5 types of emails to send your subscribers for coaches and consultants.

Have you got an email list? I don’t mind how big or small it is as long as you’re regularly sending them emails. 

Are you…?

Oh good! 

But does it feel like a constant brain drain trying to conjure up fresh ideas that will educate and entertain and make you some sales on a regular basis?

If that sounds about right, that’s what this blog is designed to help with!

Before we dive in, let’s just get clear on the different types of emails you could be regularly sending to your list.

1. Regular ‘newsletters’
   1. Digests
   2. News-based
   3. Story-based
2. Long-term nurture
3. Sequences for a specific purpose e.g. welcome, nurture and sales

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope that this blog gives you some inspiration on how you can make emailing your list regularly easy for you and valuable to your audience.

1. Regular newsletters

Up first and probably the most common are regular newsletters.

You set up an email list. You might have a freebie to give away to encourage good-fit people to join.

And then you have to muster up regular ideas of what to send to those lovely people.

Let’s have a little look about each type of ‘regular newsletter’ and the pros and cons of each type.

a. Digests and round-up style emails

What is it?

This style of email tends to be split up into ‘features’ like a magazine or newspaper.

The regular features mean that you always know what you’re going to put into your email, but they can take a long time to put together.

I’ve seen them work best for people who run communities like Andrew and Pete and their Atomic-specific weekly digest emails. Or Mark Masters’ extensive weekly email he sends to his You Are The Media community. 

They aim to bring members together, deliver a spot of learning and highlight anything that’s going on in terms of events or trainings.

Copywriter Dave Harland does a round-up style email most weeks that collates his funny LinkedIn posts every week. 

A couple of examples of ‘big players’ would be the beloved Ann Handley (copywriter and marketing expert) and Codie Sanchez (talks about buying and turning round ‘boring’ businesses as well as sharing sensible business advice.)

The common denominator between all these examples is that they’re a round up of content that has already been created or things that are already planned. You’re unlikely to be able to repurpose a digest-style email. It is the result of repurposing.

Pros of using digest and round-up style emails

• It gives you the opportunity to include lots of different pieces of news and advice as well as enabling you to inject lots of personality.
• You have a template to work from every week.

Cons of using digest and round-up style emails

• They can be time consuming to produce. I reckon four out of the five examples included above have teams that put their newsletters together for them. 
• They’re time consuming for your subscribers to read too! 

Just like a magazine they’re skimmable, which on the one hand is great. But it means that people are unlikely to read every section. That’s not what this format is made for. So if you have something really important to tell people e.g. you’ve just launched a fab new offer; it’s likely to get lost in this format.

Ideas of what to include in a digest and round-up style emails

• Questions or lightbulbs people in your community, membership or programmes have shared with you this week.
• Client-of-the week; champion their business and any recent successes.
• Book-of-the-month; or any type of resource that you’d recommend e.g. a course, video channel or app.
• News of upcoming events e.g. if you do a lot of speaking and guesting on podcasts.
• A round up of your most recently created content e.g. blogs, videos, podcasts or your social media posts from that week.
• Something lighthearted and ‘on brand’ for you e.g. a joke, a time wasting app, meme or viral video.

As with everything in business, if you like this format as a consumer then you’re more likely to use it as a content creator. I’m not a huge fan as a consumer so I won’t be using this format for myself any time soon.

Some business owners do round-up style emails monthly or quarterly instead of weekly. If this is you, make sure you’re sending other types of email in between. I’ll explain why later.

b. News based emails

What is it?

No, I don’t mean literally telling people what’s going on in the world, I mean news and updates specifically relevant to your readers. 

For example, sending your list the latest blog you’ve written, podcast you’ve released or summit you’ve spoken at.

Plus perhaps what’s going on in your industry. 

Amanda Webb used to run a weekly show called The Digital Coffee that gave a thorough run down of social media marketing news from that week. She then promoted that content to her email list. (Click here to find out why she stopped it and what she’s doing next.)

A much more common approach would be someone sitting down to write their email for that week and thinking ‘ok, what happened this week..?’ which is where this approach can become a tad spaghetti-on-wall.

Pros of using news-based emails

• This is obvious stuff that your subscribers need to be made aware of!
• If you’re regularly creating content, visiting conferences or appearing in the media, this format can practically write itself.

Cons of using news-based emails

• It’s harder to be strategic with it if you’re reacting to what’s happening rather than plotting out what your subscribers need to hear from you. The aim with email marketing is that you’re establishing yourself as a trusted option so they think of you when they’re ready to take action.
• What if something doesn’t happen that week? #BrainTumbleweed
• You create them once and you can’t typically reuse them.

The dilemma here is; how do you make sure you get all this goodness to your subscribers without sacrificing the opportunity to help them along the buyer journey?

Keep reading, I’ve got some suggestions coming up.

Ideas for news-based emails

• Share a piece of content you’ve created that week or give people a sneaky peek into something that’s coming up.
• News of upcoming events e.g. if you do a lot of speaking.
• Updates on recent work you’ve started or completed. Again, only if it’s useful for the reader to know.
• Your take on a hot topic in the news.

The key with all of the different types of emails is that, whatever format or topic you choose, it has to fulfil the ‘what’s in it for me’ factor.

So you’ve got to be careful with the news-based approach- there’s a danger of it becoming a bit ‘me me me’ and losing touch with what will actually chime with your readers.

If your subscribers think it’s irrelevant, they’ll quickly stop reading and then unsubscribe.

c. Story-based emails

What is it?

This is where you use your own anecdotes, life stories and client examples to illustrate a point or as a way to introduce a relevant message or resource.

Or even analogies and metaphors- my favourite!

Story based marketing is all the rage.

And for good reason; humans can’t resist stories. 

It’s baked into our DNA from when we bonded round the village fire. It was how we passed on knowledge before we could write.

I once wrote a story email about having a massive spot on my face and a client told me she was thinking ‘why am I reading this?’, knowing that she was already working with me. She couldn’t help reading to the end. Tee hee! 

An example of someone who does this well is Kay Peacey who runs Slick Business and the ActiveCampaign Academy. 

The tricky thing with writing story based emails is that it can sometimes feel like you’re jamming in the ‘business moral’ at the end. It can feel forced.

In my experience, this is less of an issue than it feels.

Although you do sometimes see some crackers on LinkedIn. One guy put a post out recently about him getting engaged, with a photo of him down on one knee in front of his fiancée that read ‘I proposed to my girlfriend this week. This is what I learned about business as a result…’ You’ve gotta laugh! 

Pros of using story-based emails

• Stories are just SO compelling
• They allow people to get to know you on a deeper level — fast tracking that ‘know like trust’.

Cons of using story-based emails

• If you’re not a natural writer, you might struggle with this format. (But the same could be said of the other formats…)

As long as you’re using them in the context of where you want to be taking your email audience, there aren’t any downsides of writing story-based emails. They’re adaptable- you can take a story in any direction (and call to action) that you want.

Ideas for story-based emails

• Your origin story- why you do what you do
• What do you do to take care of yourself or what you do for a hobby
• What are your values and how did they get embedded into how you do things (you could pick one and zone in on it or a summary of all of them)
• What anecdotes happened to you this week or in your past that made you think differently about what you do or made you realise the importance of what you do.
• Is there an analogy or metaphor that explains why what you do is so powerful and/or is particularly appealing to them? Bonus points if you can create a graphic that illustrates your point.
• Something that you hate that everyone else loves or vice versa.

2. Long-term Nurture emails

What is it?

I first heard of this concept from Gemma Gilbert but I believe Elizabeth Buckley-Goddard does something similar.

Basically, instead of a short ‘welcome’ when people join your list, you send them a set of pre-written, carefully chosen emails that stretches the length of time it takes for an average person to decide whether you’re who they want to work with or not. 

How long are we talking? 

For a high-ticket coaching package that could be a few months to a year. Or even longer!

Pros of using long-term Nurture emails

• It’s the definition of strategic. Work out the journey you want to take your email subscribers on, and craft the emails ahead of time.
• You get to dip into all your greatest hits of previous emails and pieces of content you’ve created and reshare them. This has awesome repurposing potential. 
• Looking at the whole buyer journey will highlight any gaps you have in content you need to create to help people make the best decision for them.

Cons of using long-term Nurture emails

• It’s onerous. Write six months worth of emails? Argh!
• Each long-term nurture email should have a singular focus. There’s no room for a ‘p.s. I went to a fun networking thing the other day’ type update.
• If you don’t have a tonne of content to delve into this could be very time consuming as you’ll uncover topics that you need to cover in depth – potentially in another medium e.g. blog, video or podcast. (But arguably this will need to be done sooner or later, so…)

Of course in reality, you don’t have to batch write months of emails all in one go. You only need to do one at a time and add them to an automated sequence as you go. Just make sure you’ve done that pre-planning. 

3. Email sequences for a specific purpose

What is it?

Someone just subscribed to your list? Got something amazing to offer? Someone new just joined your community? Then you’re going to want to send them an email sequence.

The most common types of email sequences are:

• Welcome sequences e.g. for when people join your list for the first time or your membership or community
• Nurture sequences – usually sent when someone has downloaded a lead magnet or bought a course of yours 
• Sales sequences – for when you want to sell something! Sometimes these can join onto the end of a nurture sequence; so you can make an offer of something relevant to someone new to your list. A small proportion of people subscribing will be ready to get some help now, so it makes sense to let them know how you can help as soon as possible.
• The long-term nurture sequences mentioned earlier count as a type of email sequence too.

