I remember the first time I got exposed to story-based emails.
I had just recently entered the copywriting world and transitioned away from being an indie author.
Having just written 3 novels for myself and my clients (with mine having now over 85,000 chapter reads) I was so glad to see that these story emails were getting not just a lot but TONS of sales.
I was so happy to see story emails working because this was my playing field and I was out, standing in it like a scarecrow.
And to be honest, writing problem-agitate copy as a beginner looks kinda… 😬
Since then, I have written tons of story-based emails for myself and especially for clients, that were responsible for breaking sales records, creating cult-like fanbases and all the good stuff an online business cares about.
And in this post, I want to share with you everything you need to know to get started with writing story-based emails that sell.
Why Story-Based Emails Sell
At first, writing story-based emails felt like running away from writing proper copy – the kind that would get the most amount of sales.
Only later I realized how lucky I was.
Turns out, stories are one of the most powerful persuasion tools in your arsenal.
People Are Wired For Storytelling
We’ve been communicating through storytelling for thousands and thousands of years, ever since the beginning of humankind.
We used to tell stories about the dangers and prey that we found outside, about the things we did, about everything.
You can even see it in old cave drawing, where people drew stories on the walls.
We needed to pay attention to those stories to learn more about the world and survive long enough to invent cocomelon.
So, we learned to pay attention to stories.
Stories bypass our defenses
Stories allow us to persuade (and get persuaded) more easily since we’re getting the sales message more indirectly and we see the potential more vividly through the story.
If I tell you that I’ll teach you how to ride the bike with no hands in 3 days, you’ll immediately sniff out that I’m trying to sell you something and will raise your defenses to anything I say, even it’s genuinely something that you’d actually want, would actually help you and would be a good deal for you.
But if I tell you about my cousin Ricky who didn’t know how to ride a bike and then 3 days later I went out and saw him speeding by, riding with no hands, you might wonder how Ricky did that, and I’ll point you to that same product with that same price, except now you’re much more open to buying.
Stories Entertain
You cannot sell to a bored audience.
You need to grab people’s attention and keep it long enough to get your sales argument through.
And in today’s email world, you need to do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after.
This way you keep exposing your audience to your marketing message and they tune in every single day.
Eventually, if they’re a good fit, they’ll buy. If they’re not, they’ll leave.
The One Thing Every Story Email Must Do
Stories are awesome and entertaining.
But if that’s the only thing your story does, then you’re writing a short story or a novelette, not sales material.
And that’s a BIG mistake I see a lot of beginner copywriters and business owners that try to write copy do.
They write a story for the sake of it.
They just tell stories that are fun. And then they wonder why they didn’t make any money.
Imagine going to the bank and saying:
“Yes, hello, I made 500 people laugh today, can I withdraw $500?”
Guess what their answer will be.
You don’t get paid to entertain.
You get paid to sell.
Not even comedians get paid to make people laugh.
They get paid to bring people that will buy beers, that will eat burgers, that will watch ads.
If comedians don’t get paid to make people laugh, what makes you think you can get paid for telling fun stories?
Your story needs to build KLT (Know-Like-Trust), not to be confused with BLT (Bacon-Lettuce-Tomate, methinks).
Your story needs to show the amazing thing that people will get if they buy from you OR increase their trust in you OR make people like you more.
If it doesn’t do any of those things, then it’s entertainment, not persuasion, and you have no reason sharing it with this audience.
The Two Approaches to Writing Story Emails
When it comes to writing a story-based email, there are two main approaches you can follow.
And, let me tell you, things are heating up in the ‘story email’ side of internet marketing.
Because most of the people I see talking about their approach, they have STRONG feelings about why their approach is the one you should go for and why the other approach is role playing a vacuum cleaner.
Approach 1: Start From The Story You Want To Tell
Some people prefer to search for good stories to tell first.
Their goal is to grab the audience’s attention, get them to read and tell a good story.
Then, once the story is told, they put their copywriter hat on and search for ways to tie in the story to a marketing lesson or a product they want to sell.
With the best case scenario usually being to find a specific part of the course to tie your story into and sell your course through that specific angle.
That being said, starting with the story first means that you might tell a story that is not easy to tie to a lesson or a product of yours. Or you might want to promote a specific product or specific angle because you’re in a promo, but the story fits better a different product/angle.
It’s also harder to find the exact insight or idea or parallelism that ties your story to your offer.
Which means that your transition will also probably be odd if you don’t find the right connection.
But if you’re able to nail it, you have so much more freedom and creativity available to you, which makes things more interesting both for you and for your reader.
So, here’s the gist for the story-first approach:
Pros: More freedom, more creativity, you can talk about practically anything (as long as you can tie it in), more interesting for your readers (since you have more topics you can talk about)
Cons: It’s hard to execute, it’s even harder to execute right, you need to be extra careful in your transitions, you’ll sound cringe if you don’t nail the tie-in idea, you risk alienating your audience if you go too off-topic
It’s overall a great way to write story-based emails but it requires skill and experience, so I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re now writing your first few story emails.
Approach 2: Start From The Product You Want To Sell
This is a much more straightforward approach to writing a story email.
Instead of choosing a story first, you find what you want to promote (whether that is a product, a webinar, or even an idea) and then search for stories and events that could support your argument.
Now because you already know where you want to end up and how you want to end there, your transitions will naturally be smoother and your tie-ins will be much better because you’re actively hunting for stories that make this exact part easy.
Some fans of this approach go as far as to say that stories that don’t support your selling idea are not worth telling in your emails.
Which is something that I don’t necessarily agree with, but it definitely makes selling a LOT easier.
On the other hand, this means that your subject matter is more restricted.
Not necessarily because there are not diverse enough stories that support your idea, but because you have to be more focused on the specific idea and angle you chose.
And when you’re starting out, you’ll inevitably ignore some stories that could actually be good matches for your product but in a not-so-obvious way.
This sorts itself out with practice.
So, here’s the gist for the product-first approach:
Pros: Simple to execute, easy to have a smooth transition, clear tie-in between story and product, you know exactly what to look for in a story
Cons: Can feel less creative/pigeonhole-y at first
If you want to dive deeper into how to write story-based emails…
(+ see a brilliant explanation and demonstration of how to write this exact kind of emails with the product-first approach)
…then you should definitely check Story-Seller Emails from Maliha @ The Side Blogger.
I recently went through the course and it honestly makes writing story emails a breeze.
So, if you’re newer to writing story emails, you’re going to absolutely love it.
If you’re more experienced, note that even I learned some things while going through the course.
And I do this for a living!
So, yeah, go check it out!
How To Find Email Story Ideas
No matter which approach you chose for your story-based emails (be it finding the story first or the product first), you still need to find a story to tell eventually.
And the easiest way to do that would be to reverse engineer the answer.
Reverse Engineer Story Ideas From The Product
If you chose the product to sell first, what you’re going to do is search for stories that reinforce your sales message or prove your method works or sell a certain part of the course.
For example, if I had a course on knitting and one of the modules was talking about how to choose the right yarn, I might tell a story about two friends that were knitting and one of them was much faster. And turns out the only difference was the yarn they were using and they switched yarns to make sure, which proved the point.
Then, this allows me to pitch my knitting course with an emphasis on module 2 where I show you the exact yarn to choose for each thing you want to knit so you can create more beautiful stuff faster.
Reverse Engineer Story Ideas From The Goal
If you chose to go story-first, then remember what all story emails must do.
You need to build your Know-Like-Trust stats up so even if the story has no way to be related to the product whatsoever, at least make sure you hit at least one of them.
Otherwise, it’s pretty much a wasted touchpoint. What was even the point of sending the email if, after reading it, your reader does NOT want to buy from you, does NOT trust you more, does NOT like you more and does NOT know you better?
Where to Look For Email Story Ideas
You can literally look everywhere for email story ideas.
But I know this is not very helpful so let me give you some more specific pointers.
Look at your own daily life: Sourcing ideas from your own life is the most sustainable way to find story ideas since you’ll literally keep getting new life until you die (yes that’s a new and weird way to phrase it, yes you’re welcome). But always look for story ideas when you go through daily life.
Look at your clients/customers: If you work with clients, look at the work you do for them or the communication you have with them. You can use this either for drama or educational material
Touch some grass: The more life you live and the more diverse experiences you have, the more story ideas you’ll acquire automatically, so make sure to talk to more people (especially outside your market), visit more places, do different stuff.
