Write Your Entire Weekly Email in 15 Minutes: My 3-Step Solopreneur Time Hack
You’re here reading this so I’m going to presume that you already know that you should be writing 1-2 email newsletters to your list every week. I’m also guessing that you’re finding that a struggle because you’re looking for ways to get your emails written and sent in less time!
That’s really common and you’re definitely not the first solopreneur service provider I’ve come across who feels they don’t have enough time for consistent email marketing. I totally get it because like you, I also have a full client roster and I run a membership and various group programmes, plus I have to fit all of this in during school hours!
The difference between us is that I learned how to prioritise my list building and emailing from day one. It’s easier to commit to writing an email quickly when you know there will be a direct return on investment (ROI) for your time, bringing in consistent leads and sales.
If you’re not quite there yet and would LOVE to get to the point where you can hit send on an email and make sales - you are in the right place.
One of the most effective ways to make email marketing fit into your busy schedule is to dramatically speed up the process. Instead of taking 1-2 hours to write, you can get a high-quality, high-converting newsletter drafted in as little as 15 minutes.
In this article, I am going to help you overcome writer’s block (a big time drain!) and give you the 3 steps to draft an entire email in 15 minutes without sounding "salesy”. I’ll also throw in tips on how to get clicks and replies so you can finally see traffic and conversions from your list - which will spur you on to write even more emails.
I should point out that the solopreneur email marketing system I will share with you isn’t theoretical. It’s based on the process I’ve honed in my one-woman business, which has seen me harness the power of email marketing to take my business to a 6-figure turnover working just 20 hours a week. It’s practical, proven, and based on years of testing and thousands of emails sent.
Why B2B Solopreneurs Must Choose Speed Over Perfection
The Cost of "Waiting for Inspiration"
I know it can feel like you need to get the email perfect before you hit send. Unfortunately, that quest for perfection is exactly what holds you back from being consistent. While certain elements must be right - like your subject line, links, spelling, and length - the email does not need to be the best email you’ve ever written. Good is enough when you are getting started.
When you procrastinate on hitting send, you often go for several weeks (or even months) without emailing. This lapse hurts your email deliverability. To ensure your emails land in the inbox instead of the dreaded spam/junk folder, you need to stick to a consistent sending schedule. Once a week is just fine, but when you drop off and don’t email for a while, resuming your schedule can signal "unusual activity" to providers like Gmail or Outlook, pushing your messages straight to spam.
To avoid landing in spam, you should aim for little and often over sending a long, perfect email once a month or less.
The Non-AI Difference: Why Storytelling is Your Friend
It's tempting to use AI to write an email quickly, and it’s true that ChatGPT can spit out a draft in seconds. The issue? You still need to invest time prompting the AI tool, and you must edit that draft heavily, or it will be super obvious that the words are not yours - they are your AI copywriter’s.
For a busy solopreneur, learning to use AI effectively is just another chore. Instead, I believe the best use of your time is to write a storytelling email. This does two powerful things for your business:
It Builds Trust and Uniqueness: It makes your emails sound like you (in a good way!) and helps you stand apart from competitors whose emails are increasingly generic and AI-generated. Storytelling builds the know, like, and trust factor better than any generic, factual email.
It’s Faster: You can speed up your email writing because you don’t need to fact-find or do research. You write from your lived experience and expertise.
Keep reading for the 3 steps to draft an entire storytelling email in 15 minutes.
Storytelling emails also build the know, like and trust factor better than generic, factual emails. Think about your own inbox experience. Whose emails do you remember?
The List Size Advantage
If you have a small email list (fewer than 500 subscribers), you are in the perfect position to connect deeply with your readers. You can focus on writing to your small but mighty list as a cozy audience of real people instead of thinking about sending the perfect broadcast to a huge, faceless audience of thousands.
In the 90s, I had penpals all over the world. These days I like to think of my email subscribers as penpals and I write to them with my life updates as well as what’s going on in business and sharing useful marketing tips with them.
This helps me to remember to connect with the individual reading the email instead of thinking of the whole list as an anonymous collective audience.
By engaging with your small email list, you will quickly notice who opens, clicks, and replies all the time. These people are your warmest leads and your super fans! They are showing you that there is potential in your small list to make sales - which is the ultimate motivation to prioritise that weekly email.
The Zero-Draft Rule: Eliminate Writer's Block Instantly
If you’ve ever sat staring at a blank screen wondering what to write about, this is for you! Sitting down to write an email newsletter without having an idea of what to write about or why now is the perfect time to write on this topic leads to wasted time and an email which is potentially off-topic.
Here’s exactly what you need to do to choose your email topic quickly and feel 100% confident that you are writing about something that is of interest to your ideal client.
The Solopreneur's Email Copy Goldmine: Your VoC Document.
Before setting up this business, I was head of marketing for an international software company and I would never dream of having the team send out an email without a clear marketing brief. As a solopreneur or freelancer writing emails to your small list, you still need that clarity: You must be clear on WHY you are writing on this topic today.
Now, I know you are already time-poor, so I’m not going to suggest you write a formal brief. But I am going to give you a quick task that achieves the same goal and makes your email writing even faster.
Eliminate Writer's Block with Your VoC Document
You'll need to create a "Voice of Customer" (VoC) data document. This isn't as fancy or complicated as it sounds! It's simply a dynamic list of everything your ideal clients are telling you about their pain points, blocks, and desires. My own VoC document is a simple Google Doc filled with bullet points copied directly from market research calls, sales calls, and anything I’ve seen people sharing online about the problems that I solve.
This document is your email copy goldmine. You can - and should - add to it every time you hear a snippet of feedback or a comment that gives you an example of how your ideal client talks about the problem you solve.
