I woke up, rolled out of bed and made a coffee ☕

As I was drinking my coffee I flicked on my phone and started scrolling through my …..

Emails.

Yes, emails.

Not my Instagram or FB account, but my simple email account.

Turns out I’m not alone.

58% of email users ​check their emails​ first thing in the morning before they check out social media or the news.

This, my friend, is one of the many reasons why I place a heavy emphasis on building an email list. The engagement is insane.

But here’s another overlooked reason.

To monetise your expertise online you need two things – an audience and a product.

And for most professionals, building an audience is the priority.

The email list is the place to create a deep and trusting relationship with your audience.

Look, I know, that you know, you need an email list.

But for many professionals creating it goes into the too-hard basket.

So in today’s issue, I’m going to teach you how to get one up and running in less than 2 hours.

Let’s gooooo

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The 5 Steps For Setting Up Your Newsletter In Less Than 2 Hours

  1. Nail The Basics
  2. Treat Your Newsletter Like A Product and Name It
  3. Decide on the format.
  4. Choose how many emails you’ll send out
  5. Get your technology sorted

1 Nail the basics.

A good newsletter starts with having a solid framework. It’s often a first access point into your business so it needs to align with your brand and what you sell (go here to see an example of an offer suite).

To keep it simple there are 3 questions you need to answer.

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1 Who is the newsletter for? (audience and target market)

2. What’s the main goal of the newsletter?

3. What is the big promise you’re making them?

Let’s use this Gold Mind newsletter as an example.

1. Who it’s for – Target Market

✅ Seasoned professionals who want to create digital assets eg information products, workshops, and courses, so they can have more lifestyle flexibility and leveraged income.

2. The overarching goal of this newsletter is to:

✅ Teach seasoned professionals how to monetise their expertise online with digital assets (products)

3. The big promise I make them is:

✅ Each week subscribers will receive actionable insights and strategies that can be immediately applied to start, or enhance, the online part of their business (with a focus on digital assets – using my Gold Mind Method approach)

You can see how I’ve incorporated these 3 elements into the landing page copy for my Gold Mind Newsletter

Here’s another example using our fictional friend​ Natalie the Nutritionist​ from Issue #003.

Natalie helps Female Masters Athletes with Iron Deficiency to perform better on and off the field. If she were to create a newsletter this is her jumping-off point:

Her newsletter ‘Who’:

🏑 Women in their midlife years, playing Master level sports and having low iron.

The main goal for her newsletter is to:

🏑 Help women in their midlife years navigate the nutritional, training and lifestyle challenges that come with playing at Masters level sports with low iron.

The big promise Natalie’s email newsletter makes is:

🏑 To provide weekly evidence-based, female-specific education and strategies to help women improve their iron levels while maximising their sports performance and avoiding over-training/burnout.

(⌛: 30 mins)

2 Treat Your Newsletter Like A Product and Name It

When I first started in the online space my newsletter was an afterthought. I created a basic ‘sign up to my newsletter’ optin box and hoped for the best (it gathered digital dust on some obscure part of my website).

You can see examples of this all over the interwebs.

But, when I shifted to viewing my newsletter as an actual product, the whole energy around it changed.

The first place to start with this mindset shift is to give your newsletter an identity. Give it a name. Treat it as if it’s a $100/week product that people are paying for (trust me this will put a rocket up your ass to stay consistent and produce quality content).

What’s in a name? Make sure the name is:

  • Catchy and memorable (keep it short and punchy)
  • Unique and different from your competitors
  • Aligned to your brand in some way

For ideas head​ here.​

(⌛: 30 mins)

3 Decide on the format.

Currently, there’s a rise/trend in Atomic Newsletters. These are as they sound. They’re one to two sentences long and provide links to other sources.

I love reading atomic newsletters but I prefer to write longer form ones.

There’s no right or wrong way here. Choose a format that you can be consistent with week in and week out and meets the goals of your newsletter.

(⌛: 5 mins)

4 Choose how many emails you’ll send out

Once upon a time I would’ve said, choose a frequency that you’re comfortable with. But for many people, this ended up being 1 x month (not enough)

I’m now of the opinion that more is better.

A least one email per week, up to daily if you want.

Remember this: your emails help you to deepen your relationship with your audience. You have to put time and effort into that relationship.

(⌛: 5 mins)

5. Get your technology sorted

To get your newsletter into the wild you need:

  • A platform like Convertkit. This is where the people’s names and email addresses go, and your automated welcome sequence gets triggered.
  • A landing page like​ this​. This is where people sign up for it (once signed up your email platform triggers the automated email sequence)
  • A basic Welcome email written
  • Share it (the URL of the landing page) in all the places! Tell people you have a newsletter and encourage them to sign up).

(⌛: 50 mins)

Wrap Up

Starting a Newsletter is one of the fastest and easiest ways to build a loyal audience. Once you’ve established trust you have a warm/hot list of people to sell your products to.

If you’ve been procrastinating about starting one then ​this is your sign to make it happen​.

If you need to give your current one a loving upgrade, ​then this is your sign to make it happen​.

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Block out two hours this week and get it done.

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