How Storytelling Can Improve Your Email Marketing

You’ve heard the saying “the money is in the list”. It’s very true but email marketing has to be done right. You have to keep your subscriber’s’ attention and share something with them that’s valuable. At the same time you don’t want to share so much that they no longer need your products or services. It’s a fine line to walk. On top of that you also want to be entertaining and memorable as well.

We’re bombarded with information in this day and age. What stands out and stays memorable is storytelling. Think about your favorite commercials and sales messages. Chances are that they were stories being told through words, pictures, sound or film. The stories are what we connect with and remember. It’s a general human trait. And it is something we can use to our advantage to improve our email marketing.

Take a look at what you’re doing with your list right now. Are you sharing just the facts? Or maybe you’re focusing on the benefits and showing your readers how your products can improve their lives. Or are you focusing on informative content to show that you’re the expert in the field? Those are all great ways to market to your readers but the resulting messages can be a bit dry… making it hard to hold your reader’s attention.

Give this whole storytelling thing a try. Continue with the core of your message, but work a little story around it. For example instead of sharing “just” the benefits of your great new gadget or course, share how you are using it or how what you’ve learned along the way and how it has improved your daily life.

Let’s say you wrote a course on effectively using Facebook ads. Share a story about how you were spending hour after hour each day creating content, writing guest posts and posting on social media to drive traffic to your optin page. It was taking you hours each day that took you away from your family and didn’t give you the leverage you needed. There was no way to scale it up.

Your breaking point was your son’s 4th Birthday when you spend much of the day in front of your computer instead of with your family. You started to look at other inexpensive ways to drive traffic and came across Facebook Ads. After much trial and error you came up with an easy to follow system…

Or you may share that you spend the past week at a romantic getaway with your wife. Since the traffic is coming in on autopilot through your Facebook ads, you can take time to enjoy life and only occasional check in to make sure everything’s running smoothly. You’re turning $0.50 into $2.00 all day long buying traffic from Facebook while you’re enjoying a lovely vacation with your spouse.

Don’t be afraid to get a little personal. Share some of your own history, your hobbies and interests or simply what’s going on in your life today. It’s a great way to connect with your readers. They’ll open and read your emails simply to see what’s going on in your life and they may just stay for the marketing message as well. This works particularly well if you can tie the two together as in the examples above.