Stories in emails are great, except when they’re not. Here are five situations when not to use stories in your emails:
#1. If you’re in a marketplace of one (as far as your prospects are concerned), or in a marketplace where nobody else is sending regular, conversational emails.
It might seem like there are no such marketplaces any more, but there are plenty, particularly in various local service businesses — think lawyers, doctors, morticians.
In such marketplaces, no need to go nuclear by telling stories in emails, and it might even seem tryhard or unprofessional. (“Why is my lawyer writing me about his grandfather again? Why is he not working on my divorce settlement?”)
#2. If you’re in a marketplace that’s driven by current news. For example, if you are selling anything to do with finance or investing.
#3. If you’re selling done-for-you vs done-with-you or do-it-yourself.
Stories, particularly personal stories, are really there to allow the reader to identify with you and align with you, so you can congruently tell them what to do and how to live their lives.
But if you are providing a DFY solution and you aren’t asking people to change who they are, then you have better options than telling stories — and so you shouldn’t use stories as your go-to.
#4. If you have a hot new offer or some other important message and you don’t want to bury it under a drawn-out story that most people will not read.
#5. The inverse of #1 above: if you are in a crowded marketplace where everybody else is telling stories, where storytelling has become the norm, and where your audience is likely to be hearing from a bunch of your competitors.
In such a marketplace, you end up in an arms race of storytelling. Your stories have to be more vulnerable, more shocking, more engagingly told. And yet, readers are glutted and paying less and less attention, and they’re looking for the signal among the storytelling noise. As I wrote in an email a couple months ago:
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I’ve noticed I practically never read the infotainment part in the newsletters subscribe to any more. Instead, I just scroll down to see the practical takeaway, and maybe the offer.
Granted, I’m a rather “sophisticated” consumer of email newsletters (meaning, I’ve been exposed to a ton of them, particularly in the copywriting and marketing space, over the past 10+ years of working in this field). Still, that just makes me a kind of owl-eyed canary in a coalmine, and maybe points to a bigger trend that will be obvious to others soon.
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All that’s to say, story emails are bett, but other kinds of emails can be even better.
And for that, may I remind you of my Daily Email Habit service, which sometimes prompts you to send a story email, but most days (like today), it does not.
For more information on Daily Email Habit: