Systematize email marketing PT. 1 (Featuring Bev Feldman, aka Your Personal Tech Fairy)

Reader - I'm going to take a wild guess that you also write your own emails for your own audience (or at least WANT to).

Content marketing is one of the trickiest systems to create, and folks often ask me about it.

SO to help you out, I am bringing you a 2-part series.

For Part 1: I brought in the email marketing WHIZ KID Bev Feldman, aka Your Personal Tech Fairy, to go over her own system for writing emails.

By the end of this email, you will be jumping to get on Bev's email list - so go ahead and click right here to get ahead!

Next week, for Part 2, I'll give you MY secret sauce for writing emails!

Hey there, Reader!

I’m Bev Feldman, aka Your Personal Tech Fairy 🍄. As a ConvertKit consultant and email automation strategist, I transform your tangled email funnels into a system that’s streamlined, simplified, and effective.

Bev sitting at a table outside with her laptop in front of her. She is smiling and has a mug in her hand. She is wearing a dark blue shirt and has long dark brown hair. There is a green tree behind her.

In other words, I totally nerd out on email automation systems.

While my work generally focuses on helping other business owners create systems in their email marketing software so that the right emails land in the right subscribers' inboxes, Devin invited me to share with you my personal system for consistently showing up in my email community’s inboxes.

Let’s dive in!

Phase 1: Rough draft

Every Friday morning from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. is blocked off in my calendar and devoted to my business. After I drop off my kids at the school bus, I work on my Automate with Heart newsletter for the following Tuesday.

While I don’t spend three hours writing the newsletter, I use a chunk of that time writing.

I pull up my trusty Google Doc, which I’m continually adding to, and start a new entry with the date and general idea of the newsletter as the header so I can easily find it later.

Sometimes, I start my newsletter from scratch using something that happened that week as a jumping-off point, like a recent email I wrote that was inspired by receiving a third promotional postcard for a senior living community.

Other times, I build off an idea I started writing in that Google Doc a different week but didn’t use.

If I’m feeling stuck, I’ll refer to one of Liz Wilcox’s email templates.

But usually, by the time I sit down to write it, the idea has been percolating in my brain for a few days. Because I spend so much time thinking about email marketing, I often narrate my emails in my head before I sit down to write them 🤓

Writing my newsletter felt like a chore before I initiated this system around time. I was usually scrambling to write it at the last minute on Tuesday mornings and often didn’t have any idea what it would be about.

Now, writing my newsletter is one of my favorite parts of the week, and if my email engagement stats indicate anything, I think my email community can feel that energy as well.

Phase 2: Edit in Google Docs

I allow the first draft to brew over the weekend. On Monday, I come back and review what I’ve written and make edits. I also make notes of any parts of positioning for different segments of my email community using my Subscriber Strategy to guide me. (This is what enables me to write emails with consent, human connection, and deliverability best practices in mind!)

Do I want to highlight a service to a certain segment of my subscribers? Or maybe I want to personalize the messaging based on how someone is tagged?

For example, someone who’s identified as being interested in switching to ConvertKit might see a slightly different message than someone who already uses ConvertKit.

Each week, it changes depending on the content itself and what I’m highlighting.

Phase 3: Edit in ConvertKit

Once I’m feeling satisfied, I copy and paste the content into a new broadcast using a pre-created newsletter template. I tweak the wording and formatting and use ConvertKit’s nifty Liquid feature to personalize what different segments of subscribers see based on what I identified in the Google doc.

(If you use a different email marketing software, it’s often called “dynamic content”).

Phase 4: Schedule

It’s go time! My weekly newsletter is scheduled to go out around 9:00am ET to my newsletter segment (which is something I set up for each of my clients).

My newsletter segment includes everyone who’s completed my welcome sequence and is also not currently in another automated email series. I have that segment already created in ConvertKit so that I don’t have to remember who to include or exclude.

My newsletter writing has systems around time (including when to write, when to edit, and when it goes out) and how my subscribers are organized in my ConvertKit account (aka Subscriber Strategy).

Putting these systems and writing rituals in place has been pretty magical...

Since starting this tradition, I've noticed that my messaging has sharpened. I'm much clearer on what differentiates my approach to email marketing automation strategy. My creativity and ideas have increased in ways I couldn't have imagined.

And writing emails to my community is now one of my favorite parts of running my business.

Best,

Bev

P.S. Thanks for joining me on this newsletter systems tour. (I didn’t even realize how many systems I had in place until I wrote it out for you.!) If you’re a coach, consultant, or service-based business owner who wants to be intentional and values-aligned with your email automation strategy, join my Automate with Heart newsletter community.

Connect with Bev:

Want to get your Systems in Order?
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PS - Grab Inbox Zero Hero : 5 mini-lessons that will transform your email game forever. 🚀✉️

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