Hey Reader!

Remember early in the pandemic, when there were We’re All In This Together signs everywhere?

Damn I loved that.

Call me Pollyanna, but I’m an inveterate optimist. 🙃

And the truth is that we ARE all in this together, whether we’re talking about the global economy, or people who share your identity, or your neighbors, or the group that lives in your house.

Like it or not, we’re a species that thrives in community and perishes alone. So it’s in our best interests to help one another out.

So! In the spirit of mutual aid, I’d love to highlight YOUR newsletter. Send me a subscription link and a brief description of what it’s about, and I’ll include it in this newsletter so other readers can sign up if they’re into it.

Bonus: If I think your blurb could use a little zhuzh, let me know and we’ll see if together we can make it sing a little louder. 📣

xo, Julia

Each week I give you ideas for making your writing (and sending) life a little better. Here's what I've got for you this week.

Group Therapy

A friend recently let me know that she’s switching gears, and wants to move people from her current mailing list to a list for her new project. Due to my tendency to start new things by the bushel, this is a thing I’ve done several times before, with varied success. Here are my tips:

First: Ask your current subscribers if they want to join your new list MULTIPLE TIMES. I’ve made the mistake of only asking once, then becoming completely downhearted when I didn’t get much of a response.

And then of course later some of them asked why they weren’t on my new mailing list. 😳

Not everyone reads every issue, or reads every word of every issue, or follows through even when they want what you’re offering. It’s true of sales, and it’s true of this type of request. So remind them early and often.

Then: As the end of one thing and the beginning of the other draws near, send a one line email to your list that says something like:

“It’s time for my cool new thing! Want to hear more about it? Click here or hit reply.”

If this is the only thing you’re doing in this email your audience won’t get distracted by your charming anecdotes or juicy suggestions. Want it? Say yes! Couldn’t be easier. Resend it to anyone who didn’t open it the first go round. 📬

We’re afraid of repetition; we don’t want to bore people or pester them. But if you think your reader is asking herself why she ever deigned to hand over her email address to someone who won’t shut up about the thing she asked to hear about in the first place, or something just as delightful, then stop. That is not happening.

If they really like you and are interested in your stuff they won’t mind. They may even appreciate the reminder. If not, they’ll unsubscribe. Either way you win. 🏆

Finally: If there are specific readers whom you think would really like your new project or would benefit from what you’re offering, reach out to them individually. That could be through email, or social media DM’s, or a text.

People really appreciate receiving a personal invitation, particularly if you tell them that you remember that their dog will only sleep on cashmere but you’re exploring alpaca dog beds on your next trip to Peru and you’ll be spilling all the tea on exotic woolens in your new weekly email and you thought they’d like to be a part of it! 🦙

Voice Lessons

“I couldn’t write, I couldn’t type, I couldn’t spell.”

So says Jamie Oliver in the recent Chef’s Table documentary, talking about the challenges of writing a cookbook. He’s wildly dyslexic, and completely uninterested in the written word. So he picked up a dictaphone and used his voice. 🗣️

If you feel really constricted about writing for ANY reason, saying things out loud is a great start. You can use any transcription tool to put it onto the page and then go from there.

So much of writing is really editing, anyway, even for people who have mountains of experience and love doing it. ⛰️⛰️

Once you’ve got the basics down, you might be tempted to use AI to wrangle it into coherence. I’m going to recommend that you NOT do that. We’ll talk more about AI and its uses, but this isn’t the place for it.

Theoretically, you can train AI to mimic your voice. But does ChatGPT remember that conversation you overheard yesterday that made you think about the way you’re approaching your craft or your coaching or whatever? Can it make intuitive leaps? I think not. 🚫

And while you're editing your words you're going to make connections and think of new things and generally make the whole email so much better and more interesting.

AI can do a lot of things, but it tends to create bland copy. And that’s the last thing you want in your newsletter. You want your words to sound like you!

So write it like you’d say it. Ideally when someone reads your email they can hear your voice in their head. 😻

Growth Report

Every week I tell you what I'm doing to grow my mailing list, increase my open rate, and boost engagement.

Here's what I did this past week:

• Sent more personal invites
• Worked on my lead magnet
• Started an Instagram account for this project. Let's connect!​
• Created a small questionnaire to give to a few readers to make sure I really understand what kind of help they need
• Included a link and invitation in my personal weekly newsletter​

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​Sleater-Kinney wants you to say it like you mean it, and so does this newsletter. Forward it to someone who has something to say.