How should you promote your offer in your newsletter?
Ask 100 coaches and consultants, and you'd probably hear 100 different answers. Quite often, the founders I talk to don't promote it at all. They've put a lot of work into building a list of people who open their emails each week, and they're afraid that selling will push those readers away.
I'm not going to tell you there's one right way to do it. But over the last few years, I've built hundreds of email systems for founder-led businesses and published over 10,000 words a month, and whenever I suggest a founder puts their offer in their newsletter, the same 5 questions come up.
These are the 5 questions, and how I answer each one.
Value includes the chance to buy
The first question is usually "Shouldn't my newsletter just be pure value?", and my answer is that your offer is part of the value you give.
Each email should move the relationship forward. A useful lesson builds trust, and an offer gives your reader the chance to act on that trust and buy.
Keep things too neutral, and you become a content creator rather than a business owner, with readers who enjoy your emails and keep opening them but never become clients.
Build goodwill before you ask
Next comes "Won't I sound pushy?" An offer email only feels that way when it lands without warning, before you've built enough goodwill with emails that teach something useful and show the results you've got for clients.
When it's time to sell, keep it simple: say what's available, who it's for and what to do next.
Plenty of founders have the opposite problem and worry so much about sounding salesy that the offer comes out tame. If what you're selling is valuable, telling your subscribers about it is doing them a favour.
1 email a week might not be enough
Then there's "How often can I email before people get annoyed?" Many founders assume anything more than 1 email a week will feel spammy, but my rule is to send as often as you can deliver something worth opening.
One client moved from 1 email a week to 3, and within 4 months their revenue had doubled.
Note: no number works for every list, so test what works for yours.
Unsubscribes matter less than you think
"Won't people unsubscribe?" Some will, and I used to panic whenever that notification came through.
These days I barely notice it, because the person leaving was never going to hire you, reply to your emails or tell anyone about your work. In my experience, people unsubscribe when your emails stop feeling relevant to them, and when founders do test that extra email each week, unsubscribes barely move.
One client's list has grown to 14,000 subscribers, and outside of launches, unsubscribes stay at around 1%.
Where your offer goes
The last question is "So when do I actually sell?", and my answer is in 3 places.
- At the end of each issue. Add a short footer that tells readers how you can help and where to book a call. Write 3 or 4 versions and rotate them, so the footer never looks cut and paste and the offer never dominates the email.
- In a dedicated issue. Mix a full offer email in with your value and case study issues, and give it one clear ask. How often you send one depends on your goal, and if you need sales, send more of them.
- Around a launch. With only 1 newsletter a week, readers get very few chances to notice, and we've often found that 2 or 3 a week works better. During one client's course launch, each week had a value email and a softer promotional email, and more than 70 people were on the waitlist 4 weeks before launch day.
Each of these questions comes back to one idea: when every email is worth reading, your readers can handle hearing about what you sell.