If you’ve been anywhere in the online marketing space lately, you probably heard two bits of advice.
1 – Email marketing is the best and most profitable way to connect with your audience, especially if you’re a solopreneur: you’re selling yourself and you are the brand.
2 – Open every email by telling a story. You need to hook your audience and stand out in a crowded world.
The first piece of advice is true. The second can be a trap.
How many times do we open an email with a promising subject line, only to find ourselves falling down a rabbit hole into someone’s personal story…a story that seems totally unconnected to that tempting subject line?
And how many times do we struggle to find a story that will engage our audience?
In last week’s podcast episode, I asked marketing expert Cindy Bidar, “What are the biggest story mistakes you see?”
She immediately pointed to emails where the sender shared a story and then said, “And now let’s talk about our real message.”
It feels like you’re being served dessert as a teaser for the serious meat-and-potatoes main course.
What can we do instead?
Some storytelling advice fits every business strategy, including email marketing. Begin with a purpose. Make the story subordinate to the message.
Some business owners (usually Role Model archetypes) use stories in a unique way. They introduce messages that don’t make any attempt to educate or nurture. They’re just selling. Why are they successful?
Other marketers seem to be breaking the rules.In fact, they’re following an important rule that Cindy talked about in the interview. They’re consistent in a style that fits their purpose and their archetype.
Most of all, maybe you don’t even need a story.
That’s the topic of this week’s podcast: Use storytelling to improve your email marketing. Listen here.
To learn more about the different types of stories, check out my book, Grow Your Business One Story At A Time.
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My clients report they get answers to the ever-stressful “What next?” question. They nail their messages (which makes every part of your marketing easier). They apply their marketing archetype to write their marketing copy and create content that sells…and it’s so much easier to do all these things when you understand your story archetype, your story and your message.
Learn more (and see their testimonials) here.
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