How to Write Articles that Grow Your Email List
By: August Birch
I wrote over 900 articles during the course of three years before I figured out the strategy I’m about to share with you. Here’s hoping you can avoid my huge mistake…
We’re stuck in the middle of the attention economy and the noise is only getting thicker.
If you want to hold the attention of the people you serve, it’s important to not only create unique, original content worth your reader’s time, but also to create content that encourages list-building.
It’s hard to earn a new reader.
Your readers have unlimited choices for their time and attention.
If you’re lucky enough to have someone stumble upon a piece of your content you want to hold that person’s attention as long as you can.
This means you can’t trust they’ll return to your work on their own. No one sits around and thinks, “When will he write another great article?” Your readers are busy. They have their own problems.
Therefore, we need a consistent way to capture our reader’s email address, so we can maintain that valuable connection after the initial contact.
Welcome to your Easy Invite.
Your Easy Invite is exactly what the name suggests—a free, or inexpensive, but valuable offer that you deliver in exchange for the right to email that reader at some point in the future.
We focus on the reader first.
Your reader knows how valuable her email address is to you. It’s a direct connection—a Bat Phone into your client’s house. There are no gatekeepers with email. No platform that decides whose content is seen. Everyone on your email list gets your email.
With email, you have just as much right to your reader’s in-box as the biggest companies on earth. No one can pay for a higher spot in someone’s in-box.
Despite it being the oldest digital marketing tool we have (email was invented in the 1970s), email is the best sales tool for writers and creators who want to scale their businesses.
This means every piece of content must work harder for us.
Think of your email list as the hub of a wheel. All pieces of content, every video you make, every interview you give, and every book you write, should lead to your email address.
So, how do you write content that grows your email list?
You answer the questions that bother your reader. You solve the problems that plague them. You remove the pain so they don’t have to worry about a certain issue anymore.
When you create any piece of content, think of your reader first. You take a little piece of the reader’s time every time she reads some of your content. Don’t ever take that time for granted.
- Don’t write boring content
- Don’t write content we’ve read a hundred times before
- Don’t write content that doesn’t solve a problem
Instead, create content that enters the wild conversation that consumes most of your reader’s waking thoughts.
Solve that big, pressing problem—one piece of content at a time. Get specific with each piece of content you create. Your content should stand alone, even if the reader doesn’t join your email list, or they never buy anything from you.
- Give until it hurts, then give a little more
- Solve one problem at a time
- Share what you learned the hard way so your reader can avoid your mistakes
Here’s the best part (and the way you grow your email list)…
At the bottom of every piece of content you create, invite your reader to enroll in your Easy Invite. Remember, this is a free, or low-cost tool/course/template/workbook that you give in exchange for their valuable email.
- Don’t ask people to get your newsletter
- Don’t ask people to ‘keep in touch’
- Don’t ask people to ‘join your list’
No one wants to be on some list. We have enough generic newsletter jamming-up our in-boxes. We want entertaining content that solves a specific problem for us, right now.
And if the client wants more—if she wants a deeper-dive into your work and the problems you solve, she’ll click that self-serving link at the bottom of your super-valuable piece of content and she’ll join your email list to get it.
When you’re ready to grow your email list I have something special, just for you…
My Tribe 1K Email Masterclass is a $97 value (with all the templates and checklists included). Enroll today:
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed email marketing expert for writers and creators, August helps indie writers and creators make more work that sells and sell more work they make. The core of August’s process is your email list. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August hangs-out with his beautiful wife and handsome son, carries a pocket knife, and shaves his head with a safety razor.
