How to Stick to Your Weekly Newsletter (From Someone Who’s Sent 300 in a Row)

Guest blog by Sara Joelle from Between The Lines Copywriting

So, you started a weekly newsletter.

Or, at least, you planned to start a weekly newsletter. Maybe you even got as far as naming it, designing a pretty little email template, and telling everyone on Instagram to subscribe.

Buuuuut then you actually had to write the damn thing. Every. Single. Week.

And suddenly (not surprisingly?) that newsletter you were SO excited about became another recurring task on your never-ending to-do list.

I get it, though!

Coming up with something interesting, valuable, and strategically relevant to your business every seven days can feel like a lot of work, especially when you’re also responsible for literally every other part of running said business.

But I have some good news for you: Sending a weekly newsletter doesn’t have to mean writing a newsletter every week.

And as someone who has sent over 300 consecutive weekly newsletters without missing a single one, I’d say I’m pretty qualified to teach you how to make that happen.

First, hi! I’m Sara, and I have a LOT to say about newsletters.

I’m Sara Joelle — Website Copywriter, Marketing Mentor, and the yapper who has spent over five years showing up in thousands of inboxes every Tuesday morning.

My newsletter, Tuesday Table of Contents, is a weekly email where I share one marketing tip, once a week, alongside a personal story that may or may not be more “life gossip” than “business lesson.”

I’ve written newsletters about everything from unfortunate airplane cheating scandals to scary dating incidents to awkward encounters with strangers, all while teaching my subscribers how to become better marketers.

I’m also the creator of Swipe File, an email marketing support membership where I provide business owners with strategic newsletter topics, writing guidance, weekly copy edits, and accountability to help them show up consistently in their subscribers’ inboxes.

So, when I say that I’ve spent a RIDICULOUS amount of time thinking about how to make weekly newsletters easier to write, I mean it.

And after 300+ consecutive sends, I can tell you that consistency has a lot less to do with discipline than it does with having a system that makes it easy to follow through.

Here are my best tips for creating one:

1. Give your newsletter a permanent spot on your calendar.

The most important thing you’ll need to do to ensure you actually stick to sending your weekly newsletter is DECIDE THAT IT’S A PRIORITY.

It might sound obvious, but I’ve found that’s a huge reason why people stop sending: because they haven’t prioritized this task over other things!

Before we get into content planning and batching, we need to establish something important: Your newsletter can’t be the thing you work on when you’ve finished everything else.

Because when, exactly, is that going to happen?

There will ALWAYS be another client project to finish, Instagram post to create, or admin task that somehow takes 3x longer than you expected…

If sending your newsletter depends on having extra time, you’ll never have enough of it.

(That’s what you do when you have a goal that’s important to you, right? You don’t expect to grow huge muscles by only going to the gym “when you have time” aka 2 times a month!)

Instead, I recommend choosing a specific day and time to write your newsletter and sticking to it.

& not only is your consistency in WRITING it important, your consistency in SENDING it is, too.

I send Tuesday Table of Contents every single Tuesday morning, and I’ve been doing so for more than five years. At this point, my subscribers know when to expect me, and I know exactly what needs to be ready before Tuesday rolls around.

This kind of predictability is helpful for both of us.

Your readers get into the habit of looking for your emails, and you get into the habit of preparing them. Your newsletter becomes a recurring commitment rather than something you have to decide whether you’re going to do every week.

BONUS TIP: Schedule a recurring newsletter writing appointment on your calendar, too. Your send date is the deadline, but you also need to make time for the work that happens before it.

And while you’re at it, decide what your bare-minimum marketing commitment looks like.

For me, it’s my weekly newsletter. I can skip an Instagram post, forget to publish on Threads, or disappear from social media for a few days, but my newsletter is getting sent.

Instead of trying to do ALL THE THINGS consistently, choose the marketing activity that matters most to your business and make that your priority.

2. Plan your newsletter content BEFORE you need to write it.

I think one of the biggest reasons people struggle to stick to their newsletters is that they’re trying to complete two entirely different tasks at the same time: figuring out what to say AND figuring out how to say it.

Every week, they open a blank email draft, stare at the screen, and ask themselves some variation of “what the frick am I supposed to write about this week?”

And because they don’t have an answer, they spend an hour brainstorming, another hour questioning whether anyone will care about their idea, and eventually decide they’ll just deal with it tomorrow.

Sound familiar?

Here’s what I’d recommend instead: Plan your newsletter topics at least a month in advance.

(Don’t be scared! I swear it’s not as overwhelming as it sounds right now!)

Set aside an hour to look at what’s happening in your business over the next four weeks, what your audience needs help with, and what you’d like to promote.

Then plan four newsletters that support those goals.

For example, let’s say you’re a website designer launching a new service next month.

Rather than trying to think of four random topics your readers might find interesting, you could write newsletters about:

The most common homepage mistake you see business owners making.
What potential customers actually look for when they land on a website.
A behind-the-scenes story about a recent client project.
How to know when it’s time to invest in a new website.

Suddenly, you’ve got an entire month of relevant newsletter content planned, AND every email creates an opportunity to educate your readers about something related to your offer.

