One email a week: what to say when you have nothing to say
The cheapest customer you will ever get is one who already paid you once and liked it. The way you keep that customer is embarrassingly simple: show up in their inbox once a week with something worth thirty seconds. Most businesses know this. Most send three emails, run out of things to say, and stop.
The fix is a rotation. Not a calendar of clever ideas, a short list of email types you cycle through. Here's the one we use.
The rotation
- The job we did this week. One photo, three sentences, what the problem was and how it turned out. Customers love seeing the work.
- The question we got asked. Something a customer asked this week, and the answer. If one person asked, twenty wondered.
- The thing to check this month. Seasonal and practical: change the filter, book before the holiday rush, the deadline that's coming.
- The offer. Once a month at most. A real one, with a date on it.
- The person. A short note about someone on the team, or a customer, with permission. People buy from people.
Five types, one a week, and you've got five weeks. Start over. Nobody notices the pattern; they notice that you show up.
The rules
- Plain text or close to it. It should look like a note, not a catalog.
- Under two hundred words. Thirty seconds to read.
- One link, if any.
- Send it the same day and time every week. Tuesday morning works for most businesses.
- Sign it with a name, not a company.
What it returns
At a few hundred subscribers, one email a week generates a handful of jobs a month from people who'd forgotten you existed. That's the whole case. It costs nothing but the habit.
If you'd like to see what ours looks like, the signup is at the bottom of this page. One a week, from me, and I follow my own rules.