Written by Anna Crosby
April 10, 2025
If you’re still sending a weekly email newsletter — and you’re NOT a newsletter business — you might be sabotaging your own sales.
Tell me if this feels all to familiar:
You send out emails inconsistently, because even though you want to email weekly, sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Something comes up with the family, or you can’t come up with anything worth talking about.
Speaking of what to write, each week is a struggle when it comes to deciding what content to put in your newsletter. You might have reached for pre-written, fill-in-the-blanks templates to help with that. Or decided on a format for your newsletter with several themed sections. But the words still don’t come.
Ultimately, you’re feeling like your newsletters just don’t drive revenue. Is anyone even reading them? You get modest opens and clicks, but almost no sales. You might be feeling like you were lied to when you were told you can make income with a small list.
If you’re feeling this way right now, don’t worry. It’s not you — it’s your email strategy.
Most email marketing advice starts with “send a weekly newsletter” and ends with “provide value.” No one has bothered to tell you anything more about the process, or answer all the follow-up questions, like “OK, what do I write each week, then??”
In this article, I’ll show you the simple shift you can make in your email marketing strategy to make emails more consistent, more FUN, and above all, more profitable.
Prefer to watch a video instead?
I break down the anti-newsletter strategy in the 18-minute training available to watch free, no opt-in required:
Why Newsletters Don't Work
In order to understand the strategy shift, first let’s explore why your current strategy of weekly newsletters is not working.
#1 — Weekly newsletters are stand-alone in a silo.
This makes each one on a different topic that doesn’t connect with anything that you’ve sent before or after.
This also causes you to effectively start over from scratch each week, making it hard to know what to talk about each time.
#2 — Too much pressure on every email
Because you’re only creating one email a week, there’s an immense pressure to be creative. You only have this one email to successfully capture their attention and get their eyeballs on your stuff.
There’s only so much creativity and “new”-ness you can crank out before it begins to be unsustainable.
In fact, in a survey I ran in my email community, the Geni Insiders, almost 40% of people identified “coming up with creative ideas” as the #1 reason that holds them back from sending more emails.
#3 — Newsletters make selling naturally difficult
Newsletters make it very hard to sell naturally. You only have one email to introduce a topic / problem, introduce your offer as the solution, answer objections, and give them a compelling reason to decide. It’s a LOT for a single email!! And because it feels like a lot, and it feels abrupt, you tend to skip the sale… am I right??
(( As an aside — that’s still only one touch point. According to recent studies, people may need as many as 30 touch points before they feel ready to purchase something. How many weeks of newsletters is that?? ))
#4 — Newsletters place too much focus on “value”
Even the name — “newsletter” — makes you focus too much on sending tips, teaching, and “value.” There’s nothing wrong with providing value, of course, but if that’s all you’re doing, you’re just overwhelming your people with information that they can’t readily implement, causing them to doubt whether your methods would really work for them.
(( Focusing too much on value is actually one of the 3 most common mistakes I see online business owners make with their emails. In this free 4S training, I break down why this doesn’t actually lead to more sales — and what to do instead. ))
So if you’re not supposed to provide “value” or come up with fresh creative ideas each week — what do you do instead??
The Shift to Topic-Based Email Marketing
First things first, stop thinking of your emails as a “newsletter.”
You’re not a magazine or publication that makes money solely by producing content.
(( There’s obviously nothing wrong with this strategy, and there are many successful monetized newsletters. But this article isn’t about that. ))
Your business makes money from the products and services that you create for your audience. And these offers serve to solve your peoples’ problems.
So the content that you’re putting out there has only ONE job: to connect with your people and convert them into buyers.
When you think about it that way, it’s a very different mindset than simply sending tips or teaching.
Your content needs to educate your people in a different way — by showing them the gaps in their knowledge or skillset, and how your offers are perfectly positioned to help them.
This is the switch from “value” based content to topic-based:
Each of your emails is now exploring a specific topic that directly relates to a pain point or struggle that your audience is experiencing, rather than inundating them with even more haphazard tips and tricks that they probably won’t implement.
Ready to try this for yourself?
Grab the free Connect, Nurture, and Sell™ Cheatsheet, and I’ll walk you through exactly what to write in a 4-email sequence that builds trust and makes sales (without sounding pushy or weird).
💌 You’ll get:
A step-by-step breakdown of my 4-part email strategy
Three alternate approaches to fit your business + writing style
A way to send emails that feel good and convert
This cheatsheet is available for FREE to members of the Geni Insiders Email Community. It's free to join, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Click Here to Sign Up + Get the CheatsheetTopic-Based Email Marketing In Action
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this concept is to show you what a typical month of email marketing looks like when you adopt this approach.
The biggest difference between topic-based emails and “newsletter” emails is that instead of writing 4 emails on completely different topics, you’re now writing 4 emails that are all relevant to the SAME topic.
In essence, you are picking ONE topic — one problem you’re working on solving for your people — each month.
Each of the monthly, topic-based emails focuses on a different aspect of exploring the problem. Perhaps one week you’re just talking about the problem itself and engaging with your audience to see how it resonates. Another week, you’re sharing a personal or client story of how you’ve worked towards a solution. Another email might focus on something that your people are doing wrong, mistakes they’re making, or thoughts they’re thinking that hold them back and keep them stuck — and what they can do to move forward instead.
And, because you have a paid resource or offer on this topic, you can casually or not-so-casually mention it and make the offer to your audience in every single email — seamlessly.
The best thing about this strategy is that together, all your emails serve to educate, engage, and sell. Yes, sell!! With this process, you can sell organically in every single email instead of waiting for a launch.
And it doesn’t even feel like selling. The closest that I’d describe it as is “recommending,” like you would a TV show to a friend. You’re not telling them the whole plot of the show or force them to watch it, but you find out what they’re looking for and what they like, and then tell them why you think they should give your recommendation a try.
Selling becomes nurture, and nurture becomes selling. This is a big part of how you can know your emails are strategic and revenue-focused, while keeping in line with your integrity and authenticity.
Write Your First Topic-Based Email Series
I hope that this article has given you a start in thinking about your email marketing in a different — and more inspiring — way.
Most of my clients who have implemented this approach saw themselves increasing the number of emails they send, WITHOUT spending more time on writing them.
And more emails = more sales, so this is no small thing. Especially when almost every email you send using this approach has a sales element to it.
To get you started on trying out this strategy for yourself, I’ve put together a special resource for you: The 4 Emails You Can Send RIGHT NOW to Connect, Nurture, and Sell™.
This cheat-sheet breaks down how you can write 4 emails that connect with your audience, nurture and educate, and sell in an authentic, non-pushy way.
And, it’s based on my signature Connect, Nurture, and Sell ™ framework that follows buyer psychology to seamlessly meet your audience at each stage of the decision-making process to guide them towards making the best decision for them.
No sleazy used-car-salesman vibes here — just human connections that benefit both you AND your people.
The cheat-sheet is available for free when you become part of my Geni Insiders email community. It’s completely free to join, and you may unsubscribe at any time.
What to Do Next:
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Watch Free Training:
The 4 Elements of Emails that Connect, Nurture, and Sell
What if your emails could connect, nurture, and sell—without feeling pushy?
I teach my 4S System (sales, sequences, structure, and systems) in this free training, and it’s a game-changer for making email marketing sustainable and profitable.
(( Free, no opt-in required ))