They don’t really. I just think they do.
Frank laughs at me every time I jump from fright when mail (or more often junk) is shoved through our letterbox.
You have to understand, I’ve spent most of my life in Kentucky where the mailbox was always unquestionably disconnected from the house. In some of my former homes, I’ve even had to cross the road to check for mail.
Six years in Ireland, and I’m still not used to the letterbox being a part of our house. Or how the delivery people manage to sound like they’re executing a full-body assault on our door (causing me to jump, EVERY SINGLE TIME).
But I have picked up the knack for telling the difference between junk mail and real mail, based on sound alone. Do you live in Ireland? Do you know what I’m talking about?
Most days, the arrival of our mail goes like this:
Frank and me at breakfast table (also our lunch and dinner table, we only have the one). Me about to take a leisurely sip from my fourth cup of coffee of the day. sound of someone trying to violently break in Me gasping and jumping while trying not to spill coffee. Then “Oh,” I say, hand over my racing heart, feeling relieved we’re safe, but disappointed because it’s only fliers from restaurants we never order from, which I can recognize by the noise they make.
But on special days…
We get to the point in the scene where I’m trying to keep my coffee in my cup, and instead of disappointment, I feel a little surge of excitement, because I know by the sound coming from the hall that it’s real mail from a real person that’s being aggressively force-fed through our door.
It’s such a nice little burst of positivity—receiving an engaging letter from someone you know and like, and not just another advertisement you won’t even pause to look at before chucking in the paper bin.
If you write a newsletter for your business, your goal is to get your subscribers to feel the same little jolt of positivity when your email arrives in their inbox.
Because we all get A LOT of newsletters.
And most of them are written in bland corporate speak that makes no effort to be interesting, or entertaining, or even just flatout nice.
So when you write an email that makes the effort to connect with your reader on a human-to-human level, it gets noticed.
Then the next time your reader sees your name pop up among all the boring newsletters they’ve never bothered to unsubscribe from, they’ll feel a little thrill of excitement that’s caused by hearing from someone they know and like. (Also: Helloooo, higher open rates!)
Since you’re here…
We’d love to send you our emails which have been called by readers “brill” and “some of the best emails I’ve ever got!” Why not find out for yourself?
Sign up here.
And if you ever respond to one of our emails, you can bet I’ll be feeling a little jolt of excitement when I see your name pop up in my inbox.