Your Fastest Path to a Topic
To help get an email newsletter written in as little as 15 minutes, you can let this VoC document show you the topic you are going to write about. The struggles and dreams of your ideal client are literally there in black and white for you to choose from.
When it’s time to write your email quickly, you just:
Open the doc.
Choose a topic you haven't covered recently.
Write your storytelling email using their exact language.
If it helps, you can highlight or tick off the topic once you’ve covered it, perhaps with the date alongside, so you can easily track your communication and ensure you always have a fresh idea ready for your next weekly send.
The 3-Step, 15-Minute Drafting Hack
Once you’ve selected your topic for your email, get your document open and your timer ready - it’s time to speed write!
Step 1: Define the Marketing Objective (2 Minutes)
Every email you write needs an objective. This could be to "make a sale" or simply to "build know, like, and trust." Decide the purpose of your email and work backward from that end goal.
Define what the next step will be once your subscriber finishes reading. What do you want them to do next? It could be to consume more of your content or to visit a sales page. Decide on this call-to-action (CTA) now, before you start writing.
High-Converting, Non-Salesy CTA Choices:
The Soft Sell: Invite your subscribers to take a step closer to exploring working with you by sharing your services page or call booking form. Think strategically; this works best after a short series of warm-up emails.
The Engagement Booster:
Ask a question with an easy YES/NO reply. This is a clever way to build rapport with your subscribers while simultaneously ensuring your future emails land directly in their inbox. When a subscriber replies, it shows their mailbox provider that your emails are a priority. To get high engagement, ask a simple question that doesn’t require any soul-searching. Example: "Do you have an email list set up? Reply with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to let me know."
How this 2 minute prep time cuts down writing time: If you start writing the email knowing the ending (the CTA you will use), you have a roadmap to follow instead of winging it. Your goal is to get there in the shortest word count possible! Having an end goal for the email also focuses your writing, preventing you from going off on tangents and accidentally steering people away from buying from you.
Step 2: Plug in the Story & Draft Imperfectly (8 Minutes)
Now, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and focus on getting the story out. Do not pause to edit!
Outline your storytelling email into 4 parts:
The Hook (the problem)
The Story (what happened)
The Lesson (the moral of the story/your expert insight)
The call-to-action (next step)
To make your emails valuable as well as highly readable, you need to share a clear lesson. This could be sharing tips or advice based on the experience you just shared so your reader can avoid making the same mistake or immediately apply the knowledge to their own situation.
Gaining an Advantage with an email template
To ensure your 8 minutes is spent efficiently, I recommend starting with one of the 3 Core Storytelling Email Structures that Convert Clients:
The "Client Transformation" Story Template (How to prove your value.)
The "I Was There" Story Formula (How to build trust with a personal anecdote.)
The "Common Mistake" Story (How to spark replies and engagement.)
These emails makes 8 minutes of writing time nearly foolproof ensuring the core structure is always high-converting. You can see the outlines of each of the 3 emails in this blog post.
Step 3: Format for Conversions & Ship (5 Minutes)
Once you’ve got the words down on the page, it’s time to go back and tidy up the email so that it’s ready to go. Note: I did not say the email has to be "perfect." Done is better than perfect for your weekly email newsletters.
This checklist will help you write an email quickly while maximising readability:
The 500-Word Rule: Do a word count and cut the email down to under 500 words. Copy/paste the email into the Hemingway Editor here if you are worried about some of your sentences being too long.
Format for mobile readers: Most people will be reading your email on their phone. Split your paragraphs so they don’t fill the entire screen with text. Use line breaks and white space so the email looks light and easy to read. Avoid the "wall of text" that causes readers to unsubscribe.
The Subject Line Trick: Write the subject line LAST and keep it under 40 characters for maximum mobile open rates. Skim through your finished email and jot down any interesting or unusual phrases which could become the subject line. Your subject line needs to evoke curiosity to get the open
Your Content Funnel: Stop Trading Time for Leads
We've just covered how you, as a busy solopreneur, can use the 15-Minute Email Drafting Hack to be consistent with your weekly emails. This consistency with your email marketing is going to be key on your journey to growing your business efficiently. You’ll reap the rewards from your list over the long-term without the need to waste hours of time and energy on social media.
But a question might be buzzing in your head right now: "This method for writing newsletters is great, but how do I grow my small list so I have more people to send these emails to?"
I’ve got you covered! Keep reading…
Solve the List Growth Problem (Without Ads)
You can't keep selling to a list that isn't growing because the list will burn out and people will unsubscribe. If you have been struggling to grow your email list, the good news is that you absolutely do not need to rely on expensive ads to gain traction with this.
There are many ways you can grow your email list for free and I’ve put my favourite list-building strategies into a handy Google Doc for you:
👉 Download the Free Google Doc containing 25 Ways to Grow Your Email List for Free
This is the fastest way to get new email subscribers without spending money on ads. This is exactly how I grew my email list for the first 4 years in business when I had zero budget for list building.
The Final Time Saver: Eliminate Drafting Time Forever
You now have the system (the 15-minute hack) and the strategy (storytelling) to write a high-converting email every week.
But what if you could cut the 8 minutes spent on Step 2 (Drafting Imperfectly) down to just 2 minutes?
The 15-Minute Drafting Hack works best when you don't have to invent the story structure from scratch. That's why I built The Spark, my Email Template Club.
For the cost of a takeaway meal (£25), you get 90 fill-in-the-blank email templates that apply the storytelling formula directly to your business. You simply:
Pick a template based on your VoC topic.
Plug in your experience by filling in the blanks.
Hit send.
You get the marketing strategy and the copy, making your weekly email effort nearly automatic. Check out The Spark emails templates here.