My Email Marketing Origin Story

Every good superhero has an amazing origin story.

The same is true for most people who start their own businesses. The path we all took to get where we are can be quite the strange tale.

While I may be an unlikely superhero, I do always use my copywriting and email marketing powers for good, so I’m going to claim this origin story idea and run with it today.

To be honest, my email marketing origin story started while I was still a full-time touring musician.

My Life Before Copywriting

You’ll recall that last week, I talked about my time working at Renaissance Festivals all over the country. That morphed into becoming a touring Celtic band with my then husband, called The Muses.

We played at libraries, pubs, Celtic Festivals, Scottish Games, house concerts, and yes, Renaissance Festivals. You may have seen me perform years ago in what now feels like another lifetime.

FYI, if you’re curious, you can still find our music on Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services. Search under my name, or “The Muses.” There are other bands with the same name, so make sure you see me on the album cover.

As we started touring to the same areas over and over each year, I needed a way to let people know when we were coming into town. So, I printed up some mailing list sheets and put them on our merchandise table.

People wrote their names, email addresses, and zip codes down in mostly legible handwriting and I dutifully entered them into a spreadsheet, so I could email them once a month.

That’s how I started emailing our fans whenever we came into town and how I started my very first monthly newsletter. The content was upcoming show dates, album and merchandise updates, and fun stories from the road. Nothing too complicated.

And it worked! People came to our shows. They bought CDs and T-shirts; they shared our music with their friends. Our email list was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. Help us make money and grow our business, in this case, our fan base.

The “Tragic Event(s)” that Unleashed My Superpower

After my band and marriage fell apart (a much longer email I’ll write someday), I became a full-time copywriter. I’d been doing all the marketing and booking for our band, so it was a logical next step. It took a few more steps than I would have liked, but I got there.

I started by writing short SEO articles for one of the “copy mills.” This was in the days where the more times you put a keyword into an article, the better it ranked in the search engines.

I got paid a pittance for each article, but it helped me build my writing habit and muscles. And I learned a lot about what a “good” article or blog post was, vs. a “bad” one.

While doing this, I discovered direct response copywriting, which I learned from a company called AWAI or American Writers and Artists Inc. They are the leading copywriting teachers in the country, possibly the world. I highly recommend them. I still take courses from them and I mentor other copywriters through them.

My very first “official” copywriting job was working full time for for a lawyer marketing company, where I wrote website copy for lawyers for 4.5 years. (If I never write another car accident page, it will be too soon.)

While I was doing this, I took on a few freelance projects, and generally rebuilt my life. Through all of it, I saw email marketing growing and taking its place as a driving force in the business world.

It was when I was hired by a marketing technology company called Leadpages that everything clicked for me. If you’ve been part of this email list from the start, you’ve heard me talk about this company.

Their main product at the time was lead generation templates. Templates were the hot thing at the time and Leadpages was the industry leader in a very small field. (They’re still around and are still a great company.)

I saw a lot of businesses and solopreneurs collecting email addresses from interested potential customers… And doing absolutely nothing with them.

At the time, I was writing pretty much everything for Leadpages, blog posts, web pages, promotional materials, copy for our templates (of course) and a lot of emails. We were very much a “we model what we recommend” company and we sent out dozens of emails every week, properly segmented and tracked.

Yet very few of the businesses we served were doing the same thing. This was despite us urging them to do so in our emails, our case studies, our blog posts, our podcasts, our weekly office hours, etc.

Seeing all of this wasted effort, and hearing their complaints of “I don’t know what to write!” and “I don’t have the time to write emails” was what set me on this path to help business owners nurture their subscribers and guide them to becoming customers.

Just like I’d nurtured my fans to buy tickets, t-shirts, and CDs, I knew how important it was to stay in regular touch with the people who have raised their hands and said they’re interested in what you have to offer.

Just when everything was getting exciting in my work life, I was suddenly laid off.

I’ll be honest, it was devastating. I loved working at Leadpages and I was really happy doing what I was doing.

But it gave me the opportunity to become the email nurturing evangelist I am today.

Transitioning to Full-Time Freelancer Again

As you may know if you’ve read my emails or followed me for a while, I’ve been self-employed for most of my working life.

I was a full-time freelance costumer before and during my time as a Road Rennie. I was the one running the business side of my Celtic band. I’ve had a few other businesses as well. I’m a serial entrepreneur, through and through. (Very Gen-X of me, I know.)

So, I did what any smart serial entrepreneur would do. I built a website and hung my shingle out as a freelance copywriter focusing primarily on lead generation and email marketing.

Then, I built my own copywriting-focused email list.

I started with a very basic, no-frills system that I lay out in my “How to Start Your Own Email List From Scratch” guide. If you still don’t have your copy after the last 2 weeks of giving it away in this newsletter, go here.

I started writing blog posts and emailing that original list every week. I got a few referrals and jobs from that list, which brought in much needed work and money to live on.

And I built my own lead generation funnel. People joined my email list and my business grew.

Identifying and Solving the “Problem” I Help My Customers with To This Day

I will admit that even for me, a full-time professional copywriter, finding something to write about every week was challenging. Especially if I hadn’t published a blog post to go with a weekly email.

That, and hearing from so many people who subscribed to my list, became clients, and took courses from me that they struggled to get those weekly emails out hardened my resolve to help.

I learned and developed systems to find content topics. I created frameworks that were easy to use. And I started teaching this to other business owners who wanted to write their own emails.

Obviously, I took on (and still have) one-on-one clients, for whom I write those weekly nurture emails. But I still believe it’s better if a business owner writes these emails themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m good at what I do. But you, as the business owner, know far more about the heart of your business. Why you started it, what’s going on, and the successes (and failures) you’ve experienced.

That’s why I created my list of 30 Subject Lines to Keep Your Subscribers Opening and Reading Every Email. This is my primary lead magnet and it’s still downloaded regularly. If you don’t already have it, you can find it here.

It’s why I came up with the 30-Minute Email Workshop, which walks business owners through how to write their own emails to their subscribers, including basic formulas for how to come up with ideas to write about and the structure to follow.

And it’s why I started the Email Writing Accountability Group, where business owners come together every week to write their emails, get feedback from me, and edit those emails, so they’ve got something to send to their subscribers every week.

All to make it easier for you to write weekly nurture emails to your subscribers. That way, you too can grow your email list and make more sales.

That’s My Origin Story, What’s Yours?

There you have it, my copywriting origin story. I hope you enjoyed this little yarn and it has inspired you even more to write weekly nurture emails to your subscribers.

Now that you know my origin story, what’s yours? I’d love to hear it and learn more about your business.

Just reply to this email and tell me about what you do, why you do it, and how you got started.

And if you have any questions about any of the offerings in this week’s issue, feel free to ask by emailing me or leaving a comment below. I’m happy to talk to you about ways I can help you write your weekly nurture emails.

This week’s Landscape is from the Zoo Lights show at the Santa Barbara Zoo. If you’re in the area, I recommend it. It was a lot of fun.

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