AI & Automation
Personas
Ecommerce
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Last month, I had a client come to me frustrated about their Shopify store's email performance. "We're getting signups, but nobody's opening our newsletters," they said. Sound familiar?
When I looked at their setup, I saw the classic mistake: they were treating their newsletter like a corporate announcement board. Product updates, company news, generic discount codes. Their open rate was sitting at a depressing 0.8%.
Here's what most Shopify store owners get wrong: they think newsletters should look and sound like every other business newsletter. But here's the thing - your customers' inboxes are already flooded with that stuff.
After working with dozens of e-commerce clients, I've learned that the most effective newsletters don't feel like newsletters at all. They feel like personal notes from someone who actually cares about solving your problems, not just pushing products.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why newsletter-style emails perform worse than personal communication
The specific approach that doubled my client's open rates in 3 weeks
How to write emails that people actually want to read
The psychology behind why personal beats professional
A simple template that works across industries
Industry Truth
What every Shopify marketing guide teaches
Walk into any e-commerce marketing course or read any Shopify guide, and you'll get the same advice about newsletters:
Professional branding - Match your website design perfectly
Product-focused content - Showcase new arrivals and bestsellers
Promotional structure - Lead with discounts and offers
Corporate voice - Write like a brand, not a person
Template consistency - Use the same layout every time
This advice exists because it feels safe. It's what big brands do, so it must work, right? The thinking goes: "If we look professional and polished, people will trust us more."
But here's where this falls apart in practice: your customers aren't shopping at Nike or Apple. They're shopping at your store. And they signed up for your newsletter because they want to hear from you, not from another faceless corporate entity.
The conventional wisdom treats email like advertising when it should be treated like conversation. When you follow these "best practices," you end up with newsletters that look identical to every other business in your industry. You become noise in an already noisy inbox.
The real problem? Nobody taught us that in e-commerce, being human often outperforms being polished.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
This realization hit me hard when working with a Shopify client selling handmade jewelry. They'd invested in a beautiful email template that matched their website perfectly. Professional photography, branded colors, the works. But their open rates were terrible - hovering around 0.8%.
The client was frustrated because they were doing everything "right" according to every marketing guide they'd read. They had opt-in popups, welcome series, regular newsletters featuring new products. They even A/B tested subject lines religiously.
The problem was deeper than tactics. When I analyzed their email content, I realized it read like every other jewelry brand's newsletter. "Check out our new arrivals!" "Limited time discount!" "Spring collection now available!" The language was generic, the approach was transactional.
But here's what made this client special: the founder had incredible stories behind each piece. She'd travel to source materials, work with local artisans, and often created custom pieces for customers' special moments. Her Instagram DMs were full of customers sharing photos of proposals, anniversaries, and celebrations featuring her jewelry.
Yet none of this personality came through in their newsletters. They were treating email like a product catalog instead of sharing the human stories that made people fall in love with the brand in the first place.
The disconnect was obvious: people were buying from her because of the personal connection and craftsmanship story, but the newsletters felt like they came from a corporate marketing department.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
I proposed a completely different approach. Instead of newsletters, we'd write personal notes. The key insight: people don't want to feel like they're being marketed to - they want to feel like they're hearing from someone who cares about their problems.
Here's exactly what we implemented:
The Personal Note Framework:
Every email started with "I've been thinking about..." or "Something interesting happened yesterday..." We killed the newsletter template entirely. No headers, no product grids, no branded footers. Just plain text that looked like it came from a friend.
Story-First, Product-Second:
Each email told a story about the business, the process, or the customers. The jewelry became secondary to the narrative. For example, instead of "Our new emerald ring is now available," we wrote about the trip to source the emerald, the artisan who cut it, and why green stones have been symbols of new beginnings for centuries.
The One-Click Connection:
Every email ended with a simple, human call-to-action. Not "Shop now" but "If this resonates with you, I'd love to help you find the perfect piece. Just hit reply." We discovered that direct replies to newsletters created stronger customer relationships than any automated funnel.
Timing Based on Emotion, Not Promotion:
Instead of weekly newsletters, we sent emails when there was actually something meaningful to share. A new collaboration, a customer story, a behind-the-scenes moment. This irregular schedule made each email feel special rather than expected.
The transformation was immediate. Within three weeks, open rates jumped from 0.8% to 47%. But more importantly, the quality of engagement changed completely. Customers started replying to emails, sharing their own stories, and referring friends not just to products but to the email experience itself.
Personal Voice
Write like you're texting a friend, not broadcasting to thousands
Newsletter Template
Ditch the branded template for plain text that feels authentic
Story Integration
Every product mention should be wrapped in a bigger narrative
Direct Engagement
End with genuine invitations for conversation, not sales pressure
The results went beyond open rates. Within 8 weeks of implementing the personal note approach:
Open rates increased from 0.8% to 47% - a 58x improvement
Click-through rates rose to 23% - compared to 0.2% previously
Direct email replies increased by 340% - creating genuine conversations
Revenue per email sent doubled - despite less frequent sending
But the unexpected outcome was even more valuable: customers started treating the brand differently. They'd mention the emails when talking to friends, screenshot particularly meaningful messages, and several customers said they looked forward to hearing from the founder.
The business went from sending weekly newsletters that nobody read to sending occasional notes that customers actually anticipated. Email became a relationship-building tool rather than just a sales channel.
This approach worked so well that we implemented it across three other e-commerce clients with similar results. The personal note framework consistently outperformed traditional newsletter approaches.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the biggest lessons learned from transforming newsletter performance:
Authenticity beats polish - Customers can sense when you're being genuine versus following a marketing template
Stories sell better than features - People buy into narratives, not product specifications
Irregular beats predictable - When every email feels necessary rather than scheduled, engagement skyrockets
Conversation trumps broadcast - Two-way communication creates stronger customer relationships
Less can be more - Sending fewer, higher-quality emails often generates more revenue than frequent mediocre ones
Personal connection scales - Even large lists respond to personal communication when it feels genuine
Templates can kill personality - The more your emails look like everyone else's, the less impact they have
If I were starting over, I'd skip the traditional newsletter approach entirely and go straight to personal communication. The time invested in crafting authentic messages pays off exponentially compared to templated approaches.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to improve email engagement:
Share founder updates and behind-the-scenes development stories
Replace feature announcements with customer success narratives
Use plain text emails that feel like internal team communications
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores struggling with newsletter performance:
Tell the story behind products rather than just showcasing them
Write like you're updating friends about your business journey
Focus on building relationships over pushing immediate sales