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Why hello there!

I'm getting back into the swing of things after taking a week off to hang with my family. We've been going to this marvelous farm for the past few summers, that's like summer camp for people of all ages.

My week consisted of learning line dancing, swimming, hiking, eating sun-warmed wild blueberries, watching the world cup, feeding goats, good conversations, winning a speed-puzzling competition, and reading. So much reading.

I read an entire novel, cover to cover, in a 24-hour period, and read a second one a bit more slowly, over a 3-day period.

(If you want to know what my dream vacation is, it's doing just that, by some water. In this case it was a pool overlooking a mountain.)

And perhaps the best part? I left my laptop at home, and my phone primarily stayed in our cottage.

While this place wasn't device-free, in many ways it was like a step back in time.

My kids roamed free around the farm, doing crafts and swimming and feeding animals with their fellow (human) farm friends. For some activities, you had to sign up for them on a piece of paper in the main office. And I observed three teens spend hours by the pool, each reading a physical book, nary a phone in sight.

While I didn't do any work work, I used the time to do some thinking work.

One thing in particular that continues to swirl in my head is the evolution of my own newsletter, and where it fits in what I've dubbed as the Newsletter Identity Profile.

As I shared in my last newsletter, last month while prepping for a workshop I was leading, I had an epiphany about the framing of newsletters and email marketing.

A lot of content out there about email marketing is written through a one-size-fits-all lens that often assumes one of two things:

Assumption #1: The newsletter itself is the product.

Think the paid-subscription Substack model, or newsletter operators building to tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers to sell ads or earn money through digital products and affiliate marketing.

Assumption #2: You’re running promotional campaigns to a large list.

You have lead magnets, tripwires, value ladders, and series of launch emails to promote digital products or time-based services.

A lot of newsletter/email marketing strategy advice is written for either one of these models, where list growth is a huge focus.

But for the vast majority of businesses, you’re not a newsletter operator, nor are you necessarily doing pure email marketing.

So that advice, applied to your practice, might lead you to create a newsletter that feels completely misaligned with your business and/or extremely salesy.

(Which might explain why you’ve read a lot of email marketing content and still feel like you’re doing it wrong. You’re not doing it wrong! You’ve just been reading advice not geared toward your type of business.)

Which brings me to the Newsletter Identity Profile.

I think of email marketing for credentialed professionals who built your business out of your expertise as falling into three profiles: Founder Newsletter, Brand Newsletter, or Hybrid Newsletter.

Founder Newsletter

This type of newsletter is really about you, the person behind your business. It’s about your perspective, your ideas, your point of view in your field.

With a Founder Newsletter, you’re sharing how you think about your work, rather than directly promoting your services. You might even take people behind-the-scenes of your work, or share aspects of your personal life.

That’s not to say that you’re not marketing your services, but that’s not the main focus.

(And I’ll note that while a Founder Newsletter might not feel like email marketing because you’re not launching or heavily promoting anything, you are in fact marketing your ideas!)

Brand Newsletter

This type of newsletter is less about your personal perspective and more focused on your offers. Think service updates, case studies, new offerings, announcements about availability, product launches or releases.

It’s what you might think of when you hear the phrase “email marketing.”

Most ecommerce businesses and SaaS companies run pure brand newsletters. You don’t really see the people behind them, except for perhaps a periodic “note from our founder” type of email.

If you’re running a business at scale and want the focus to be less on you and more on your products or services, you might lean in this direction.

But for most credentialed professionals, it’s less likely that you’ll run a pure Brand Newsletter.

Hybrid Newsletter

As the name implies, a Hybrid Newsletter is somewhere in between a Founder and Brand Newsletter, and it’s what most of my email marketing clients have.

You’re sharing your perspective AND talking about your work and services, sometimes in the same email. The goal is staying connected with people, building trust over time, and attracting clients through a mix of thought leadership, case studies, helpful content, and straight up sales content.

This newsletter is a hybrid. I share what I think about email marketing AND I write about my client work and actively promote and sell my services.

You might also have more than one Newsletter Identity Profile depending on your business. For example, my client Chelsea has a monthly newsletter that leans more Founder – it goes out to her past colleagues and referral partners – and a weekly newsletter that leans more in the direction of brand where she actively promotes her coaching and supervision services.

Why determining your newsletter profile is important

Knowing which Newsletter Identity Profile yours fits under will help you make more informed decisions about pretty much everything email marketing related, including:

• What to write about
• ​How often to send your newsletter
• Which tool is the right fit for your newsletter
• Whether or not you actually you need a lead magnet.

It helps you avoid the trap of following the advice of online business coaches who dole lots of one-size-fits-all advice about the "best" software, that you need an email funnel, and the "right" cadence to send a newsletter (usually weekly), all of which is based on their business model, which is most likely not yours.

Which Newsletter Identity Profile does your newsletter fall?

I'm curious to know where you think yours falls. Reply to this email and let me know!

Take it one step at a time,
​Bev

P.S. Need help figuring out your Newsletter Brand Identity? This is something we can cover during a Power Hour.

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What I've been listening to & reading

I absolutely loved the two novels I read on vacation last week. The first was Go Gentle by Maria Semple, followed by The Society of Shame by Jane Roper.

I'm also just about finished listening to Hot (Not Bothered) by Harper Ford for one of my bookclubs. It took me longer to get into than the other two, but I think that's because I don't generally do audiobooks for fiction, but my library didn't have a physical copy.

(The fact that two of the books have perimonpause/menopause as central themes is purely coincidental 😅)

Cool conversations I've had

I've been on a coffee chat kick lately, including with Brand Strategist and Advisor Jamie Cox (Jamie also featured me on her Brand Burnout Newsletter), Marketing Specialist turned Business Coach Christina Hunt, and Aero Engineering Consultant Carly Braker.

Pst, wanna connect? I have some space on my calendar for 30-minute coffee chats.