how to craft a good newsletter

Summary

are you running a newsletter for your business? if not, why not. I’ve collected over 250,000 email addresses across my companies and it’s the single most durable asset I own. here’s how to actually do it.

1. weekly cadence. not monthly. not daily. weekly keeps you top of mind without burning the list out. people won’t open every email and that’s fine. they’ll open one when they need you, and that’s the one that matters.

2. don’t start each week from a blank page. that’s how newsletters die. use a structured format. Five Line Friday. the weekly three. one quote, one stat, one question. pick a frame, fill it in, ship.

3. curated newsletters work too. share two or three things you read this week with a sentence of context on each. saves the reader time. positions you as a filter. real value with low writing overhead.

4. own the channel. social media is rented. email is yours. one platform change can wipe out a hundred thousand followers overnight. nobody can take your email list.

5. make the signup big and obvious. on the homepage, at the end of every post, on every landing page. if people can’t find the form, you won’t get the signup.

stop posting into the void on social. build the list. try harder.

Transcript

intro

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Are you running a weekly, monthly, biannual newsletter for your business? If so, could you be better at it? If not, why the hell not? This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon, and today let’s talk about newsletters.

But before I do, let’s talk about my newsletter. Go to jerred.com, J-E-R-R-E-D.com, sign up for the Try Harder newsletter. I would greatly appreciate it. And for all of you that have already signed up, thank you so much. All right, that’s it. Let’s dive right into a newsletter. This is something I have to convince almost every business owner to do.

sign up for my newsletter

And there are a lot of reasons why, but let’s first talk about the history of newsletters in my business. This is predominantly what I’ve worked on. So how has he grown his online businesses? You know, it’s not, he doesn’t have a massive social media presence. He’s not doing YouTube. Like, how does he do it?

It’s been a lot through newsletters. And honestly, I think newsletters are so much better because you can have higher open rates. You can create quality content. People can reply and interact, and you can kind of do that stuff on social media. But social media is so, it’s the social media gods, the algorithms decide who sees your content and doesn’t see your content.

It can be suppressed. You know, maybe some people engage, some people don’t. A lot of people never even see your stuff. You know, that’s the problem with social media, and that’s why I like newsletters so much more. But I have collected over 100,000, to be honest, if we just talk about across all businesses that I’m a part of, it’s probably like a quarter of a million email addresses that we have collected.

my experience with newsletters

And when I say email addresses, those are human beings. And that’s something I always keep front and center. Those are human beings that have signed up, said they wanted to hear more, learn more from you, so on and so forth. And so it’s really important. And so in your business, when you think about what you’re doing with a newsletter and why it might be important, just remember that one, you’re talking to human beings.

They’re not just email addresses. And they have signed up specifically for something that you offer. And so you could be trying to run a newsletter like I’m running, like the Try Harder newsletter, where it’s very purposeful and impactful, but you can also just kind of do an update newsletter. So let’s talk about types of newsletters that you can provide in your company, in your business, and why it’s important.

So the big reason with why it’s important is you really just want to be top of mind, even if you’re not necessarily trying to sell something. If you have a brick and mortar practice or location, and you do send out a weekly newsletter, by the way, that’s going to be my recommendation, not monthly, weekly, it’s a weekly newsletter.

why newsletters matter

It’s kind of the minimum frequency. And you could just update people on what’s going on. And you know, hey, here’s what’s going on at our location. And here are any specials we’re running or deals that we have, or new merchandise or new apparel, things that are going on in the community, all these kinds of things, you just want to be useful to some degree.

And that’s the biggest thing I think you need to remember in having your newsletter is you want to be useful and provide some sort of value. If you do have a local brick and mortar location, yeah, what’s going on in the community, what educational stuff can you provide, you know, all those kinds of things.

If you’re purely online like me, you’re just trying to provide value, you’re trying to make an impact, you’re trying to make sure it’s something worth reading. So don’t ever forget those things. But when you send a weekly newsletter, you are top of mind. You are, even if it’s not getting opened, which you ultimately want people to open it, even if they’re not opening it, they’re still seeing you.

types of newsletters

They’re still seeing your name come across their inbox. They’re seeing the title. Maybe they just don’t want to read it. And that might be something you need to work on, make it worthwhile, make it something people want to read. But ultimately you are top of mind. You’re reminding people every single week that you exist and here’s what’s going on with your company.

