility and trust with potential clients and get yourself into pole position for when they’re ready to buy.

All while helping your readers succeed and generally being a good egg.

“Yeah, yeah, great”, you might well be saying, “but it’s just not that easy”.

Most people’s experience with newsletters is one of frustration and struggle. Of tearing their hair out trying to come up with good ideas. Of rewriting the same paragraph a zillion times and it still not sounding right. Of feeling your emails just aren’t doing your ideas justice.

Of not getting results.

If you struggle with your newsletter you might have heard a bunch of different reasons why.

But I’m going to tell you it’s not because you’re not creative or don’t have good ideas.

It’s absolutely not because you’re somehow not “not a writer”.

And it’s certainly not because “you’ve been lied to” or there’s some arcane secret somewhere that if you just somehow knew, it would all be easy.

The real reason the vast majority of people struggle to write an effective newsletter is simply because they don’t have enough experience doing it.

Now I’m not about to go all “10,000 hours” on you. Writing a decent newsletter that helps to get you clients isn’t anywhere near as complex or difficult as becoming a virtuoso violin player or a chess grandmaster.

It’s more like learning to drive a car.

Sure, with a lot of practice and natural talent you can get really good. But it doesn’t take all that long for most of us to learn to drive at a decent enough standard to get the job done.

Same with newsletters.

According to the DVSA here in the UK, it takes most people 45 hours of lessons and 22 hours of practice to get to the level where they can pass their test.

It’s much less for some people and more for others. But 45 hours of lessons and 22 hours of practice is a good rule of thumb.

And both lessons and practice are needed.

Just sitting in a car hoping you’ll somehow figure it all out is a much, much slower method than getting a decent instructor to show you the basics, introduce each element step by step, then give you feedback on your progress.

Getting lessons but never going out on the road to practice is equally short-sighted. The theory never goes from slow, deliberate thinking to intuitive action unless you practice and practice.

It’s the same with a newsletter of course.

You don’t need anywhere near 10,000 hours of practice to get to a decent enough standard. But you do need to write and send regularly. And you can speed up your progress with decent lessons to point you in the right direction.

There are shortcuts too.

If you want to cut down the amount of time needed to learn all the complex “doing stuff in parallel” skills with driving you can drive an automatic rather than a manual. No doubt driverless technology will make things even more “done for you” in future.

When it comes to newsletters, if you want to cut down the amount of time needed to learn to write a good one, focus on simple, single-message emails that draw on your own experiences. And use templates for the structure and proven “angles” for the approach you take in each email.

I’m also going to suggest that getting “driving lessons” in writing your email newsletter will make things an awful lot easier for you too.

Obviously that’s a bit self-serving as I built what I believe is the best course available on writing email newsletters that get results - and making the whole process easy.

But it’s also true.

Just like a driving instructor who gives you initial guidance then gives you feedback on your progress, my Effective and Engaging Email Newsletters course will have you writing great emails within an hour.

It’ll introduce the more advanced elements of email newsletters step by step. You’ll get feedback on your process. And you’ll get “shortcut” templates and structures you can put into immediate use.

I “soft launched” the course a little while ago. That’s code for “I wanted to make sure the course worked brilliantly before I made a big deal out of it”.

Now it’s time to make a big deal out of it.

I’ll be pushing the course out more widely to the world starting on Jan 1st and selling it at £197 (+VAT in the UK). But up until midnight on New Year’s Eve you can get it for just £97 (that’s about $125 USD).

If you’re looking to finally crack the code and get an effective email newsletter working for you in 2024 I can’t think of a better way of doing it.

Click here for more details and to join us.

- Ian