In a few hours, I’m to board a plane to sunny Andalusia in the south of Spain. Before then, there’s still the gym, packing, and of course, this daily email to write.
Fortunately, a reader sends in a timely question:
===
I have a (copy)riddle that’s been on my mind for a while now…
I have a tiny list of 40 people I want to grow and use to get copywriting clients.
Now… Should I keep writing to them about copywriting and marketing, or should I switch to something else that would attract the people I want?
Just because if I keep writing about copy, it is going to attract mainly copywriters and not the business owners I want, right?
What are some of your thoughts on this one?
===
When I first read this question, I felt it was either the world’s most gingerly tossed softball or some kind of setup.
Should you, or should you not, write emails that attract your target audience… hmm… let’s see… and it’s a copywriter asking me this…
Clearly, the answer is yes, right?
Yes. If you want people in a specific market to read your emails, you should write your emails in a way that attracts those people.
That’s what I replied to the reader above.
But then I thought a bit more. And the following question popped up in my mind:
Over the past 5 years, how many copywriters have started email lists with the goal of attracting clients?
And of those, what percentage have ever managed to get a single paying client from their email newsletters?
My guess for the first question is, thousands. My guess for the second question is, fewer than 5%, and maybe fewer than 1%.
So maybe there’s more to this question than meets the retina.
That’s why I’ll talk more about this on the free training I will put on at the end of this month, about how I do it, meaning how I write and profit from this newsletter you are reading now.
Because I have gotten copywriting clients via this newsletter, multiple times.
I’ve also gotten lots of one-time-gig, ongoing-job, and even partnership offers that I turned down, because I had enough work or because I wasn’t taking on clients at the time.
And yet, I’ve written many more emails about copywriting and marketing than I have about the troubles of being an online business owner… and my prime directive has never been to write in a way that attracts my ideal clients.
I’ll talk about this on the training, and I’ll work to make it interesting and valuable to you too, whether you’re hungry for clients or you simply want to write your own email newsletter for other reasons.
Once again, the training is free. It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. You will have to be signed up to my list in time to get on the training. If you’d like to sign up to my list, click here.