How to Write Emails People Actually Want to Read

Sam Vander Wielen: So I know you might be overwhelmed and maybe even a little bit stuck on how to write your weekly newsletter and build your email list. I know that you just want to know what to write each week. Like you just sit down and have clarity. You know what you’re writing and you’re writing with intention.

Which is going to lead to more consistent leads coming into your business, getting more client inquiries, more responses and engagement, like you’ve been reading my mind and I love your emails, and ultimately you want your emails to make more sales.

If only you knew how to actually get the right people to sign up for your email list and then know what to send them in all of your weekly newsletters or however often you send it.After listening to this episode, you will feel clear and confident about how to build your email list and what to email your list so you’ll never have to sit and stare at a blinking cursor again.

My guest today is one of my favorite copywriters, uh, in the biz, and frankly, one of the best copywriters in all of online business.

We are so lucky to have her here today, Tarzan Kay. So Tarzan specializes in writing emails that are fun to read and more addictive than whatever you just marathon watched on Hulu. Her programs and DIY courses teach business owners how to write highly addictive story-driven emails that sell without using coercive sales tactics.

She spent the last three years quietly dismantling her seven figure boss babe empire, and is now building a more inclusive online business that prioritizes people over profits. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her two children and one canoe. I’m so excited for you to hear my conversation with Tarzan. She dropped some real gems in this episode, so you’re in for a treat. Let’s get into it.

Sam Vander Wielen: Hey Tarzan, welcome to the show.

Tarzan Kay: Hey, thanks for having me, Sam.

Sam Vander Wielen: I’m so glad you’re here. You’re one of my favorite people. I talk about you all the time.

Tarzan Kay: What? Me too. Me too.

Sam Vander Wielen: I’m just very lucky to have you here. Everyone is very lucky. And speaking of, I would love for you to tell our listeners, if they take the time, they go pop in their headphones and take a walk or go canoeing, your favorite thing to do. What can they expect to hear out of today’s episode?

Tarzan Kay: Okay, well, you’re gonna walk away from this episode feeling a lot less scared and a lot less bad about all the things you haven’t done yet. Like we all have all this drama wrapped up in email, like, ooh, I didn’t send one last week. Or, I don’t have enough subscribers. Or like, Ooh, people are gonna be mad at me. They won’t like it. Like, we are just gonna cover all of that. And you’ll leave this episode knowing where your next subscribers are gonna come from and what sorts of things that you should be talking to ’em about.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah.

I love that you, you and I are very much cut from the same cloth of just like, let’s cut the BS and just get it done. ’cause we’re wasting way more time talking about it than we could have just got back to it by now. So I think that’s gonna be really helpful. So we’re gonna break up our conversation into kind of a two-part situation.

We’re gonna talk a little bit about building up our email list for anybody listening who feels like they don’t have enough people on their list to write to yet. Although I would make an argument that it does not matter if they, you have two people right now. You got two people, let’s write to them. But, we’ll talk about building that and then we’ll talk in the second half about writing great weekly emails.

So why do you think that everyone listening should build their emails? Why should they focus on email list building as a part of their online business?

Tarzan Kay: Well, your email for an online business, like that’s your mechanism for making sales, like that’s really where the transaction happens. It’s the final step to get people to click through to whatever thing they’re gonna buy.

It’s also where you have the most control. It’s where you can predict like, okay, X number of people received this email. This number’s probably gonna click through and we can predict a little bit what’s gonna happen, you know, if I need a revenue boost in September, I know like, okay, well I’m gonna send X number of emails and promote this thing and this is what’s gonna happen.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. Okay. Sure. So consistent, consistent sales. That comes up a lot. I just did an episode with Kaitlyn Collins, who does all my, like funnel work, and we were talking about how people are often disappointed to find out that if they’re gonna run a sale or some promo to their list, and 1 to 2% is roughly the conversion rate. They look at their numbers and go, oh no, this giant sales goal that I had is now not realistic based on, you know, I have five 50 people on my list like I, I’m not gonna make my $50,000 that I thought I was going to make.

Tarzan Kay: Oh yeah. That is a bit of a cruel reality. Yeah. But, um, it’s also important to have a perspective on one to 2%, like for people like you and I who are seasoned marketers with larger lists. Like, you know, we use one to 2% as a baseline conversion rate, but we’re also doing highly scalable marketing strategies. Whereas when you are, like, let’s say you’re a small, like you’re a service provider and you have 50 people on your email list, those 50 people, like, they might have come to a workshop with you, they might have done a one-on-one session, like you might know them personally.

Conversion rates can be much, much higher with a small list than percentage wise than they are with a larger list. So let’s keep that in mind. Like my subscribers mostly come from Facebook ads. They don’t know me from Adam, like they saw me for three seconds on Facebook, clicked through to my opt-in page and like that’s the beginning of the relationship versus someone that you that you did a session with, like maybe created some sort of transformation with, and they said, okay, sure. Like I’ll follow you and like read your work in my inbox. Very, very different. So, you know, some, a little piece of feel better advice there.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, that’s a really good point. ’cause I do feel, I could see how it’s like a higher quality list even when it’s small. I mean, as long as we’re assuming that the people on your list aren’t all people you’re related to currently.

Tarzan Kay: Right. That is also true. Yeah. But, and the other factor to keep in mind is like, I’m selling lower cost products at scale. So, you know, I might be selling courses for like 500 or a thousand dollars.

You might be a service provider and your earnings per subscriber is gonna be way, way higher than mine because you’re selling things that are potentially more expensive and those people might come back again for the same thing.

Sam Vander Wielen: True. Okay. Yeah, that’s a very good point.

Tarzan Kay: I meet people all the time that have a list of like maybe 3000 or 4,000 and make the same amount of money that I do with my list of 10,000. That’s like really common. Happens all the time.

Sam Vander Wielen: Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot, that makes a lot of sense. And then I guess it’s also a plug for engaging a lot with any of the replies that you are getting because those leads could be a little bit warmer at this point. And so keeping up that back and forth relationship with them when you do go to run a sale could be really important.

Tarzan Kay: Even with a list my size, when I do a promotion and I see the names of the people coming through, I often recognize them. Because I’m like, oh yeah, this person replies to my emails all the time.

Sam Vander Wielen: Oh, okay. That’s great. Okay. Where would you say that someone should, who’s, who’s starting out and like, sometimes people feel a little worried about, like, feeling like I’m just starting, I’m trying to build my email list, it feels so far away. And then they’re being hit with all this messaging on social media that, you know, they can create reels and go viral or I guess be on TikTok or something. But I’m always making an impassioned argument for how the email list should really be more of the focus of, of building. Where do you feel like email list fits versus the hierarchy of, of social media and other content platforms?

Tarzan Kay: Okay. Well, I’ll say right up front, I’m not qualified to speak about social media. Yeah. I’ve never been good at it. And mostly it’s something I just really don’t like. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel bad about myself. Like it really gets in the way of me doing productive work just by logging in.

So, as much as possible, I don’t really engage, like I, I’m a little bit on LinkedIn because I enjoy that more. It doesn’t really get me that much growth, so I’ll start by saying like, I, just, for me, I have a hard line on it because whether or not it works, it doesn’t feel good to me.

Whereas with my email, my newsletter, and my email marketing, like, I love writing. Like it’s it’s the best part of my job and the whole reason I have this business is that it’s given me a career as a writer, which is, you know, not everyone’s choice, but for me, like the writing is the best part. And it’s like this one-to-one conversation with the person who’s reading and in the replies as well. It feels personal. It feels powerful. The connections that I make through my email and my newsletters are so much deeper than this sort of, you know, this like one to many thing going on on social media. And we all, we’ve already heard all the arguments too, like, you don’t own the algorithm, it can change at any time, blah, blah, blah.

I do know people who, you know, I have a client who’s really successful on TikTok. She knows the formula. She has tons of viewers and she’s like built a funnel based on having like a shit load of traffic from TikTok. And that’s working. And also, that’s just not my model at all. I’ve chosen to lean in to email because I don’t wanna be on social Um, I just like this better.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I’m with you. I mean, as somebody who, my social media works great and I don’t like it, so it’s like I’m where I’m like right there. So it’s, it’s a weird, it’s a really weird place.

Tarzan Kay: Do you participate in it though? Are you on, are you doing it?

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, but I have a nice in-between where it’s like I have a team that creates the content and posts it for me. So I’m not, I’m not posting that content myself. So it’s like, you know, but I also recognize I can only do that now. I couldn’t have done that in the beginning. So I pay a premium, you know, to be able to do that now. But I think, you know, for somebody listening who’s in the beginning and they might be identifying with what you’re saying and they’re like, I don’t like it either. I think so many people just treat social like it’s a requirement of building this kind of business. And so, I’m curious what your advice would be to somebody who’s like, okay, I like what Tarzan’s saying. Like I also wanna focus on my email list, but I’m new, so how do I get people to my email list without being on social media?

Tarzan Kay: Yeah, okay. I mean, the reason people are building on social media is because there’s people there. So you’re going to Instagram, you’re going to Facebook, you’re going wherever, to get in front of people, but there’s plenty of other places that you can get in front of people. So just as an obvious thing here, like Sam advertises in my newsletter quite frequently, that’s a place for her to get in front of my audience who are ideal buyers.

We serve the same sorts of customers, and that can be done, um, as a paid ad, but it can also be done as a swap. So people do this all the time, like, Hey, can you give me a shout out in your newsletter. I’ll give you a shout out in my newsletter. Like you gotta go for someone with a similar sized audience or say, 50 subscribers and you wanna get in front of someone that has a thousand, you might say like, Hey, I’ll give you like three shout outs. Can you give me a shout out in your newsletter?. So that’s a way to get in front of someone else’s email list. There’s an audience there. There’s probably audiences whatever your industry is, there’s audiences everywhere.

There’s other leaders in your industry. Maybe they have. podcasts, I mean, we’re doing it right now. This is one of my best organic list building methods is getting on other people’s podcasts. And if you think about the difference there too, it’s like if you listen to this whole episode, you will have listened to me speak for, I don’t know, what are we doing this for an hour?

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah

Tarzan Kay: You’ll have been listening to Tarzan for an hour. You’re gonna know a lot about my style, my vibe, the way that I talk, my values in business, like the way that I list build, like you’re gonna know so much more about me as opposed to like if you saw one post of mine on Instagram. Think about where the audiences are other than social and go get in front of those and that requires some tenacity. Like this is, this is online business. Like there’s many skills that we have to build. And one of the critical skills that you’re gonna have to build is pitching people saying like, Hey can I be on your podcast? This is what I’m gonna talk about. Hey, will you shout me out in your newsletter?

Hey, can I speak at your event? Like all of these sorts of things are audiences that are available to you to get in front of.

Sam Vander Wielen: Absolutely. Yeah. I call them list building opportunities and I’m always telling people like I look for it every single place I go. I think the first step is having this be top of mind. like, as I always say, and I repeat many times in my book, like all roads lead to the email list. And so I’m always thinking about that. And I think very much to your point Tarzan. Somebody just asked me the day, for example, to include my book as part of a, like a goodie bag for an in-person conference for online business owners. And I was like, that’s great. I need some exposure from my email list beforehand.

Like I want to be included in something like some email that’s going out or we have a playlist, for example, that’s very popular that I created on Spotify for the podcast where I have like three popular episodes and instead of just sending everybody the link to the actual playlist, now they, we use ManyChat on Instagram where people have to put in their name and they get added to my email list to get the playlist link.

So it’s just like these, just these little tiny grabby ways. But also not to forget like all these in-person opportunities, I wrote articles for other people’s websites a lot in the beginning. I offered that.

Tarzan Kay: Yeah. The other thing is like, just be ready, like I have, um, I don’t have one in front of me right now, but I have like a postcard that I bring to events and I just like to carry them around with me. I give them to people all the time. Even very successful newsletters still hand sign people up. So like, don’t discount that. That’s like even greater than an hour on a podcast is like, I shook your hand. Yeah. I looked you in the eye. Like I know you. So those ones are also super valuable. But you know what, we skipped over so I just wanna back up a second.

A lot of people struggle with building their newsletter because they don’t actually know what it is. They don’t know who it’s for. They don’t really know what they’re writing about. Like they don’t understand the value. And if you don’t understand those things, it’s really hard to say, like, why should someone sign up?

It’s difficult to write a signup page that’s convincing if you don’t know what it actually is. What are the key things. That you’re gonna write about, like, why should I sign up for, take yourself out of the equation. Like, I’m not gonna say to you, like, read the, the latest news of Tarzan, like, come and read my life story on my newsletter, even though that’s kind of what my newsletter is, that’s boring.

I started with 37 subscribers by the way, and I started writing a biweekly email. That’s your time to like practice, to see what you enjoy writing about, what’s most resonant with the 12 people who are reading, like that’s your testing ground. It’s absolutely worth it to send those emails, whether you have 12 subscribers or 200 subscribers, like you’re just figuring that out.

So give yourself a little bit of time. But then really knowing what are the key things. That you’re gonna write about, like, why should I sign up for, take yourself out of the equation. Like, I’m not gonna say to you, like, read the, the latest news of Tarzan, like, come and read my life story on my newsletter, even though that’s kind of what my newsletter is, that’s boring.

Like, you don’t know me, you don’t care about me. I have no investment. Like if I come to your website and it’s like, join my email list for weekly updates. Like, what are you offering? Do you, do you like, lead some sort of circles? What sorts of things do you write about? Like even what is the main problem that you solve?

Like we started off with what are people going to leave this interview with? Like the main problem that I can solve for people is supporting them in letting go of their resistance around sending email. So even just knowing something like that, like if you go to my landing page, there’s this headline that says, the email that will make you wanna write more emails, because that’s like the primary point of resistance is like, I know I should be doing email marketing. I know that newsletters are like this really big thing right now, but I’m all up in my head and like, I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to write about?

Do people want this? Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. So just knowing what is that problem and actually writing, this is a really good exercise, is like sitting down and writing a landing page for your email list. Like traditionally, people only really create landing pages for their freebies. That’s sort of the way that I was always taught.

But we’re seeing way more opt-in pages that are direct to a newsletter and whether or not you ever even build that page, just like sit down. And in fact, you know what I, I have like a really great template.

Sam Vander Wielen: I’ll put it in, I’ll put it in the show notes. so we have a link to it.

Tarzan Kay: Okay. So if you sit down with this template and you just fill it out, like, okay, what’s the, what is the main outcome that I can provide?

Okay, here’s a spot that I have to write who it’s for. Here’s a spot where I need a little bit of authority. Like, why me? Why should you trust me? What’s your education like? Who are your mentors? Who did you learn from? How long have you been doing this? All of those things like sitting down and doing that as an exercise.

Hopefully you will build the page because you also need a very strong landing page to capture all that hard won traffic. But along just like to sit down and do that so that you can understand, like if you go out and do a podcast interview and the interviewer says like, okay, Tarzan, where can people find you?

You have to know what to say and, and they don’t wanna read the musings of Tarzan Kay. So I’ll say, Hey. You go to tarzank.com/newsletter and sign up to my newsletter. You’re gonna see how this is done. You’re gonna really see in action what it looks like when newsletters are engaging and interesting and we do sales in a consent based way.

Like that’s something else. We won’t talk about that today. But, um, figuring out how to get around, what is it that you are actually asking people to sign up for. Because actually an email address is pretty precious. Like you’re asking people for their time, you’re asking people for their focus, which not a lot of us, you know, we, we have a limited amount of focus. Know what you’re asking for and, you know, treat it seriously. Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, exactly. Give them a reason to come around. . People have enough other stuff to check out. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I’m a big proponent of the, as you know, we go, I, I advertise straight to the email list all the time and, uh, but I had to figure out that when I started doing this years ago, I called it easy email sign up. ‘Cause in my head I was like, I just wanna make it easy for people to sign up. ’cause my emails themselves are valuable. And so we came from this very heavy freebie culture, which I still think freebies are great and I use them obviously a lot. But I also think that if you’re good at communicating the value of your actual email itself, what are you gonna get out of opening this thing once or twice a week?

You can get people also just to sign up that way. And it does, it does feel a little easy, I’ll say less friction. Like there feels like there’s less friction doing it that way. Yeah.

Tarzan Kay: What I’ve noticed, like people have a huge mental block and actually if someone signed up to your freebie, like you don’t really know if they want your newsletter.

You know that they want your freebie, which is cool. That’s like a hint that they might be interested in hearing from you. I use freebies too. I think freebies are great. However, I also give people the option to just get the freebie and they still have to say if they want the newsletter or not.

So I use a tick box. I wanna know, like you signed up because you said that you want my emails, and I’ll often remind people when they’re caught up in their drama of like, should I email my list? Like, do they wanna hear from me? Like. But no, like they said, they gave you their email, like they said, yes, I want you to email me and you have a button in every single email. Like we started with consent. It can be revoked at any time. Like you check that box, let’s not go over this again and again, we’ve taken care of that.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Both legally and literally. It’s all, it’s all done. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I always say give people, uh, the, the like authority. They can, they can leave on their own.

Tarzan Kay: Give them the authority, but also like trust them that you don’t actually have to baby people. You don’t have to manage anyone’s inbox for them. That’s their job. You do your job. Yeah. Which is you send the emails you said you were going to send. If you don’t, it doesn’t look great for you. There’s a really short period of time where people actually remember you.

If I signed up and then I didn’t hear from you until like three, four months later, like, I don’t know who you are anymore. Yeah. So, you know, showing up right away and showing up, you know, at least once a month, twice a month is better. Is like your, every time you show up in that [00:21:00] inbox, you are showing like, I am trustworthy.I am a serious business person. I am someone who says, who does what they said they were going to do.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, that’s so true and I think people start to look forward to it. If you’re, you know, if you’re doing a good job and people are hearing your emails, then they’re, look, I’m like always waiting. I love reading your emails. I’m always excited when I see your emails come in.

Tarzan Kay: So, I mean, we haven’t even gone to that yet, but that’s the best feeling is when. People reply and they’re like, oh my God, your emails are the only ones I read every week. Like, oh yes. Wow. That is my love language. Email compliments.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. I’m assuming. I know. I’m sure you get a ton of those. I know. I do as well. And so it’s, it’s really helpful, which again, goes back to your point of like, people have a lot of options, but probably they’re overwhelmed with options actually. And so giving them that reason.

That value to come to you and stay, you know, you, one thing you’ve talked about in the past I think would probably be very mind blowing to some people. It’s like you’ve talked about the difference between email marketing and newsletters. Right. And I think sometimes that it’s helpful for people to hear what really what the difference is and what we’re talking about.

Tarzan Kay: Okay, great. Yeah, good question. So your newsletter is your weekly nurture email, your newsletter is Sam’s Sidebar. It’s that newsletter that has like a little bit of, like a little bit of story, maybe a little bit of lesson. Like you can make your newsletter whatever you want it to be. Maybe it’s a news newsletter and it has like a few links to what’s happening in your industry. Not all newsletters have to be like mine and Sam’s, uh, but there’s, you know, some body content. It usually has a format that is predictable every single week, goes out on the same day and it’s purely there to start conversations, show your expertise, and do a little bit of teaching. You know, it has a few little side hustles, like maybe people book a consultation here and there.

Maybe they see a sale, maybe they click on something but really like the newsletter is a consistent nurture and almost everything else about email is email marketing. So email marketing is a promotion is a series of emails to sell something. Email marketing is a series of emails to have people join your webinar.

Um, anything that’s an automation, that’s email marketing. On my email list, for example, if you join and like you click on a program, you might get a series of follow-up emails trying to sell you that program. Like all of those automations are email marketing and those are about sales. Whereas the newsletter is about nurture and it doesn’t have much automation attached to it.

Sam Vander Wielen: So that’s super helpful for people I think, to know that we’re really talking about two different things. And so how do you break down or approach in your own business, your weekly newsletter versus, I’m not talking about any of the, the funnels or automations you have set up, but when you go do a few weeks at what I call sprint internally of email marketing to point to one of your programs? For example, how, what’s like that cadence balance like for you?

Tarzan Kay: Oh, you mean like how often do I promote, do a promotion?

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. For promotions versus then like your weekly newsletter.

Tarzan Kay: I generally do a promotion at least once a month, so there might be like a larger, you know, there’s quarterly, there’s usually like one big marketing push that has like, you know 15 or 20 emails attached to it, which sounds like a lot, so don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be that much. But, you know, something of that size, let’s say quarterly, but I’m promoting something every month for sure. I haven’t been great in the automation side. We just set up a new automation that I, you know, we hope will do well for us.

But most of my revenue that I make comes from sales emails that are like, I write, you know, they’re, they’re like current, they’re not evergreen stuff. So because like this would be very different if I had evergreen stuff in the background, I probably wouldn’t promote as much. But again, like this is very personal.

You know, my competitors, my peers that send way more promotions than I do. I’m like once a month and maybe I might also, as a secondary thing, I might like to do a little bit of affiliate marketing or something. You know, I might promote someone else’s webinar and that would just be like two emails, maybe one promo, something like that.

Sam Vander Wielen: Okay. And so if you’re doing a monthly promo, how many emails are you dedicating to that promo?

Tarzan Kay: Let’s say like six maybe.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Yeah. Within like a two week time period?

Tarzan Kay: Yeah. Even less. Yeah. I like to, yeah. You know, I’ve, I’ve experimented with the different lengths of promotions like for 10 years and I like a longer window because I feel like it puts less pressure on my subscribers.

They get more time to decide, but actually, in some cases it results in fewer sales, which is normal. Like if you’re not pressuring people, they don’t feel pressured. They don’t purchase, so that’s normal. But, the other thing to know is like if you have a window of selling, like cart open, cart closed, it’s a lot of space holding. If you’re new at this and you’re like launching a course for the first time and you’re like, I’m gonna sell this thing for two weeks, oh my God, you are gonna wanna die like on day six. And you’re gonna be like, why did I do this to myself?

We were just talking before we hit record like so much of being in this business requires like inspiration, belief, like you are the cheerleader. And so to play that role for like two weeks, you know, I don’t do those sorts of launch windows anymore. For me, the maximum is like eight days. And then I’m like, that’s, I can’t hold any more than that. I gotta take care of me first. Sam Vander Wielen: Same. Yeah, same, same with me. Yeah. I’m with you. And you always use, I want everybody to know too, like you always use what we call soft, soft opt-outs. Uh, so you, you always have links within your emails that say, if you just don’t wanna hear about this promo, because I’m imagining some people are having some resistance thinking about that.

Tarzan Kay: I mean, also, I’ve been doing this for a decade, so yeah. For me to do a promo once a month is no big deal. I recycle a ton of emails, so, you know, the biggest amount of work is the first time I promote something, but if I do it again three months later, it’s way easier. I, I already did most of the emails, so just know that like you’re, you’re not gonna be doing it at the same cadence as me because you have way more creative output.

Regarding the soft opt outs, like that’s another thing I do. Because again, if we’re coming back to a place of like feeling good about sending email and not feeling like I’m annoying people, I give them a way to turn the emails off and then it’s out of my hands. Yeah. I just have to trust you that you’re gonna manage your own inbox.

That’s not my job. My job is to give you the tools to turn it off because it’s true if you promote a lot, like if you promote at the pace that I do and many of my peers and whether you use soft opt-outs or not, like you get unsubscribes when you do a promotion. It’s just normal. People don’t read the whole email and they might just be like, oh, Tarzan’s being annoying. Like, let me just get rid of her. Um, so that does happen, but you’ll save a lot more if you just let people manage their own inbox. Like I even let people manage the frequency of their emails.

So if they’re like next to the unsubscribe button, again, like you have to go to tarzan k.com/newsletter, so you can see all these things in action.

But in my newsletter, part of the template at the bottom in the footer where you have the unsubscribe links and stuff, you can change the frequency to like all the emails once a week or once a month. So I’m like giving them the options and I’m just gonna trust that they can manage their own inbox.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, it’s a good thing to start practicing no matter what, and just start like sitting in the fact that you offer value, your emails are good and like let people do what’s best for them. ’cause once those people become customers, you don’t also wanna start micromanaging like that, the next thing is people will start feeling badly that people bought from them and like, oh, they probably didn’t even want this thing. It’s all part of the process.

Tarzan and I are also good examples in that, like there, you know, I preach a lot in, in my business that there are just so many ways, I don’t believe that there’s any like one right way or one path. And so like you and I are good examples of like, I do three promos a year for the whole year.

And so it’s like, but I also have an evergreen funnel running in the background that works really well. So it’s like there are so many different ways and cadences. We sent out an email in, uh, December, just a one day email promo. About literally one day about the bundle, and it made 12 grand in a day. And so it was like, you know, it happens. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, there’s many, many ways to go around this. Yeah.

Tarzan Kay: Yeah. I mean, it’s a hard thing to wrap your head around because. So many online courses, most of them that are pitched to you are like, teach my model, my proven step-by-step thing. And it, you know, it can take years to like try someone’s model. Okay. Like, that didn’t work. I’m gonna try someone else’s model. Okay. That didn’t work. And like after a while, like. You cobble together your own model and all of those failures along the way is like a critical rite of passage. Like nobody gets to skip that step. So just go easy on yourself if you didn’t find the perfect model yet.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, seriously. Just welcome to the club. I think you’ve given people a lot of good ideas about some email list growth and like kind of setting things up in a certain way. I would love for you to talk about how you plan what topics you’re going to, like, how do you approach, now when we’re talking about more of your weekly letter, not your promos, how do you plan what you’re going to talk about each week? Is that something you do far in advance or do you do it week by week?

Tarzan Kay: Yeah, you know, all my career people have been talking about their content calendars. I’m like, don’t talk to me about, yeah. Like, no. I mean, I do have a system and actually we can add this to your resources here because I have a system that I love. So every month I have one Google Doc that houses all of my emails and I use tabs. So it’s like all beautifully organized. And the first tab, which is sort of like the first page of the document, organizes the emails for the month. You know, I have a few complex factors is like, I sell ads, sometimes I do newsletter swaps, and then I promote things in my newsletter, like I do the email marketing, which is the sales emails, but I will still say like, Hey, my program 1K Subs is on sale right now, um, to, you know, try and get more people interested in the promo. So all of that is organized and that’s just like that, that’s more like the promotional elements of the email. And there’s not really like content like, you know, as Monday as we’re recording this episode, I write my newsletter on Wednesday.

I have like a little bit of an idea of what I might write about on Wednesday, but I don’t really know. However, I do keep a running list of ideas and this part is so important because, you know, figuring out what to write about week by week is a struggle for everyone. Like we all have to figure out our systems, um, to get around this problem of the nasty blinking cursor.

So I, in that same document where I organize my newsletters. I am constantly, I have like an ideas bucket and I’m constantly throwing things in. So if I read something, like, let’s say I see something on LinkedIn, I might wanna write about that, or like I, I, you know, read something in a book or there’s like a little turn of phrase or a story that I wanna tell, I’m just dumping those into the document. All week, all month long. And then when I sit down to actually write the newsletter, I’ve got like, you know, 8 or 10 things that I could pull from. And, you know, that’s, that’s my system that works for me. Like some people love content calendars because

I’m in this business to be a writer.I love the writing. It’s my favorite part of my job. So anything that makes me feel boxed in is like, oh, like February is the month of welcome emails. Like, but I don’t want to like, I feel like instant resistance, so I give myself a ton of flexibility.

But I would say like one place where I’ve gotten in trouble is because I write my emails the week before I don’t always check the date. You know, like sometimes I’ll write something that’s like totally inappropriate for like Thanksgiving or like, ’cause I’m, I’m Canadian, so I’ll like send something out on like an important US holiday or like Super Bowl Sunday or something like, you know, at, at a minimum for your content calendar like you could have like important like cultural dates that would helpful.

Because it’s important to be timely, like people know. People definitely can tell. It might take a little bit, but like if they’re in an automation for a long period of time and it’s not current, it’s just like, like, you know, I talk a lot about writing, so if none of my emails address AI content, like that would be weird and would be an indicator that I’m not producing timely content.

So it is also important to pull from like, not just cultural events, but like whatever’s happening in your industry and whatever’s in the news. And those would be something that I would put again, I would just like dump it into the document. Oh, look like Chat GPT, like rolled out this new feature. Like put that in the document. Maybe I could talk about it.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. And you could always kick, like, I’ve had what I planned to talk about that week, and then something timely happens. And I’ll kick my idea to a different week and just keep it on the list.

How do you go from taking, ’cause I, I think ’cause of the way I write as well, I get a lot of questions about storytelling and, and translating stories into emails that, that speak to your audience, um, and maybe eventually sell, but how do you take everyday stories, as I say, seeing a peanut in the grocery store and turning it into, um, a story that has something to do with, with what you do.?

Tarzan Kay: Yeah, that is the question, isn’t it?. Um, okay. I don’t always know.

Sam Vander Wielen: It’s my favorite thing..

Tarzan Kay: I don’t always know. Yeah. And I like, so I have a lot of experience and for me, I am able to write the email and segue into a bit of a lesson. For most people, it works better to have a destination. To know where you’re going and start with the story and see how you can connect the two.

But like a lot, I’m sorry, this is like annoying advice. So much of it is practice. Like you can ask Chat GPT to help you segue into a lesson about whatever your industry is like. You know, AI can be great for support like that, even just to give you 10 bad ideas. So that gets your brain going to think of a good one, but like. I’m sorry. It’s just, I think it’s just practice and sometimes there’s not, like sometimes you can’t make it work.

Yeah. I’ll write a story and I’ll, I’ll either be like, Hey, sorry, I know I said I was writing about email, but I just thought you would like this story and it’s not related to business. Like, see ya. Sometimes I do that. Yeah. If the story is good enough, um, sometimes I’ll start with a little bit of a story. Like I often don’t have a whole story, but I have an interesting hook.

Like someone said something to me that I thought was like. Hmm, curious. I wanna like explore that in writing, even though I don’t know what the story’s gonna be. Sometimes I’ll explore it and I can’t make it work. One vital part of my newsletter document that I’ll share is the cutting room floor.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah,

Tarzan Kay: And it’s like, I’ll just grab this thing that I wrote and throw it on the cutting room floor. I might use that scrap later. I might not. It’s like every writer’s constant challenge is that we have to learn to kill our darlings. And sometimes just moving it somewhere else, it’s like, okay, I wrote this.

I can’t use it. I’ll just put it over here. Maybe I’ll come back to it, even though I probably won’t come back to it, but it makes me feel better. So, you know, you have to get used to false starts. Like, I don’t know, I’m sorry. You don’t have a better answer for that question. It’s practice.

Sam Vander Wielen: I think that is a good, I think that’s a really good answer.I really believe in practice. I mean, I’ve been talking about this here on the podcast a lot about just like getting used to it. People ask me about like, how did you go from talking about this thing to that thing? And I’m like, I literally just started, I, I remember that I found like a copy hackers document, uh, blog post like a million years ago. Like, eight years ago or something like this. About segues about just being like, yeah, like what does a seeing a peanut in the grocery store have to do with growing your email list? Like, here’s how, and like, I literally would just start off by actually saying that my mine are like a little bit smoother now, but like, I started by doing that.

