The average person receives about 100 emails per day.

No matter what emails you’re sending, it’s competing with:

• Newsletters
• Promotions
• Notifications
• Bills and payments
• Service announcements

Sending emails consistently isn’t enough—you need to make them good!

The Mistake: Sending boring emails

If your emails don’t entice your readers, they’ll get buried in the inbox amongst the sea of other emails.

This crucial mistake leads to high unsubscribe rates.

And there are other negative outcomes along the way:

1. Low open rates

If nobody opens your emails, nobody is going to read them (obviously).

All the promises you made when they opt-in to your email list won’t be fulfilled.

In the end, zero trust will be built with your potential customers.

2. Low click-through rates

Clicking a link is an extremely valuable action that can lead to more revenue driven actions.

If your emails have low click-through rates, you’ll get less:

• Calls booked
• Sales page visits
• Course purchases

Side note: while you get punished for having links in your posts on social media (since it sends their users off their platform), your email deliverability improves when readers click the links in your email.

Speaking of which…

3. Your emails will end up spam folder

If you keep sending emails without them getting opened, eventually they will fall into the spam/junk folder.

Whenever you send an email, the ISP assigns a sender score based on the recipient’s actions. A lower sender score means more recipients are unsubscribing or marking your email as spam.

This can have a snowball effect since it will impact the deliverability of your future emails to new subscribers.

All your marketing efforts to acquire potential customers will be wasted.

The Reason This Happens

This often happens when there’s a disconnect between yourself and the reader.

Your email content most likely doesn’t align with the specific interests & needs of the reader. It’s the same issue when product teams build fancy features that users don’t care about. Ask yourself: “What are my readers’ jobs-to-be-done?”

Your readers don’t want more emails, they want the outcome that you promised.

Here are other reasons why your emails are boring:

1. Ignorable subject lines

The job of the email is to deliver valuable content. The job of the subject line is to grab attention so that readers open the email.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Adam! I don’t want my emails to sound like click-bait.”

I’m not saying you should do that, but you need to master the art of packaging your emails or risk them getting ignored. Your subject lines need to be juicy enough without being spammy (more on this later).

Attention is the currency of the online world.

2. It’s difficult to skim

You know those presentation slides at work where there are giant walls of text?

I call them the “text tsunami”.

Why? Because the reader gives up as they drown in information overload 😛.

Even if you win the click and the reader opens your email, they won’t read a text tsunami.

3. It’s not fun to read

If you sound like AI (or a monotonous college professor), you’re making it hard for people to read.

Even though you’re not in the entertainment business, everyone will benefit from digesting an engaging email:

• The reader gets to unpack the value while retaining information better
• You get to display your expertise and build a better connection with the reader

And no, you don’t need to be a comedian to do this.

How to Fix It

Your emails should bridge the free value in your content with your paid offer.

In marketing & sales, the more related these topics are = the more likely the message resonates = the more likely people buy.

And to do this, you need to be more specific.

“Product management tips” while valuable, is not appealing enough because it doesn’t communicate a tangible outcome for the reader. Why should people read this email when there’s loads of other generic advice on the internet (heck even ChatGPT can spit this out)?

Also, how are you going to turn that into a product/service that stands out?

Nicolas Cole mentioned in his book “The Art & Business of Ghostwriting”, that the best way to attract the right people is to solve 1 specific problem for 1 specific person in 1 specific way.

Your email topics should be based on:

• Readers’ jobs-to-be-done: Which topics performed well in social posts/newsletter?
• Your unique expertise: What information advantage do you have based on your experience?
• Your offer: The product/service you’re selling

Having multiple content buckets is OK, as long as most of your emails are focused on these overlaps.

Here are other ways to make your emails so exciting that your readers are dying to open them:

1. Write click-worthy subject lines:

As I mentioned earlier, to avoid being perceived as click-bait, you need to deliver on the promise of your subject line.

Do this and you will be click-worthy!

This is a huge topic on its own, but here’s a cheat sheet of click-worthy subject lines:

• Ask a question: “Do you need product ops? Here are 3 signs”
• Evoke an emotion: “Silicon Valley tricked you into becoming a PM”
• Open a curiosity gap: “This trick will make stakeholders instantly agree with you”
• Clearly spell the benefit: “How to craft product strategy (even if you’re in a feature factory)”
• Create a sense of urgency: “AI will take PM jobs away…unless you build them yourself”
• Challenge a common belief: “You’ve built a good product, but it won’t sell itself”

2. Use proper formatting

Most people won’t read every single word or sentence, they would scan first before diving deeper.

Part of making your writing easy to read is to make it easy to skim.

You can avoid the “text tsunami” by using:

• Bullet points
• Numbered lists
• Short sentences
• Headers to break sections

The reader has given us their precious resource in the form of their time.

It’s our responsibility to respect their time.

3. Make it fun to read (write like you talk)

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when writing online is not using your own voice.

We’re made to believe that we need to sound formal when we write (like some professor at college) or have this other writer persona (like…Shakespear?).

If you want your writing to resonate, you need to speak directly to the reader (just like what I’m doing with you right now).

Just write like you talk. Use a conversational tone.

You can test how conversational your writing is by reading it aloud (WARNING: doing this in public might freak people out but trust me it works!).

Also, academic writing is focused on delivering information. Online writing is more than that.

If you want to grab attention and build relationships, you need to engage your reader.

You need to be inside their heads.

And I know what you’re thinking: “how do I do that?” (see what I did there 😛?).

There. Right there. I just broke the fourth wall by using “()” a.k.a parentheses.

Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

I can build a well-packaged, high-value Educational Email Course (like this one) for your business that will:

• Boost your email opt-in rate by 30-50% (and accelerating email list growth)
• Educate leads on their problems before any sale calls (to warm them up)
• Build trust with leads in days instead of months
• Promote your products/services on autopilot

Interested? Book a free call with me.

See you 😁

P.S. In case you missed it, check out {resource}