Templates for all these abound! But adapting them to your business and your audience is tricky in practice. Impossible, if you’re not clear on exactly who you’re serving and what makes you different! 

Want to know more about this?

Check out my blog The Ultimate Guide to Creating and Selling Coaching Offers for a full run through of how to get clear on the messaging, packaging and pricing of your main high ticket service.

Pros of using email sequences

• They’re the best way of achieving a specific goal. 
• Since you plan, create and automate them, the response (or lack thereof) feels less emotional. Marketing is testing. Not everything will land. It’s much easier to observe the results from automations from a more detached and logical standpoint. Learning and tweaking as you go. 

Cons of using email sequences

• This isn’t a ‘con’ as such, but it can start to be tricky when you have several sequences firing- knowing how they all fit in with each other can be an artform. But it’s all figureoutable! 

Email sequences are at the heart of email marketing. If you’re just sending random weekly updates, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

Ideas of what to include in an email sequence

Welcome: This is your chance to introduce yourself, what you do and share a little bit about yourself. This could be in one email or stretched over five or more.

Nurture sequence: Using the example of someone having downloaded a lead magnet of yours, a typical nurture sequence could look something like this:

• Email 1: Here’s the freebie and a reason to use it now.
• Email 2: Did you access the freebie? Here’s a reminder why it’ll help
• Email 3: Here’s a tip for getting the most out of the freebie.
• Email 4: Here’s another way of looking at the reason why you downloaded the freebie OR a link to a follow on resource.
• Email 5: Explain how the freebie fits into what you do with people. If you’re not segueing into a sales sequence, you could include an offer in this email.

Sales sequence: The simplest, shortest sales sequence I’ve seen uses the acronym GLR and it goes like this:

• Gain- What are the emotional reasons that someone would want to take you up on what you’re offering? What would they gain in the wider context?
• Logic- Why are the logical reasons that they’d want to buy? Money and return on investment often crops up here.
• Respect- With respect, if you don’t take action now, what will happen? How will you resolve this situation yourself when you haven’t managed to do so already?

Long-term nurture: Bearing in mind this type of sequence is tens of emails long, I’ll boil it down to it’s essence — the job of the long-term nurture sequence is to:

• Take new subscribers on a journey that builds the know like trust factor with you
• Removes the reasons why they wouldn’t buy from you
• Show that you’re an expert in your field and that you get results
• Helps them understand the size, shape and flavour of their problem i.e. brings clarity
• Helps them make the right decision for them.

Yes, you can mix the formats up

To close the loop I opened earlier; how do you communicate the off the cuff ‘this fab thing just happened’ stuff with the strategic ‘I am taking you on a journey’ stuff?

You have two options:

1. Mix them up. Say you email your list weekly- one week you could have a run down of news, the next could be a ‘clarity on their problem’ email. This could either be planned this way e.g. first week of the month – send a story, second week of the month- send a news round up. Or it could be adhoc.
2. You set up your long-term nurture emails to go out on a certain day every week and then reserve another day in the week for topical things.

Why should you send more emails to your list

I couldn’t finish this blog without touching on an unhelpful and widespread problem people have, which makes it harder to decide what to send to their email subscribers.

And that’s a set of unhelpful believes that go something like this:

• I’m annoying people
• People get too many emails as it is
• I don’t want to clog up their inbox
• I’m bothering them
• I don’t like having a full inbox, it stresses me out. I don’t want to stress people out, so I won’t send many emails.
• What do I even have to say to them? (I have a solution for this – see below)

What is true:

• These people have CHOSEN TO RECEIVE EMAILS FROM YOU. Not following up on your promise and failing to send regular emails is weird. 
• When you know what you’re helping people with and who you’re helping, what to send to your email list becomes a heck of a lot easier.
• Making offers to help people is serving them. You can only help them in a limited way if they don’t buy from you.
• People are not mind readers.They need to see that you know you’re doing and how you can help.

If your leg was dropping off and someone could help you but they kept it to themselves because they didn’t want to be a bother, that would be ridiculous wouldn’t it? 

And if all that wasn’t enough; that the fewer emails you send, the fewer people in your audience who have chosen to receive your emails will see them. 

Most email experts recommend a good mix of delivering value to your list and making offers.

How can you do that if you’re emailing infrequently?

A value piece one month and a sales email the next?

The relationship will take longer to build. It’ll take longer for them to see you as an expert. And you’ll never see any results.

Even a really fabulous open rate is only about 50%, so if you send your emails once a month, your audience will only see about six emails from you in a year. IN A YEAR! 

How much impact can you have like that?

Rant over.

Still scratching your head as to what emails to send your list?

Download my Email Content Generator Tool for free here: