At the time of writing this post, sitting here in my room in a co-living house in Denver, Colorado, in the year 2026 of the Horse, it’s been approximately eight years since I began writing a newsletter.

It started off as a once-a-week-ish newsletter back in 2018, mostly to promote my weekly blog posts. Then it became a when-I-feel-like-it newsletter sometime around 2019, when I only sent an email maybe once a month or so.

But then, in 2020, I decided to take this blogging business seriously, started earning a full-time income, and figured emails were the way to go if I wanted to make sales. And since then, I went from writing and sending a weekly email (again), to sending a twice-weekly, then a thrice-weekly, and finally, in 2024, a daily email newsletter.

Which is to say, I’m fairly well-versed in writing emails at this point, and considering I’ve been making a full-time living and some since 2020 thanks to said emails, I’m not only well-versed in writing them, but I’ve also become quite efficient at selling with them. So much so that people now pay me to teach them how to write emails that sell.

And that’s the topic of this post today: How I write my emails, which tend to be mid- to long-form story-based sales emails, every single day.

Now, I cannot give you all my secrets in one blog post, but I will give you enough so you have a good handle on the following:

• why story-based emails are great for your business
• how to weave stories and offers in an email, seamlessly
• a common story-based sales email structure that you can repeat over and over
• and a few different story angles you can rotate, so that even if you send a daily email (as I do), they seem fresh and new to your readers, every single time

Here we go.

Why write story-based email?

I like to keep life as simple and enjoyable as possible.

I feel like I should clarify what I mean by “simple”….

Writing a daily email isn’t necessarily the simplest thing on Earth. So when I say I like to keep things simple, I do not mean the task itself has to be simple. What I mean is that the process of choosing what I do and don’t do is quite simple. And that’s where the “enjoyable” part comes in. If I enjoy doing something, even if the task itself is not simple, I’ll do it, and it will most likely bring me good outcomes (life’s weird that way).

And so it was with daily emails.

So, the first question I’d like to ask you is this: Do you enjoy writing, and can you see yourself writing at least a weekly, story-based email to start off?

If the answer is yes, then all of what I’m about to write will make sense.

Now, enjoyment wasn’t the only reason why I chose the story-based format for my emails. There are plenty of ways to write a newsletter, after all. I have seen people writing a one-paragraph (sometimes one-sentence) email. Others write in-depth how-to guides (I personally like to reserve them for this blog, and not my newsletter), while some others mix unique content with curation inside one email.

At this time, I have a confession to make:

Back in 2024, before I started my daily email habit, I discovered a direct-response marketer and entrepreneur, John Bejakovic. It was my first introduction to story-based daily emails. Bejakovic is an email marketer, and yet, his words are no less than what you might expect from someone writing a literary essay… but for marketers and entrepreneurs. As a lover of good words, I was hooked instantly. And before long, I realized I wasn’t the only one hooked. The guy literally has serial buyers in his audience, and I found myself turning into one of them as well.

Now here’s a good business advice:

If you find yourself buying something from someone, pay close attention to what made you hit the buy button. Chances are that the “what” is your own business affinity, and if you can tap into that same “what,” you’ll likely get good results.

So, as it happened in my case, because I’ve always enjoyed writing and storytelling, when I found Bejakovic and his newsletter, it was as though someone gave me permission to finally do and be what and who I wanted to do and be.

But that’s my personal story and the reasons behind why I now send a daily, story-based email.

Let me bring it back strictly to business.

If you enjoy writing and storytelling, here are some additional reasons to lean into that and make it a core part of your marketing:

• people generally like good stories, so when you write story-based emails, your audience is more likely to tune in and not out
• when people are in a good mood, or they’re enjoying themselves (which is what happens when you share a good story in your email), they’re more likely to take action (think about the CTA or call to action)
• some of the most successful direct-response marketers I know are story-based email writers, and their success tells me there’s something to it

So yes, story-based emails are the GOATS of emails.

However, if writing a story alone were enough to make money, there would be no such thing as a starving writer (of which there are plenty!).

And that’s where things get a little more… technical.

Basically, stories in emails are not the same as stories everywhere else. Direct-response marketers tell a story not only to entertain, but to use entertainment as a leverage to enchant their readers, and then get them to do whatever they want them to do (CTA!). It can be replying to an email, clicking a link, or buying whatever you’re selling. The term “direct-response” says it all… you’re trying to get your readers to respond to your call to action without delay.