A story is a moment: Usually, the whole story is a single moment. And if not, then usually, it’s what leads to a single moment. So don’t think to broadly when looking for stories. A single second could be enough.
How To Find Your Pitch Angle
No matter whether you start with the product or the story, the way to find your pitch angle is the same.
And that’s because your pitch angle depends entirely on your story.
I can’t go and tell you a story about how choosing the right kind of yarn helps you knit faster and get better results and then pitch you on technique XYZ for creating multi-colored sweaters.
So, you need to find the part of the story that best connects with the product.
Again, there isn’t one true way to go about it, but there are a few things you should consider to come up with the right pitch.
Does my story connect to the core offer? For example, if the core offer is “learn how to knit 12 different pieces of clothing,” does the story showcase or prove that promise?
Does my story connect to a specific teaching? This can be a specific module or chapter or lesson or even a single insight you reveal on a random minute of a random video.
How serious is my story? If your story is super light-hearted and maybe even not too relevant to your product, there will be a disconnect if you suddenly start selling the product hard.
Where does my story lead emotionally? If your story naturally leads to a strong desire for your product, you can be much more direct and hard-sell-y with your pitch.
On the other hand, if you tell an emotional story about how you come from the streets, with little money, it might be awkward to suddenly turn around and hard-sell your product when you prospect ends the story with 0 desire-based feelings for your product.
What is the gap my story exposes? Your story most probably exposes a gap between where your reader is and where they want to be, with your product bridging that gap. Use this to paint how good the other side is and make your prospect take the next step.
How To Transition From Story To Pitch
Now, we have our product, our story, our pitch angle, and we just need to connect them with our transition.
And the key to good transitions is that they should not feel forced.
You can just hit the brakes on your story, take a 90 degree turn and go straight to pitching.
That would look like this:
“……and since I’ve started doing heavy squats, I’ve been sprinting much faster than before. Speaking of speed, Module 3 of my knitting course is all about speed tactics that will help you finish your knits much faster than before”
Noooot very good.
Instead of taking a turn like that, what you want to do is find your connecting idea and keep expanding on it. Because the more you expand on it, the more you’ll be able to naturally segue into your pitch.
And that 90 degree angle will start looking like an 80 degree. And then a 70. And you keep going until you make it as close as possible to a straight line instead of a turn.
A quick example using the same story and pitch:
“………….and since I’ve started doing heavy squats, I’ve been sprinting much faster than before. Of course, I’ve also been taking my training more seriously lately, which definitely played its part.
I’ve been going to the gym more often and run at least 2-3 times per week.
It helps that I’ve been focusing hard on technique XYZ for knitting faster, which is what Module 3 of my knitting course is all about, so I get more free time in the afternoons, which gives me more time to train”
Depending on the story, you might need to expand a lot more or a lot less on your pitch angle. But more often than not, your story emails will end up quite a bit longer than you initially expected if you want to have smooth transitions.
Putting It All Together
Okay, so based on everything you learned so far, let’s recap what you need to do to write a story-based email that actually makes some goddamn sales!
First: Decide on what will be your story approach for the next 30 emails. Are you going to start with the product? Or are you going to start with the story?
Second: If you start with the product, choose the product you want to promote.
Third: Find a story that builds Know-Like-Trust and desire for the product.
Note: Building desire for the product in the story isn’t absolutely necessary every single time, but if you want immediate sales, then you gotta have it (eg if you’re running a campaign). If it’s a regular daily email where you build brick by brick your desire, then it doesn’t need to be super strong in every email.
Fourth: Find the angle that best connects your story to your product
Fifth: Keep expanding on your angle until the road from story to pitch feels like a straight line.
Conclusion
You now have what you need to write story-based emails that make sales.
If you want to learn even more about how to make sales through story emails, check out The Side Blogger’s Story-Seller Emails.
It’s a brilliant resource that makes story-based emails super simple & easy and it’s proven to work again and again.
And if you don’t know how to start your story emails, check out my free guide called “7 Deadly Story Starters (That Lead To a Sinful Amount of Stories)”