Before we move into writing your micro-course, we need to fill a gaping hole in what you’ve learned so far — all those details about email marketing that you are probably wondering about.
No point jumping into writing an email sequence if you’re not settled and comfortable on the practicalities of how to do email marketing — and why.
In this lesson I’ll canvass all the major strategies and tactics you need to know — the background information you need, to feel confident in putting together an email sequence.
(I won’t talk about tools; we’ll cover practical implementation questions like which email service to use, how to format emails, and so on, toward the end of this program.)
A word of caution
Although I’ve used the term “best practices” here, I need to be open with you that these are what I consider best practices. These are the methods which I — and other copywriters I hold in high regard — have tested and found to work.
They are not necessarily “best practices” in the general sense of “the aggregate wisdom about email marketing available across the entire interwebs.” As Flint McLaughlin shrewdly observes, those kinds of best practices are actually much closer to pooled ignorance.
For this reason, you need to be very cautious about peer pressure. Too many businesses worry too much about what other people are doing with their email marketing. So you end up with a situation where everyone copies everyone else because:
They assume the people they’re copying know what they’re doing. Obviously this is completely unjustified in nearly every case, because nearly every case is an example of the one before it! A snowball effect of incompetence.
They assume that if they don’t do the same thing, they’ll look stupid. This is not a rational reason to do anything, but it is very compelling, especially in the politico-bureaucratic corporate world.
They assume that if they do something different, they’ll have to justify it. Since they don’t understand it well to begin with (because they’re just copying), that’s a terrifying prospect at the best of times.
Suffice to say, there will be plenty of times when what I teach conflicts with the received wisdom of the internet. I can’t make you do things my way, of course, but I do have very good reasons for teaching the methods I teach. Try not to fret.
With that caveat given, let me outline three strategic-level principles that will help you think about email marketing rightly, before moving on to tactical-level stuff. This is a high-level overview for your entire email sequence — not just for your micro-course. In some cases, your micro-course will actually break these rules a little; but I’ll be careful to point this out when needed.
Strategic principles
These are short and sweet — the best kind of principles. You can easily understand them, and easily apply them too.
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