In today’s post I’ll share what has made the biggest difference in making my small business newsletter more effective and easeful.
When it comes to marketing our businesses, there often seems to be a split in our brains.
On the one side we have the creativity and inspiration that we put into our business and how we work in our business.
On the other side, we have the marketing, for which we feel like we need to come up with wholly new ideas, creativity and inspiration. For so many of us, these two sides of our business rarely meet. Marketing becomes like doing your accounts: a necessarily evil seemingly separate from the work you actually do in your business, the work you love.
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Writing from within your business
Writing my newsletters became infinitely more easeful when I realised that the topics I loved thinking and talking about most, the topics I worked on with clients and created free and paid resources on, were exactly the topics that I could write my newsletter about.
Whereas before I had been writing about my business, I was now writing from within my business.
Not only made this writing my newsletter so much easier and fun, this approach also makes attracting clients and customers easier. So often new clients tell me that my newsletter and the topics I write about inspired them and made them want to work with me—because the newsletter gives a good sense of what working with me is really like.
Everything I teach in Small business newsletter magic, my self-paced course, is based on writing from within your business. In the first module I take you step by step through making your newsletter not only part of your marketing ecosystem, but also part of your business ecosystem. These foundations, even if you’ve been writing a newsletter for years, are essential to a newsletter that’s not only effective, but also remains a joy to write.
And: Small business newsletter magic is returning in the autumn of 2026: join the waitlist to be part of the launch (and get 10% off).
Writing from within my business, not just about it, has made all the difference.
At this point, you might think “well, it’s easy for you to say this, you run a service-based business!”. And yes, my business is indeed largely service-based and the products I offer are all digital. It’s perhaps easier for me to give a taster of my work in emails than for someone with a product-based business.
As a florist, you can’t very well send a flower with every newsletter you send (as lovely as the idea is), and as a homeware designer, you can’t send a design with every newsletter either.
Making your newsletter an explicit part of your business is possible for both service-based and product-based businesses, as I show in Small business newsletter magic. In fact, throughout the entire course I give examples from both service-based and product-based businesses.
While you might not send physical products with your digital newsletters, there are many ways in which the newsletter of both your service-based and product-based business can show your work in a smaller form:
- coaches and mentors: all of my newsletters do this. A good example that shows my 1:1 work in a smaller form is my free resource Take up space;
- yoga teachers: share your favourite exercises; tips on finding time and motivation to get on the mat; debunking ideas about who can or can’t do yoga—as well as links to your classes;
- brand designers: prompts helping people create their own brand story; the importance of a colour scheme and how to create one—as well as links to your services.
Sarah Robertson’s newsletter is a great example of this; - knitting designers: share a free or favourite pattern; great beginner gifts to knit; projects for experienced knitters—with a link to the kits you design yourself;
- ceramicists: inspiration that goes into your products; values that guide you; how people might use your products, from mugs to candleholders and special bowls.
Remember, people will never be able to do by themselves what they’ll be able to do with your support.
You might share a free pattern in your newsletter, but that doesn’t make the chances of someone buying a paid pattern from you in the future any smaller. In fact, it only makes it bigger. A reader might not be able to afford your branding services right now and use your tips on creating a colour scheme themselves. But once they do have the resources to book you, there’s a big chance they will, because you helped them in the past.
Making sales through your newsletter
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned: there’s no predicting what an individual newsletter will do. But, having a newsletter that is rooted in your business makes it much easier for people to buy from you. It means having a newsletter that has a clear focus and strategy. A newsletter that is intentional.
An intentional newsletter does not just show in a great sales email. Having an intentional—and effective—newsletter is about all the work that’s gone before, from the description of your newsletter on your website or sign-up form, to the topics you write about, the connections you create with your readers, implicitly and explicitly.
All of this forms the foundations of my own successful newsletter, and I share these strategies with my clients again and again.
PS: Small business newsletter magic opens to the waitlist on May 25, 2026—for one week only. If you’ve been curious about the course , this is the moment to join the waitlist here.
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