And if you want to get REALLY ahead of the game, you can take this a whole lot further.

I created a Newsletter Strategy Workshop that teaches my signature method for planning an entire year’s worth of actually-worth-reading newsletters in less than an hour.

Yes, you read that right: 52 newsletters, planned in under 60 minutes.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to stay consistent when you already know what you’re going to write about for the next twelve months.

3. Batch your newsletters so you’re not writing under pressure every week.

Now that you’ve planned your topics, let’s talk about actually writing them.

Just because your subscribers receive your newsletter every Tuesday doesn’t mean you need to write it every Monday.

I am a HUGE advocate for batching newsletter content.

Rather than sitting down every single week to write one email, try dedicating one day each month to writing the next four, or five.

You’ll already have your topics planned, so you can spend that time focusing entirely on writing, editing, and scheduling your newsletters.

And once you’ve finished? That’s an entire month of email marketing taken care of.

You can go on vacation, have an unexpectedly busy week, or spend an entire Tuesday dealing with something that has absolutely nothing to do with your business, and your newsletter will still show up in your subscribers’ inboxes.

One of the questions I get asked most often is how I can possibly batch newsletters when so many of my emails include personal stories.

Your stories don’t need to have happened yesterday.

I’ve written newsletters about childhood memories, embarrassing experiences from years ago, and completely random situations that I happened to remember while working on something else.

I’m even writing this week’s newsletter about an awkward situation with a past boyfriend I haven’t seen in 10 years!

If the story is relevant to the lesson you’re teaching, it doesn’t matter whether it happened last week or last decade.

And when I do write about something happening in the future, I simply make sure it’s something I know will have happened by the time the email goes out.

Batching doesn’t make your newsletters less personal. It makes your email marketing more manageable.

MY ADVICE: If batching an entire month of newsletters feels overwhelming, start by getting one week ahead. Then try two. Having even a small backlog makes a huge difference when life gets busy.

& because I know you’re gonna ask…

“Sara, if I don’t even know what I want to say in THIS newsletter, how the frick am I gonna figure out what to say FOUR newsletters into the future?!”

Here’s what you’re gonna do — THINK OF…

4 questions your clients or customers ask you
4 things your clients or customers NEED to know before working with you or buying from you
4 things your leads ask you on discovery calls or inquiry forms
4 parts of your process or elements of your work that clients find cool or interesting or helpful

That’s it — just 4 of each!

Then, once you have your 4 lists of 4, pick the 4 things that feel most relevant right now.

After that, ask yourself how people feel in those situations.

Example: let’s say you’re a copywriter, like me. If one of the questions someone asks you on a discovery call is “how can I be sure what you write will still sound like me?” they’re probably feeling wary, or in need of reassurance.

What YOU are gonna do is think of a time YOU have felt that way.

Then, tell that story.

That story effortlessly leads into the thing they need reassurance about…

Then, you give them that reassurance.

& DONE — best newsletter ever, AND you might even get some inquiries from it.

(Want to learn more about this method?! I have a whole workshop on it, which you can get right here OR you can watch it for free inside my email support membership!)

4. Stop expecting yourself to come up with brilliant ideas on command.

Want to know one of my biggest newsletter writing secrets?

I have a note in my phone filled with absolute nonsense.

Seriously. It’s a collection of random thoughts, weird conversations, things that made me laugh, things that pissed me off, and stories that I think MIGHT eventually turn into something worth sharing with my email subscribers.

Most of the entries barely qualify as complete sentences.

But whenever I sit down to plan my newsletters, I have an entire collection of potential stories to pull from instead of relying on my brain to produce something brilliant on command.

And I recommend that you do the exact same thing.

Create a note called “Newsletter Ideas” and start paying attention to the stories you’re already collecting in your everyday life.

Maybe it’s a conversation you had with a client, something you overheard at a coffee shop, an irritating experience with customer service, or an unexpected lesson you learned while doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with your business.

Write it down!

You don’t even need to know what the lesson is yet.

The important thing is having a place to collect ideas before you need them.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, Sara, but nothing interesting EVER happens to me,” I have another piece of advice for you:

Your boring stories are probably your best stories.

You don’t need to have climbed Mount Everest, met a celebrity, or experienced some life-changing revelation to write an engaging email.

You need to learn how to recognize the interesting little moments in your everyday life and connect them to something your readers care about.

That’s a skill you can develop, and it’s one of the main things I help members do inside Sara’s Swipe File.

Every month, I give members five strategic, story-based newsletter topics with detailed guidance on how to write them, so they’re not responsible for coming up with all their ideas from scratch.

Because sometimes, the easiest way to stick to something is to remove the part that’s making it difficult.

5. Create a simple, repeatable newsletter format.

Think about your favorite television show, podcast, or magazine. Chances are, there’s something familiar about the experience every time you tune in.

Your newsletter can work the same way.

For example, Tuesday Table of Contents follows a pretty simple formula: I tell a personal story, and connect it to a marketing lesson. That’s it.

The specific story and marketing topic change every week, but I don’t have to reinvent the entire concept of my newsletter every Tuesday.

