What have we found to expand your email knowledge today?

Here are a few of our favourite links from across the email and business world, carefully curated just for you:

Find of the week ⭐

We’re experimenting with some new “visual aesthetics” for this newsletter, and frankly, we’re pretty excited because things are going to look a little different around here soon…

While researching the best ways to do this, we inadvertently stumbled on something that helps all you folks looking to create a consistent “look and feel” across your brand using Midjourney.

The team over at the Moodboard newsletter put together a pretty neat guide on using Style Reference codes, and the results are seriously cool.

Here’s an example of one of those, to pique your curiosity:

We’re tinkering with something similar, but this is their third Volume dedicated to using those well.

Possibly a great way to create consistent visuals in those future newsletters?

Check out a few more styles here.

We’re also constantly on the lookout for new resources, news, tools and links, so hit us up if you’ve got something valuable to feature!

Today’s email was prompted by some introspection around where we’d like these newsletters to go. And who better to share that than you, dear reader.

There's something we've noticed across years of consulting, newsletter audits, speaking to email senders (and obsessing over everything we’re doing in the inbox):

Most senders can describe their audience in broad terms. We’re talking demographics. Job titles. Maybe an industry. That’s most often there.

But ask them to describe the one person they're writing to…and often, it’s crickets (not literally crickets as an audience, but you get the idea).

There’s often a massive gap between "knowing your audience" and actually writing to a specific person. And that’s the abyss most content (and senders) fall into.

And it may not even be that the content is bad. The problem stems from an “aimed at” crowd, rather than a conversation.

Those crowds? Yeah, they don't click or reply.

The best you often get is a skim, a vague nod, and an email that gets either filed for later or deleted.

We’re talking about that feeling when you read an email and think, "This was written for me"

That's not luck, guys. Because that only happens when a sender does the work of narrowing things down.

It works like this.

You sit down to write your next email. You think about your subscriber list (all 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 of them), and you instinctively try to write something that appeals to the broadest possible group.

The topic gets a little safer.
The angle gets a little more general.
The CTA gets softer because you don't want to alienate anyone.

Sound familiar? We've caught ourselves doing this, too. 🙃

The issue with this is that by trying to speak to everyone, you strip out the specificity that makes content feel personal (essentially, sanding down the edges that would make someone stop scrolling and actually engage).

General content gets general results.

And, over time, general results train inbox providers to stop prioritising your emails altogether.

We talk about the Rule of One a lot (one email, one goal, one CTA). But there's a layer underneath that rule most senders skip:

One reader in mind when you write.

No, no, not another persona document (there’s some merit in these, but in reality, things aren’t that straightforward)

Not a segment name either.

We’re talking an actual person. Someone like you, {{name|friend}}, that you can picture opening this email at their desk, on the train, between meetings, on the loo (the best place to read emails, no judgement here).

Here's how to put that into practice:

1. Give your reader a face (or borrow one).

Think of one real subscriber. Someone who's replied to you, commented on your content, or asked a question.

Write to them.

If you don't have that person yet, write to the version of you that needed this advice six months ago. That works, too, as a neat starting point.

2. Name the specific problem they're sitting with right now.

Not "[your industry] challenges." Something you could say in a sentence to a friend. To guide you, here’s one for our readers, as an example:

"They're getting decent open rates, but nobody's clicking, and they don't know why."

The more precise the problem, the more your content feels like a direct response to it.

3. Ask the forward test before you send.

Would your one reader forward this to a colleague and say, "You need to read this because of [x]"?

If the answer is "maybe" or "probably not," the content is still too broad and needs sharpening. That forward instinct only kicks in when the reader feels like the email was written specifically for their situation.

That last one is likely toughest because often, so many email audiences (even this one) span so many interests, but this will also guide your audience growth efforts because you’ll seek to attract readers who stick because your emails add tangible value.

Writing to one reader doesn't just improve your content quality (or reader stickiness). There’s also the benefit of positively impacting your inbox placement.

When your content resonates with a specific reader, they click. They reply. They forward.

Those are the engagement signals that inbox providers use to decide whether your next email lands in the primary inbox(es) or gets buried with all the other generic inbox-filler.

We covered this back in Volume 63 when we talked about clicks being the real North Star metric. This is the upstream reason why.

Specificity drives clicks.
Clicks drive deliverability.
Deliverability drives reach.

The sender writing to 1,000 people but connecting with 200 of them will always outperform the sender writing to 10,000 and connecting with none.

Not your list. Not your segment. Not "people that topic I’m known for"

Who is the one person?

What's the thing they're wrestling with this week? What would make them stop mid-scroll and think "okay, this one's for me"?

If you can answer that clearly, you've already done more strategic work than most senders do in a quarter.

And if you're stuck on it: hit this link, tell us who you think your one reader is, and we'll fire back some thoughts. Seriously. We love this stuff.

Your list has hundreds (or thousands) of names on it. Start writing like it has one.

The best marketing ideas come from marketers who live it. That’s what The Marketing Millennials delivers: real insights, fresh takes, and no fluff. Written by Daniel Murray, a marketer who knows what works, this newsletter cuts through the noise so you can stop guessing and start winning. Subscribe and level up your marketing game.

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This gem by Dan Regan was something noted by your loving author just this week 🥲

Why? Well, to let you in on a rare life update, we added pooch number 3 to the mix last week, having rescued one of the smartest, most energetic and loving pups from the side of the road.

And guess how many photos of the little guy are already on my wife’s phone?

(Let’s just say the dog folder alone now exceeds 5000+ snaps)

Hit this link if you’d like to see one of those, and we’ll send over some pics of little Theo.