Do Open: How a simple email newsletter can transform your business (and it can) (Do Books Book 15)

by David Hieatt

I am fascinated by the power of a simple email newsletter to grow a business. I am also fascinated by the fact that most businesses don’t pay much attention to theirs. It’s an afterthought. A poor cousin. ‘Give it to the intern.’ And yet, newsletters are one of the most cost-effective ways of talking to your customer that a business can ever have.

With skill, with a strategy, with a methodology, they become one of the most effective instruments in your digital toolbox. They build community. They build your brand. And they relentlessly build long-term growth.

NEWSLETTERS ARE NO LONGER IMPORTANT. THEY ARE VITAL

An app can suddenly close overnight. A platform can come and go. And all those millions of followers you have amassed go with it too. But email isn’t going anywhere.

DON’T GIVE IT TO THE INTERN Newsletters are mostly treated with a lack of respect in big companies. It’s not the latest app, it’s not the latest platform. It doesn’t get written about in the press very often. In short, it is not sexy.

But if you understood its power, you would hand this project to the best people in your business.

From that hyper-stressful day, everything we did, everything we built, every single piece of communication was geared towards building our community through our newsletter. And, oh boy, over the last four years we have learned how to do a newsletter well.

I love Instagram. I love Twitter. I love Medium. I have even begun to love Facebook. But without a newsletter, I couldn’t gather all those people in one place and have a slower conversation with them.

ACCORDING TO A 2014 STUDY BY MCKINSEY, FOR EVERY DOLLAR YOU PUT INTO EMAIL MARKETING YOU GET BACK 40X MORE THAN YOU WOULD THROUGH FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND ALMOST EVERY OTHER MARKETING CHANNEL

YOUR BIGGEST COMPETITION IS THIS: PEOPLE ARE BUSY

Everything, everyone, wants our attention. And the one constraint is that we have the same amount of time we’ve always had before all these distractions came along. So understand this: Your newsletter has to stand out in a busy world when it drops into my inbox. Because I am busy.

One way to try and carve a place in their busy week is to be consistent on the time: 11.30 a.m. every Sunday; or late on Thursday evening. You decide. But to create a habit, you have to be consistent.

WE NOW CONSUME IN MICRO MOMENTS

We need to story-tell in lightweight and quick ways.

The key thing here is to understand where the customer is in terms of their day, and tailor your newsletter accordingly.

HOW TO RESPECT PEOPLE’S TIME? BE EXCELLENT If you respect people’s time – and I don’t just mean by saying you do, but you actually do – then you will think hard before you send them a newsletter. You will do your best to make it super-useful. To make it truly inspiring. To make it deeply relevant. To make it as simple as you can. As beautiful as you can.

The amount of sheer effort you put into it shows respect for your customers’ busy life by not adding to the dross they get sent each day. You won’t have to tell them how much work goes into it, because they will be able to sense it, to feel it, to see it for themselves.

They will, by your actions, be able to tell that you respect them by only sending something worthy of th...

DEEP WORK HELPS GET MORE DONE In order for you to do newsletters well and give you amazing results, you have to invest time into making them great. Your team are already busy, so where will that time come from? Well, by training them in the art of deep work. This is done by switching the distractions off. We live in a wor...

To do their best work, your team will have to commit all their attention to it. And to do so for long periods of uninterrupted time. They will have to be...

Cal Newport has written a great book cal...

In essence, you need to find two to three hours each day without wi-fi, without your phone, and make th...

That two to three hours will be worth more than other people’s eight hours. They may be working longer but they will be doing shallow work. They will be distracted by gossip in the open-plan office, by an ema...

When you are doing shallow work, you can’t solve difficult problems. Your best work will require you to overcome difficulty. Your best work will stretch you, push you, find your very limits. This wo...

For every distraction we get caught up in, it takes us another 20 minutes to get back into the flow of where we left. Distractions take more time than the distraction alone because they lea...

M + M MAINTENANCE + MOMENTUM = STRATEG...

Big companies have big teams. But they waste a lot of time, they have a lot of red tape, meetings that lead to another meeting but not to something happening fast. A small team can punch above its weight by not only being focused, but ...

WANT TO BUILD A NEWSLETTER THAT BUILDS YOUR COMPANY? THEN SPEND MORE TIME ON IT

US studies have shown that for every $1 spent on a newsletter, there is a $40 return.

Compare that to $7.30 for catalogues, or $17 for ad keywords. Plain and simple, newsletters are one of the best ways to grow a business. So spending time on it makes sense. And money.

Mostly, every newsletter they will receive this week will ask them to give or buy.

Rarely will a newsletter simply try and give them something useful, something inspirational, or an interesting bit of new information. And if it did, it would stand out.

Think of your newsletter as a relationship. A long-term one. The best relationships that last are those that both sides receive value from. In order to build a long-te...

THE LAW OF RECIPROCITY We are hard-wired to help people who help us.

Social psychologists call it the ‘Law of Reciprocity’ – which is what makes humans want to give back, to help others, to return a good deed.

GIVING CREATES TRUST

It is not a short-term strategy, it is a long-term one. Relationships are best built over time – and on equal terms.

Newsletters can be inspiring, useful and fun. But you have to do one thing: be interesting. A great newsletter works by you sharing how you think about the world, and not just what you have to sell in this world.

LESS DELIVERS MORE

So instead of the effort of doing many, how about doing fewer and making them mean more? Excellence is a great business model. And if your newsletter suddenly becomes something that people look forward to, if your newsletter becomes useful, becomes inspiring, then the ‘do less but better’ strategy will pay off.

WHEN YOU ARE SELLING, SELL

A lot of companies will try and hide the fact they are selling with humour, or get to the...

Don’t leave them in any doubt that you are selling. They will make a decision if they want them or not.

MAKE ALL ROADS LEAD TO SIGN-UP Think of Twitter as a road. Think of Facebook as a road. Think of Instagram as a road.

Well, one of the most important things you have to do is find a way to tell your story more on your own terms. Emailed newsletters allow for a longer conversation with your customer. And in a fast-paced social media world, that is pure and utter gold.

Once someone unsubscribes from your newsletter, that is them gone from your company forever.

So, your job is to be the guardian of a long-term relationship. And the best way to have a long-term relationship is to stop thinking short-term. Think about how you build this relationship over a ten-year period.

Often we think we will get better results by doing more. But the opposite is true. The single biggest reason for people unsubscribing is mailing too often. Play the long game. Email less. Email better.

PERSISTENCE IS A SKILL Everyone starts from zero. It’s a tough place, but everyone begins there. But here’s the thing: it takes time to build any...

Let’s start by saying this: design matters. If the design of your product matters to you, if the design of your website matters to you, if the design of your workspace matters to you, so should the design of your newsletter.