And when you do it day after day, month after month, year after year… the thing that keeps your readers coming back to you for more is the entertainment they get from you.

Your stories.

Some very specific types of stories.

So, let’s talk about those stories now.

Stories That Sell

I think one of the biggest problems with newbie newsletter writers is that they hear the word “story” and right away start imagining something complex, requiring one to have lived a fantastical life of adventure ripe with stories worthy of a night spent with friends and loved ones next to a campfire.

Just let that image out of your head right now.

That’s not what stories are… not for our purpose, anyway.

So, in order to understand what I mean when I say “story-based sales emails,” here’s a new and more accessible definition of stories that sell:

Last month, guest contributor Lib Aubuchon shared some examples of story-based emails that you can write to your list when you’re not in launch mode. I recommend Lib’s post; give it a read if you have a few minutes.

Some of the stories Lib suggested are easy to understand, and they connect directly to offers. For example, if you’re seeing a new trend in your niche that you can connect to what you’re promoting, then the “what I’m seeing” part becomes a story, and the inevitable offer plug brings in the sales.

Or, if you’ve helped a coaching client get stellar results, you can share some of the “behind the scenes” to sell your coaching offer.

Other directly-related stories you can share are customer testimonials, showing off other people buying, using your own results, using a hate comment, or just a dumb (quite-possibly-AI) comment, etc. I’ll show you a couple of examples of these in a minute.

That said, sometimes you can sell stuff even with seemingly wild stories that, at first, do not seem to connect to your offer until you’ve peeled off the top layer of a story and peeked into what lies underneath, and then connected that elusive mechanism to your offer.

These types of stories are extremely powerful because they do something other types of stories do not: They make your readers feel like they’ve learned something truly unique, which in turn makes them feel smarter. That feeling… the feeling of transformation that they can directly connect to reading your email… has the power to create dopamine, which often allows the reader to convert and become a buyer.

These reader-buyers then often turn into your fans, fans who then want to buy whatever you’re selling.

That is the kind of transformation I witnessed in myself when I read John Bejaokovic’s emails, which has now turned me into one of John’s serial buyers. And it’s the same I hear from some of my own buyers now, who come back to buy more from me, again and again, giving me my own set of serial buyers.

How I Write Story-Based Sales Emails

Every email has its own flavor of storytelling, and how one might draw a natural conclusion from that story to the offer.

I gave you some example story types above: client or customer testimonials, your own results as a case study, something new you’ve observed in your industry, etc. Those are some of the simplest yet highly effective “story”-based sales emails.

Then there are more complex types.

I’ve read (and written) story-based emails that are more like a braided essay (where multiple stories are woven together to create a natural conclusion, which organically promotes the thing you’re trying to sell).

I’ve also used other people’s stories or seemingly unrelated observations to point to something related in the offer.

Each of these stories may have its own kind of structure, but in the end, for most story-based sales emails, this is the most common one:

The story

↓

a bridge that connects the story to the offer 

↓

the inevitable next step (the CTA for the offer)

So, for example, some time ago, I wrote an email about how Nagisa Oshima, a Japanese director, made a movie about a woman named Sada Abe, who fell in love with her patron, had a wild affair, and ended up killing her lover in the heat of mad passion.

The movie itself, aside from some really great facial expressions from both the lead characters, was purely pornographic. But because there was a backstory, the movie became an instant classic and not just another porn movie among a sea of other porn movies.

The point of the email was this: Stories make everything better, more meaningful, and also more impactful. And so you should plug stories into everything you write.

And then I asked folks to sign up for the waitlist of my email writing workshop, Write Without AI, where they’ll get to practice writing story-based emails.

How to think about the story → bridge → offer structure

This is hard to explain within a blog post, and the best way to understand is by writing a lot of story-based sales emails.

Practice makes perfect, after all.

So, the best I can do is tell you how I approach it:

• Step 1: I start with the offer. What is it that I’m promoting?
• Step 2: Then I think about the story. Sometimes it’s easy. I can pull from a customer testimonial, or my own success, or a bad comment from a reader (exactly what I did for one of my promos that I’ll share below)… and sometimes I will think of a more sophisticated something (like the one about Nagisa Oshima’s movie).
• Step 3: Once I have the offer and the story, the next and super important part… one without which the entire email falls apart… is to find a bridge between the story and the offer. Most of the time, I try to think about a “lesson” from the story that directly connects to the offer. In the Nagisa Oshima movie, the lesson was that a backstory elevated Oshima’s movie from porn to an instant classic. This was a perfect bridge between the story and my offer — a workshop that helps cohort members write story-based sales emails.

I want to point out that even though the common structure of a story-based email is:

Story

↓

Bridge

↓

Offer…

In most cases, when thinking about how to construct such an email, first comes the offer, then the story, and finally, the bridge. So, the thinking process looks like this:

Step 1: Choose the offer to promote

↓

Step 2: Think of a story that connects to the offer

↓

Step 3: Think of a bridge between the story and the offer
(A common bridge is a lesson from the story that is related to the offer)

And then you simply use the story → bridge → offer structure to put the three parts together in order.

But how do you come up with cool stories?

The Nagisa Oshima example is a stroke of luck… I happened to have watched the movie some years ago, and at the time, I thought about how, without the story, this movie was just porn.

That happens sometimes.

If you keep your eyes and ears open and observe your own life and the things in it… from the books you read to the movies you watch to the people you see in the streets… sometimes an interesting bit will present itself that you’ll be able to use as a story in your emails, that will naturally lead to something about your offers.

One of the best things you can do as an entrepreneur with an email list is to keep a journal and write down whatever catches your attention in it.

I used to have paper journals back in the day, but then realized that when you need to find ideas quickly, a digital journal with search capabilities is the best. I still use paper journals (I love writing on paper with a pen), but then always make sure to transfer those scribbles into my digital journal, too.

In fact, I learned my perfect journaling system from John Bejakovic. He has a course called Insight Exposed, where he outlines exactly how he gets ideas for his emails (or how he finds the perfect stories every time thanks to his careful journaling and cataloging system), as well as what he reads, how he reads, and some other extremely useful ways to add to your idea journal every single day which makes you a more interesting person in real life, AND makes your emails that much more intriguing.

If you’re curious, check out John Bejakovic’s Insight Exposed right here.

Let me now give you a few more examples of stories that have created buyers out of readers for me:

A 4-day, 4-email promotion that used simple stories to sell an offer

I ran this promotion in September, 2025.

It was a promotion for my “Story-Seller Emails” mini-course that I’ve since stopped selling (more on that in a second).

Let me give you a little history of how this course came to be and what has become of it now.

The course was, at first, just a how-to guide that I wrote, thinking it would either become a free blog post or a low-ticket offer.

I decided to try selling it as a low-ticket offer first. Set up a sales page, wrote a bad email (didn’t have much of a story… just a haphazardly put-together something-something with a link to the sales page), that produced nothing but one bad comment from one reader.

When I didn’t make any sales, I decided to publish it as a blog post instead. However, right before I hit the publish button, I remembered that sometimes, copywriters like Ben Settle or Daniel Throssell would use bad reader comments to write an entire sales email. And since I had one such freshly-received comment, I decided to give it a go.

This time, however, I put on a little more effort and turned it into a multi-day promotion using proper story-based emails.

4 days and 4 emails.

The result?

Multiple sales each day of the promo!

And if you ask me why this produced better results than the first attempt, then I’d say because I had a more effective story → bridge → offer structure for each of the promo emails.

And the best part? I didn’t even have an urgency attached to the promo. No deadline for cart closure or price increase.

The only “urgency” was this: I’d increase the price of the course at some point in the future… which, if I’m being honest, is not much of an urgency at all.

But even so, without any urgency, I was still able to sell this course to several of my readers on each day of the promo.

Which was great because when something like this happens, it tells me that there’s enough interest in the subject itself, and it has the potential to become more. So, after a couple of months and making a few more sales outside of that promo, I retired the mini-course and created a 4-week, LIVE, cohort-based, email writing workshop called Write Without AI, which now sells for $750 – $1,750 four times a year.

Let me now break down the emails I sent and the “stories” I used to sell this mini course.

Day 1: Objection handling with a bad comment

You can click here to read the first email of the promo.

I used the bad comment I mentioned earlier as the fodder of my main story, and broke down why the comment was bad, which allowed me a chance to break down some potential objections my readers may have had regarding writing story-based sales emails to promote their offers.

Objection handling is always a great way to turn skeptics into buyers.

The natural bridge or lesson of the story was that “stories” in emails are not literature. They’re carefully chosen slices of life that naturally persuade a reader to buy whatever you’re selling.

