The Repeat Customer Letter

The Three-Part Email Campaign Structure I Use for Every Promo I Write

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:15:34 GMT

A few years ago, I worked with an agency that built monthly promotions/launches for their clients.

When you write that many, patterns start to emerge quickly. I realized early on that we followed the same basic skeleton every time.

And it wasn’t “forced.” It was the most logical way you’d expect a launch or promotion to flow:

Announce/open
Sustain interest through the middle
Close/last call

I also noticed that sales followed a predictable “barbell” pattern — the Announcement and Last Call did most of the sales, while things dipped and stayed consistent through the promo’s middle.

Makes a barbell shape. Heavy on the ends, light in the middle.

Once I had that skeleton and those patterns clearly in my head, planning campaigns got way easier.

Instead of staring at a blank calendar wondering how to structure the whole thing, I could split up my promo planning/strategy into those three sections.

Every campaign I’ve written since follows some version of this structure:

Product launches
Seasonal sales
Price hikes
Flash promos

It sounds almost too simple.

But knowing it makes you faster, more intentional, and a lot more likely to run a campaign that rings the register repeatedly.

Here’s how each part works.

What’s In This Article:

The Announcement

For a campaign to be successful, people need to hear about it.

The Announcement portion opens the campaign by introducing:

The offer (such as BOGO, gift with purchase, new product launch, etc)
The reason for the campaign
The deadline/other logistical information

And any other info they need to decide.

Ready buyers will buy in spades here. They’re already on the verge of buying, and just need a push from you to do it. The novelty alone will carry a lot of weight.

Speaking of that…

Send the announcement to your full engaged list. This is the widest net you’ll cast during the campaign, so you want as many of the right people seeing it as possible.

Depending on the length and nature of the campaign, you might send more than one email at this stage. One announcement email will make the register ring, but a follow-up will only add to your earnings.

One other note: Some brands exclude customers who bought in the last X days from emails at this point and beyond.

You don’t want to annoy or overwhelm them when they already took advantage, as the logic goes.

The upside is a lower likelihood of causing them to unsubscribe, but the downside is losing another opportunity to make a repeat sale. Up to you.

The Middle

Between the start and end of the campaign lies, well… the dreaded Middle.

You don’t get to coast on the novelty of the Announcement nor the urgency of the Last Call. The subs who bought then won’t necessarily be back to buy again for a bit.

Your revenue lives and dies by the quality of the emails (and the offer).

The good news is you have plenty of tools. Things like:

Customer stories/storymonials (stories with bits of the customer testimonial sprinkled throughout)
Educational emails
Product usage guidance
Belief-shifters
FAQs

In other words, the same kinds of emails you’d write to your list OUTSIDE of promos… but with heavier emphasis on what the promo is.

Do it right, and you could defy the “barbell” shape promos usually have.

I know so, because I did.

My “Behind-The-Scenes Story” email example in my 21-Email Swipe Vault was one of these emails.

I told an obviously satirical story of the founder’s accountant freaking out that the company would go under because the promo deal was too valuable.

That email did almost as well as the first announcement email, far exceeding the other Middle emails.

Goes to show that if you get creative, it can pay off.

The Last Call

The Last Call portion closes down the campaign… but it’s where you catch a ton more sales — especially from those who haven’t bought yet.

The urgency is most real here, so you lean heavily into it to shake those skeptics off the fence.

Your copy here should be a bit shorter and more direct, almost like a mirror of the announcement.

I like to do at least two emails:

One that’s a bit longer (but not long) recapping the offer and driving deadline-based AND problem-based urgency
A second evening send that’s much shorter and presses the urgency even harder since only a few hours remain

But I’ve seen people do more than that (particularly info product sellers).

BONUS: The Teaser

I love to write a short curiosity-building email before the cart opens. It amplifies the Announcement’s novelty since readers are primed to look for the sale or drop announcement.

Teasers also offer opportunities to:

Nab some extra sales with recommended product blocks, or even
Build an SMS list by promising early access

They’re fun and easy to write, too. Test one in your next campaign.

Simple Structure, Serious Results

This 3-part framework is simple on purpose. Announce the offer, sustain momentum through the middle, drive urgency at the close.

Adding complexity is rarely necessary outside of special occasions like Black Friday sales.

But that’s the skeleton. What about the copy you write? Especially in the middle, where you have to keep giving the reader helpful and entertaining content?

My 21-Email Swipe Vault has 21 of my best emails — each a different type — to show you what kinds of ideas you could use.

Personal stories, science-based emails, product care/usage guides, belief-shifters… these and many others are all inside the vault.

Grab it here.

Other Ways I Can Help You

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⇒ Never run out of email ideas: Learn how I use Claude to get hundreds of email ideas in 5 minutes. Full recording + 4 bonuses (SOP document, Matrix sheet, email format reference guide, & email angle ingredients doc).

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⇒ Raise prices without pissing off customers & create a “sales surge”: Template, framework, real-world breakdowns, & video lessons/walkthroughs on how to run a “Perfect Price Hike” email campaign.

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Subscription vs. Bulk Offers: Which Is Best For Your Business?

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 13:15:43 GMT

One of our clients has a product that almost every customer who tries it falls in love with.

We see high repurchase rates and solid reviews, with few complaints. They quickly integrate it into their routine, making it a daily necessity…

And so tons of our first-time customers hop on a subscription, which serves as our back-end offer.

But this made us reevaluate:

Is a subscription program really the best offer? If people are so hyped to repurchase… Why not scrap the subscription program for bulk orders?

That way, the customer gets a 3, 4, or even 6-month supply upfront while the brand gets a huge cash surge they can reinvest in acquisition, hiring, and so on.

We haven’t made that move yet. But the idea made me want to explore each model’s benefits and tradeoffs.

Below, you’ll see these for each so that by the end, you have a clearer sense of the best offer type for your business.

What’s In This Article:

Subscription/Continuity Offers

A continuity offer — often called a subscription offer — charges the customer a recurring fee in exchange for ongoing delivery of a product or access to a service.

The customer continues paying monthly (or whatever interval you use) until they cancel or pause.

For physical products, this typically looks like recurring delivery on a set schedule. For example, getting a supplement every month, a meal kit each week, or a skincare product replenished every six weeks.

The customer gets convenience and often a small discount in exchange for their commitment.

The brand gets predictable, recurring revenue.

Pro: Predictable Recurring Revenue

The most obvious benefit of subscription offers is that revenue comes in every month.

That feels good, but the practical advantage is that it gives you a “floor” from which to work.

Such predictability makes planning easier (inventory, staffing, marketing spend, etc.) and reduces the feast-or-famine cycle that plagues brands relying entirely on one-off purchases.

Pro: Easier To Sell Up Front

Subscriptions don’t entail dropping huge money up front. In fact, many brands offer a discount in exchange for the subscription, such as 5-10% off every order.

Much easier to say “yes” to, say, one $30 tub of protein/month than $300 for 10 tubs.

Important for new customers. Bulk and subscription are both harder to sell to them on the front end due to the commitment, but subscription isn’t as tough.

Pro: Builds a Deeper Ongoing Relationship

A subscriber is a customer you stay in regular contact with.

Every renewal, shipment, and email is another opportunity to deliver value, reinforce the brand, and deepen loyalty.

For example, you might send them a few emails at each renewal notifying them of their upcoming order, reinforcing their choice with testimonials, and asking if they need help or want to add anything.

Speaking of that… that means more selling opportunities.

For instance, you encourage customers who have been subscribed for several months to upgrade to a larger size by framing it as a way to get more of what they love.

Or you might try to sell them on a complementary product (one-off or subscription).

Over time, subscribers can become your most engaged and most valuable customers precisely because the relationship compounds.

Con: Less Cash Flow Up Front

The flip side of spreading payments out over a long period is that you spread cash flows thin.

You might have 1,000 active subscribers pulling in steady revenue, but you won’t see huge cash surges unless you add plenty of new customers at scale.

Brands needing capital to grow may not find this as ideal as bulk orders.

Con: More Operational Complexity

Subscriptions require infrastructure:

Renewal management
Cancellation handling
Pause options
Dunning sequences for failed payments
Customer service around billing issues

None of this exists with a one-time purchase.

The more subscribers you have, the more moving parts you manage on an ongoing basis.

Con: Requires Ongoing Retention Efforts

The “sale” is never truly done.

A subscriber can cancel anytime, so you must continuously earn the renewal.

That requires consistent communication, ongoing value delivery, and active retention efforts.

If you go quiet or the product stops feeling worth it, churn follows.

To illustrate:

A $50/month subscription takes 10 months to earn $500. You’d need almost a year to get the equivalent of 1 instantaneous $500 bulk order (although “instantaneous” may involve a longer sales cycle).

Bulk Orders

A bulk order lets the customer purchase a larger quantity upfront, typically at a discount.

For example, a brand may offer a two-month supply for 5% off. Some brands also do multiple tiers, where you can buy a larger amount for the same (or a larger) discount.

The customer pays more in a single transaction but pays less per unit overall.

The brand receives a larger sum of cash immediately rather than collecting it in smaller installments over time.

Pro: Huge Cash Flow Surge Up Front

A bulk order puts lots of cash in your pocket immediately, vs. a subscription that spreads payments out over weeks or months.

For example:

A $300 bulk order of skincare products that lasts 10 months puts $300 into your pocket immediately. A subscription, on the other hand, could take 10 months. Not to mention the risk of pausing or canceling.

By collecting more cash up front, you have more money to pay your bills and reinvest into projects/initiatives that’ll grow you more (*ahem* ads or email, perhaps).

Pro: Operationally Simple

A bulk order is a single payment. Once a customer places an order and you ship it, the operational work is basically done.

There are no renewals, auto-billing payment failures, cancellations, etc. Customer service may still be needed given order size, but they won’t get bogged down in help requests regarding subscriptions.

It’s clearer for the customer, too. They get what they see. Fewer things for them to get confused over.

Pro: You Can Set Up “Tiers”

Bulk orders lend themselves naturally to tiered pricing structures. One example:

1-month supply: Full price
3-month supply: Moderate discount
6-month supply: The best discount

Each tier gives the customer a clear incentive to spend more upfront.

Meanwhile, this structure makes the larger purchase feel like the smart, value-conscious choice rather than an extravagance.

Tiers aren’t necessary, since there’s value in having the full supply at once. But if you give up a bit more margin to have tons more cash on hand to reinvest, well, maybe the math makes it worth it.

Con: Harder to Sell Up Front

Would you rather pay $30 for 1 bottle of something or $300 for 10 bottles of it, assuming you’ve never had it before?

Exactly. Larger dollar amounts are just harder to stomach. Even for existing customers — they may be uncomfortable or even unable to fork over that much at once.

Discount tiers can help here, but ultimately, you’ve got a big price tag to deal with.

Con: Fewer Ongoing Upsell/Cross-Sell Opportunities

Subscriptions give you ongoing touchpoints (renewals, anniversaries, etc.) to upsell and cross-sell customers into new products (whether one-off or subscription).

Bulk orders offer far fewer. The only true upsell/cross-sell opportunities are:

Post-Purchase Flow
Regular broadcast emails
Replenishment Flow (and that’s a restock, not an upsell)

And if someone buys a bulk amount, well, they won’t need to buy more for a long time anyway.

That means upsells are off the table in many cases. Only cross-sells remain. You can still do it, it’s just tougher.

Con: Tougher to Forecast Demand

Subscription revenue is smooth and predictable since you know roughly how many orders are coming each month based on your active subscriber count.

Bulk orders are “lumpy,” so to speak. You can try your hardest to sell them, but they don’t hit at a regular interval. It’s more manual (even if, yes, you have to “sell” your subscription customers on their subscription regularly).

And the nature of bulk orders lends itself to this further.

You might run a promotion and get a surge of large orders, then see very little activity for the next several months as customers work through their supply.

This makes inventory planning harder.

Order too little and you risk stockouts when demand spikes…

But order too much, and you tie up capital in excess inventory instead of investing in more productive ventures.

The Verdict: Subscription, Bulk, or Both?

Subscriptions work best when you want predictable recurring revenue, a deeper ongoing relationship with your customers, and the flexibility to upsell and cross-sell over time.

The tradeoff is operational complexity and the constant need to earn the renewal.

Bulk orders work best when you want a cash flow surge upfront, operational simplicity, and a clear tiered pricing structure.

The tradeoffs are a higher barrier to entry, fewer ongoing touchpoints, and lumpier demand that’s harder to plan around.

Some brands do both, and it can work…

But it adds complexity for you and a potential decision paralysis problem for the customer.

When someone lands on your offer page and sees both a subscription and a bulk option, they now have to decide between three things: subscribe, buy in bulk, or buy once.

And even if they only decide between the first two… now, you’re making them do a bunch of multi-month math just to decide on which option to go with. Neither will be the obvious choice since both are bigger commitments than one-off buys.

So it’s often best to pick one model and stick with it.

Look at your own priorities, your customer, and your operational capacity. The pros and cons above should tell you which model fits.

If you go the subscription route, I’d strongly recommend picking up Retention Point by Robert Skrob.

His core concept — that every subscriber has a “retention point,” a moment where they become deeply committed and unlikely to cancel — is an excellent framework and heavily influences how I think about subscription offers.

Paperback’s only $9 on Amazon.

Grab it here.

Other Ways I Can Help You

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Inside the Inbox 23 - A Substack Creators Nightmare

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:31:21 GMT

Pete showed up to this week’s Inside the Inbox locked out of his own Substack account.

And now, he wasn’t hacked or banned. His domain expired and he lost his Google Workspace login… yet Workspace was sending the verification code to the inbox tied to the expired domain.

Absolute “digital security” nightmare. All the features meant to protect him screwed him over.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, he had to call in from his phone (where he could still use Substack) to talk about this issue.

We used that situation as a jumping-off point for something every creator and email marketer needs to hear about protecting their list.

You’ll learn:

How to think about backup frequency based on how fast your list is actually growing
Why your list sitting inside Klaviyo, Kit, or Substack isn’t the same as actually owning it
How Pete defines list engagement — and why opens don’t factor into it at all

And more.

Watch the replay now.

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Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

7 Books That Made Me a Better Marketer and Copywriter

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:15:00 GMT

I’m self-taught as a marketer. No marketing degree (I have an accounting degree instead) and no formal copywriting education.

So I’ve read quite a few marketing, copywriting, and business books in my day.

A lot of them are “good enough,” but either too niche/specific or derivative (in the positive sense) of previous works.

Maybe I took something new from them, but they just don’t quite hold up to the 7 on this list.

Some of these are CONSTANTLY recommended in copywriting circles, and I can see why. Others are a bit more under the radar, offering hidden gems to those who read them.

Either way, you’ll learn a bit about each book and a key takeaway or two that have stuck with me from each long after reading.

Let’s start with one of my all-time favorite copywriting-specific books…

What’s In This Article:

1. The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joe Sugarman

If you’re going to read one copywriting book, start here.

Sugarman is a copywriter first and a teacher second, so the book reads the way good copy reads:

Clear, logical, easy to follow.

He walks you through the process from initial research all the way to the finished edit in Section 1 before covering some tactics in Section 2.

Then, Sugarman takes you through a dozen real-world ad examples to demonstrate the lessons in action. Toward the end, you learn how to apply these concepts across different media.

Sugarman included a few appendices summarizing the book, building on certain concepts covered early on, and recommending further reading.

Two concepts from this book stuck with me more than anything else…

1. The Slippery Slide

The idea is simple:

Every line of copy exists to get the reader to read the next line.

Once you understand that, you start reading every sentence you write differently — does this earn the next one, or does it slow things down?

Seems obvious. But newbie copywriters often add flair that, while well-intentioned, backfires by distracting the reader and diluting the message.

2. Selling a Cure, Not a Prevention

Every time I get sick (especially with a sore throat), I beg and plead to get healthy, promising to never take health for granted again.

And then when I’m healthy, I toss that out and live my merry life, forgetting I was ever sick.

I know I’m not the only one. That’s because people have limited attention and care. They don’t care about preventing a theoretical problem as much as curing a real pain they have right this minute.

Yet another way your offer determines your success.

Selling an NSAID pain reliever is easier than selling a multivitamin that prevents the cold you need the NSAID for, for example.

However, a clever marketer can turn “preventative” products — whether that’s a multivitamin, an insurance policy, a lawyer on retainer, or something else — into a “cure” through adjusting the copy or targeting a different market.

For example, a tax lawyer selling “protection from future IRS audits” won’t do as well as a tax lawyer selling to people who just got that dreaded letter in the mail.

Grab The Adweek Copywriting Handbook here

2. Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman

This was the first copywriting book I ever read. I remember reading a few pages out on the bench during lunch at my first (and only) “real job.” I was 22 and figuring out what copywriting really was.

I’ll be honest:

I don’t remember much of it in granular detail. When you read a book that early, with that little context, a lot of it doesn’t “click.”

7 years and several copywriting and psychology books later, a lot of what I learned from Ca$hvertising has blended into a broader foundation I can’t always trace back to a specific source.

What I do remember is that it’s not a “learn the fundamentals of copywriting” book.

Where Sugarman (and some other copywriting authors) gives you a framework and walks you through the logic, Whitman gives you a compilation of specific tactics grounded in consumer psychology research.

Things like:

The 8 basic human desires that drive nearly all buying decisions
How to connect with readers on a deep emotional level
What a good ad should “feel” and read like
A quick pass/fail test to see if your headline hits hard
Where to put your biggest benefit

With that in mind…

I wouldn’t recommend reading this first. It’s not that difficult of a read… but the contents aren’t helpful without a grasp of the broader structure of sales arguments.

Read something that gives you that before you dive into a “tactics collection” book.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Influence, or Scientific Advertising (covered later in this article) serve as better starting points.

Ca$hvertising makes more sense and offers more value once you have that foundation underneath it.

Grab Ca$hvertising here

3. Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Positioning, according to Ries and Trout, is about the customer’s mind rather than your product.

Specifically, what slot your brand occupies in it relative to everything else.

The core argument is simple:

The first brand to occupy a position in the customer’s mind has an enormous advantage over everyone who comes after. Examples:

Hertz owns “car rental” in most people’s minds
Coke owns “cola” to the point that many colas are called “Coke” colloquially… and, in the American South, “Coke” is a stand-in for soft drinks (even non-cola ones, like Sprite)
Kleenex owns “facial tissue” so completely that people use the brand name as a generic word.

And yet these market-dominant brands often make a huge mistake.

They get a little bit of corporate FOMO and want to expand into new products/categories (they call it “line extension” in the book, as in “product line”).

Brands that try to expand into new categories by leveraging an existing brand name often fail — even if the product is amazing — because the customer’s mind already has a fixed idea of what that brand means.

If Kleenex launches toilet paper, they’re fighting Charmin on Charmin’s turf. The brand name that was an asset in one category becomes a liability in another.

Similarly, if Charmin tried to launch facial tissue products, people would skip ‘em most of the time for Kleenex. Even people that BUY Charmin facial tissues might call them “Kleenex” or “Charmin Kleenex.”

This brings us to the other big takeaway:

If you’re not first, you have to find another way in. You can’t just show up and claim to be better than whoever already owns the position. No one will listen.

You have to reframe the conversation entirely, or own a different, more specific position.

The Avis “We Try Harder” campaign is the classic example.

They couldn’t beat Hertz at being the biggest in the rental car business. So they made second place a virtue — a reason to believe they’d work harder for your business. They owned the “underdog who earns it” position instead.

This happens to be an example of “making the skeleton dance,” one of my favorite copywriting techniques. Apply it to your brand positioning, and you could capture a good chunk of the market like Avis did.

Anyone who writes copy NEEDS to know these things. It helps you shape the messaging around your product properly and carve out/reinforce your unique positioning in the customer’s mind.

Yet I discovered this book by accident while looking for something else.

Read this, and you’ll have an edge as a copywriter, marketer, or business owner.

Grab Positioning here

4. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

This is one of the most cited books in copywriting circles, and for good reason.

Cialdini spent 3.5 decades studying the science of persuasion, and Influence is the result:

6 core principles (now 7, with the addition of Unity in later editions) that explain why people say yes.

Here is each:

Reciprocation
Commitment and Consistency
Social Proof
Liking
Authority
Scarcity
Unity

Research and practitioner observation both back these principles.

It’s not a “copywriting book,” as it doesn’t cover “copywriting.” But the psychological principles within underpin the copy.

I use Social Proof, Authority, Scarcity, and Unity (identity/being part of a group) ALL THE TIME in my copy. If you’ve followed/subscribed to me for a while, you know I mention these a ton.

But the principle that stuck with me most was Commitment and Consistency.

Once someone takes a small action, they feel internal pressure to remain consistent with it. They’ve signaled to themselves and to others that they’re the kind of person who does this thing.

The next step feels like a natural extension rather than a new decision.

Put another way, it uses the concept of “cognitive dissonance” in a rather innocent way by ensuring customers feel said dissonance for not staying consistent.

For example, in my own life:

My church asks me to fill out a donation pledge card every year. I write down that I’ll donate a certain amount by the end of December and turn it in.

That small act of writing it down makes me far more likely to follow through than if I’d just had the intention. I’ve committed. Walking it back would feel inconsistent with who I am.

Funny enough, my priest HOUNDS us (in a friendly and joking manner, he’s a fantastic guy) about “just donating isn’t enough” if you don’t pledge, and he’s partly right for the reasons laid out here.

I’ve used this recently for a client, too. We’re growing their SMS list by offering early access to new drops in exchange for SMS signup.

All the customer does is type in their number. But now, they have to perform our desired behavior — buying — to stay consistent.

Boom.

Interestingly…

Effective propaganda and psychological/influence (*ba dum tssss*) operations uses a version of this concept.

Good propagandists rarely ask you to accept a radical worldview upfront. Think of

Pre-Suasion, Cialdini’s “sequel,” is a good read, too.

It covers various techniques for priming your customer to buy, reframing how customers think about things before you sell them something, etc.

But it’s not as good or as fundamental as Influence. If you can only read one, read Influence.

Grab Influence here

5. Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

This book was written in 1923 but still holds up. In it, Hopkins made an argument that was radical at the time and is still underappreciated today:

Advertising is a science. “Creativity” may be involved, but only insofar as “creativity” entails thinking of the best possible angles.

Seems obvious….

But remember this is one of the earliest copywriting books. Everyone who talks about the scientific aspect of advertising draws from Hopkins. Anyone who runs an A/B test in Klaviyo… yeah, thank Hopkins for that.

He’s the one who created the framework around testing and measurement.

All that said, this idea resonated with me plenty.

I have an accounting background and a numbers brain. There’s something inherently satisfying about isolating variables and testing one thing against another to see what works.

But the thing I remember most vividly from this book is the Schlitz beer story.

In 1907, Hopkins was brought in to help Schlitz, which was struggling despite being a quality product.

He toured the brewery and asked questions about the process. They told him about the cold filtration, the steam-cleaned pipes, the way each bottle was tested before it left the facility.

Hopkins was fascinated. He said, “Why don’t you advertise this?“

They said, “Everyone does it that way.“

He fired back with, “But no one has said so.“

After some persuasion (what do you expect, he was a marketer), Hopkins built the campaign around the process.

He detailed the behind-the-scenes reality of how Schlitz beer was made and tied that to why it’s the best beer and worth buying.

Schlitz went from an also-ran to market leader in mere months, setting the stage for a meteoric rise and strong industry position that lasted over half a century.

You can draw a LOT from this story:

The curse of knowledge: Sometimes, you need an external perspective to see what’s remarkable about your brand, products, etc because when you’re in the business, things that feel mundane might be fascinating and compelling to customers. If you’re not sure what I’m getting at here, think about how you stop feeling/noticing clothes a few seconds after putting them on (sensory adaptation). Same thing — you don’t see problems, good angles, etc. when knee-deep in the work.

Positioning: Think back to Positioning a couple sections back in this article. Now look at what Hopkins did… he positioned Schlitz based on the process. It became known for that even though everyone else did the same thing. Doesn’t matter. Schlitz was THAT brand.

Market sophistication: The market had heard claims about “the purest beer” a zillion times. That angle fatigued. If everyone says it, it’s meaningless. So the market becomes more “sophisticated”. Hopkins realized he needed to differentiate the brand after this market evolution by providing proof of the “purest beer” claim.

I will admit Hopkins is not the most thrilling writer. His writing style is curt and serious, if I recall correctly.

But there’s no fluff. It’s no more than 80-100 pages, depending on the version. Read it over a weekend and take some notes.

Grab Scientific Advertising here

6. The MOAT by Chris Orzechowski

Chris is a friend, client, and sorta mentor I’ve learned a lot from over the years. The MOAT is, in my opinion, the best of his 3 (4?) books.

He called it The MOAT after Warren Buffett’s concept of a “moat” — a distinct structural advantage that insulates its long-term market share and profits from potential competition.

But the “MOAT” stands for something:

Mission: Who you are, what makes you different, and who you’re selling to
Offers: What you’re selling on the front end (and on the back end)
Acquisition: How you’re getting people to those offers
Traction: How you’re keeping those customers around and getting them to buy again

(His MOAT here inspired my AREA² framework, which you can learn more about here.)

There’s more detail in the book, but those are the 4 big pieces that make a successful eCom business.

But it’s much more strategic. Not much on copywriting… much more on business and marketing.

The overarching theme is “essentialism,” which, in simple terms, is “do less, but better” so you can focus more time and resources on what works.

Don’t move to the next level of complexity until you’ve exhausted every reasonable opportunity at your current level.

For example, before you launch a new product, list a hundred ways you could improve your existing funnel.

Or before you hire an agency, ask whether you’ve truly maxed out what one focused person or small team can do.

Before you add complexity, make sure complexity is actually the bottleneck.

It’s a bit similar to what Eliyahu Goldratt lays out in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Find and fix what’s slowing things down, then move to the next.

On a related note, another takeaway from the book is that you as the founder/operator are a capital allocator. Your job is to find the projects/initiatives that’ll turn $1 into as many more $$$ as possible.

Chris, being a copywriter, wrote this in plain English with his signature style. It’s about 145 pages, but the text is big so it’s a quicker read than it looks.

This is one of two books I keep by me as a reference resource. The other is next…

Grab The MOAT here

7. Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz

Full disclosure: I’ve only read the first couple sections of this book. I don’t know what the rest covers (although you could probably look that up).

But those sections alone are worth the price of admission.

This is where Eugene (Gene, for short) introduced the world to two critical concepts:

Market awareness
Market sophistication

Market Awareness

Market awareness describes where your prospect is in relation to your product before they ever see your copy. There are 5:

Completely Unaware: They don’t even know they have the problem yet
Problem Aware: They know they have a problem but don’t know there’s a solution
Solution Aware: They know the result they want but don’t know your product can deliver it
Product Aware: They know your product exists but aren’t convinced yet
Most Aware: They know your product and just need a reason to buy

Where your prospect sits on this spectrum determines everything about how you open your copy and what kinds of angles you take.

The goal is to move them up the stages to nab the sale.

Market Sophistication

Market Sophistication describes how saturated the market is with similar claims. Again, there are 5:

Stage 1: The market is new. You can lead with the bold, direct claim. “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days.“ No one has said it before so it lands.
Stage 2: Competitors have made the same claim. You have to make it bigger, bolder, more specific. “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days, guaranteed or your money back.“
Stage 3: The claims have been made and amplified to the point of skepticism. Now you need a unique mechanism. HOW do they lose weight?. “The 3-phase metabolic reset that burns fat while you sleep.“
Stage 4: Even the mechanisms are getting crowded. Now you need to elaborate on the mechanism, make it more specific, more credible, more detailed than competitors.
Stage 5: The market is completely saturated and deeply skeptical. Direct claims and mechanisms no longer work. Now you lead with identification, identity, and the person — the products and claims are there, but more so as mundane features, in some sense.

An early market where no one has made your promise before lets you lead with the bold claim directly. A sophisticated market that has seen every version of that promise needs you to come in with a new mechanism, a new angle, or a new level of specificity — because the reader has heard it all before.

Think back to the Schlitz beer example from Scientific Advertising that I covered.

Everyone claimed pure beer, so the market moved up to Stage 3 (perhaps skipping Stage 2 since it’s beer). Hopkins spoke at that level by highlighting the process.

Positioning touches on similar ideas.

Market sophistication is essentially what happens over time as more competitors pile into the same position. The claim gets crowded, and late entrants have to find an entirely different position or a new mechanism to stand out.

See a throughline here?

Many of these books circle the same deep truth about marketing:

What you say and how you say it depends entirely on what the reader already knows, believes, and has been told before.

Now, this book isn’t cheap. Gene passed away in 1995 (a year before I was born), and Brian Kurtz (a friend of Gene and a top marketer himself) was handed the rights (via his company, Titans Marketing) alongside Gene’s widow, Barbara.

Since he has been entrusted with the rights, and not some giant company… well, it’s more resource-intensive to produce the book.

So the link below is NOT an affiliate link. I could send you to the $399 copy on Amazon and earn ~$18 in Amazon commissions, but I’d rather you buy it at the regular price of $125 + tax and shipping.

Still pricey? Sure. But less than half the cost, and it won’t be used.

(Psst: This is not tax advice, but it could potentially be a tax writeoff if buying for business purposes. Ask your accountant.)

Grab Breakthrough Advertising here

BONUS: Simple Email Sequences That Sell

These 7 books represent the foundation of how I think about copy, marketing, and persuasion.

Plenty of other good ones exist. I own and have read several not on this list. But we’d be here forever if I listed every last book.

Not to mention, you don’t need to read 100 copywriting/marketing books before you start writing. I’d say 3 maximum will get you mostly the way there. Any books beyond that may help reinforce concepts, but 2-3 will get you the fundamentals.

True learning after that entails hand-copying classic sales letters and writing real copy for yourself or clients.

If I had to rank them by impact, Ca$hvertising and Breakthrough Advertising would probably sit at the bottom simply because I read one too early and haven’t finished the other. Still worthy books, though.

The remaining five I’d recommend to almost anyone trying to get serious about copy and marketing. I’d start with something broader (like Sugarman and Cialdini), then tackle things like The MOAT or Positioning.

Now, there’s one more book I’d love you to have for free.

It’s called Simple Email Sequences That Sell, and I wrote it earlier this year.

It contains 10 email sequences that can boost your revenue 10-15% every month on autopilot.

Short and sweet. You could knock it out in an afternoon (and keep it as a reference guide for later).

It’s called Simple Email Sequences That Sell, and it covers 10 email automations that can unlock an extra 10-15% in revenue for your store.

Subscribe below and I’ll send it straight to your inbox.

And one more thing…

What books did I miss? What’s on your list that isn’t on mine? Let me know in the comments below.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox 22 - How to Grow Your SMS List Using Product Launches (A Real Client Example)

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:00:39 GMT

Last time you were asked for both email and SMS on a website, I bet you were more hesitant to hand over your phone number.

You’re not alone.

Email’s a personal medium already, but text is even MORE personal. Much more of a “family and friends” method of communication.

And with more scam calls/texts than ever these days (I got like 8 spam texts yesterday), most don’t give out their digits willy-nilly.

On top of that, many have been burned by false promises of “early access” or “exclusive updates,” just to get nothing but the same promos as the email list.

So you need a real reason. A concrete one they can actually see paying off.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, I broke down the strategy we’re using right now with a collectibles client to grow their SMS list from zero — using their limited-run product launches as the hook.

You’ll learn:

Why “early access” works as an SMS opt-in incentive when the scarcity is real (and how this client’s business model makes it so)
How the teaser email before each launch doubles as an SMS list-building tool
Why keeping the normal SMS opt-in on your front-end popup still matters even when you’re running this strategy
How to adapt the approach if you sell something other than limited-run collectibles… including promos, seasonal launches, and new product drops

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

7 Persuasive Copywriting Techniques That Make Customers Pull Out Their Cards

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:15:00 GMT

If you thought that the best copywriters all come from the writing world, you’d be wrong.

Some of the best copywriters came from sales, law, or philosophy before they ever wrote a marketing email.

They already knew how to build a case, dismantle an objection, and lead someone to a conclusion without it feeling like a push.

Yeah, they do need to hone the actual writing portion. But a little bit of practice puts them right into “solid copywriter” territory.

Copywriting is about persuasion, not words. These three careers (and others like them) force you to develop those skills to succeed:

Sales: Get people to buy from you (most analogous)
Law: Persuade a judge/jury/the public of the merits of your case
Philosophy: Demonstrate why your point makes more logical sense

In the course of doing so, they learn plenty of persuasion tactics they can deploy where relevant to strengthen their arguments.

I use many of the same tactics in my own copy. So do my copywriting friends.

Here are seven of the best — what they are, why they work on the human brain, and how to use them deliberately when writing your emails (or other copy).

What’s In This Article:

1. The Reductio ad Absurdum

Socrates would follow someone’s reasonable-sounding claim to its logical conclusion to demonstrate its absurdity.

In doing so, he shows how their argument falls apart and thus won’t work for, for example, how family structure in his ideal City/Polis would work.

This is called reductio ad absurdum (reduce to absurdity) tactic, and it applies to marketing as much as to philosophical debates.

For example, I wrote an email for a health/fitness supplement brand calling out “Big Protein.”

Some supplement brands inflate their protein powder’s protein count by doubling the serving size — 20g protein/scoop becomes 40g /serving by defining a serving as two scoops.

Looks impressive on the label. But follow that logic:

If doubling the serving size doubles the protein count, why stop there?

Make the serving size the entire bag. 30 scoops. Suddenly you have 600g of protein per serving. Best protein powder on the market.

