At the end of my last email I asked you to write down the ways in which the things you do and the advice you give is different to others in your field.

Being different is vital when it comes to email marketing.

No one is suffering from getting too few emails. So if you want people to pay attention to yours they need to stand out.

One way to do it is to have different ideas.

They don't need to be Einstein level different. They can be your own twist based on your practical experience. Or you can combine two complementary approaches. Or bring in best practices from another industry into yours. Or apply research and new ideas from other fields to yours.

All of us have half a dozen things we do differently that would be interesting to our subscribers. Or we could come up with them with a bit of application.

But that's not going to keep you going with different and interesting emails forever.

Often an easier way to stand out is in the way you present your ideas.

That might sound like a bit of a cop out. Won't people see through it and recognise you've just dressed up old ideas in new clothes?

But it doesn't work like that in practice. Nobody watched Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen's adventures on Altair IV and said “hang on, this is just The Tempest set in space”.

Even though you know the plot, the new interpretation is interesting and feels new and different. 

And when you're sharing ideas, a new presentation of something your subscribers already know often sheds new insight or at the very least reinforces a lesson for them.  

So using your own stories or being imaginative in how you explain things keeps people tuned in and keeps up the perception of difference.  Like quoting 1950s sci-fi for example, or correcting a common misquote of a greek philosopher ;)

And it also keeps your emails interesting – which is the topic of our next email surprisingly enough.