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How to Write Daily Emails in 20 Minutes

How to Write Daily Emails in 20 Minutes

Some people swear by this....

June 26, 2024

_{997 Words | 4 Min 15 Sec Read}

Today we’ll be discussing how to write daily Internet Marketing style emails in just 20 minutes per day.

While many online marketers (and random commentators from the public) tend to look down on daily emails, most anyone who's tested this strategy says daily emails generate dramatically more revenue than sporadic ones.

Let’s dive in.

In the online marketing community, few topics are as controversial as whether or not daily emails "work."

On the one hand, many Internet Marketing veterans swear by them and use them in their own businesses.

On the other, many of those same gurus sell Internet Marketing courses to Internet Marketers. A group of people who are known for being notoriously obsessed with learning about marketing, but notoriously bad at building profitable businesses.

Either way, what's undeniable is how people love to be entertained.

From Netflix to social media - and from gaming to pro sports - most everyone on planet Earth enjoys some form of digital entertainment.

Why do I bring this up?

Because when you daily emails right, you entertain more than you sell.

Infamous for being the most brash daily email proponent, copywriter Ben Settle refers to his strategy as wrapping broccoli in bacon.

In this analogy, the "educational content" or lesson is the broccoli.

For better or worse, however, people don't enjoy being taught nearly as much as they like being entertained. Which is why Ben refers to the storytelling / entertainment aspect of daily emails as the bacon.

It's what makes the broccoli tolerable. Pleasant even.

And when you do this right, you can build a ravenous base of fans who not only read - but look forward to - your emails.

The downside?

Writing that good of an email day in and day out is incredibly difficult.

But as a copywriter who's done daily emails for both my own businesses and my clients, I can testify they do in fact work.*

*I should clarify the below strategy can be used with any level of frequency. There are plenty of people who use this exact approach, but only send two or three emails per week. What matters is the applying the underlying formula, and sending emails on a consistent basis (so your audience grows accustomed to receiving them on a specific schedule).

So how do you write the type of email readers look forward to opening?

First, you need to have a recipe.

While I've seen various gurus apply different names to their methodologies, the underlying ingredients you need to have in your formula / recipe are:

The lesson / insight you want to teach / convey / get across
The story / metaphor / analogy you'll use to get the lesson across
The tie in (where you connect the lesson to whatever you're selling)

Let's break each of these down.

#1 - The Insight

While it's true people love to be entertained, you're probably not going to make any sales sharing a story about how you went to jail in Cabo.

Mainly because it's unlikely that kind of story has any connection to the product or service you're selling.

Meaning, while entertainment is important, it has to be linked to your product or service somehow.

Further, because of the law of reciprocity (and because of how we're indoctrinated to respect people who educate us), sharing educational and insightful content with your audience builds goodwill.

So, the first thing you need to figure out before you start writing is what type of lesson / insight you want to get across.*

*Generally speaking you should already a grasp on this type of thing as a result of creating a content marketing system for your business.

#2 - The Story / Analogy / Metaphor

Once you've figured out the (insanely compelling) insight you want to get across, you need a mechanism for getting your point across.

And your to go solution is going to be either a:

Story
Metaphor
Analogy

Why?

Because if you try to educate with facts, statistics or flat out instructions, your audience will hit the trash icon.

Similar to how most students tune out at school unless their teacher is highly compelling, your readers will tune out if your emails aren't compelling.

Fortunately, the human brain is wired to learn through stories.

Which includes not only first person, but third person, metaphor and analogy.

As you know, entire books, courses and professions are dedicated to the art and science of storytelling. So we're not even going to open that can of worms.

Instead, we encourage you to pick up some of the more well known fiction writing, copywriting and storytelling books (in addition to reading best selling fiction, which is an incredibly powerful way to learn storytelling).

From there, once you have a) the point you want to get across, and b) your mechanism for doing so, all you need to do is connect the dots between the lesson and the thing you're selling.

#3 - The Tie In

While the above ingredients work well for educational emails, if you want to generate revenue you need to sell something.

Which means the story you tell (or metaphor or analogy you use) serves two purposes:

Entertain the reader
Connect the dots between the lesson and the thing you're promoting

Fortunately, this is easier than it sounds.

Because as long as your lesson / insight is connected to the problems your audience is trying to solve, your "tie in" just has to make logical sense.

As an example, let's say I sell insurance.

And let's say the lesson I want to get across is the importance of protecting yourself from unexpected disasters.

And let's say a bird pooped on me yesterday (sadly this actually happened).

In this situation, my "tie in" would be something along the lines of how a bird pooping on me was an unexpected mini disaster with no real consequences.

But if it had pooped on my motorcycle helmet, blocking my vision and causing me to get into a life threatening accident, not having insurance could be disastrous.*

*I thought of the above example in 30 seconds. That's how easy this is once you get the hang of this system.

Point being: Your "tie in" is how you connect the dots between your lesson, your story and your offer.

And if you can't connect the three with kindergarten level common sense, go back to the drawing board until you can.

Last, your emails should range anywhere from 250 to 500 words.

Any longer than that and you better be highly confident in your ability to entertain using the written word. As Dan Kennedy once said:

"The biggest sin in marketing is being boring."

💡 Takeaway: The practice of writing frequent / daily Internet Marketing styles is highly controversial and something you should test (by measuring revenue) before blindly adopting.

With that said, the handful of people who commit to this process and do it well swear by it, so don't be quick to judge (and don't make assumptions about your audience's preferences) if you've never tried it yourself.

🎁 Resources: