How Do I Do Email Marketing If I Hate Being Salesy?

You don't need a 47-step nurture sequence. You need to send emails people actually want to open.

The Unsubscribe Fear

I know exactly why you hate email marketing. You open your own inbox and it’s a wasteland of manufactured urgency, fake countdown timers, and subject lines that scream “DID YOU SEE THIS??”

You don’t want to be that person. You don’t want to bother people. So, you collect emails on your website, let them sit in a dusty Mailchimp list, and maybe send a newsletter twice a year when you have a launch. And then you wonder why nobody buys.

Here is the truth: Email marketing only feels sleazy when you are trying to extract value from your audience instead of providing it.

The 80/20 Rule of Non-Salesy Email

If every time you call a friend, you ask them to help you move, they are going to stop answering the phone. But if you call them just to chat, send them funny memes, and check in on their life, they will gladly show up with boxes when you finally do need to move.

Your email list works the same way. The rule is 80/20.

Eighty percent of the time, you are just showing up with value. You are answering a question, sharing a story, or giving them a quick win. You aren’t asking for a dime.

Twenty percent of the time, you invite them to work with you. Because you have built so much trust and goodwill during the 80%, the 20% doesn’t feel like a pitch. It feels like a natural next step.

What to Actually Write About

"But what do I write about?" is the number one question we get from women who are terrified of their email list. Here are three prompts that never fail:

• The 'Ask Me Anything': Take a question a client asked you on a call this week. Write down your answer. Send it to your list. If one person asked it, 50 people are wondering it.
• The 'Client Win': Share a story of a client who got a great result. Don't make it a brag—make it a case study. What did they do? Why did it work?
• The 'Behind the Scenes': Share a mistake you made in your business and the lesson you learned. Vulnerability builds trust faster than perfection ever will.

Write to One Person

Stop starting your emails with "Hey everyone!" You are not speaking to a stadium. An email is an intimate medium; it lands in an inbox where they read messages from their boss and their mother.

Pick one specific client. Your favorite client. The one you wish you could clone.

When you sit down to write, imagine you are writing an email only to her. Your tone will instantly soften. The corporate jargon will vanish. You will sound like a human being offering help to another human being.

And that is the only kind of marketing that actually works.

Cheers to your success,

Lori Walker

Your Next Steps

Did you find this helpful?

If this post resonated with you, consider sharing it with another woman entrepreneur who might need to hear this today.