My weekly email newsletter process

Something that I shared inside of a private Facebook group but though my fellow small business owners exploring email marketing might be interested too...

Happy Monday everyone!

Your Monday host popping in to share a bit of a behind the scenes on how I write my weekly email marketing newsletters (yes... my theme has been email marketing for the last few weeks!).

Also if you haven't already seen the link to sign up for the Email Marketing Bootcamp and you're interested, you can join here: https://www.planthatsocial.club/email-marketing-bootcamp

I have REALLY tried to simplify things over the years in all areas of my business, and email marketing is no exception.

The first thing I came to terms with was email frequency and what worked for me to actually stay top of mind for my audience, and I learned from one of the best in digital marketing, Amy Porterfield.

When it was revealed that WEEKLY emails were the secret sauce for most service based businesses, I thought I might ?? at the thought of having to create a newsletter each week, but I went for it anyways.

I committed to that frequency and decided I would level up my skills in all the other areas of email marketing as I got used to sending more emails and I just learned as I went along.

I won't lie, that habit was hard to create in the beginning, but now it's the one non-negotiable marketing piece I have to tackle each week. Unless something drastic happens in my personal life or with my kids, then an email goes out every single Monday without fail, and if I miss Monday for some reason, it will go out another day of the week, but it will still be weekly!

HERE'S MY BASIC PROCESS FOR WRITING MY EMAILS EACH WEEK:

Refer to my big ole' ideas list. I have a list inside of my notion dashboard where I braindump marketing ideas as I have them. I take all those paper scraps laying around and consolidate them here digitally every so often so that I can actually find those light bulb moments that I had at 2am ??

Choose one of the ideas OR decide on what story I want to tell based on something that has just happened in my business, or choose to write about something that is coming up soon (like the email bootcamp offer I am promoting this week to my email list)

Create a copy (duplicate) of my previous newsletter (I use podia to send my emails and my site is built on this also) so that my main banner, colours, email signature etc are all looking pretty and ready to go!

Write the email! I leave the copy from last week intact in the copy while I create a new block above it (this just helps me maintain the length and style). Once I have the framework/draft in place, I copy the new content into a google doc to proofread, then back into the newsletter it goes with the corrections made.

Get rid of fluff... I am very wordy, and I have a hard time shortening my own newsletters. For this reason step 5 is kind of an additional step for me that you might not have to do. This is where I bold certain sections and add emphasis in certain areas, create more line breaks so it's easier to read, and I even delete entire paragraphs sometimes if they don't add anything to the overall message or story. If I'm SUPER stuck then I paste sections into chatGPT and ask it to create a condensed version.

Add images/gifs/videos/links.

Decide on the subject line. I know this seems weird to have it at the end, but I write the whole story before I decide what the subject line will be that best fits with that email. Sometimes my original idea is no longer the main focus and I went on a bit of an ADHD email journey... so I have to bring it back into focus ??

Review and send!

Once I've sent the email, I copy the whole thing into my notion marketing dashboard so that I can re-use it or look back at it later.

In 2024, I plan on looking at all of my best performing emails to build on those concepts and recycle some of the really engaging emails because really... I just want more time with my kiddos and no one will remember what I sent Nov 20th of the year before ??

What does your email marketing process look like?

-Brittany Hardy