Subject:
[Email Series on Series] Making a smooth transition
How do you make an email into a series anyway? Open up to find out.
Hi Tanya,
We’re talking about email series again. I started this email series on writing email series on Tuesday. If you missed that one, I recommend going back and reading after you finish this one. It will all make sense.
As I mentioned yesterday, writing an email series is an easy way to stretch out an idea when you have a lot to say about it.
The art of writing an email series is in the transitions.
When you originally wrote your email, you probably looked at it and said, “That’s way too long for an email.” Then you gave a huge, disgruntled sigh and looked for sections you could cut.
Instead of being forced to truncate your wonderful idea, you just need to break it up into sections.
Once you’ve done that, your next task is to write transitions from one section to the next.
The first section will only need a farewell transition. The last section will only need an intro transition. Every section in between will need one of each.
The idea with these transitions is to be the connecting wires between a bunch of lightbulbs. Each wire leads your subscriber to their next “A-ha!” moment when the lightbulb turns on.
If you’ve ever listened to old episodic radio shows, you’ve heard great examples of this.
The narrator reminds the audience of what happened in the last episode at the beginning.
“When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were dangling from a cliff, high above the Colorado River, desperately clinging to the rocks to keep from plummeting to their deaths below…” and then the dialogue would start.
At the end of the episode, the narrator would forecast the next installment.
“Will our heroes manage to rescue the rancher’s daughter, round up the stray cattle and save themselves? Will the rancher’s daughter be willing to return home to her family or will she choose to live a life of reckless abandon with her newly formed band of lady outlaws?
“And what about Naomi?
“Tune in next week to find out on (Insert name of show here.)”
You need to do something similar, but perhaps not quite so dramatic, with your email intro and farewell transitions.
Your intro transition for each email would look something like:
“Yesterday, I talked about how X and Y would cause Z. Today I want to clarify…”
The farewell would tease the next day’s email, should look something like this:
“Okay, I’ve gone on long enough for today. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about…”
If you don’t send daily emails, substitute whatever day you’ll send your next email.
By the way, I don’t recommend email series if you send less often than once a week. That’s a long time to ask someone to remember what you previously wrote, even with a dramatic reminder intro.
I do recommend trying this at least once, to see how your subscribers react. I tend to get a lot of replies when I finish a series. I get good open rates too.
If you’re feeling a bit confused by all of this and wondering how to write an intro and farewell paragraph without sounding like a cheesy 1930s radio announcer, finish reading this email. Then go back and read it again, paying specific attention to the beginning and the end. I am presenting a perfect example of how to make it all work smoothly.
Now that you know how to introduce and wrap up each section of your email series, you may wonder how you go about dividing your original email into sections, so you can add those pieces to each one.
(Cue dramatic announcer voice:) Tune in next week, when I reveal the secret to isolating each small idea within your overall big idea, so you can turn that into its own, unique, and perfect email in your series.
Tanya Brody LLC - United States You are receiving this email because on Oct 30, 2019, you opted in to the mailing list Tanya Brody's Newsletter from Tanya Brody LLC.