Tarzan Kay: Well that’s a really great tip. Like I put segues in my writing courses. There was always some sort of segue document, but like, if you could, you could have AI brainstorm this for you, but just having a list of segues is great. I know the blog post you’re talking about, by the way, ’cause I’m sure I read it too.

Okay, this is the line that’s gonna transition. It might be a bit awkward, but like, you’ll get better next time if you, there’s just no way around it with writing. Like, great writers write a lot and they read a lot. So if you want to be an awesome writer, like start writing daily, it doesn’t have to be a lot, but like, keep reading those things will make you better.

Sam Vander Wielen: Absolutely. Good advice. Yeah. I always, I say to myself, often writer’s write, because I get in my head about like, I wanna be more of a writer. I wanna write more I wanna do, and I’m like, yeah, writers write about it. They don’t talk about it. How about we stop talking about it? And I, otherwise I’m gonna be a public speaker.

I don’t know what you think about this advice, but one thing that has also helped me in the past with, if you want to write emails that are a little bit more story driven is that I actually think about the lesson that I know I want to teach, and then I think back, I brainstorm a little bit back to a story or something that’s happened to me that proves that point.

Like I reverse engineer it actually and write it backwards. That really helps me where I’m like, I know this is where I want to end and where’s a time that this thing has happened to me before that would illustrate this.

Tarzan Kay: I use that method almost exclusively with sales emails.

I give myself more flexibility. With the newsletter, I’m like, let me just, let have my, this is my sandbox. Let’s just see where it goes. But when it comes to sales emails, I don’t have the luxury of just seeing where it goes. It’s like, I need to address this objection. So I start with that and then a segue and then the top part.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yes. Okay. That’s a good point. So what would you say should be people’s goal with their weekly newsletter or their newsletter as often as they write it?

Tarzan Kay: Oh, what should be their goal? Like for consistency?

Sam Vander Wielen: For engagement? Should you be like getting, like, how’s it, like, I guess what’s a good way to know it’s working? Like, oh, should we be looking for engagement? Should we be getting \ clicks? Like where, where would you tell them to focus?

Tarzan Kay: Great question. Okay, so. The first thing is like you always, you are in competition with yourself and no one else. And remember, just like we started a lot of the metrics that you’ll hear, like one to 2%, uh, for a baseline conve rsion rate, like same with email.

If you’re hearing like, oh, most people are getting like 40% open rate and they’re click to open rate is 8% or whatever, like you’re not comparing apples to apples if your list is small. Your open rate’s probably gonna be higher as is your click through rate. So like don’t bother comparing yourself to other people.

Every industry is different. Every list is different. It’s just like a waste of time. What I would say as a starting point, even just like, I’m gonna log in every week after I send my email. Just like, don’t even worry yet about like what it means. I’m just gonna log in and I’m gonna look at it. What percentage of people opened?

What percentage of people clicked? And even more importantly, which links did they click on? What did people find interesting? So like, forget about trying to make yourself better, just like, data can be scary too. It’s like, oh, I have to like put a spreadsheet together or I have to try and be better or be as like, good, as like same open rate as this person, whatever. Like, no, just get comfortable, just like looking at the numbers and see if you can interpret what they mean.

Are you trending upward or are you trending downward? Like, your subject line, especially when you don’t have a lot of history. Your subject line is really the most important thing that’s gonna get your newsletter opened in the long term, like with your long term subscribers, actually it’s the from name. It’s all of the trust and all of the history that you have with that person. And so that’s also, you know, you’re, you’re building your credibility over time, but right now, you’re starting out, so your open rate is gonna be mostly dependent on what your subject line is. So, you know, as you’re just logging into your email service provider, whatever it is, um, you’re just gonna look at the open rate and then look at the subject line.

You don’t have to take notes. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to log in and read it and start there.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. And do you have any suggestions as to how people can improve their subject lines?

Tarzan Kay: Um, yeah, I mean, almost any subject line can be improved by just adding a question mark at the end of it.

Maybe I’m writing a subject line about, um, my favorite sandwich and the subject line is, My new favorite sandwich. Just adding a question mark. My new favorite sandwich? it’s like, now we’ve opening, a sandwich was, I’m sorry, I can’t think of a better example. No, I think that’s a good example.

Sam Vander Wielen: It adds some intrigue. Cause I’d be like, wait, what is your favorite sandwich?

Tarzan Kay: Totally a question mark opens a loop, and human beings are wired to want to close the loop so you can just

Sam Vander Wielen: So opening the loop is the goal..

Tarzan Kay: Opening a loop, yeah. So just play like even if you think you have a good subject line, like the best piece of advice I ever got versus the best piece of advice I ever got? You know? Suddenly it’s like a little more interesting, so, yeah. Adding a question mark and some sort of curiosity. You know what else works great is like weird words, like made up words or like think about all, you know, in, there’s all these online business words that we hear all the time, like, uh, about like scale and perfectionism and trading hours for dollars and da da.

Like, that’s so boring. It’s not gonna get your emails opened. So anything like, even either like funny jargon or like clever spelling made up words like those can play really well in subject lines. I noticed you use first names all the time. I’m like, wow, this is like really working for Sam. I don’t use them very often.

Sam Vander Wielen: The reason I do that is because I have found a little bit of a method that’s worked well for me, which is centering the reader In the outcome that they want. So like, oh, cool, Tarzan hits 30 K subs, like something like this. Or like, Tarzan’s podcast just got ranked number one. And then like, the story will be something about that, or like that we shouldn’t be going for that, or something like that. But it’s like that, that’s the thought process that I’m doing. I’m using the outcome and making them the hero of the subject line.

