Your next email...
👉 here's what to write about
So I’ve had a bit of an idea…
In my last email I described one of my favourite methods for collecting stories to inspire your emails.
It’s a simple one. But there’s an even simpler way of getting great ideas for emails and newsletters.
It’s to be told what to write about.
It struck me that one of the fastest ways I can help you write great emails is to cut out all the pain of trying to decide what to write about by giving you a topic.
I don’t mean telling you all the specifics to write about, but instead giving you a prompt that will help you come up with your own unique idea quickly.
For example, my email This is the spice of life could have come from a prompt saying “Share a lesson for business you gleaned from one of your favourite ever TV shows”. What not to do when you write an email could have been prompted by “Share one of your bad habits and what you do to overcome it”.
I’ve used prompts like these as part of writing challenges I’ve run for clients and members of my training programs and they work really well. In fact my email template packs are perhaps the ultimate version of this.
I think it’s because they remove a whole chunk of going round in circles trying to come up with a perfect idea.
The reality is there’s no perfect idea. You can drive yourself mad trying to find one. So by constraining yourself to a decent topic that someone else has suggested you cut out all that mental anguish and jump straight in to writing a great email.
So the next few emails you’ll get from me are going to be fairly simple: they’ll be a potential topic for an email for you to write along with a couple of guidelines.
My hope is that you’ll get into the spirit of it and set aside 15-20 minutes to use the prompts to write yourself an email.
No need to polish it or wordsmith it. Just do the bare bones.
But if you do, you’ll have 5 great emails almost ready to roll.
So here’s today’s prompt:
Write an email about a mentor or colleague who was really helpful and supportive early in your career and include a tip or suggestion they made (or 3) that you think would be useful to your readers.
For example, I might write about my mentor at Gemini Consulting, Kieron Brennan and the advice he gave me about needing to specialise to grow my career.
Or I might write about the advice the irascible but insightful Neil Glass gave me about developing my own character and style when it came to building relationships.
A great subject line for this type of email is “Thank you [name of mentor]”.
It’s a great email to write as it allows you to give a lot of value by sharing the powerful advice you were given, it builds your credibility because you took that advice and succeeded with it, and by giving the credit to your mentor you come across as humble.
And the best thing is that by thanking your mentor you feel good after writing it :)
See you next time for another simple email prompt.
- Ian
PS If you want more detailed prompts with examples and a writing guide, take a look at my Email Template Packs.
Each pack contains 5 emails with a guide to writing each key section and a full example to learn from. You can find out more details and get a preview here.