Why Story Based Emails?
Story based emails are not a new strategy, but they are an incredibly effective strategy. The reason you want to use story based emails, is that it forces you to find stories, personal, or popular that matter, and relate to what you are promoting. When we tell a story, we tell it from our perspective.
Our perspective is formed through our values, our beliefs and our experiences. Once you start telling stories, more come to the surface, and they show you what your values are. Story telling has been around for millennia, since before written words existed. Stories are still told today to entertain, share, and bring people together.
So why should you be using story based emails? The answer is pretty obvious, however, not many people do it. They throw out shotgun versions of marketing, or spammy emails that just turn people off. It makes it difficult for an industry that is trying to help people. Story based emails show that you are a real person, because sometimes the only interaction you have with people is via email. Your story brings you alive in their mind.
As you think about that, I’m sure the question arises, “how do I build a story based email?” Well first you need an outline, read on!
Outline Of A Story Based Email
Hook:
As hard as we try, we will never get away from having to “hook” our readers. Attention spans are short, the world is busy, and people don’t have time to read every email. So once the email is opened, your first words need to speak directly to the reader.
We will cover subject lines in another lesson, today is about the hook. You want something that grabs their attention, a question, or a statement with some power to it. For example:
They fell how far and what?… or,
Have you ever seen a snake eat itself?
Have you ever tried to use a hammer to put in a screw?
So before you just go sticking any old random shock statement there, be wary that it relates to the rest of the story! Otherwise your reader will feel duped, and then will close your email! The hook is the most important line in your email. Once you have them hooked, they are far more likely to read the whole email!
Your mission as an email marketer is to get the person to read the next line… There are lots of other tricks that can do that, but first and foremost, you have to hook your reader. They are hooked, so now what?
Body:
After the hook, this part has to be carefully crafted to ensure that you keep the email about your reader, by telling them a story, preferably about your life or an experience you had. I cannot stress this enough, because the goal of the body of your email is to make yourself relatable to your reader.
Once you become relatable, you become easier to trust. Once your prospects trust you, they are far more inclined to purchase things you recommend for them! This becomes important later on!
The next step in the body of your email is that you need to keep the story short, but meaningful. So a section of a story that had an impact on you personally. This part is also something that has to be done carefully and ensure you can relate it to what you are promoting! An example below:
“As I started building my dog run, I was trying to build it with the tools I have at home. Well I had never built a dog run before, so I didn’t have the right tools! Do you have any idea how hard it is to build something when you don’t have the right tools?
Well what ensued was a trip to the hardware store to get the tools I needed for the job to get done properly. “
Before this example I mentioned that your story needs to relate to what you are. You see the word promoting a lot in this text, and that is because, every email needs to promote something. If you aren’t promoting something then why are you emailing them? They know you will promote something, so it’s ok to do that.
What we want to do though is ensure they click through to see what it is! This is where the next ingredient comes in!
Transition
The transition of any email is where we bring it around to our promotion. This is probably the most difficult part of an email, and it is where many emails go off the rails.
Why is that? I am so glad you asked, it is because people try to just one sentence a transition! I have done it, and can attest to the fact that it does NOT work! It has to be a smooth, gradual transition, done quickly, and meaningfully. An example below:
“Having the right tools really is important, and after I had them the dog run went up in no time at all!
The right tools can help you in a lot of places, not the least of these which is online marketing! If you don’t have the right suite of tools, your marketing efforts are going to be slow in results, time consuming to do and bring you more frustration than you know what to do with.”
The transition takes a few sentences to complete, but it introduces a frustration that a lot of marketers have. Online marketing takes time, but when you have the right tools, it saves you time! So now, your reader knows exactly what it is that you are offering, now you need them to look at it! How do we do that? That’s our next ingredient!
Call To Action
I actually don’t like the phrase call to action, it feels salesy. Although it describes exactly what this step is! This is the part where you want your reader to do something! You want them to take some kind of action!
So how do you create a powerful call to action? The days of “Click Here”, or “Learn More” are old school and it seems they don’t work as well, unless there is powerful words around them. A button works well if you can add one into your email, a statement that is a link works well as long as it’s a powerful statement. So let’s see what that might look like with the above example.
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So by finishing off with that statement that offers a picture of what that product can do gives a compelling reason to click the link and have a look! Our call to action has to be convincing, but also should be natural. It’s like a secondary transition, like if they don’t click on the link they are going to miss something important!
Bonus Tip
Now this little extra is pure gold! I just learned about this not too long ago myself and have started implementing it with great results! When you sit down to tell your story, write the whole story out, and then break it into 3 or 4 relatable and memorable moments.
Once you have done that, use each one to create an email, and use the common thread to induce curiosity for the next email. Drama series do this all the time. End on a note that makes the watcher, or in your case reader want more! You want to create a story arch that keeps for 3 or 4 emails with a big conclusion and then if you can make it work drop that last call to action as one that includes some scarcity. We will talk about that in a later post.
SO let’s recap! First you want to create a solid hook, a compelling statement or question that grabs the person’s attention. Make them want to read the next line.
You then want to create a short, compelling story that shows you are vulnerable and real that relates to your promotion. Next transition into your promo with a solid call to action! Relate 3 or 4 emails together to create a story arch to build even more trust from your prospects and finish the last email with a limited time offer, or ending soon, or something to that effect!
Stay Tuned
Watch for the next post on how to create a story based subject line that demands your list to open it to learn what happens next!
Also make sure to read the “5 Incredibly Important Musts To Build Your Successful Brand” Comments or questions below! Thank you for being here and Stay Hungry!
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