Will Formulaic Emails Put Your Subscribers To Sleep?

In the Email Copywriting Workshop I launched last month (which is just wrapping up), student Ram queried:

If I keep on repeating the same structure, won’t my mails look very routinized and formulaic over time? Will people trust me with my stories any more?

Very valid concern.

In the workshop, I handed the students a hammer—ONE simple, flexible formula for writing emails.

And I encouraged them to (for now at least) look at every email they write as a “nail.”

The idea is to get really good at one approach to email writing.

Nail, meet hammer.

Wax on, wax off.

This is great for avoiding “analysis paralysis,” but Ram’s concern makes sense.

Won’t your readers get bored?

Well, here’s a true story about that:

A few weeks back I got a message from a confused software developer.

He’d signed up for one of my Simple Programmer email courses…

And he wanted to know why he wasn’t getting the lessons.

I dug into this guy’s history in Drip.

At first I was pretty confused too—from what I could see he should be getting the emails, but they weren’t going out.

Then I looked more closely…

Turns out this subscriber had actually signed up for this EXACT course less than 2 months ago.

He’d gotten all the emails, and even opened most of them.

(In fact the reason he wasn’t getting the lessons now is that Drip tries to be smart about not sending out repeat messages.)

Apparently he didn’t remember going through the course just a few weeks ago—and so he wound up signing up for it a second time.

Getting back to Ram’s concern:

Your subscribers are NOT analyzing, cataloging and hyper-scrutinizing every email you send them.

In most cases, they don’t remember the details of what you sent them last week.

And they may not even remember signing up for multi-week email sequences.

So relax.

Take a chill pill.

Don’t stress about repeating yourself once in a while.

Just have fun with your emails—get into a groove.

Hammer those nails for a while.

You’ll find your subscribers don’t mind in the least.

Related posts:

  1. Do Your Subscribers Love Your Emails This Much? Nothing makes me happier as a teacher than seeing a student take the ball and run with it. Subscriber Chad is one of those. He’s been paying attention and implementing—and his list is starting to perk up and take notice. Chad recently forwarded me an email he got from one...
  2. Worried Your Emails Will Annoy Your Subscribers? Read This… A few weeks back my alarm went off as usual at 4:55 a.m. And when I grabbed for my iPhone, I saw that I had a message waiting from Bryan Harris. If you don’t know Bryan, he is THE MAN when it comes to building your email list. He’s created...
  3. How to get subscribers reading (and responding to) your emails Reader Yurii writes: +++ I’m only starting with email marketing and the most frustrating question for me at the moment is “Why people don’t answer my emails?” I’ve got only about 30 people on my mailing list, but all of them seem absolutely unresponsive and not even willing to respond...
  4. How To Pitch In Every Email (Without Turning Off Your Subscribers) Subscriber Stuart runs a website to help lonely singles find love online. And he’s worried about coming on too strong in his emails: He asks: Do you try to sell in every email? For my drip series, there’s a PPS in every email with a different reason to order online...