Day 2: Reasons to get the offer

On day 2, I highlighted a comment from a buyer from the previous day.

Said buyer himself is an accomplished copywriter and email marketer, so this gave me the perfect opportunity to highlight reasons why people should get my mini course, even if they think they’re good at writing story-based emails.

Here’s email #2.

Day 3: More reasons to get the offer

On day 3, I used my story of how I used to have a poor open rate when I first started writing email newsletters, and how, now, I have a higher open rate, and more buyers, too.

The lesson or bridge here was that most people don’t do story-based emails right. Sometimes they have good stories, but they don’t know how to combine stories with marketing to convert open rate into sales. But my course will show them how to combine storytelling with marketing so they can rectify their errors.

Here’s email #3.

Day 4: Final promo day, where I demonstrate the effects of story-based sales emails

On the last day of the promo, I drew my readers’ attention to the fact that for the previous three days, I’d been practicing what I’d been preaching and selling: Story-based sales emails.

I pointed out that I had used the same technique to write the promo emails that I teach in my mini course, and how I acquired multiple buyers each day of the promo… and if they sign up for the course, they’ll learn how I write those emails.

This final email brought me a few more sales before I wrapped up the promo and moved on to other things.

Read the final email of the promo here.

Story Angles You Can Use

I’ve already demonstrated some of the story angles that make people engage with your CTA, and even take action, such as sign up for a waitlist or buy a paid offer.

Let me reiterate those, along with a few others:

• Stories of customer or client success with your help or your offers
• Stories of your own success using what you teach
• Highlight sales. People feel more comfortable doing something when they know others are doing it, too
• Client/customer testimonials
• Connect an underlying philosophy to teach something, and then connect the lesson to your offer (example: in the case of Nagisa Oshima’s movie, where the reason the movie became a cult classic was largely due to its backstory). These underlying philosophies can come from various sources, such as:
  • Your own life
  • Lives of people you know
  • Lives of your customers or clients
  • Lives of famous people
  • Current news
  • Old news
  • Books and movies
  • New findings or observations in your industry or even an industry that has nothing to do with yours (it will work as long as the underlying philosophy can be connected to your offer)

Finding the right story often comes down to, as I’ve already said before, the power of your observations. And that is something you’ll need to hone over time.

Be curious about things.

Pay attention to what’s going on around you, in your life, and the lives of others around you.

Find out what’s going on in your customers’ or clients’ lives (without being creepy, of course).

Stay in the know of what’s happening in your industry.

And to make your stories really, really interesting, be curious about completely unrelated things, too. We’re all connected, so even in unrelated things, you’ll often find common threads and throughlines, as long as you pay attention. And often those things make some of the best story-based sales emails.

The Next Logical Steps

Now that you know the basic building blocks of story-based sales emails, here’s a question for you: What can you do to take your knowledge and turn it into a habit so that the knowledge translates into your actions more easily?

→ First, write emails… lots. And be intentional about implementing what you just learned.

→ Start a digital journal so you can collect and keep track of your ideas and findings. I use Obsidian. I like their tagging feature; easily searchable and makes life simpler. Everything is saved locally, and it is completely free to use. But if I want to, I can also sync all my data if I sign up for their cloud syncing service, which costs less than $5 per month.

→ Always read aloud what you’re writing. You’ll often spot the speed bumps if you hear yourself reading what you just wrote.

→ Finally, if you want some help with figuring out some of the other logistics of writing story-based sales emails, such as how to make your offers more appealing in your emails, marketing techniques that improve your conversion, and writing effective sales bullets, then sign up for my Write Without AI workshop.

About Write Without AI

Write Without AI is a 4-week, LIVE, cohort-based workshop, where cohort members write a daily email for 4 weeks (Mon-Fri) based on a short lesson and a prompt from me. Every day, after writing their emails, they submit them to me. Then I take over. I pick one email from all the day’s submissions, randomly using an app that picks a random submission for me, and critique and review it, and give my feedback thoroughly on camera (anonymously, so nobody except me knows whose email I’m reviewing).

I do this every day.

So, by the end of the workshop, cohort members will have written 20 emails, and they’ll have 20 in-depth reviews of emails they can refer to and learn from.

I offer this workshop 4 times a year: In January, April, July, and October.

If you’re interested, you can join the waitlist here, or, if you happen to read this during a promo window, you can just sign up for the workshop.

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