Tarzan Kay: This is such a great tip. So I write a lot about my own stories from life, and then I notice that some of my subscribers and people in my courses will be writing their own stories from life. And I’m like, okay, that’s okay. That’s all good. However, when I’m telling my own stories, I’m also thinking about the reader, as the hero of the story. And that’s pretty important. It’s like I’m telling a story in a way that I think you are going to be able to relate to, that you can see yourself in. And that’s, you know, you have to learn, like you have to train yourself to think that way. ’cause it’s a very layered way of write writing. It’s like I’m writing the story, but like, how can I write it in such a way that my subscriber really feels like I’m writing about them? And that’s when you get the sort of emails that are like, oh my God, this is like the best thing in my inbox. Like, oh, somebody finally said it. This was exactly what I needed to hear today. That’s what people will say when you’re writing as though they are the hero of the story.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. My email last week was about, the subject line I think was the queen of content is dead. Uh, which I should have added a question mark to that.

But I added it to my book. But it was about how I was the self-appointed queen of content. And I died a long time ago when, when my parents died, there was just like no pumping out this amount of content anymore, but about how we can like transition to a new way of doing business. And this was like. It was wild watching the replies come back afterwards. I took it from like me being the queen to then flipping the reader to being like the queen of their own story.

Tarzan Kay: Yeah. And that’s a lot of knowing your audience, like it also requires knowing like, what, what, what are they really struggling with? Like there’s the problem they say they have and then there’s like the problem that they really have and knowing that they actually have, yeah, knowing that takes some time.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. And I feel like the theme of this conversation is like practice, practice, practice. ’cause the more you practice that, then you, that’s how you don’t, ’cause you pick up on the themes and what’s working.

Tarzan Kay: But also like, just that things take time. Like we, I mean you wrote about this in your book, but like, because we’re exposed to so much marketing about online business and how it’s gonna happen in like 60 days or like, you know, so many funnels are like, how I built an $80 million business, blah, blah.

Steal my system. Like people start thinking that it’s gonna happen that fast for them, and it’s very rare that it does. And when you think you just like Sam, if you think you know someone who built it really fast, they probably had a bunch of failures behind them. Like it really does take time and you’re already doing the right things.

Like you’re listening to a podcast, you’re taking classes like you’re keep going. After you fail, you try again. Like those are the right things and just. Let it take time ’cause it does.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, for sure. I, I think I already, I know how you approach this, but like, uh, would you share with everyone what your thought process is on the old adage of like, there should only be one CTA one call to action per email versus what I know a lot of people like you and I are doing now, which is having more than one usually link at least, uh, different things in our emails. How are you feeling? Maybe for more the beginner, like should they be focusing on one thing?

Tarzan Kay: Well, we’re actually back to this question about email marketing versus newsletters. Yeah. So with email marketing, there’s usually a specific purchase, like, let’s talk about your welcome sequence.

Like when, or actually let’s make it simpler. Let’s talk about, I just signed up to your webinar. So that series of emails is like, all the links are like add to calendar. Zoom link, like we’re, we’ve got one goal and any link should support that goal. And they’re probably all the same link, but a newsletter is very different. You have way more flexibility. You can link to the things you’re listening to, the content you produce, the thing that you’re selling. Like you can put, it’s like a fun basket of surprises and like put all the treats in there.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. I love that you call it a sandbox ’cause I think that’s a great description for it. Yeah. And like, and it also helps you to figure out how you can connect with your audience.

Tarzan Kay: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love a sandbox too.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Don’t we both?

Tarzan Kay: You can have that one for your newsletter. Rename it, Sam Sandbox.

Sam Vander Wielen: It’ll just keep going. It’s like I didn’t know if people understood the sidebar.

I’m like, it’s like what lawyers do on the side and they whisper. So I was like, me whispering to you guys, like, I don’t know. Maybe it’s too much explaining, but it worked. It’s two s’s. It works. So thanks to people like you who have helped me to optimize it, so I, I highly recommend that everybody goes and obviously signs up for Tarzan’s emails. They’re amazing. Um, they’re full of value and content, but also I think, set just like a fantastic example, and I know we didn’t get into it today, but you’re also such a good example for consent based marketing. And so I would, I know that’s gonna resonate so much with people here and so definitely go check out. Tarzan’s stuff.

Tarzan Kay: Great, thanks. You already did the pitch for me, plus I think I recited it three or four times already. So tarzankay.com/newsletter, that’s where you find it.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, so go to tarzankay.com/newsletter. And then, uh, also is there anywhere else you want people to connect with you or anywhere that you want them to reach out to?

Tarzan Kay: If you hit reply, you might get my team, but you might get me. So that’s also a way to talk to me. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m, I’m going through, um, some a, really big life changing personal loss right now. So I’m not on LinkedIn very frequently, but, or maybe at all. Uh, but normally that’s the social media channel that I hang out on. So you can see me there.

Sam Vander Wielen: Yes, you Tarzan there, reply to the emails. And definitely go read. Well, Tarzan, thank you so much for being here. You’re such a treat. I appreciate it.

Tarzan Kay: Thanks, Sam.

Sam Vander Wielen: Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi. Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.