Obviously absurd. But that’s what the competitors are doing. It’s just hidden until you, the persuasion expert, follow that to its logical and silly conclusion.

This worked for Socrates as much as it does for copy because it doesn’t feel like an attack. It’s more of a question/dialogue.

You’re just asking: If we take this reasoning seriously, where does it lead?

And when the answer is somewhere ridiculous, the reader arrives at that conclusion themselves — far more persuasive than being told what to think.

Use it against misleading marketing claims, flawed conventional wisdom, or any “best practice” that sounds smart until you actually think it through. Great way to “throw stones at common enemies” and go after common but not-so-good practices in your niche.

2. Making the Skeleton Dance

Every product has a skeleton in its closet. Something that, if the customer learns about it… they *GASP* might not buy.

Most brands try to hide it. All that does is give the customer an unpleasant surprise and make them annoyed or angry.

The better move is to drag it out into the open and make it “dance” — show why the bad is actually a GOOD.

For example, say I run a leather goods brand and charge more than others due to quality, domestic sourcing, etc.

I might say, “Yes, we’re the most expensive option on the market. We’re also the only ones who still source our leather from American tanneries and hire skilled American workers to craft our belts.“

You’ve disarmed the objection before it becomes a wall and managed to make it another reason to buy from you vs. your competitors. It’s a clever positioning tactic.

My Perfect Price Hike Formula campaign template uses a “reverse” version of this very tactic. We show why we HAVE to raise prices if we want to maintain all the high standards our customers enjoy.

See? No one likes price hikes, but I turned it into a good thing.

When you acknowledge a flaw or hard truth the reader was thinking, you signal that you’re not trying to spin them.

The reader can safely assume you’re not hiding anything going forward. They feel more confident placing that first (or second, or third) order.

3. Steelmanning

A “strawman” is a cheap rhetorical tactic (and, for some, a logical fallacy) where you set up the weakest version of someone’s argument and knock it down. Often, it’s not even an argument the other person made. It’s putting words in their mouth. It’s a bad faith argument in most cases.

A “steelman” is the opposite. You elucidate the strongest version of the argument you’re about to counter.

Now that you’ve presented the best case for the other “side” (in this case, a brand/common opinion/something else) in good faith, you can show why the argument still doesn’t hold.

Sounds counterintuitive. But, like Making the Skeleton Dance and similar tactics, it builds trust.

A reader who disagrees with you feels heard when you accurately represent their position.

Even if they’re loyal to another brand, you gain some respect at the very least. That’s worth something. But hey, you might win their business.

Meanwhile, a reader who already agrees with you feels more confident after watching the strongest counterargument get addressed and still come up short. They’re more assured that they’re buying high-quality stuff from a good, honest company.

Either way, your point lands harder because you’ve shown the full picture without leaving anything out or arguing in bad faith.

An example:

If you’re making the case that email marketing outperforms social media, don’t just say “social media is unreliable because algorithms change.” That’s true, but weak. It ignores all the benefits of social media, obvious and subtle.

The steelman looks something like: “Social media can build massive audiences quickly, costs nothing to start, and creates viral potential that email simply doesn’t have. For brand awareness and top-of-funnel reach, it’s genuinely powerful.“

Then you make your case for email.

Makes more sense — email is NOT a miracle marketing channel. It serves its purpose, just like social media. So if you’re selling email marketing courses, books, etc, you’re appealing to people who need help with THAT part of their business. Social media may be the better tool for ANOTHER audience.

Now the reader knows you understand the alternative and still arrived at a different conclusion rather than dismissed it out of arrogance or ignorance.

Harder for them to dismiss you.

4. Value Reframing

Price is not some absolute thing existing in a vacuum. It is ALWAYS relative to something else.

Whatever “something else” is determines the price’s reasonableness as the prospective customer perceives it.

So a “price” objection is not that something costs too much. Rather, you must raise the perceived value using copy until it’s higher than the price tag.

For example, $500 sounds expensive. But compared to what? It’s expensive compared to “nothing” (in an abstract sense) or, more tangibly, “I am paying nothing right now.”

But what if spending $500 now on, say, ads, earns you $600 extra/month in sales? You regain your investment + more.

A $500 expense to save just $100/month for a few years may be “cheap,” even after accounting for time value of money.

The concept here is not bombarding them with value, but showing them what NOT acting is costing them. It works especially well for higher-ticket products where the upfront number creates hesitation.

It’s also why I am against constant discounts. Instead of organically building/reframing the value, you’re “brute forcing” it by lowering the price to the customer’s perceived value.

Or, more simply…

You’re devaluing your product.

NOTE: People do something similar called “value stacking” in sales pages before announcing the price. It basically involves sharing everything the offer provides (plus benefits and dimensionalization), then introduces the price (often with a few “false prices” like “$1,000? Nope. $500? Lower. $250? Yep, just $250” to further set the mental context and show just how affordable the product is, relatively speaking.

5. Specificity

Gary Bencivenga, the world’s greatest living copywriter, says that EVERY claim should have proof to back it up.

I agree.

A vague claim like “best moisturizer on the market” is boooooring. Anyone can write that on their product at any time for any reason. Customers don’t even register that kind of thing half the time.

No one actually knows what that means, either. “Best?”

Best at what?

“Healing/clearing your skin!”

Yeah duh. But what does that actually look like?

Well, how about we instead say, “94% of users saw visibly softer skin within 7 days in a third-party clinical trial?”

Hmm. Much more persuasive. I now know that a specific portion of users (a large portion) saw concrete results that I also seek within a specific (and pretty short) timeframe. Feels less risky to buy.

Or maybe, “dermatologist-tested on 200 women over 60 days, with 89% reporting reduced fine lines?”

Again:

A large but specific portion over a specific timeframe achieving a defined result. I even included the total number of women so the reader could do the math and see that 178/200 reduced their fine lines.

Specificity works because it implies measurement and actual lived experience. You took time and effort to get data. That’s harder than dashing off “best XYZ,” AND it’s harder to fudge (false data may look less realistic). Vague claims lack that accountability.

It’s the same reason a witness in court is more believable when they have details. The time on the clock, the color of the car, the exact words someone said, the people who were around, and so on all make a witness more credible and more helpful to whichever party they are used by.

The more specific claims you have, the more likely customers will buy. A few more examples:

Testimonials: “I lost 14 pounds in six weeks” is more credible than “I lost a lot of weight”
Timeframes: “Within 30 days” is more powerful than versus “quickly”
Product claims: “Cold-pressed at under 40 degrees to preserve enzymes” feels a lot more professional and expert than “minimally processed”

When in doubt, get more specific.

6. Analogy

Some concepts, ideas, benefits, etc are hard to explain or demonstrate on their own.

Analogy is one of my favorite techniques to overcome this issue. It maps something unfamiliar or abstract,

I write in the health/supplements spaces a TON. So I often analogize the human body to a car.

For example, it doesn’t matter how much gas you put in your car: If your engine is small, your car isn’t fast. Or maybe if your engine is broken, then the car won’t work well or at all.

Similarly, it doesn’t matter how much food you eat or something similar if your body can’t efficiently turn it into energy for high performance.

The concept holds across both cases: The human body and a car both have systems that turn an energy source into mechanical energy. Energy source vs. what uses that energy.

The reader now better understands the point being made: Fixing your metabolism is more important than merely eating healthy foods. Just like fixing your engine is more important than fueling your car.

Plus, analogizing helps customers visualize the effects by forming a picture in their head. They can imagine someone fixing an engine and a car going faster.

That ports over to the body, visually (even if “metabolism” isn’t a fixed actual object like an engine). Food is “gasoline” that goes into their mouth, metabolism (the “engine”) is represented by, in their mind, the stomach (most likely).

Analogizing fails if the parallel doesn’t hold well. It confuses the reader and does more damage than no analogy at all since the reader notices the cracks and, depending on the analogy, perceives you’re trying to make your product sound better than it is.

Sometimes, you discover that the analogy is weak after writing it, so it can be trial and error.

Either way, this may take a bit of practice to get right. But when you get it, it’s fun and persuasive.

7. Burden of Proof Shift

As mentioned earlier, every claim you make needs proof. The need to supply proof for a claim is called the “burden of proof.”

But how about this:

Instead of defending your position, flip the burden to the skeptic. Make them defend their position.

Not aggressively, though (unless your brand personality is aggressive and “rude,” so to speak). Should feel more like genuine exploration — such as “why wouldn’t you want to know what your customers really think?”

Now, the reader’s trying to justify their inaction. They haven’t thought through why they’d resist. When you ask them to make the case against what you’re offering, they often can’t.

Lacking a good counterargument can add to the persuasive power. Works best used alongside many other techniques.

Use it sparingly. It works best when the alternative to your offer is hard to defend, not when you’re asking someone to justify a reasonable hesitation.

In those cases, the burden of proof shift feels dismissive rather than compelling. But when the status quo costs someone something, asking them to defend it can be the most efficient persuasion tool in the email.

Write Copy That Actually Moves People

These aren’t “tricks.” You’re not “fooling” people into buying. Your audience has a problem or goal, your product solves that problem or accomplishes that goal. If your product is genuinely good, they NEED it.

You’re simply structuring an argument that most effectively communicates to the reader why they need these.

You use some of the same tactics in day-to-day conversation, in fact. When you tell someone that your drink at the bar tastes really strong, you’re “making the skeleton dance.” Doesn’t taste great, but one drink will get you your money’s worth.

Or when you explain to a friend why you chose the more expensive gym over the cheap one by showing off the amount of interior space, new equipment, and extra amenities, you’re doing some value reframing.

The more you study good copy, the more you’ll start to see these tactics everywhere. The more you use them deliberately, the more natural they become.

So work a few of these into your copy. You don’t need to do them all at first (since each takes some level of skill to nail). A well-placed reductio ad absurdum or tight analogy can go much further than spamming “here’s why we’re so great” in your copy.

If you want to go deeper on the craft of persuasive email copy, Email Copy Academy is the place to be. It’s a full course on writing emails that sell, built around the principles that actually move people — created by Chris Orzechowski, industry-leading email marketing professional.

Click here to learn more about Email Copy Academy.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

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The Anatomy of A High-Converting Marketing Email

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 13:15:00 GMT

Think back to the last time you did a jigsaw puzzle.

Unless you’re some kind of masochist, you didn’t build it in one long chain, individual piece by individual piece.

You worked on a chunk here, a chunk there, and eventually, found a connector piece between them.

Writing emails works the same way because a good email has an underlying structure.

So you don’t have to write it in the order the reader reads it. That’s more difficult since you’re restricting how you can write the email.

Many of the best writers, therefore, write each “section” of that structure in whatever order works best for them, then “weld” them together into a finished email.

To that end, this article walks through the anatomy of a high-converting email and what order I (generally) “complete” each section.

I’ve presented them in the order they appear in an email, but here’s the order I write them in:

Envelope
Body
CTA
Bridge
Hook
Subject lines/preview text

Although sometimes I’ll move the envelope to the end.

Speaking of which, let’s start with the “envelope” since you’re probably confused about how an email has one.

What's In This Article:

The “Envelope” — The Pre-Email Metadata

Before you rip open a physical letter or piece of mail, you’ve already seen who sent it, where it came from, when it arrived, who it’s going to (you), and whether you should open it.

All of that info is on the envelope. A physical envelope.

Email has a digital analog to the envelope, and it includes all the same kind of information:

Sender name: The name someone sees in their inbox before opening the email. It can be a person’s name, a company name, or both. In Gmail, it’s on the left side. Example of a person here:

Dr. Saladino also cofounded a few brands, such as Heart & Soil. So if Heart & Soil mailed, they could either send as “Heart & Soil” or have Paul send “from him”.

This is the first thing the reader sees. A warm, engaged list opens emails because they recognize and trust the sender name.

Sender email address: The email address the email “comes from.” This impacts deliverability and trust. A legit-looking, consistent sender address builds sender reputation over time. Random or mismatched addresses raise red flags for subscribers and spam filters.

Segment: Who you’re sending to. Not every email should go to your entire list. The segment determines which subscribers get this particular email and why. Getting segmentation right gets the right message to land in front of the right person at the right time.
Send date and time: When the email sends. The exact time isn’t a HUGE deal, but you do want to be intentional about it. Mailing your list at 8am or 4pm will work FAR better than 3am, of course.

The Email Itself

The envelope gives them more context and moves them toward the open.

Now for the fun part… the copy. The stuff that makes the sale. The place where most of the skill, strategy, and craft of email marketing lives.

But first…

Subject Line + Preview Text

The subject line and preview text do a lot of the work in earning the open, but they work alongside the other aspects of the “envelope” (subject line and preview text are part of the envelope, depending on who you ask).

Here’s what each is:

Subject line: This is your “headline.” It’s the primary copy element that determines if someone opens, especially early on. A good subject line creates curiosity, signals relevance, or both. A bad one gets ignored. As you build a relationship with your readers, the subject line loses importance, but you still want to be intentional.

Preview text: The short snippet of text that appears next to or below the subject line in most inboxes. It’s often an afterthought — left blank or auto-populated with the email’s first line — but it’s prime real estate. A well-written preview text extends the subject line’s hook and gives the reader one more reason to open.

Here’s an example from Nic Nac Naturals:

Subject line: The New Guy Is Here

A fun, “behind the scenes” sounding subject line, or perhaps it’s a product launch where “guy” is a funny stand-in for the new product.

Either way, the subject line leaves enough ambiguity to stoke curiosity, earning the open.

Preview text: Hope you like repeating yourself.

This builds on the subject line while adding humor and nudging the curiosity up a notch.

Hook

The hook opens your email. Each line’s job in the hook is to earn the next line. The whole hook’s job is to make reading the rest of the email irresistible.

This is also where you want to pay off the subject line (in most cases). The hook should build on the idea the subject line introduced.

Some proven hook types include:

Story or anecdote: Drop the reader into a moment or situation. For example, “I was checking driving to the store the other day, when…“ and then continue the story. Stories are often my best-performing emails. If you have a lot of good (and in-depth) reviews, you have TONS of customer success story material.

Bold statement: Lead with a claim or observation that makes the reader think “wait, really?” For example, “Most email marketers are optimizing for the wrong metric.“ You sometimes have to toe a line — bold enough to get attention, not so outlandish that people call BS and close your email.

Question: Opens a loop the reader wants closed. For example, “When’s the last time you actually looked inside your Welcome Sequence?“ Generally speaking, avoid yes/no questions. If the reader can mentally say “no,” that implies the email isn’t relevant. The reader will close it.

Dialogue: Throws the reader straight into a conversation or exchange. Works especially well for story-based emails. Can also work for question-answer or FAQ emails. Basically, an effective form of in media res for email.

Surprising fact or observation: Something unexpected that reframes how the reader thinks about a familiar topic. Similar to the “bold statement” but it doesn’t lean as heavily on being controversial or bold.

Too many beginner copywriters jam in extra, unneeded lines at the start of the hook to set the context. This “throat clearing” does the opposite — the reader’s eyes glaze over.

Don’t “warm the reader up”. Do NOT say things like “I hope this email finds you well.”

I write the hook last. This is fairly common among book authors because it’s easier to write your way up to the rest of an existing story.

Same here. Easier to write a hook when you know where it’s leading the reader.

Body

The body is the “meat” of the email. This is where the bulk of the persuasion happens.

I write it first because the hook and segue have to connect to it seamlessly on each end, and those have higher-stakes jobs (get the reader into the email/get the reader to take action).

Also because this is where the main idea shows up. The argument happens here.

What the email body looks like depends on the email type you’re writing. A few examples:

A story-based email uses the body to develop the narrative, build tension, and create emotional investment before the payoff.

An educational email uses it to make a case, shift a belief, or explain a concept in a way that makes the reader see something differently

A social proof email highlights some top customer testimonials and potentially the brand’s thoughts on them

A straight promotional email keeps the body short to get to the offer fast.

Regardless of email type, the body should flow naturally from the hook without losing momentum.

If a sentence doesn’t move the reader forward, add information, deepen the story, or build toward the offer, it probably doesn’t need to be there.

Simple in theory. Takes writing skill to do it well.

Now, email length is a function of what the email needs, not a rule.

Some emails need 100-150ish words. Maybe a promo last call or a quick 3-item list style email.

Other emails (like one I wrote a few days ago for a client) call for hundreds of words, if not more, to cover the topic enough.

A 100-word email can lose the reader if crammed full of fluff, while a 700-word email where every word serves a purpose pulls the reader to the very end.

Write enough to convey the idea and cover the topic — no more, no less.

Bridge

The bridge, also called the segue or the offer transition, connects the body to the offer. It’s one of the hardest parts to do well.

A clunky segue can jar the reader out of the flow state they were in reading your email. It feels like you’re shoving a product in front of them.

A good segue makes the offer feel like the natural conclusion of whatever came before it.

The reader should feel like the product you’re about to mention is the obvious next step given everything they just read.

A few common approaches:

The “which is why” pivot: “Which is why I put together [product].” Connects the problem or insight from the body directly to the solution.

The lesson-to-product connection: Summarize the key takeaway from the body, then show how the product delivers that takeaway in a more complete or faster way.

The “speaking of which” transition: A lighter, more conversational bridge that works well for shorter or more casual emails.

The “lesson” bridge: Write “The lesson here?” and then give the lesson, followed by the product as a way to solve the problem you detailed.

The tighter the connection between content and offer, the more natural the bridge feels.

If you’re struggling to write the segue, it’s often a sign that the content and the offer aren’t aligned as well as they should be. The fix is usually in the body, not the transition itself.

CTA

Every email should urge the reader to take SOME action, or it is wasted.

The CTA is where you ask the reader to take some action. Usually placing an order, but also things like:

Reading a blog post
Opting into an additional email newsletter
Following on social media
Leaving a review on a product
Voting in a competition
Urging replies

Even if you do NOTHING else, ALWAYS urge replies. Helps deliverability and might help you uncover new things about your list.

Most email CTAs fail either because they’re:

Too vague: “Click here” and “learn more” are snoozers. How about “Fix your gut health today” or “Put eczema to bed for good”? More specific, more action-oriented, and more fun.

Too abundant: You can do a couple CTAs to ONE location, but do NOT (outside of certain circumstances) link to multiple products/digital locations in your broadcast emails. This confuses the reader and creates analysis paralysis.

A single, clear, specific CTA removes the friction of deciding and makes it obvious what happens next.

The CTA should also match the temperature of the email.

An early-sequence Post-Purchase Sequence will have a softer ask — maybe urging replies.

On the other hand, a Last Call email in a Cyber Monday promo will drive the sale HARD in the CTA.

Being aggressive in the “thanks for buying email” will turn off buyers who JUST bought. Being soft in a Last Call email won’t communicate sufficient urgency.

Shorter emails only need one CTA. Not much between it and the reader.

Longer emails often work best with an early CTA link and the main one at the end. You could also do a CTA somewhere in the middle, where relevant.

Don’t neglect the lines right before the CTA. The copy that leads into the link is some of the most valuable real estate in the email.

Those last few sentences should reinforce the benefit, add a final urgency or curiosity push, or remind the reader why clicking is worth their time.

Dropping a CTA at the end of a sentence that does nothing is a wasted opportunity.

Design Considerations

You don’t have to do design-heavy emails, but design and formatting do matter in text-based emails.

First, your header.

Many brands have their brand name and/or logo in their header. Some add a “top menu” with options like “shop,” similar to the website, but that’s not necessary (it may distract).

The footer should have your unsubscribe link (don’t try to hide this), physical address, and social links.

If you’re a single-product brand or have a small, similar catalog, consider adding some brand-level benefits to your email template’s footer (such as your guarantee, shipping info, etc.).

A few other miscellaneous elements and widgets include things like:

Recommended product blocks (show products the customer may like based on purchase history/other factors)
Abandoned cart blocks (show products the customer left in their cart)
Countdown timers (a live countdown clock showing how much time remains for a special offer)

And many, many more.

Know the Parts, Write Better Emails

Every marketing email you’ve ever received, good or bad, had these same components working for or against it.

The sender name and email address either built trust or raised a red flag before anyone opened it.

The subject line and preview text either earned the open or got ignored.

The hook either pulled the reader in or lost them in the first three lines.

The body either built momentum toward the offer or meandered until the reader gave up.

The segue either made the sell feel natural or killed the flow.

The CTA either made the next step obvious or left the reader with nothing to do.

Knowing the anatomy doesn’t make you a great email copywriter overnight, but it’ll make getting words onto paper and structuring them easier. You’ll know why emails work (when they do) and have a framework to analyze any emails to see what’s working and what’s not.

Again, I generally do them in this order:

Envelope
Body
CTA
Bridge
Hook
Subject lines/preview text

Although sometimes I’ll do the envelope last since clients sometimes iron out that information right before sending (and it’s easy to change).

Speaking of studying…

I got good at copywriting early on by hand copying famous print sales letters. Writing out what other writers wrote helped me absorb good copywriting principles, but, more importantly, the structure of a good sales argument (studies back this method up).

I say this because a recent 21-Email Swipe Vault customer told me he’s going to study 1 email a day, closely, to understand the structure better.

It has 21 proven emails (and 3 bonus “occasional use” ones) I’ve sent for clients, each with a description, bullet-point framework/outline, template, and real-world example…

Giving him almost a full month of material (more than a month if only business days).

I love his idea, and suggested he hand copy them out. Highly recommend you do the same. Far easier to hand copy a 300-word email daily than a full, 2000-word sales letter.

Click here to get the 21-Email Swipe Vault and start hand copying today

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox - 4 Email Tweaks That Can Nearly Double Your Click-Through Rate

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 22:02:08 GMT

If you have a sales/product page that converts well, you need more traffic to the page.

But what if you’re already mailing plenty? Or you’re not comfortable upping the number of sends per week?

No need. If you can improve click-through rate (CTR) in your emails, you’ll earn more. More clicks to a high-converting page = more sales.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down four simple tactics for getting more clicks out of every email you send.

You’ll learn:

The subject line CTA trick — and the two psychological principles that explain why it works
How to use multiple links strategically without cluttering the email or diluting the CTA
A simple formatting change to your links that makes them visually impossible to miss
How to use urgency and scarcity to get fence-sitters off the fence (without resorting to fake deadlines or discounts)

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

How We’re Building Our SMS List With Launches (And Making Big Money in the Process)

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:15:12 GMT

Building an email list is one of the hardest parts of email marketing. Building an SMS list is harder.

Email addresses feel personal, but compared to text messages, they almost feel semi-public.

People hand them out relatively freely for discounts, eBooks, and so on. Worst case, you get some emails you don’t want and unsubscribe.

A phone number is different.

It’s the same number your friends, family, husband/wife, doctor, etc. have.

Someone can technically hear your voice and even see your face via phone (worth considering, even if brands don’t have the permission to call you).

People have seen the “sign up for exclusive SMS access” boilerplate promise too many times and gotten nothing meaningful in return.

Discounts may increase signups, but then you give up margin for the purchase at best…

And, at worst, cheapen your products and turn off your wealthy target audience.

My newer client faced this dilemma. The brand needs to grow its SMS list from 0 but, given the nature of the products (as you’ll see), discounts are a terrible idea.

So we’re taking a different approach, using my client’s unique business model to our advantage.

Read on to learn how we’re growing their list…

What's In This Article:

The Strategy: Product Drops + SMS Early Access

My client is a precious metals collectibles brand with a strong patriotic personality.

Think Americana-themed (but not exclusively American/Americana) artistic creations in silver and other metals.

Some products are numismatic coins (desired for rarity, historical significance, condition, and collector demand instead of just precious metal content) with commemorative designs.

However, most are objects made of precious metals.

For example, we recently helped them launch preorders for a specially-themed silver “coin” of a well-known handgun.

It’s shaped as the actual gun, NOT a coin with a design stamped in.

Now, many collectibles brands routinely launch new products to give customers reasons to come back. My client is no different (except all launches are preorders). That’s the nature of nonconsumable products.

Furthermore, this brand ONLY does limited runs, further necessitating constant launches.

That scarcity underpins our SMS list growth strategy.

Before we drop a new product, we send a teaser email to the full list.

It reveals that something new is coming…

Often with a short story and/or an appeal to a similar collectible that sold out, plus a teaser photo (though emails are mostly plain text).

Standard “hype up your audience for the launch” stuff.

There’s nowhere to send our readers, though. But we can’t waste this email and get nothing out of them.

So we turned the teaser into an SMS list growth engine by driving people to sign up for SMS.

Few people hand out their phone number for no reason. A discount won’t do for a precious metals collectibles brand, either.

People with money buy these. They don’t care about shaving $50 off a $500 silver model of a military aircraft or famous firearm.

A discount speaks ill of product quality and anchors customer expectations improperly.

Early access to new launches made much more sense.

On launch day, a few hours before the announcement email, we text SMS subscribers driving them to the product page.

Boom.

They can kick back, relax, and take their time navigating to and preordering the new product.

But not too long.

Soon enough, the announcement email hits, and email subscribers flood the page.

Every new launch is another opportunity to make money AND grow our SMS list.

We use urgency in launches, too.

We shut off preorders after the launch ends. But eventually, when the product is finished and in stock, people can buy it until my client runs out.

How Do I Use This WITHOUT Limited Run Products?

Limited-run products make this strategy easy by building in scarcity.

But you don’t have to BS scarcity or run a collectibles brand to use this principle.

eCommerce brands with regular inventory (consumables AND nonconsumables) can apply this concept to their promotional campaigns.

For example, you might give your SMS list early access to Black Friday deals. Maybe they get access to a better offer, too.

That’s two incentives to join without faking scarcity. Urgency around early access drives more signups, too.

Service businesses can use this too.

For instance, a marketing agency could text its SMS list when its client roster opens up. Give those people a few hours to apply to work with you before the rest of the list.

Two examples from my own life:

Local barber: A barber up the street frequently texts urgent same-day availability and, in some cases, same-day-only discounts. Exclusivity of SMS list + first come, first serve = more bookings.

Auto detailer: Texts me SMS-only deals, reminders to book my next appointment, and other special things.

Results

We added 101 people on the first send (that top row). Expected — people heard about or were nudged to the SMS list for the first time ever.

Novelty alone drives a lot of signups.

Moreso since we go beyond vague “early access” and specify the imminent upcoming launch they WILL get early access too.

From there, we netted a little under 1 subscriber/day. Meaning it takes 2 days at least to gain 1 subscriber.

Sounds slow, but remember, SMS is harder to grow.

We aren’t desperate for signups. We don’t want to pay for SMS subs or sends we can’t convert into earnings. We’re pairing this with email.

Quality > quantity, especially for a channel whose performance isn’t vital to company survival.

Notice that out of the 15 days we’ve worked with them (at the time of writing), we had:

10 days net positive growth
2 days flat growth
3 days negative growth

Those 3 negative growth days were on SMS send days.

Sending will ALWAYS cause unsubs once you’re past a few subs. That’s how statistics work.

Funny enough, the very first drop announcement email we wrote for the client (we sent the day after, rather than 2 hours after like we do now) netted them a bunch of signups.

I’ve done that before:

Realize I can get early access to something, but too late for THAT particular drop, so I sign up on the drop day to be ready for the NEXT drop.

The second drop teaser we wrote added 4 net signups (second to last row).

A LOT less. But more net growth than ALL non-teaser days except for the first drop announcement I just mentioned.

Why This Works

This strategy works because our SMS subscription grants real benefits.

Many brands say you get “exclusive access” or “first dibs” or “brand updates” (bleh) if you get on the list… and then don’t deliver any of those.

Our strategy works because we do keep that promise.

We make good on it frequently, thanks to our multiple monthly drops.

And, since no product has unlimited inventory…

Being on the SMS list is an attractive proposition for precious metals collectors, fans of the brand, gift shoppers, and anyone else who may shop with us regularly.

Now, people respond to early access not just for the practical benefit — beating the crowd, grabbing something before it potentially sells out.

The practical benefit is not the only reason customers get on our SMS list, though.

Being in the “inner circle” feels good even when the stakes are low.

If a customer maintains it long enough, it seeps into their identity. It’s hard to give up status that feels like it’s part of you.

You get a self-reinforcing loop:

A subscriber who got early access, bought the product, and loved it has every reason to stay on the list for the next drop. They get to “be in the know” as they get priority access to the next item.

Some of these people will tell their friends. A portion of those friends become warm traffic and easy sales.

The mechanic compounds over time without additional effort.

Last little note:

AI is a HUGE help here.

Claude summarizes large amounts of product info fast and gives me some angle ideas. I workshop it and then write…

But Claude does a good chunk of that work since each launch follows a similar structure.

I do the creative portion — storytelling, descriptive copy, etc. — and punch up some of the AI output.

Boost Launch Sales + Grow Your SMS List

Phone numbers are almost as personal as Social Security numbers to some.

Brands that build strong, sizable, lucrative SMS lists understand and respect this by making a helpful, aligned promise to potential subscribers and DELIVERS on it quickly.

Brands that don’t… They tack on an SMS opt-in form with ESP-generated boilerplate. MAYBE a discount if they’re ambitious.

Our approach works because subscribers see a tangible and valuable benefit they feel is worth their phone number.

No need to crank out a brand new product every other week.

Early promotional campaign access, SMS-only deals, appointment reminders, same-day openings…

These, too, offer value to different types of customers. The key is picking what fits your business model and your customer’s desires… and demonstrating the promise.

What’s nice about our SMS list growth efforts:

SMS subscribers who enter flows will get additional messaging (the SMS’s we put in flows).

More automated opportunities to get the sale.

My free guide covers the 10 email automations worth having in place to maximize the revenue from every subscriber you bring in.

Subscribe to The Repeat Customer Letter below, and you’ll get a free copy via email.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

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Inside The Inbox - 5 Types of Continuity Offers

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:01:43 GMT

“Subscription” means a lot of different things depending on your business model.

A supplement brand doing subscribe-and-save is running a completely different kind of continuity offer than a membership community, a subscription box, or a SaaS tool.

Each one has different economics, different churn dynamics, and a different relationship with the customer.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down all five types of continuity offers — what makes each one work, and how to figure out which one actually fits your business.

You’ll learn:

The five categories every recurring revenue offer falls into… and the key differences between them
Why delivery-based continuity has two distinct subtypes that require different strategies to sell and retain
How perks and privilege programs make the math visible in a way other continuity models don’t — and why that’s an advantage
Which type of continuity offer is hardest to cancel

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

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⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT or DM me to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

5 Types of Continuity Offers to Earn Recurring Revenue and Scale Your Business

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:20:27 GMT

A while back, I was going through my credit card statements to trim spending.

I sifted through subscriptions first since cutting those means recurring money back in my pocket… and there were many:

Kit
Xbox LIVE
Meat delivery
Organ supplements
Online marketing/copywriting community
Men’s shaving/grooming
Paid newsletters (print AND online)
SaaS tools
Streaming services (primarily Spotify)
Amazon Prime

All are examples of continuity offers — an arrangement where a customer pays you on a recurring basis in exchange for ongoing value.

But notice how each delivers a different type of value.

(Put another way, Xbox LIVE is NOT the same type of product as a meat delivery box.)

There are five main types of continuity offers worth understanding. Knowing which you have (or want to build) shapes everything about how you sell, onboard, and retain subscription customers.

What's In This Article:

1. Delivery-Based

Delivery-based continuity is the simplest and most familiar:

Pay to receive a physical product on a recurring schedule.

Ongoing auto-billing and delivery until they decide to cancel. These also let you pause and edit your order (like if a customer wants to add something before their order renews).

Monthly delivery is common because many delivery-based offers are designed to last a month.

Not always, though. I worked with a meal kit company that defaulted to semi-monthly and let you choose weekly or monthly.

This offer structure works best for products that get used up regularly and require replenishment.

Consumable Auto-Replenishment

The customer buys a product they use regularly, and instead of manually reordering each time they run out, they set up automatic, recurring delivery.

Often, the brand uses specific automated sequences to upsell those one-off customers on the subscription since it is the logical next step.

Example niches/product types include (but are not limited to):

Supplements
Skincare
Coffee
Pet food
Candles
Cleaning supplies

The value prop is convenience.

The customer never runs out, nor has to think about reordering.

Many brands tack a discount onto auto-replenishment, such as Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. Amazon’s offers tiers that unlock more savings as you maintain more subscriptions.

Heart & Soil offers an example of leading with subscription offers, even though its offers are not exclusively subscriptions. It sits between this offer type and Subscription Boxes.

Some subscription programs throw in freebies and perks.

For instance, I worked with a pet health brand that offered the following to subscription customers:

Free food bucket for your dogs
A free T-shirt
Occasional mystery gifts throughout the year
Guaranteed product in stock (set aside for subs so they’d have product on schedule, even if regular inventory runs out)

Retention is tied to product satisfaction and results.

If the supplement works, the coffee tastes great, or the skincare makes you look radiant — they stay.

If it isn’t working, they cancel. Pausing/skipping their next delivery and editing their order are options, too.

Subscription Boxes

The customer receives a curated selection of products on a recurring basis — usually themed around a niche or interest.

Common examples include:

Beauty
Fitness
Meal boxes
Meat boxes
Snacks
Books
Pet supplies
Outdoor gear

Many brands with this offer type are subscription-only. Some may have a la carte one-offs while maintaining the box as the main offer for the front and back ends.

Two ways to do this type of offer…

Brand-curated: You curate their monthly box and surprise them. The customer forfeits some control in exchange for an expert’s taste and expertise.

Surprise and discovery are part of the appeal here.

It also takes the thinking off their plate and offers a real opportunity to “wow” them.

This works with consumables AND nonconsumables.

For example, BirchBox sends brand-curated makeup/beauty products monthly. They choose each item, not the customer.

Brand-curated boxes have to keep surprising to work well. If customers don’t feel like they’re getting something cool, new, and relevant each month, they’ll ditch it.

Customer-curated: The customer selects everything. This offers more choice, but shifts the order management onus onto the customer. Discovery matters less than convenience, quality, fulfillment reliability, and choice.

This works for consumable products only (a customer can’t get the same metal water bottle in the mail month after month, see what I’m saying?).

It’s most common for food and drink (such as meat boxes), though.

For example, Good Ranchers ships me a box of steaks (and some ground beef) monthly. I chose the box I wanted, and they ship it to me.

Strong offer + excellent customer service/support = my loyalty.

2. Content-Based

The customer pays for ongoing access to information, tools, or content they couldn’t otherwise get.

They learn something that can solve a problem and/or move them toward a particular goal. It improves how they think, work, or operate.

Paid Newsletter

The subscriber pays for recurring access to a specific person’s thinking. Often, this is insights, analysis, curation, or unique perspective.

A strong paid newsletter succeeds because the writer earns trust, credibility, and favor among an audience that agrees/appreciates the content and believes their time and money is well spent on it.

Chris Orzechowski’s Make It Rain Monthly is a prime example.

Chris sends you a few dozen pages every month detailing a new strategy or technique he’s applying in his/client businesses (often, but not always, email related).

A lot of the value is the ideas you can implement. I’ve made myself and clients lots of money with Chris’s MIRM newsletter ideas. I am obviously paying for that in the abstract.

But not ONLY in the abstract.

There is no Make It Rain Monthly without Chris’s unique background, voice, worldview, beliefs, etc.

I trust HIM over others because of who he is (alongside seeing the proof his stuff works).

Other examples include:

Investment research/analysis
Industry-specific publications
Premium job opportunity aggregators

Substack’s getting pretty hot as a place to run a paid newsletter thanks to ease of use.

Once you activate paid content (takes a few button clicks), you can make any post or section of a post you’d like “paid content.” Only paying subscribers can read it.

For instance, my friend Ryan Stax publishes helpful free content on AI…

But offers more in-depth stuff, such as exact prompts and workflows, behind his Substack paywall.

3. Perks-Based

The customer pays for access to a set of benefits and perks, rather than a specific deliverable.

The value is less about a specific product or content and more about a smattering of nifty bonuses for being a member.

Put another way…

The subscription buys you into something rather than delivering something to you.

The membership ITSELF is the product.

Membership Communities

The customer pays for access to a group — like-minded individuals who share a common interest, goal, or industry — along with whatever resources, events, or programming the community offers.

Unlike a product that either works or doesn’t…

Or a piece of content that helps or flops…

A community becomes more valuable the longer someone is in it because its value is relational and cumulative.

Relationships deepen, trust builds, and inside knowledge accumulates within the community. Members bring what they’ve learned and what’s working from outside to the community, benefiting everyone else. Everyone works with each other to move toward their goals.

A member who has been in for two years has more to lose by leaving than someone who joined last month.

Thus, well-run communities tend to have strong retention.

But a community offer is a double-edged sword since your retention is tied almost entirely to the quality of the community itself

An active, engaged, well-moderated community where members genuinely help each other is worth paying for indefinitely…

Even if the features within aren’t the most wide-reaching..

On the other hand, a quiet, low-engagement community where nothing much happens loses subscribers fast.

The Masterclass Discord community I’m part of is the perfect example of an online community offer.

We focus on making money/building a business online with content (X mainly, but also Substack and in general).

Yet we come from all sorts of niches, interests, and careers:

AI
Architecture
Board games
Books/reading
Christian apologetics
History
Marketing/copywriting
Travel

Which allows us to bring our different backgrounds AND what we’ve tried that worked (or didn’t) back to the group.

And I can befriend people who send me clients, customers, and subs (among other things).

Copy Chief is another famous example. RIP. I was a member for many years until Kevin decided it was time to close things down.

But inside were forums running the gamut of freelance/copywriting topics, monthly expert trainings (recorded), entire courses, and a job board, among other things.

Perk/Privilege Program

The customer pays a recurring fee in exchange for a designed set of tangible benefits.

Members technically pay for the belonging aspect. These programs often offer an air of status, after all.

But the main benefit is the math, if it works in the customer’s favor. If the $$$ value of the perks and benefits outweighs the membership’s recurring fee…

Then a customer buys in.

Tons of examples across product types here.

Premium credit cards, for example. Those elite travel cards charge like $495, but offer a laundry list of perks (alongside high cashback rates).

For example, most have an annual statement credit that offsets most of the annual fee.

A high-earning frequent traveler will almost certainly get more than $495 in annual value out of one of these.

Other examples include:

Amazon Prime: Pay monthly (or annually for more savings), get free shipping, streaming, and a bunch of other benefits. I get WAY more than $140 (or whatever) in value from it each year, so I’ve been a Prime member for over a decade.

Carnivore Snax’s The Hunt membership: Pay annually, get free Wagyu brisket on signup, earn 5% cashback on all Snax, access exclusive cuts, and earn referral rewards for bringing others to The Hunt. See the value for a Snax enjoyer?

Costco/Sam’s Club: Pay your annual membership fee, access Costco/Sam’s Club member pricing on groceries and various other services.

See the pattern?

This continuity offer type is best for frequent users of your main offers.

It may work better than recurring delivery for consumable product customers who don’t have simpler needs on a predictable schedule.

It also appeals to customers craving status (subscription programs can offer this, but they require more effort and aren’t as clear a “status symbol”).

If nonconsumables, it allows for continuity income without a consumable product. As long as you offer enough perks to justify the cost, of course.

4. Service/Coaching Based

The customer pays for ongoing access to a person’s time, expertise, execution… or some combination of these.

The value here cannot be fully automated, boxed, or downloaded. A skilled person has to be involved here.

So the offer combines:

Objective criteria/work
The professional’s quirks and idiosyncrasies

For example, lots of email marketers can manage your email list.

However, my work will be unique since I am the only one of me on earth.

This model commands higher price points. Think of it as a supply limitation — there’s only one of you (maybe more if you have a team) and 24 hours a day.

Done-For-You (DFY)

The customer pays someone to handle something entirely on their behalf on an ongoing basis.

Such an ongoing arrangement is often called a retainer because you pay a fixed fee to retain some defined amount of a person’s services.

Either way, the customer doesn’t learn how to do it, collaborate on it, or get involved in execution. They pay you, you do it all.

Involvement only comes at key stages where buy-in is needed, such as approving email copy drafts before building and scheduling.

Retention in this model comes down to two things:

Results and relationships.

If the work is good and the provider easy to work with (clear communication, reliable delivery, no surprises), clients stay for a long time.

If either breaks down, the relationship usually doesn’t last long.

Examples include:

Marketing agency retainers
Bookkeeping services
Virtual assistant services
Email marketing management

This is how I work with most of my clients.

I take their monthly retainer fee. I create the calendar, write/schedule campaigns, build/enhance sequences, update pop-up forms, and much more.

My clients get involved only when planning new initiatives or getting signoffs.

DFY costs more than anything else on this list due to time constraints.

When you’re doing it ALL for someone, you can only take on so many clients/customers.

Done-With-You (DWY)

The provider works alongside the customer but as a leader, guiding the process, answering questions, adjusting as needed, and staying involved throughout.

The customer does the real work. What they’re paying for is the reassurance of ongoing personal support and expertise.

DWY offers tend to cost less than DFY since the customer handles more work…

But that also means you can serve multiple people at once.

DWY can be 1-on-1, but businesses often structure these as group cohort programs.

For instance, I was in Kevin Roger’s Accelerator coaching group (and for a brief time, his ultra-exclusive Supergroup) when Copy Chief was around.

One perk was 1-on-1 text messaging with Kevin. Plus, semi-monthly group coaching calls where we’d bring a business problem to the “hot seat” for help from Kevin + coaches + fellow members.

A big thing I worked on in there was my first offer, AI-Assisted Email Copywriting.

Kevin helped me decide that, yes, I should launch it and iron out some of the details.

He tapped into his years of experience as a launch copywriter + running a business/launching products + relevant knowledge at the time (AI stuff).

But I had to build it myself.

I stayed in Accelerator for so long because I was solving business problems and moving forward.

That’s the key to retention. If the customer’s not seeing improvements, their ongoing investment isn’t justified. So they cancel.

Other examples of DWY programs include:

Expert-guided health plants
Marketing consulting retainers
Coaching groups
Financial planning

5. Software-Based

The customer pays for ongoing access to and use of a digital tool or platform that helps them do something faster, better, or in a way they couldn’t otherwise.

Retention’s strong here because a piece of software that solves a business problem will be useful for a LONG time for that business.

Plus, the longer someone uses a piece of software, the more embedded it becomes in their workflow.

Data accumulates, habits form, and integrations multiply.

Ditching it at all becomes unthinkable.

Switching to new software becomes costlier and more inconvenient, too.

You risk paying more and going through the headache of a migration between tools without 100% certainty the new tool or platform will work better.

Horizontal SaaS

Horizontal SaaS tools serve businesses across any industry.

Communication, project management, document creation, customer relationship management — regardless of what that business actually does, it needs these things.

The value of these offers is breadth and flexibility.

A law firm and an eCommerce brand can both use Notion for documentation, HubSpot for their CRM, or Google Workspace for their day-to-day operations.

What usage looks like differs. Useful for both, though.

Retention tends to be strong because these tools become deeply embedded in how a business operates across multiple teams and functions.

Look at Google Drive.

ANY business can use it.

I can’t see myself without it.

I wrote this very article with Google Docs.

It’s free, yes. But apply this same logic to a paid tool.

How about a paid example to make this clearer:

RightMessage.

It’s AI copy/messaging personalization. That works in any niche. Because it’s the point of the software — to adapt messaging to the audience.

I could use it, but so too could an accountant, a regenerative farmer, a restaurant supplier, you name it.

Vertical SaaS

Vertical SaaS tools are built specifically for one industry or use case. Depth, not breadth.

These are more common in highly regulated or operationally specific industries (healthcare, law, finance, etc.) where workflows are more unique and compliance is imperative.

Doesn’t mean they can ONLY be used by one industry or use case. That varies depending on the tool.

Klaviyo is a decent example of a not-purely-vertical tool. It’s an Email Service Provider (ESP) built for eCom email and SMS marketing.

Others can use it (I know of a nonprofit that almost moved to it, and a personal brand that DID), but the features best lend themselves to physical product eCommerce.

A few other examples that are more purely vertical:

Mindbody: Scheduling and business management for fitness studios
OpenTable: Reservation management built specifically for restaurants
Clio: Practice management software built exclusively for law firms
Jane: Practice management software built exclusively for health and wellness practitioners

They’re not trying to serve everyone — they’re trying to serve one type of business exceptionally well by solving problems that are unique to that context.

The retention dynamic here is stronger than horizontal SaaS.

Fewer options are available, yes, but the specificity of this software type makes switching costs higher.

Launch The Right Recurring Offer

Every offer type on this list works, but they come with different pros, cons, and retention levers.

Knowing which type of offer you have (or want to build) shapes every decision downstream:

How you onboard new subscribers
How you communicate value to existing ones
How you pitch the subscription
What you need to address before someone will commit

Many continuity offers blend structures.

For example, my health/wellness client’s recurring offer mixes recurring consumable product delivery with coaching-based DWY assistant.

Thus, understanding the offer types helps you make hybrids that amplify the benefits of each while downplaying the drawbacks.

So pick an offer type and build it, or use what you learned here to increase sales.

And speaking of boosting sales…

When you subscribe to my Substack, you get a free copy of my eBook, Simple Email Sequences That Sell.

This free guide breaks down 10 email automations worth having in place regardless of which type of continuity offer you run.

Click subscribe to get it now.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

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6 Ways We’re Getting (and Keeping) More Subscription Customers In Q3

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 13:15:20 GMT

Subscription revenue sounds passive until you’re actually in it.

Churn is real, and you can never hit zero. Subscribers cancel for all sorts of reasons — some within your control, many not.

If churn is inevitable, you can’t ditch subscription acquisition. You NEED to be constantly growing your subscriber base.

This is why my client has been so adamant about driving their continuity offer’s sales. More members joining = more revenue = huge win. And many potential members hide on our email list.

Yet my client has had some churn problems in certain months. Customers seem to lose steam and stop seeing the necessity of the offer.

To fix that, we have to improve the experience and reiterate the benefits and value for existing subscribers…

Or, in other words, sell to them, too.

Below, you’ll learn what I’m doing to drive more people into the subscription program and keep them around for as long as possible.

What's In This Article:

1. Building a LONG Post-Purchase Sequence

I like to aim for 7-8 Post-Purchase Sequence emails with non-subscription brands and offers. That’s about as much onboarding (and other stuff) as you need to get them integrated and buying again.

But a Post-Purchase Sequence is part of an overall experience. It is NOT an island. It should be as long as it needs to be.

Our program runs forever, but you see “everything there is to see” by day 365, when you look back at your progress…

So our Post-Purchase Sequence is a year long.

More concentrated early on, including the typical onboarding stuff and emails helping them at various milestones (like retesting a few months in).

The flow drops to 1-2 emails a week with successful member stories and/or niche-relevant and/or product-relevant tips.

Such an approach seems like overkill from an internal POV.

But if a customer is getting personalized attention and excellent customer service, a helpful email sequence that keeps you in the loop and creates opportunities for conversation only adds to the “VIP” feel.

2. Adding Retention-Focused Sequences

Slowing subtraction is another way to speed growth.

That’s why my client and I plan on implementing retention-focused flows on the back end to slow subscription churn:

Subscription Renewal: This reminds subscribers of their upcoming order, reiterates their ability to manage/edit their order, and makes the brand feel open to questions — improving customer satisfaction and reducing churn, meaning a growing subscription base. Also opportunities to cross-sell one-off products here. For us, we’d sell products outside the program, like lesser-known supplements we offer.

Subscription Winback: Targets those who canceled subscriptions, aiming to win them back. Your goal is to overcome the top objections/reasons for cancellation. Big opportunity for us here.

Push to Continuity: This flow sells one-off buyers on upgrading to recurring delivery/billing, often after they’ve ordered at least twice. We’ll show that they can automatically, regularly get their product without manual reordering, plus expert help when needed. This is a regular retention flow, yes, but it gets you more subscription customers and shortens the time it takes to get them there.

See what happens when you get all these in place, including the subscription’s Post-Purchase?

Push to Continuity: More people buying into the subscription.

Post-Purchase: More people getting, seeing, and feeling results = fewer people churn.

Subscription Renewal: More people getting help with their subscription and feeling reassured with their choice and our customer service = fewer people churn.

Subscription Winback: That smaller number of churners? We get back a slice of them, boosting total subscription customers even more.

3. Focusing Engaged Sends On Continuity

We already focused a portion of regular broadcast sends on the continuity offer. And, surprise, that helped us make more sales.

In fact, we averaged 4.31 weekly continuity offer sales despite mailing no more than 3 times weekly. That’s at least ~1.43 sales per email…

So now, when we expand by (likely) at least 1 continuity email per week, there’s a good chance we’ll add another sale in there from email.

Each email I write will address objections, future-pace, and educate readers into seeing why they NEED to become a subscriber. We’ll need to dig for and watch out for fresh angles constantly.

As for who we’re sending to…

We’ll send to ALL engaged. Even “Never-Buyers” — subs who’ve never placed an order with us.

There’s always a chance a “Never-Buyer” wants to jump into a subscription instead of trying one of the one-off product(s) first (part of the offer structure entails regular delivery of the top 2 products to the customer).

May as well maximize the reach, here.

4. Writing More Stories

Story-based emails outperformed every other type of email in Q2 for all our goals — especially “Never-Buyers,” but subscription sales were not far behind.

Customers can see themselves in stories. We can show the benefit (by making them visualize the product doing something real) instead of layer on features or explain how something works.

Customers aren’t skeptical of the product itself at this stage…

But they are uncertain about committing to ongoing payment.

To convert customers to continuity, we must overcome the commitment hesitation. So we wrote stories that showed other customers who were skeptical, but enjoyed results with long-term use.

We also highlight:

Ease of managing orders
Strong customer service
Customers who promise to join the recurring offer in their testimonial (if writing a storymonial)

Speaking of storymonials, that’s what we leaned on heaviest.

These are customer stories with bits of the testimonial woven throughout for a seamless mix of storytelling AND customer language. That social proof element makes them the strongest style for us.

What’s nice is we have TONS of reviews so we never run out of storymonial ideas… and we can keep gathering more from members as they enjoy results.

I did use a few others:

Parallel Path stories: Tell a story of two individuals who have some relationship (such as friends) taking two paths to solve the problem. The successful individual’s path involves your offer in some way (such as recurring use of X product to solve Y problem).

Before/After stories: Tell a theoretical/future-pacing story of the customer’s life before and after your offer.

Given the power of story-based emails, we’re also looking into ways to gather more reviews.

More reviews = more storymonial fodder = more sales.

5. Reiterating the Guarantees

One of the biggest barriers to a subscription commitment is the fear of being locked into something that doesn’t deliver.

This brand has two guarantees that directly address that fear:

A satisfaction guarantee that gives new subscribers 60 days to decide if it’s working for them
An expert guarantee that promises to adjust their plan until it works — if results don’t show up, the team keeps working on it until they do

Those are strong guarantees, but we only added them to a few emails in the past. Going forward, we want to add them to ALL emails.

Perhaps we’ll do a footer or standardized PS. With some emphasis on it in the occasional continuity send if the commitment objection is that specific email’s target.

Either way, the point:

Risk reversal is one of the most powerful tools in direct response copywriting. When the downside of trying something is effectively eliminated, the decision becomes much easier to make.

Oh so powerful for continuity offers.

6. Reusing and Resending Emails

The cool thing about an email is that once you write it… it exists forever. It doesn’t vanish upon sending.

You can send that email again later.

“But Bradley, won’t they recognize the email?”

Not necessarily:

People have short memories here. They see hundreds of ads, emails, and other messages a day. Many won’t remember that listicle email you sent last quarter.

Your actual subscribers have changed. Your list is always in flux. New people join and old people leave as time goes on. From the moment you send an email, the number of people who never even received it grows.

You could resend within as little as 2-3 months and a huge chunk of your list wouldn’t remember it.

But maybe they still do recognize it.

So?

A good email is a good email.

If it got lots of engagement and sales before, that means people liked it.

For instance, if a storymonial did quite well, it must have resonated with your audience. It’ll resonate again.

What, are they going to “call you out” for being “lazy” or something? If so, that’s strange behavior. I’ve never felt the urge to do that when I recognize an email.

“Reuse” doesn’t just go for broadcast → broadcast.

We put some of our top-performing broadcasts into specific email flows (continuity-focused and otherwise) and see solid performance. So we’ll evaluate ways to repurpose emails there.

More Subscribers = More Money Monthly

Everything on this list — the post-purchase sequence, retention flows, continuity-focused broadcasts, stories, reused top performers, and guarantees — supports continuity growth by:

Adding more NEW subscription customers: Making the subscription feel like the obvious next step for someone seeing results.
Losing fewer EXISTING subscription customers: Reiterating the value and enhancing the experience.

The results from Q2 suggest we’re moving in the right direction with what we’re doing now.

We did 41 membership sales in Q2, and we want to 1.5x that this quarter, making our goal 62.

We stopped selling a specific high-ticket product as part of our quarterly goals. The effort to sell 4 (twice as many as last quarter) was not worth it. That gives us one extra weekly membership send.

We averaged 3.15 weekly NAD membership sales in Q2 sending 2-3 times weekly, meaning we could potentially make another weekly sale with this extra send.

Assume we do the same things and make the same 41 sales. The new send’s extra 12 puts us at 53 already. 9 more needed over 12 weeks, or just 0.75/week (round up to 1/week), to hit 62.

Nothing but mailing once more weekly does half the work.

That’s what email marketing can do for you.

If you want to sell more by writing more, but your mind runs dry when you sit down to write, Angles on Demand will fix that.

Shows my process for filling up a spreadsheet with hundreds of email ideas in as little as 5 minutes.

Just a few Docs and a short set of prompts, and you have a big idea bank to lean on whenever you lack ideas that day.

⇒ Learn more about Angles on Demand here

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Never run out of email ideas again: Learn how I use Claude to generate hundreds of email ideas in 5 minutes. Full recording + 4 bonuses (SOP document, Matrix sheet, email format reference guide, and email angle ingredients doc).

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox Ep 19 - The 1-2 Punch Sequence

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:02:01 GMT

A typical promotional email sequence takes 5-7 days to run its course.

The 1-2 punch compresses that into a single day… sometimes a single hour.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down how this 2-email sequence works, why the open rates on the second email can hit 60-80%, and how to set it up in your ESP so the whole thing runs automatically.

You’ll learn:

How the sequence works. A short teaser email that triggers a follow-up only to the people who clicked
Why sending to a smaller, self-selected segment produces better engagement numbers than blasting your whole list
How to use a piece of content (a video, a blog post) to do the heavy lifting on the sell before the offer email ever lands
Why this works for both eCom and info product businesses — and what the setup looks like on each side

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

How I Grew a Health Brand's New Customer Email Conversions by 1.78x in One Quarter

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 13:15:11 GMT

Every email list has its chronic window shoppers.

People who read what you write, browse your site, and yet never place that first order.

And unlike the people who unsubscribe and disappear, these ones just... linger.

Meanwhile, you’re paying to mail them every month. If your ESP charges by subscriber count, they’re literally a line item on your expenses.

That’s why when my client came up with Q2 goals, one was to double the number of “never-buyers” — people who opted in and are on the list, but never purchased — that converted via email.

Here’s what we did… and how the results looked.

What's In This Article:

The Challenge: Doubling New Customers From Email

This brand has a large email list with a significant portion of “never-buyers”

Buyers are easier to sell to than leads. So the faster you can turn leads into buyers, the sooner you can make repeat sales.

Plus, this brand’s flagship offer is a continuity offer. Easier to sell recurring billing to existing customers who know you deliver.

What’s more…

The continuity offer includes our top 2 sellers as part of the overall offer structure.

This makes it even easier to sell the continuity offer to those people.

More buyers = more continuity customers = grow recurring revenue and recoup ad spend/front-end losses = reinvest for more growth… creates a nice flywheel effect.

That’s why we wanted to focus on converting more of these people.

In Q1 2026, we had converted 32 of these people for $9,916.74.

For Q2, we aimed for double:

64 sales for $19,833.48.

That’s aggressive, especially since we can’t focus ALL our sends on new customers only.

We aimed for those goal numbers and planned to stay positive even if we fell a little short. “Falling short” would be a big improvement.

Good thing is this brand is in favor of and already used to the “mostly plain text” direct response style.

They prefer it, in fact. This helps, because plain text has several advantages over design-heavy stuff that were key to what we wanted to do.

It also has some strong guarantees around its products. Such risk-reversal makes new customers less apprehensive about being burned, which helps us sell more.

What We Did

1. Segmented “Never Bought” Customers

First, we need to know who these people are. So we set up a segment in our email software for people who have never placed an order with us.

This lets us send only to Never Buyers, so we can tailor messaging and maximize conversions without burning the rest of the list out on suboptimal messaging.

2. Selected The Right Offers to Promote

Instead of promoting the continuity offer or more niche products, we chose two entry-level products most likely to convert skeptical, first-time buyers.

They also happen to be the two top sellers, and one is our main front-end offer:

A blood test (this is the main front-end offer)
A supplement

The blood test got most of the emails. I’d say about 70% of them. It offers the broadest appeal, and the results help customers choose what products (if any) to buy next — often, the main supplement.

However, we mailed to the supplement sometimes. Some people are looking for that only, not the test.

Lastly…

As mentioned, both products are part of the continuity offer. So the customer can try both without committing.

The push to continuity is natural:

You saw your data and/or started improving with the supplement… why not get on a recurring plan of testing/supplementation + gain expert help in one white-glove arrangement, all at a membership discount?

Perfect setup.

3. Sent The Segment Dedicated Weekly Sends

The brand’s juggling multiple goals, including selling more of:

The continuity offer
A specific high-ticket product

So we couldn’t hog the whole week with Never Bought sends. Instead, we carved out 2 days/week for them.

What’s nice is that our 4x/week regular emails (3 push continuity, 1 pushes that specific high-ticket offer) also hit new customers.

That means the Never Bought people got an email almost daily, and ⅓ of those weekly emails were tailor-made for them.

Higher volume than any other segment.

I don’t have the data, but I bet we sold a couple of Never Bought subscribers on our continuity offer, even if most of our new customer sales were the blood test and supplement.

4. Focused on Story-Based Emails

Early in the engagement, we leaned heavily on science and education. It converted, but not that well.

Our audience has seen claims before. And they’ve heard plenty of science, too. Outside of specific topics, they’re not learning anything new. They’re not that interested.

The brand conducted additional research and found the same to be true.

Customers cared about not wasting money, about actually seeing results and knowing it beyond feeling, about feeling like they’re finally in control of their health, about working with experts…

So I’ve been writing more stories recently. A few types I’ve tried:

Storymonials: Customer stories with bits of their testimonial sprinkled throughout (often as self-supporting lines that add to the story).
“Parallel Path” stories: Showing how two similar people’s lives differ after making a decision (such as buying your product or the type of solution you offer).
Before/after stories: Showing what someone’s life is like before and after.

Most have been storymonials, but the other two have made sales when used.

Either way, two factors at play:

Stories put the reader at the center. The reader can see themselves in the story. They can see themselves using the product and understand its benefits. It’s not abstract nor is it “telling.”
Stories are entertaining. People love stories. Especially if relevant to themselves. More will get to the end and have a positive feeling about you, even if they don’t buy.

And, for storymonials, the social proof element demonstrates that your product fixes what your customer cares about most, in the customer’s language.

The Results: 1.78x, A Serious Showing

Recall that in Q1 2026, we hit 32 sales for a hair under $10k in revenue.

We have 1 week left at the time of writing, and here are the numbers:

I’m gonna be conservative and say we close things out with 3 more sales, for 57/64.

Using the actual numbers for an Average Order Value (AOV):

$13,844/54 = $256.37

$256.37 x 3 = $769.11

$769.11 + $1,844.00 = $14,613.11

We didn’t quite hit our goals.

And although 10 sales in a week would be HUGE, the most we’ve ever done is 9.

But that’s fine. The client and our team were ambitious. Doubling quarterly performance is no easy feat.

By aiming for this goal, we achieved a dramatic improvement.

Shoot for the moon, land among the stars if you miss.

Now, the revenue improvement was lower. 1.47x, vs. 1.78x in sales. That’s a lower AOV.

It’s not inherently bad, though.

The main point of getting leads is NOT to profit, but, as mentioned, gain buyers.

And hey, we’re still earning more gross revenue anyway. Assuming margins are the same, that’s more profit.

Also, we weren’t getting a ton of conversions before. The ones who DID come through self-selected into buying and thus are the types to spend more on their first order.

What We Plan to Do Next

A few things we’re doing to convert even more new customers in the near future:

1. Mail More

Mailing more to ANY segment resulted in more sales with few downsides (we’ve already cleaned the list and dialed in deliverability).

The takeaway? Write more emails.

Gotta stay on the idea generation game 24/7 to keep putting out stuff the subscribers want to read (and will buy from).

We mail 7 days a week, but 1 of those days has 2 office hours reminder emails. If possible, we’ll squeeze in a send there.

2. Use More Stories (Quantity AND Variety)

In general, the more stories I sent in a week, the stronger the sales data was that week.

In the future, we’ll mix in more:

Parallel path stories
Before/after stories
Founder stories
Celebrity stories (if allowed)
Current events
Cultural/historical stories

But customer stories/storymonials would remain the cornerstone. Nothing beats customers seeing other customers achieve results with the product.

3. Build Out a Post-Purchase Sequence

I told you the whole point of new leads is to acquire buyers. You want buyers because they’re easier to sell to…

And a Post-Purchase Sequence is the first opportunity to make that happen.

A good one of these flows contains emails that:

Onboard the customer properly (hype + what to expect)
Get them a result as fast as possible
Set up the next logical offer to purchase
Gathers a review if possible

The next logical step for most new customers is to upsell them to the continuity offer.

So by putting this in place, we can turn a larger portion of our growing number of first-time buyers into repeat customers.

See how lucrative that could be?

4. Optimize The Welcome Sequence

If you have lots of customers on your list who have never ordered, your Welcome Sequence isn’t doing its job. It’s supposed to turn those subs into customers on autopilot.

We’re most likely looking at their Welcome Sequence next month to identify areas we can improve to maximize flow conversions.

That’ll leave us with fewer Never Boughts to win over manually.

Get More Buyers With Email

Nothing here is complicated.

Carve out the relevant slice of the audience, select offers that appeal most to them, and mail them consistently with copy that entertains, educates, and addresses objections + an offer to match.

Next, we’re shifting toward retention to keep a larger portion of these larger inflows for longer. We’ll set aggressive goals here again, but dedicate more attention to upping repeat-order rates and whatnot.

New customers in the door + recurring revenue on the back end = fuel for a fire.

If you want this kind of work done for your brand — segmentation, copy, strategy, and execution needed to get more out of your email list — hit reply or DM me on Substack.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox - Subscription Ascension System

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:01:27 GMT

Recurring revenue doesn’t stop at the subscription.

What you do after a customer subscribes to recurring delivery determines how much that subscription is actually worth.

The more you can increase each subscription’s value, the more (and faster) your revenue grows.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down the Subscription Ascension System — a set of four interconnected flows designed to move subscribers up a ladder from their first recurring order all the way to multiple expanded subscriptions.

You’ll learn:

The four stages a subscriber moves through, and the specific flow that acts as the bridge between each one
How to think about timing these flows within a monthly billing cycle so they don’t run into each other or pile onto your broadcasts
Why recurring revenue isn’t actually passive… and the mindset shift that determines whether your subscription base grows or slowly churns out

And more.

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

What to Look For in a Professional Email Marketer

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:15:06 GMT

A couple years back, I started working with a large mealbox delivery brand.

Early in our onboarding, while we were poking around their Klaviyo on a call, the director of sales started venting about their poor experience with the previous agency.

“Here, check out the Cart Abandon to see what I mean,” he told me.

So I opened it, and yeah, I see why.

It was 2 emails. 2 giant, heavily-designed, billboard-ad-ass emails with 18 sections that have nothing to do with each other or the subject line.

Not to mention obvious flows were missing entirely. Things like a Post-Purchase Flow, for example.

Meanwhile, I saw next to NOTHING in the way of broadcasts. The last agency seems to have done no more than a weekly email (often closer to bi-weekly) in the same terrible billboard style.

Of course, not every agency is like this.

I’ve worked with several that do excellent work for their clients (partly because I’m doing the copy + strategy).

So I put together this list of what to look for in a professional email marketer. Keep these in mind when looking around for someone you can trust to manage your list well.

What's In This Article:

1. They Treat Your List Like They Own It

An email marketer doesn’t have the same incentive to care for your list as you do. They don’t own it. The worst that happens is you yell at them, and they lose your retainer fee.

Classic principle/agent problem.

So one of the most critical things to look for is an email marketer who treats your list (and your business) as if it were theirs.

That means they won’t chase short-term volume at the expense of list health. Nor will they run constant discount promos to generate tons of revenue at your bottom line’s expense. Nor will they recklessly pursue any other goal regardless of the impacts on other parts of your business.

Instead, they’ll take care to protect your list health, grow + maintain subscriber relationships, and take a more comprehensive approach — even if their work looks less impressive at first.

The simplest test: would they make the same decision with their own list? If the answer is yes, you’re in good hands.

If they’re recommending things they’d never do to their own audience, that’s worth paying attention to.

2. They Act Like a Strategic Partner Instead of an Employee

Contractors (like self-employed email marketers or agencies) aren’t employees. They work with you, not for you. And that’s a good thing.

A good email marketer will bring a point of view and an understanding of where email/SMS fits within the broader business — how it connects to acquisition, retention, revenue, and customer lifetime value — and use that understanding to inform recommendations.

That means they won’t act as a mindless drone. They’ll push back when something doesn’t make sense to them.

For instance, if you wanted to blast your entire list with a discount the week after a sale ended, a good email marketer will warn you against that.

Or if you want to chop up your segments into tons of micro-segments, they’ll caution that the time spent doesn’t yield a return in terms of revenue.

Ultimately, it’s your business and your list. So you can ignore them and have them do it anyway. But they will advocate for what they believe (based on prior experience) will move you forward.

Don’t be surprised if they eventually part ways with you, though.

This goes the other way, too. They don’t seek permission for every small decision. They get buy-in for big things, like strategy changes or major campaigns, and handle the rest themselves.

3. They’re Curious

The more information I have about you, your product, your brand, and your target audience, the easier it is to plan strategy AND write copy.

Without this stuff, I flounder. I lack the raw materials to build the strategy and copy.

Thus, a clear sign you’re speaking with the right person is that they ask you LOTS of questions about them.

Typically, they’ll do a big kickoff call, part of which entails asking these questions.

Curiosity shouldn’t stop at onboarding. Great email marketers ask you for things like:

Testimonial/review database
Past copy examples
Existing calendar, if any
Other assets (landing pages, lead magnets, etc.)
Any extra information on offers

And more.

Then, they’ll go off and do their own research. They’ll scour your site, competitor sites, and online forums. They’ll learn the terminology and language the niche speaks.

Good email marketers are curious about their own craft, too.

They stay up to date on changes in marketing, copywriting, email, and everyone’s favorite, AI.

An email marketer who is always learning, asking, and looking for better angles gets better over time through general skill development, niche knowledge acquisition, AND by familiarization with your business.

Far better than someone who shows up with nothing but their fixed “best practices” playbook.

4. They Think in Systems, Not Just Campaigns

Any old copywriter can “write daily emails” if they have enough email ideas.

A systems thinker sees how everything interacts — campaigns, flows, different offers, the customer lifecycle, etc.

Simple example:

Anyone in an email sequence generally should not receive broadcasts. A good email marketer builds a “flow exclusions” segment to keep those people out of broadcast sends.

Another example:

An amateur ends the Abandoned Cart Flow after 2-3 half-decent reminder emails.

A professional considers what might be stopping the customer from reclaiming their cart, then adds emails to address each objection.

On more:

A systems thinker considers what a Product A customer would buy next and personalizes the Post-Purchase Flow to cross-sell it to them, rather than adding a generic upsell or none at all.

Regardless…

This type of person spends more time auditing your Klaviyo but finds everything missing. Missing sequences, flows that stop short of their potential, emails that don’t urge action, etc.

And, on top of that, can “zoom out” when it comes to planning your email calendar every month/quarter.

5. They Communicate Clearly and Often

You shouldn’t have to chase your email marketer for updates.

A good one keeps you informed without you asking. They’ll tell you what they did, what they’re working on, what’s coming next, and what they need from you regularly.

It goes the other way, too.

When something underperforms or something goes wrong, they tell you. They don’t move on and hope you don’t notice the numbers.

They come to you with what happened, why they think it happened, and what they’re going to do about it.

After all, they understand a single flopped campaign is NOT a skill issue. Other things could be the cause, and getting both of your brains on it could uncover it.

It should feel like the retainer is mostly “running itself.” You participate insofar as the marketer needs things they can’t provide themselves (like client approval or specific pieces of info/research on the brand).

6. They Proactively Bring Ideas

Good email marketers don’t wait for you to hand them briefs or ideas.

Instead, they’re always on the hunt for ideas themselves.

Maybe they identify a strong email angle in something you said, or perhaps they found a solid offer idea by looking at another brand in your niche, or something else.

One example from my work was finding ways to gain more Subscribe & Save customers and to make each more lucrative.

Discussions with the client + my own thinking led me to create the email sequences that make up my Subscription Ascension System, like the Subscription Upgrade Flow.

None of this is to say that you must only use their ideas. If you have ideas for email angles, promotions, offers, and so on, bring them to your email marketer.

They’re happy to give their input on whether something’s a good idea and, if so, the best way to go about it.

Even then, though, they’re giving you their ideas on your ideas. So the principle still applies.

Overall, the best email marketers make you feel like they’re always thinking about your list and ways to get more out of it.

7. They Can Write Good Copy

Setting up flows in Klaviyo and writing emails that sell are two different skills.

I know Klaviyo-savvy techie people who aren’t copywriters. Nothing wrong with that. Their thing is being a tech wizard, not a persuasion maestro. They build the flows, create discount codes, and solve other tech problems for us.

But the email marketer themself — for whom basic technical competence does matter (scheduling emails, building sequences, creating segments) — must be a solid copywriter.

That means knowing:

How to write solid subject lines and preview text
How to hook the reader from the first line
How to shift beliefs and educate them toward the purchase
How to tell stories and entertain
How to leverage proof to back up claims and appeal to “on-the-fence” customers
How to build toward a CTA that feels like a natural next step

And you can’t nail these without a deep understanding of:

Offer
Audience
Promo/campaign theme (if any)
Individual email angle

Hence, why I emphasized repeatedly that good email marketers will communicate often and ask lots of questions.

Copy flows from strategy.

You can hire simply for strategy, but the email marketer will be more of a consultant. It’ll be on you to take their ideas and translate them into copy.

Or, you can hire for both (which will be a larger investment) and let the expert handle it all.

8. They “Get” The Financials

Opens, clicks, revenue/send… things like this tell you how the email channel is performing. Important, yes, but you run a whole business, not just an email list.

A strong email marketer understands the financial numbers. They know about things like Cost Of Goods Sold (COGS), fixed costs, inventory, etc.

For instance, have they heard of a “loss leader?” This is a front-end product you intentionally lose money on to maximize front-end conversions, aiming to recoup the losses with a profitable back-end.

Or, say you’re considering a 20% off sitewide discount campaign.

An email marketer without the business knowledge would see dollar signs. They’d tell you to run with it.

But do they know your profit margin? Do they understand your COGS?

A 20% discount might mean more sales, but 20% fewer $$$ per sale could leave you worse off.

A smart email marketer would localize the discount to a specific category (with plans to recoup “losses” on the back end) or suggest alternative offer ideas that preserve margins.

Or how about when one of my clients had a product that wasn’t moving. Their other product sold well, and they needed warehouse room for a highly anticipated new item.

We offered a steep discount to liquidate cold inventory and make room for the hotter items.

A mid-tier email marketer may worry about “losing money.”

But the smart email marketer knows you’d rather sell a $100 product for $50 than have a $100 product they can’t sell (and thus have $0 cash). We “cut our losses,” knowing we’d recoup them by selling popular and new items.

The broader the numbers they understand, the better the decisions they’ll push you toward. Not just “how do we get more revenue from email this month?” but “how do we use email to move the metrics that actually determine whether this business is growing healthily?”

9. They Track and Report Results (Properly)

A good email marketer tracks performance consistently and presents it to you in a way that’s clear and actionable:

Here’s what happened
Here’s why we think it happened
Here’s what we’re doing about it

You should be able to read their report and know immediately whether things are moving in the right direction.

I like to do shorter, “at a glance” reporting weekly, with perhaps a monthly check-in call. Weekly reporting may also include a Loom of me explaining the report.

Keeping things mostly asynchronous saves both parties time on the call itself AND on coordinating the call. Lets the client check the reports whenever they have time.

A great email marketer also owns the results.

When something underperforms, they don’t point fingers or make excuses. They come with an explanation and a plan. That accountability is part of what makes the relationship worth having.

They’re honest about attribution, too. Email platforms let you adjust the “attribution window” — the specific time frame after a customer opens the email during which their order is credited to the email.

If the window’s set to 30 days, someone could open an email, wait 29 days, and buy… and the email will be credited. Yet common sense says the email played, at most, a minimal role.

Good email marketers point this out and don’t hide behind inflated or inaccurate attribution windows. They may suggest checking against overall revenue changes or per-product sales data, including with external tools if the ESP’s reporting seems off.

Hire Well, Mail Well, And Make the Most Of Your Investment

Hiring the right email marketer pays for itself many times over — both in revenue generated and costly mistakes avoided.

Look for someone who treats your list like an asset worth protecting, thinks beyond the next send, brings ideas without being asked, and can back it all up with copy that actually sells.

Just as critical is that your chosen marketer understands your business numbers, communicates proactively, and is honest about what’s working and what isn’t.

That person exists, but they’re not easy to find…

You’re in luck, though. You found one.

So if you’re looking for an email marketer who checks these boxes (or want a second opinion on your current email program) hit reply and let’s talk.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox - Push to Continuity Sequences

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:30:59 GMT

Continuity offers deliver customers a regular supply of your product, in exchange for recurring income.

This is even better than scoring repeated one-off orders (such as through a Replenishment Flow) because customers must opt OUT of their next order instead of opting IN.

The Push to Continuity Flow guides those customers toward your subscription offer so you can accumulate more recurring customers and fuel your growth.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down what this flow is, who to target it to, and how to think about the subscription offer itself.

You’ll learn:

Why waiting until someone has purchased twice before triggering this flow tends to produce better results than going after first-time buyers
How to frame the subscription offer so it’s about convenience and results — not just a discount on recurring delivery
How this flow works for physical, consumable eCom and info product businesses
Where the push to continuity flow fits inside a broader “subscription ascension” system that moves customers toward larger recurring revenue amounts

Watch the replay now.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

Available for iOS and Android

12 Email Marketing Channels to Grow Your List (Free AND Paid)

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:15:26 GMT

My first 3 email subscribers were Bradley, Bradley, and Bradley.

Yes. I had signed up for my own list with 3 different accounts so I could see my own sends.

After that, I shared my new email list with my mom, a few friends, and my virtual assistant.

Soon enough, I had double-digit subscribers. It was a start.

But none of those people were going to buy my products.

My mom and friends subscribed to be supportive. My VA subscribed because she works for me. Even my Copy Chief friends — some of whom HAVE purchased my products — don’t number more than a dozen people.

Real list growth (and, frankly, real revenue) requires getting strangers onto your list. People who found you because they were looking for what you offer, not because you’re mom’s favorite child or the cool online business guy in your friend group.

The good news: There are plenty of ways to do that.

The sobering news: None of them is instant.

You’re either going to spend time or money… or both. There’s no shortcut around that.

So today, you’ll learn 12 list-building channels (six organic methods where you trade time, and six paid methods where you trade money), along with the pros and cons of each, so you can figure out which ones make sense for you.

What's In This Article:

Organic (“Free”) Methods

Organic list-building methods (sometimes called “inbound marketing”) are free. You can hire professionals to do these for you (such as a social media specialist), but the method itself does not inherently cost money.

This makes organic content a great choice for brand new businesses lacking capital. Think service businesses (like myself) that need to “bootstrap” things. Bigger businesses can benefit from organic methods too, though.

These methods cost you time. They take far longer than paid methods.

However, their efforts tend to compound as you build up a base of content that lives online forever. People could stumble upon organic content from years ago and subscribe because of it.

Because of this, I recommend using multiple free channels at once since organic channels blend together more naturally…

As long as one is the “focus.”

For example, most (including me) fuse blog content and social media into 1 strategy, then supplement with the others.

1. Blog Posts/SEO

Writing blog posts is one of the oldest and most reliable organic channels.

Identify keywords (or, really, topics that interest your audience), write helpful content that covers those keywords/topics, and wait for the content to rank in search engines (mainly Google).

People then find and read your content. Some portion opts into your list via your header, footer, pop-up, or lead magnet squeeze page.

More content = more entry points. More entry points = more traffic. More traffic = more subscribers. This compounds as your content library grows and gains readers (which, in turn, helps it MORE in the algorithm).

Today, AI SEO is worth considering. Google is still something like 4-6x the search volume, though, so focus on that.

Last little note:

Podcasting could be another great long-term “online content” email list growth strategy. Episodes compound over time and build authority, but the barrier to entry is higher. Works best in the “creator” world, but eCom brands could potentially pursue this strategy.

Pros

Content lives online indefinitely and can drive traffic + subscribers for years after publishing

Builds authority and trust in your niche — readers who find you through search are already interested in your topic

Compounds over time, since more content = more entry points and more chances to get found

Cons

Takes a long time to see results, even vs. other organic methods. SEO can take months or years to gain meaningful traction

Requires consistent effort and a solid understanding of keyword research + on-page optimization

Algorithm changes can tank rankings overnight with no warning

2. Social Media

Social media lets you gain followers and build an audience by showing up consistently and posting content that connects with them.

“Consistently” is the keyword. Most social platforms reward regular posting and engagement with others.

Learn where your target audience spends time and focus your energy there instead of trying to be everywhere at once.

(It’s ok to have presences elsewhere, but consider using those merely to cross-post. Extra distribution with minimal extra work.)

Funnel these followers to your lead magnet/email list. Put a link in your bio, and reply to your posts with your lead magnet + a blurb.

By the way, social media is a “rented” platform. Powerful, but you’re at the mercy of the platform’s whims (algo changes, for example). Hence, the importance of funneling people to your list ASAP.

This + content is how I am building my email list at the moment, fun fact.

Pros

Free to start and can build an audience relatively quickly with consistent posting

Allows direct interaction with potential subscribers, building trust before they join your list

Content can go viral and expose you to audiences beyond your current following

Cons

Algorithm changes or account issues can wipe out reach overnight (it’s not an owned platform)

Requires constant content creation to maintain visibility. Going quiet = lost momentum

Converting followers to email subscribers requires an extra step that many never take

3. Podcast Guesting

Podcast guesting lets you share your expertise in conversation with someone who shares a target audience (or has an adjacent audience).

You reach out to podcast hosts in your niche, pitch yourself as a guest, do a bit of prep beforehand, share your expertise, and direct listeners to your list or lead magnet at the end.

Getting booked requires a compelling angle and genuine relevance to the host’s audience.

For instance, in the first podcast I went on, I talked about being a freelancer. A few years later, I was on my friend Brien Gearin’s podcast, Millionaire University, to talk about email marketing.

Which is another good point — make friends with people who have podcasts if possible. That’ll help out, but you still need a strong, relevant topic.

Lastly… Podcasts can be fun once you get over stage fright. Talking about a topic you’re an expert in is great.

Pros

Gets you in front of a warm, highly engaged audience that trusts the host

A single episode can drive subscribers for months or years if it stays in the podcast’s feed

Builds credibility and authority by association with established hosts in your niche

Cons

Requires landing bookings which takes outreach effort and time, especially early on

Results are inconsistent — some episodes drive dozens of subscribers, others drive none

You have no control over when the episode airs or how it’s promoted

4. List Swaps

A list swap is when you and another email list owner agree to promote each other’s lead magnets via email to your respective audiences. No money changes hands.

Put another way:

Your lead magnet → Sent by your partner to your partner’s email list

Your partner’s lead magnet → Sent by you to your email list

Simple. Not always easy, though. Two things you have to iron out:

A good lead magnet
A good list swap partner

First, make sure you have a quality lead magnet worth promoting before you start pursuing swaps.

Your partner puts their reputation on the line by recommending you to their subscribers — the better your lead magnet, the more willing good partners will be to work with you, and the better the results for both sides.

Second, a good swap partner has an audience overlap. Your lead magnet can help them solve an issue adjacent to the main problem the partner solves.

For example, I am soon doing a list swap with a digital ads specialist.

My list (that is here to learn about email copy/marketing) learns something for free about ads from an ads expert (I believe it’s a swipe file of ad frameworks).

My partner’s list (there to learn about ads and ad copy) learns something for free about email from an email expert (the 10 email sequences in my Simple Email Sequences That Sell eBook).

Pros

Free and fast to execute once you have a relationship with another operator

Subscribers are warm since someone they trust recommended them

Can be repeated with different partners to keep driving steady growth

Cons

Requires a list of sufficient size for the swap to feel worthwhile to the other party (although you don’t need a MASSIVE list to start)

A poorly matched swap can bring in poor-fit, quick-churning subscribers

Relies on finding and maintaining relationships with other operators

5. Collaborations/Co-Marketing

A collaboration is a step beyond a list swap.

Instead of simply promoting each other’s existing content, the parties create something together to benefit their respective audiences.

The format’s flexible. You could do:

A joint webinar where you share a stage
A joint lead magnet
A podcast
Guest posts on each other’s blogs

And so on.

The key here, like with list swaps, is complementarity.

You want a partner whose audience overlaps with yours in terms of interests or problems, but who isn’t a direct competitor.

For example, I cohost a weekly Substack live show/podcast called Inside the Inbox with my friend, Pete Reginella.

Pete is a copywriter, yes, but has a more digital-product/creator audience than me (although I serve them, too). So he brings a different perspective to the email marketing topics we discuss on the show.

Or return to the earlier example of my ads specialist friend. Same type of business owner, different expertise.

Heck, I work with some of my friend Lucas’s clients, and we’ve discussed a joint lead magnet. He does similar, but not the same, types of work as me. So slightly different but overlapping audiences.

Make friends, and the collab opportunities will appear.

Pros

Creates genuine value for both audiences rather than just a straight promotion

Can generate significant exposure + perceived expertise if the partner has a large or highly engaged audience

Builds relationships with other operators that can lead to future opportunities

Cons

Requires more time and coordination than a simple list swap

Results depend on the partner’s audience size, engagement, and how well the collab is promoted

Finding the right partners + pitching the collab takes effort and isn’t always reciprocated

6. Referral Programs

Referral programs for email subscriptions incentivize existing subscribers to spread the word, either by:

Rewarding them for bringing in new subscribers, OR;
Making it easy to share your newsletter with people they think would enjoy

Mechanics vary by platform.

Tools like SparkLoop let you set up automated reward systems that reward subscribers with something for every person they refer.

Kit’s Creator Network lets you recommend other newsletters to your subscribers and have other operators recommend yours — essentially a built-in swap network.

Substack has features of both:

You can set custom referral rewards and tiers (escalating rewards for more lifetime referrals)
The built-in “Recommendations” function lets others funnel you subs by making your publication a “Recommendation” (I’ve gained a couple dozen subs this way)

The big catch:

This method is slow until your audience builds up. If no one is on your list, no one can refer their friends.

So set this up early, but only expect it to accelerate and compound once you gain a steady stream of good subs via other methods. Then, it’ll compound on autopilot.

Pros

Leverages your existing audience to grow for you (word of mouth from a trusted subscriber is powerful)

Referred subscribers tend to be high quality since they came through a personal recommendation

Can run passively in the background once set up

Cons

Requires an existing audience to refer from (not useful when you’re starting from zero)

Incentive-based referrals can attract people interested in the reward rather than you

Needs a compelling enough incentive or highly engaged audience to generate meaningful volume

Paid Methods

Paid methods inherently cost money. This shortcuts the process by letting you “buy” customers.

But you don’t need as much as you think. If you’re still small, you can start using some paid methods for a few dollars/day (a few hundred/month).

You see exactly what goes in and comes out. When you put in $1, you can tell whether you get $1+ back.

So no need to start on multiple channels. Pick ONE. Master it. Dominate it. If it isn’t working or you don’t like it, try another. You can turn off ad campaigns much more easily than organic methods.

Now, paid methods can make some subscriber relationships feel “transactional,” but the quick volume offsets that. Don’t worry about that.

1. Social Media Ads

Social media advertising is one of the most common paid channels. You buy ads, aiming to drive traffic to your lead magnet’s landing page.

Some platforms include:

Facebook/Meta
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn

Facebook/Meta is the most established and widely used. It has extensive targeting capabilities, and there’s a deep body of knowledge around what works. It also has over 3 billion users — almost half the world’s population.

That said, other platforms are catching up or carving out their own niche. For instance, Twitter/X ads are underrated. Different user intent, but less competition. It can drive high-quality subs at a better cost if you learn how to do X ads right.

Pick one ad platform and focus on it. Don’t spread yourself thin. Wait until you have a winning campaign on one platform (and a process for routinely creating them).

Pros

Can generate subscribers quickly at scale since volume is limited only by budget

Targetable — you can reach specific demographics, interests, and behaviors

Results are measurable and can be optimized in real time

Cons

Costs money continuously… the moment you stop spending, the subscribers stop coming

Requires testing and optimization to find a cost-per-subscriber that makes sense (this can be expensive to figure out)

Ad fatigue sets in over time, requiring fresh creative and hooks to maintain performance

2. Paid search ads

Search engines let you run ads that appear in the search results. These show up in their own section, labeled Sponsored Results, above the organic results when you run an Internet search with certain keywords. Google is the dominant platform.

For example, say you search for “Asana” (the project management software) on Google. Guarantee you’ll see ads from other project management SaaS products at the top.

The key difference between social and search ads is intent.

Someone clicking a Facebook ad was scrolling passively, and your ad interrupted them.

Someone clicking a Google ad was actively searching for something, which means they’re looking for what you offer.

Such a difference in intent can translate into higher-quality subscribers, though the cost per click tends to reflect it.

Pros

Captures high-intent traffic. People actively searching for what you offer are more likely to subscribe and engage

Can be highly targeted by keyword, location, and device

Works well when paired with strong SEO content that reinforces the paid traffic

Cons

Can be expensive, depending on keyword competition

Requires ongoing management and optimization to avoid wasted spend

Less effective for newsletters or content-based opt-ins, than for direct product offers

3. Newsletter Ads

You can pay newsletter operators to place ads for your lead magnet in their free or paid newsletters. That could be a dedicated mention, sponsored section, brief recommendation, or something else.

Ads in paid newsletters cost more, but you’re appealing to proven buyers rather than a mixed list of buyers and non-buying subscribers.

Proven buyers are more likely to buy for two reasons:

Shown a willingness to spend money (easier to justify a free download or low-cost tripwire)
Given their trust to the newsletter owner

Free newsletters can work great, too. They probably cost less and are more widely available. But the traffic, while solid, will be lower quality.

Finding the right newsletters takes research. You want:

An audience that overlaps with yours without being identical
A list that’s actually engaged (open rates matter more than subscriber count)
A placement format that lets you write something compelling enough to drive clicks

A poorly written ad in a great newsletter will still underperform.

On the other hand, if you can find newsletters whose audiences closely match your target audience, you’re essentially buying access to a pre-qualified, already-engaged group of people.

Pros

Reaches a highly targeted, engaged, newsletter-reading audience — the kind of person likely to subscribe to your newsletter

Subscribers acquired this way tend to be high quality and engaged

Can be tested with relatively small budgets before scaling

Cons

Good newsletter ad placements in relevant publications can be expensive and hard to get

Results vary significantly depending on the newsletter’s audience size, engagement, and ad copy quality

Research and outreach are required to find the right newsletters to advertise in

4. Podcast Sponsorships

Like with other forms of media, you can pay podcast hosts to mention your newsletter, lead magnet, or other offer as a mid-roll or pre-roll ad during an episode.

Host-read ads are the gold standard.

When the host reads your ad in their own voice rather than playing a pre-recorded spot, it carries the weight of a personal recommendation from someone their audience already trusts.

Finding the right podcast matters as much as the budget. A smaller podcast with a highly engaged, tightly niched audience will often outperform a larger one with a broad, loosely engaged listenership.

Look for shows where your target subscriber is already showing up and paying attention.

Pros

Reaches a warm, highly engaged audience that trusts the host

A single sponsorship can drive subscribers for the episode’s life

Builds brand awareness and credibility by association with trusted niche voices

Cons

Can be expensive, especially for larger podcasts with established audiences

Results are hard to track since attribution from podcast ads is notoriously difficult

Requires finding the right podcasts and negotiating sponsorship terms, which takes time

5. Affiliate Programs

Affiliates promote your products in exchange for a commission on each sale. For instance, you might pay affiliates a 20% commission on every sale. You keep the rest.

“But Bradley. Isn’t this a monetization method? You can’t pay commissions on a free lead magnet.”

Yes. But when someone buys your product, they get on your list. You make money and add new BUYERS (not just free subs) to your list to whom you can sell other offers.

Affiliate quality is HUGE. The affiliate must have a decent-sized, engaged audience that overlaps with or is adjacent to yours. For example, an email marketer selling a Facebook ads course to his audience.

(NOTE: I’m always looking for new affiliates for my offers. DM me if you’re interested.)

Pros

Scales well… The more affiliates you recruit, the more potential reach you have

Performance-based. You only pay when someone converts

You earn while gaining subs (the only paid method that inherently earns), and buyers are more likely to convert again (if your product delivers results)

Cons

Requires tracking, commission structures, and payment systems (adds operational complexity)

More friction means you may gain fewer subs than other methods (a customer must buy the product rather than download a FREE resource)

Building a strong affiliate program takes time, affiliate vetting, and ongoing relationship management

6. Paid Recommendations

Paid recommendations sit between newsletter ads and list swaps. You pay for others to recommend your newsletter to their subs through platforms like SparkLoop’s paid recommendation network or other tools.

But instead of appearing as a traditional ad, you, well, appear as a recommendation.

This hits a bit harder than an ad, because it doesn’t inherently feel “promotional.” It also means subs tend to be higher quality than typical paid traffic… though cost/subscriber reflects that.

Mechanics vary by platform but the idea is the same. Newsletter operators who participate in the network recommend other newsletters to their subscribers in exchange for payment.

You set a cost-per-subscriber you’re willing to pay. When someone subscribes through the recommendation, you pay.

Pros

Subscribers arrive warm since they come through a trusted recommendation rather than a cold ad

Highly targeted since you can select newsletters whose audiences match your ideal subscriber

Can generate consistent volume at a predictable cost per subscriber once dialed in

Cons

Cost per subscriber can be higher than other paid methods since lead quality is better

Limited by the availability of newsletters in your niche that participate in recommendation networks

Results depend on how well your newsletter’s description and positioning converts browsers into subscribers

Go Forth And Grow Your List

Don’t do everything at once.

For organic methods, pick one as your “focus” and let others support it. I do weekly content and daily social posts (which play off each other), supplemented with occasional list swaps and podcast guesting.

For paid methods, pick and master one before adding others. Paid channels give you clear, measurable feedback — money in, subscribers out. Makes it easy to iterate and improve fast. If one channel doesn’t work after a genuine effort, try another.

The list doesn’t grow on its own. But with the right channel and consistent effort, it compounds faster than most people expect.

And the best part is…

You can combine the speed of paid with the financial benefits of organic methods if you know how to craft a solid low-ticket offer.

Instead of running ads to a free lead magnet and absorbing the cost of every subscriber, you’ll drive traffic to this low-ticket product and make sales. Structure your funnel well, and you could recover enough of your ad spend to break even…

Which means you’re effectively acquiring subs for free.

And if you can make that funnel profitable, you get paid to grow your list.

Oh, and buyers are more likely than free subs to stick around and buy again.

So it’s possible to get paid to fill your list with high-quality, engaged, and lucrative buyers.

It sounds too good to be true. It isn’t. It’s just math. I know people with profit-positive funnels. If you want to learn how to build one for yourself, I’ve got just the thing for you:

⇒ Learn how to launch and scale a low-ticket product that pays for itself

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

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Stop Watching Customer Lifetime Value... Track This Instead

Bradley Schnitzer — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:15:30 GMT

How long does it take your average customer to place a second order?

A lot of brands couldn’t tell you off the top of their head. They track LTV, open rates, revenue per email — all useful numbers in certain contexts, but all backward-looking.

By the time LTV drops, the customers causing the drop have already churned.

The time gap between order 1 and order 2 tells you where your retention is truly headed… before it gets there.

This is called retention velocity.

The faster/shorter your retention velocity, the better. A faster second sale means money in your pocket now instead of later. Money now is worth more than money later.

Furthermore…

Customers who come back quickly tend to keep coming back.

For example, a customer who reorders in 14 days is worth more over 12 months than one who takes 60 days, even if their first order was identical.

They pay you again sooner and they’re more likely to buy yet again in the future (and sooner in the future), since that faster retention velocity implies enthusiasm.

Today, we’ll look at what your retention velocity tells you, then cover a few ways to improve yours so you can improve cash flows and take advantage of revenue compounding.

What's In This Article

What Your Retention Velocity is Telling You

By the time LTV drops, the damage is done. The customer has stopped buying, causing that longer time gap.

Retention velocity tells you what LTV will do beforehand, while you can act on it, by showing who’s buying repeatedly (higher potential LTV) and who hasn’t made it to order 2 (lower potential LTV).

So a long median reorder gap signals friction somewhere in the post-purchase experience.

The question is where.

It could be things like the:

Product: Maybe it didn’t deliver results fast enough or to a sufficient degree
Onboarding: The customer didn’t receive guidance on how to use it properly.
Communication: The brand went quiet, and/or the customer service wasn’t helpful.

Or something else… but something’s stopping the customer from ordering again.

Segmenting by product or acquisition channel can reveal where the leak is.

If one product has a dramatically longer reorder gap than another, the friction is likely specific to that product’s experience.

If customers from one channel reorder faster than others, the acquisition source is telling you something about intent and fit.

How to Accelerate Retention Velocity

1. Know Your Customers Well

Improving your retention velocity starts (as many aspects of marketing strategy do) by knowing your customers.

Understanding their goals, problems, and purchasing behavior helps you select or identify back-end offers that are natural next steps for your customers.

Product usage cycles matter, too. Knowing how long your products last (if you sell consumables) helps you time sales messaging to their natural next-purchase moment (see Section 3).

The brands compounding sales and shortening retention velocity the most send the right offers to the right customers because they know who they’re selling to.

2. Nail the Post-Purchase Window

The customer’s order, the transaction, the exchange of money… That is NOT the finish line.

What happens in the days and weeks after the first order determines whether that customer comes back in 14 days or 60 — or doesn’t come back at all.

A solid Post-Purchase Sequence is the lynchpin. It onboards the customer properly by:

Getting them excited about what they bought (overcome buyer’s remorse)
Showing them how to use it (to achieve the result faster + appear helpful)
Helping them get to a result as fast as possible

The faster a customer experiences the product working, the sooner they associate your brand with real results…

And the more they want to come back for the next order.

Beyond getting them to a result, the post-purchase sequence should do one more thing:

Set up the next purchase.

Whether that’s a cross-sell, replenishment reminder, or subscription push (some are discussed in this article), the best time to plant the seed for order 2 is during the customer’s order 1 honeymoon phase.

3. Encourage Them to Reorder/Refill

Ideally, you want order 2 to happen in the Post-Purchase sequence. Some will inevitably go through the whole thing without ordering, though.

The Replenishment Sequence is the next “net” to catch these people.

It triggers close to when they’d run out, letting them buy again and have it arrive before their current order runs out. That way, they can continue their routine without fail and without having to remember to reorder.

Past purchasers who haven’t reordered yet are one of the highest-converting segments for the same product since they know the product and have already bought… they just need a nudge.

Proof that consistency/regular use/consumption of your product is key. Testimonials or case studies demonstrating the benefits of long-term/regular use will increase Replenishment Flow conversions, shortening retention velocity.

4. Mail Your List Regularly

Once someone buys, they’re likely on your email list (either through the opt-in form or the purchase).

Beyond building the automated sequences mentioned, you should mail your list (most of which will be buyers) regularly.

Send mostly plain text emails with helpful content + offer. Work in fun/entertainment (storytelling, humor) where possible. Hold a promotion every so often, trying different types of offers (not just discounts).

Skip the HTML-only “SALE SALE SALE” billboard-style emails, except in specific circumstances (like promo announcements). Subscribers tend to ignore these because they look like ads (if they don’t land straight in spam/trash).

Unsubscribes will happen, especially if you’ve been quiet on email for a while. But do it right, and buyers will buy again as you shed subs who weren’t paying you (or planning to pay you) anyway.

(Not sure where to start with mailing your list? This resource will help.)

5. Push Them to A Continuity Offer

Continuity offers, such as subscribe & save and membership programs, remove the reorder decision entirely.

Instead of hoping customers come back, or only doing active outreach via emails and replenishment sequences, the next order is auto-scheduled.

The customer who converts to a subscription after order 1 essentially exits the retention velocity problem. Their reorder gap compresses to and stays at the subscription cadence.

(Still, you can attempt to sell them on shorter reorder windows. Perhaps they go through the product faster, share with family members, etc.)

That’s why getting a new customer onto a continuity offer as early as possible is one of the highest-leverage moves in your retention stack.

A Push to Continuity Flow automates this by sending to people who would be good candidates for the continuity offer.

For instance, I built a Push to Continuity Flow for an animal-based snacks brand. We sent it to anyone who had ordered the same product at least twice over all time (two orders is a stronger signal of subscription potential).

From there, you want to make them ascend the subscription ladder:

Renewals: Get them to add something else as a one-off to their next order.
Upgrades: Sell them on more of the same subscription.
Expansions: Sell them on subscribing to a different product.

These moves don’t directly improve retention velocity (besides Expansions, which could do so by having the subscriptions hit at different times throughout the month)...

But they do deepen commitment to the brand, which reduces churn and increases the chance of between-subscription purchases.

Make Them Buy Sooner And Compound Your Revenue

The brands that win do not stop at purchase 1. They aim to get that second order as soon as possible, and then the third, fourth, ad infinitum.

Know your customers well enough to put the right offers in front of them. Nail the post-purchase window. Encourage the reorder before the moment passes. Show up consistently in the inbox…

And where possible, remove the reorder decision entirely with a continuity offer.

Do those things well, and the reorder gap shortens — meaning more cash comes in faster, compounding your earnings and customer lifetime value.

If you want the email sequences that make this happen (including a few discussed in this article) my free guide breaks down 10 email automations that can unlock an extra 10-15% in revenue for your store.

⇒ Get those 10 email automations here (they’re 100% free)

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

⇒ Work with me one-on-one: Hit reply and say PRIVATE CLIENT to see if we’re a good fit.

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Inside The Inbox - Sunset Sequences

Bradley Schnitzer — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:30:55 GMT

Every email list accumulates dead weight over time.

Some are freebie seekers who subbed for a discount or free eBook and then never open an email.

Others have been around for a while, but perhaps lost interest in your stuff or are moving on to something else.

Keeping them around costs you money — both in higher ESP bills and in the deliverability drag they create when you mail them.

The Sunset Sequence helps guide these people off the list, on autopilot.

In yesterday’s Inside the Inbox, Pete and I broke down what the Sunset Sequence is, how it’s structured, and when it actually matters enough to build one.

You’ll learn:

Why a smaller, cleaner list will often outperform a larger, messier one on most metrics that matters
How to structure this three-email sequence so you give people a real chance to stay before you remove them
The difference between running a sunset sequence as a flow versus a manual campaign to your unengaged segment… and why the flow wins on deliverability
Why the sunset sequence matters a lot more once you’re running paid traffic — and less so when your list is primarily organic

Watch the replay now.

Other Ways I Can Help You

⇒ Steal my top 21 emails for just $15: Includes a template, framework, & example for each so you can mail & earn more. Plus, a video showing you how to use the whole file.

Work with me one-on-one: DM me and let’s talk to see if we’re a good fit.

Love this video? Found it valuable? Please share it with others who might like it as well.

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