Having a repeatable format also makes the writing process easier because you already know what needs to go where.

Your format could be a personal story followed by a tip, three things you learned that week, a quick industry update, or a recurring question-and-answer column.

There isn’t one correct way to structure your newsletter.

The important thing is choosing something your audience enjoys AND something you can realistically maintain.

BONUS TIP: In your email service provider (I use Flodesk!) create a newsletter draft, then just keep repeating that same empty draft every time. This takes sooo much guesswork out of newslettering.

6. Repurpose your existing content instead of creating everything from scratch.

You probably already have WAY more potential newsletter content than you realize.

If you’ve been creating content for your business for any length of time, you’ve already answered questions, shared opinions, taught lessons, and explained your offers dozens of times.

There’s absolutely no reason you can’t use that material again.

For example, I’ve turned blog posts into newsletters, newsletters into social media posts, and individual sections of longer educational resources into entirely separate emails.

One blog post covering 14 common mistakes could become 14 different newsletters if you wanted it to!

And before you worry that your audience will notice you’re repeating yourself, consider how much content the average person consumes in a week.

They probably don’t remember every single thing you’ve ever posted. And even if they DO recognize the topic, hearing the same advice explained through a different example can help it finally click.

(And if they’re the type to follow THAT closely to every word you say, they’re NOT the type to care about repurposed content.)

7. Make it EASY!

I know this might sound a little ridiculous coming from someone who has sent 300 consecutive weekly newsletters without missing one, but I don’t think your newsletter needs to be an elaborate masterpiece every week.

In fact, I think expecting every email to be your best work EVER is one of the quickest ways to convince yourself that sending newsletters is too much work.

Some weeks, you’re going to have a hilarious personal story, an incredible marketing lesson, and a perfectly relevant CTA.

Other weeks, you’re going to have approximately thirty minutes, a half-finished idea, and a desire to throw your laptop into the ocean.

Both weeks, you can still send a valuable email.

When you’re having a particularly busy week, give yourself permission to simplify.

Share one useful tip instead of five! Answer a question you get asked all the time! Tell a shorter story! Screw the story altogether! You can even revisit a topic you’ve already covered if you have something new to add.

It doesn’t matter! We live on a floating rock. No one’s gonna care (or fault you) for sending a shorter newsletter.

The goal is to create a newsletter your readers appreciate, not to produce the greatest piece of writing in the history of the internet every seven days.

And if you DO miss a week?

Don’t turn it into a whole dramatic thing where you convince yourself you’ve ruined your consistency forever.

Just send the next one.

While obviouslyyyy I love a good streak, the number of consecutive newsletters you’ve sent isn’t nearly as important as the relationships you’re building by continuing to show up.

The secret to sticking to your weekly newsletter: Stop making it harder than it needs to be.

After more than THREE HUNDRED consecutive weekly newsletters, I’ve learned that the hardest part of email marketing usually isn’t actually writing the emails.

It’s everything that happens BEFORE you write them.

Trying to figure out what to say. Wondering whether anyone will care. Questioning how to make your content relevant to your business. Realizing you’ve got three hours until your newsletter is supposed to go out and absolutely nothing prepared.

THATTTT is the stuff that makes people give up on newsletters.

& that’s why I recommend having a repeatable system for planning your content, collecting ideas, writing ahead, and scheduling your emails.

You don’t need to become a more disciplined person or suddenly develop an endless supply of creative inspiration — you just need to make the process EASIER to repeat.

And if you’d like a lil help making that happen, I’ve got 2 resources for you.

If you want to plan your newsletters yourself: My Newsletter Strategy Workshop teaches you how to plan 52 strategic, interesting newsletter topics in under an hour. You’ll get my planning method, a video training, and a Notion template to organize everything, so you’re never starting from scratch when it’s time to write.

If you want someone to help you stick to it: Swipe File is my email marketing support membership where I give you five newsletter topics every month, guidance on how to write each one, weekly newsletter edits, and monthly co-writing calls. Basically, all the support you need to stop overthinking your emails and start sending them.

Either way, I hope you’ll take this as your sign to stop treating your weekly newsletter like an impossible commitment.

Plan it. Write it. Schedule it. Send it.

And next week? Do it again!!!!

You got this.

xo,

FREE DOWNLOAD: How to start & stick to your newsletter

Want a cute free checklist to help make sure you start and stick to your newsletter? Download this FREE Notion checklist to get started!

About the Author

Sara Joelle is a Website Copywriter, Marketing Mentor, Podcast Host, and completely email-obsessed. She’s sent over 300 consecutive editions of her weekly newsletter, Tuesday Table of Contents, where thousands of subscribers get one marketing tip, once a week, alongside a personal story they probably didn’t expect to learn anything from.

Sara also runs Swipe File, an email marketing support membership that helps business owners plan, write, and consistently send personality-packed newsletters their subscribers actually want to read.

She’d normally tell you to stalk her site to learn more about her and how she can support you with your email marketing, but… if you want the real tea, her newsletter’s the best spot for that. Subscribe right here!