- Length doesn’t matter. Say what needs to be said.
- The first email in a series gets the most response. Everything goes downhill from there.
- Ask yourself, “What can I send that I would not be able to delete?”
- Predictability kills.
- Avoid sending emails in which the primary purpose is to get people to click on a link to an article you wrote. Just put the article in the email.
- Earn the right to address people by their first name. First names are powerful and should be used carefully; build rapport before auto-programming them into a mass email.
- Once you grab attention, earn it. Otherwise, people won’t give it to you the next time.
- Avoid doing what everybody else does. Even if you were the first person to do it.
- Be aware of your agenda. Tell the truth anyway.
- When you say something you yourself need to hear, that’s not the time for preaching. We tend to be the most dogmatic around issues we’re trying to resolve in ourselves.
- Ask yourself, “How will this make people do, be, or experience something better?”
- When you believe in what you write, the numbers stop mattering.
- Unopened email is still a valuable reminder that you exist.
- Remove unsubscribe notifications. This will increase your happiness by 126%.
- Scarcity increases value. Give something they can’t get anywhere else.
- If you’re enticing someone onto your list by giving them something free, you need to make twice as sure your list is valuable enough for them to stay on it.
- Don’t send out something you’re not proud of. You’ll regret it in the morning.
- Decide that your readers are smart and discriminating, not dumb and lazy.
- Ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this email?”
- Keep writing even when your voice is “off”. Write even more when you’re on fire.
- Have a publishing calendar. Throw it out when your muse has something better in mind.
- Scheduling emails out several weeks in advance is how you stay consistent. Sending them out immediately helps you stay present.
- Love what you make when you publish it. It gives you social media immunity.
- List-building is like long-term investing. The sooner you start, the higher the return.
- Share your failures, preferably when they no longer make you wince.
- As for subject lines, anything with a number in it is irresistible. (I still don’t know why this is.)
- If no one praises your emails, thank God. Praise is the fastest way to make you absolutely unable to produce anything worth looking at.
- Give people a reason to sign up, but don’t try too hard. It’s just an email list for crying out loud.
- If you can’t wait to send it, that’s a good sign.
- Open rates vary widely across industries. If yours is 30% or more, you’re doing just fine.
- If you are just starting to build your nation, get thee a landing page with a clear vision and a mailing list sign-up with a purpose behind it. Invite the people to be a part of it from the start, and you’ll have loyal supporters when it’s time to break ground.
- Well-timed auto-responders can *make* a buying experience. Use them for support, follow-up, enrichment, and to treat people like they’re special.
- Sending emails randomly gets better results than sending them on a predictable schedule. When people have the response, “Oh, I know what that is”, it’s usually followed by, “I’ll read it later”. Which never happens.
- Don’t automatically unsubscribe people who haven’t opened your emails in a while. (See #13.)
- If you’re looking for a mailing list service, Mailchimp makes lovely, powerful emails. But no service is perfect for every situation; do your homework.
- Email is intrinsically more personal than a blog post or an article. Design it with hand-delivery in mind.
- Write the email you want to read. You can’t please everybody, but you can please yourself.
- Good content takes time, no matter the format. A so-so email takes me about 3 hours. A good email takes 6-8. Give yourself enough time to make what you want to make.
- Don’t waste time apologizing for not showing up.
- Don’t waste *too much* time explaining why you’re doing something different now.
- Mailing lists are beautiful. You meet interesting people; have fascinating conversations; create new opportunities; touch lives and are touched in return.
- When you reach out, a handful of people will respond. Appreciate that most people are silently nodding along.
- Imagine you’re in a room with the people on your mailing list, and they’re all listening to what you have to say. This happens digitally whenever you send an email. You have more influence than you know.
- The strength of my email list is the single most determining factor in my future sales. My future sales is the single most determining factor in the number of people noticeably changed by my work. Email equals impact.
- Slick marketers say plain-text emails are the best way to go. I like minimally-designed HTML emails, personally. In any case, make sure your emails make sense when people have their images turned off.
- If you really want someone to do something, only ask them to do one thing. One link to click. One reply to send. One thing to sign up for.
- Every email does *not* have to have a call-to-action. But every email should have a purpose. (See #19.)
- Subject lines matter, but the fact that people trust you to send them good stuff matters more.
- Be clear about what and who you’re affiliated with.
- Follow your enthusiasm. If something feels exciting to you, we’ll feel your excitement with you.
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A few weeks ago, I finalized my chapter outline for the book I’m writing about nation-building. I sent it off to my publisher. VICTORY!
“My inbox is my friend—we go way back! True, this friend can be somewhat high-maintenance, requiring a lot of time and attention on a daily basis. This friend can also inspire feelings of guilt, when I think of unanswered queries or my own poor follow-up. But more often than not I find surprises and good things as I go through my inbox. I have no plans to rethink our relationship any time soon.” 
“Same as with alcohol: cautiously optimistic.” 
“There’s me, there’s email, & there’s the flow that happens when I’m totally immersed in something. Flow & I are in a relationship, but Email is our love-child. My relationship with Email is only as strong as my relationship with Flow. So if Flow & I are having a conversation, say, Email doesn’t get to just interrupt us just because it thinks something is important. We close the door, & when we’re done, then we see what Email wants. And sometimes Email doesn’t get an answer right away, but then I forward it to my 
“Actually, it’s quite lovely these days. Sane and it works.
“Love-hate. Love it when it’s empty, lol.” 
“I’d say it’s a love/hate relationship. For me, it’s not so much about quantity (it used to be an issue, but now not so much that I’ve learned how to manage it), but the types of emails I receive. I get happy when I get a nice personal email from someone I like (like you!), but noisy and impersonal emails make me wish we could go back to the old days of hand-written letters.” 
“Keepin’ it in line like an anxiously graceful dominatrix.” 
“I try to keep the burden on my inbox at a minimum. If there’s another way to receive or organize the same content, I’ll almost always use it. I think that inboxes have a tendency to collapse under their own weight, so I try to keep mine as lean as possible.
“Broken. I use it to deflect creative anxiety, to feel I ‘accomplished’ something, to waste time, and it has to stop.” 
“At its best, my relationship with my inbox is like my relationship with good dark chocolate. I get a little bit each day, and it’s intense and fun.