That’s a big reason that you want to do a newsletter. Everyone should be doing a newsletter if you have a business. Now let’s talk about newsletter styles. Now there are two different ways that I really recommend people running a newsletter. And one way I don’t recommend running a newsletter. So the number one way I don’t recommend running a newsletter is you open up a Word document or a Google Sheet, Google Doc, and you’re just staring at a cursor blinking at you and you’re like, okay, I got to write a newsletter.

What should it be? What should I say this week? Because if that’s how you’re writing your newsletter, you will never stick to it. You will get busy because for most people, the newsletter can’t be the main thing. Like for me and what I’m doing with Better Human Business and this podcast, the newsletter has kind of become the main thing.

how not to do a newsletter

Like I want to make that the most valuable thing along with the podcast episodes, but like the content is the thing. But for most business owners, that’s not the case. The newsletter is definitely going to be not even secondary. It’s somewhere down the line. So if you just are staring at a blank page and you’re trying to create content, that will become very challenging.

So don’t do that. That’s the number one thing I don’t recommend. So what do I recommend? I recommend one of two things. The first one is having a structure to your newsletter. You can do this however you want, but you first decide on the structure and the format, and then you repeat that each and every single week.

Something we did at Garage Team Athlete for years was called Five Line Friday, and each line was kind of on repeat with what it was. The first line would be what podcast episode we had published that week and why it mattered. The second one would be what our Meet Yourself Saturday workout would be and how they could learn more about that, so on and so forth.

recommended newsletter styles

I just kind of had to develop a structure. That way, not only could I take away having to be creative every single week, one, I’m already publishing a bunch of content. I don’t need additional content. So I can urge people to go check out things that are happening. It’s a repeatable process. It’s something you can have an employee draft, and then you go in and finish up or change and put your own wording in there, but they can at least put the links in and all those kind of things.

So that’s ultimately what you want. You want structure. So decide on the structure. It could be something like Five Lane Friday, Two Tip Tuesday, whatever you want. I’ve seen a bunch of variations, but first thing that you’re going to do is decide on a structure. That way, it’s a format. It’s a template.

You can repeat, and you don’t have to be creative each and every single week. That’s the first way. The second way, which is even easier, is structure plus curation, and so it’s mainly a curated newsletter. So what do I mean by curated? You heard I mentioned what’s going on in the community this week or whatever.

don’t forget to promote

You can create a newsletter, and all it does is curate other people’s content, but it comes from you. If you don’t really care necessarily about creating valuable content in your newsletter, but you want to send one, you can say, hey, here’s what’s going on this week. Here’s some cool articles that I found, so on and so forth.

A great example of this, and I mimicked from when I did Five Line Friday, was Five Bullet Friday by Tim Ferriss. So you can go to Tim Ferriss’ website and sign up for his newsletter, but his does the same thing. It has five things, and one of them is something cool I bought this week or something like that.

It’s little things like that, and so he’s basically pointing people to other people’s products, but it’s just something that he puts in there. You can push other people’s content, but through your own lens, or other people’s products, but through your own lens, and so you can be looking at things that way.

If it’s community events, you can always just be pulling from your local what’s going on in the community and putting that in there, or if you have content that you like. Maybe you listen to 10 or 15 different podcasts, and you’re like, you know what? I’m going to put that in my newsletter this week because I thought it was awesome content, and I think other people will think it’s awesome.

You absolutely can do that. For me, I don’t do that in my newsletter. I want the structure. I want it to be my content. I want it to be impactful. I don’t want to point it in other people, other places. That’s how I’ve decided my newsletter is going to operate, but if you’re just like, hey, I need a newsletter in my business, you could absolutely throw in a health and fitness podcast that you listen to that was awesome.

Be like, hey, I got some value out of this. I thought you might this week. Here’s this podcast. Here’s another thing going on in the community, and also, here’s what we have going on in my business. You absolutely can do those things, and people will still get value because you’re saving them time.

You’re saving them effort and energy in finding a cool podcast or something that’s going on. These are different ways to think about your newsletter, but the number one thing that you have to remember is you have to point people to the newsletter. You can see I’m doing it every single podcast. I do it in social media.

Eventually, I’ll do it through advertising. You just have to remember that it is very important, and you need to be pointing people there. Don’t get buried on your website like in the footer or something like that or not linked. This is collecting leads. Leads are important, and you can communicate with them.

You can develop a relationship with them, so definitely go do that. Don’t bury it. Don’t make it hard to find. Don’t make people guess, oh, you have a newsletter. Make it very apparent on your website. Make it very apparent that people need to sign up, and they will get some value, and you will end up getting business from this at some point.

I promise you. So don’t hide in your comfort zone. You need to have a newsletter. Either curate something or have one structured and templated. If you’re not doing those things, try harder.