Hey, hey Reader, A client of mine shared the sentence every marketer loves to hear: “That email you wrote booked several demos.” And the best part was that this email didn’t ask for a demo in the call to action. There was no sales language, pitch, ‘schedule a call’. Zip, nada, nothin’. Just a simple, story-driven email built on a framework I come back to again and again. So today for our final Anti-Black Friday series, I want to give you that framework. 1. Start with one person and one...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Welcome to Day 2 of the Anti-Black-Friday, Reader, Today we're using a simple dipstick test to see whether your messaging works. If your messaging feels fuzzy or flat, it’s usually because you’re too close to the product. It's the Febreze “noseblind” effect. You’ve lived with the product so long you don’t notice what your audience instantly smells. Inside your company, the scents differ: Sales talks urgency and ROI Marketing talks benefits Product talks functionality Leadership talks vision...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Hey, hey Reader, Welcome to Day 1 of our little Not-Black-Friday series: 3 days of genuinely useful stuff you can use long after the holiday email chaos ends. Today: subject lines. Cuz, if the email never gets opened, nothing else really matters. And there’s one pattern I see again and again with EdTech brands: **You’re trying to sound official. Admins are trying to feel understood.** Most subject lines die because they lean too far into corporate language: “Unlocking Student Success Through...
20 days ago • 1 min read
Do you know how to tell your founder story, Reader? Whether you embrace storytelling or avoid it like a mandatory training session, every company has a founder story. And yes, founder stories can feel self-indulgent (we’ve all seen the LinkedIn posts…). But knowing how to tell yours clearly, briefly, and in a way that still serves your audience is an important skill. You'll need 3 different versions: long, medium, and short. So here’s a simple exercise: Step 1: Write your founder story...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Hey, hey Reader, Between Thanksgiving campaigns, Black Friday blowouts, Cyber Monday launches, and December holiday cheer, every brand is fighting for space and schools are tuning most of it out. That’s why this is one of my favorite seasons to send something quietly helpful. Here are a few easy, high-goodwill email ideas that earn trust without adding to the noise: 1️⃣ Curate something genuinely cool Your subscribers are tired. Share a short, curated list...something like: “5 podcasts worth...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Demos. Webinars. Cold emails. Welcome sequences. Nurture sequences.... What do all of these have in common, Reader? They all require follow-up. I’ve been talking on LinkedIn this week about follow-up, and I want to go deeper here with you. Most EdTech companies follow a 3-5 follow-up and then… crickets. But district sales cycles aren’t 3 emails long. They’re 6, 12, even 18 months. Which means, if you stop at 3, you’ve gone dark right when admins are still deciding. What to send instead First...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey, hey Reader, I wrote another batch of role-focused cold emails for a client last week. During feedback, I saw the same note pop up over and over again when I referenced the company name: “link to the homepage” Now, I’m usually a nice, amenable person. But clients don’t hire me just because I’m easy to work with. They hire me for my expertise. So I pushed back. Here’s why: When you give readers too many options, you kill curiosity. Every extra link dilutes urgency, muddies your CTA, and...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hey, hey Reader, Before I started my copywriting business, I was a teacher for 14 years. And with that came a lot of hidden beliefs and fixed mindsets. The copywriting course I took leaned heavily on cold emailing, but I flat-out refused. It felt spammy and too pushy. Most of all, it didn’t feel like me. Then a coach reframed it for me: “If you’re genuinely helpful, you’re saving businesses from a long, painful hiring process. They’ll thank you for reaching out.” That changed everything. And...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Hey, hey Reader, Recently, I ran an outbound campaign for Client X. Instead of blasting every district everywhere, we used a signals-based approach to identify the ones most likely to convert. (I got this approach and idea from Bobby Offterdinger. He talks about this strategy in this LinkedIn post. Bobby is a must-follow if you want tangible outreach/sales strategies). Here’s what signals-based outreach looked like in action: Pick your lighthouses. We narrowed focus to priority regions based...
3 months ago • 1 min read