Hey Modern Authors,

I need to confess something.

I kind of hate the phrase:
​“Join my newsletter.”

Every time I see it, part of me feels like we’ve been transported back to 1987 and someone is asking whether I’d like to be added to the company mailing list so they can send me the quarterly bulletin.

No offense to newsletters. I write one every week.

But nobody wakes up in the morning thinking:

Our inboxes are already disasters.

We have newsletters we don’t remember subscribing to. Podcasts queued for “later.” Articles saved somewhere we’ll never find again. AI can generate a 10-page explanation of almost anything before breakfast.

And yet Modern Authors still routinely put a box on their website that says:

JOIN MY NEWSLETTER

...and expect people to get excited.

Why?
What exactly am I joining?
What will happen after I give you my email?
What am I going to learn?
Why should I care?

Those are much better questions.

And they connect directly to what we’ve been building throughout this Modern Author Identity series.

We’ve worked on your positioning.
Your category.
Your framework.
Your assessment.
Your consulting.
Your signature talk.

All of those assets are designed to help someone discover your thinking.

But eventually that person says:

“I want more.”

What happens next?

For most authors, the answer is surprisingly weak.

They get whatever email happened to be scheduled that week.

That’s a problem.

Because getting someone's attention is difficult.

Wasting it is surprisingly easy.

Design a better path to welcome new people into the fold (and you'll be surprised how much better it feels and works).

Imagine Showing Up to a Party Where Everyone Knows Each Other

You walk into a gathering.

Everyone seems friendly.

But everyone also seems to know something you don’t.

They understand the inside jokes.
They recognize the names.
They know which conversations matter.
They use phrases you’ve never heard before.

Nobody is rude to you.

Nobody asks you to leave.

But nobody really helps you understand where you fit, either.

So you stand near the edge of the room for a while.
Smile politely.
Listen.

And eventually decide:

“This probably isn’t my community.”

I think that's exactly what happens to a shocking number of new subscribers.

Someone hears you on a podcast.
Reads your book.
Sees a LinkedIn post.
Attends your keynote.
A friend forwards them an article.

Something resonates enough that they raise their hand and say:

“Okay. I’m interested.”

And our response is:

“Great! Here's Issue #173 of my newsletter.”

Maybe it’s brilliant.

Maybe it’s Part Four of a series they didn’t know existed.

Maybe it’s an announcement about an event they don’t understand.

They've entered the room.

We just forgot to greet them.

A Subscription Is Not a Relationship

I think we've spent far too much time treating audience-building as a numbers game.

How many subscribers?
What's the open rate?
How fast is the list growing?

Those numbers matter.

But an email address is not a relationship.

A subscriber can spend six months on your list and still have no idea what you actually believe.

They may not understand the problem you solve.
They may not know your framework.
They may not have any idea where they should begin.

Technically, they're part of your audience.

Practically, they're strangers.

That's why I’ve stopped thinking about this as a welcome email sequence.

I like a different idea much better:

An educational welcome course.

A welcome email says:

An educational welcome course says:

That's a much more generous promise.

Don’t Introduce Your Newsletter. Teach Me Something.

This is another place where authors get weird.

Someone subscribes and immediately receives an email that reads like the author's Wikipedia page.

“I’m Eric. I’ve done this. I went here. I wrote these books. Here are my credentials. Here are all my links.”

Okay.

But I didn't subscribe because I wanted to memorize your résumé.

I subscribed because something about how you think interested me.

So introduce me to the thinking.

What do you believe that I might not believe yet?
What problem do you see differently?
What framework organizes your work?
What have you learned that could immediately help me?

I don’t want a biography.

I want orientation.

The goal isn't for someone to finish your welcome sequence saying:

“Eric has done a lot of stuff.”

It's for them to think:

“This guy sees my problem in a way that makes sense to me.”

That's when the relationship starts changing.

“Join My Newsletter” Is a Terrible Offer

Here's the bigger marketing problem.

“Join my newsletter” describes what you want.

You want a subscriber.

It doesn't describe what I get.

Compare:

Join my newsletter.

with:

Over the next five days, I'll show you how to turn your expertise into a book people actually recommend.

Now we're talking.

One asks me to join a database.

The other promises a transformation.

That's why I love email courses.

They turn an abstract relationship into a specific educational experience.

You don't need a 37-email funnel.

You don't need six months of automation.

You need a clear promise and a short path that delivers on it.

The Five-Email Welcome Course

If I were building this today, I'd keep it almost embarrassingly simple.

I'd create five emails that move someone through five shifts.

1. The Idea: Show them what you believe. What central idea organizes your work, and why did you come to believe it?
2. The Problem: Explain what most people get wrong. Challenge the conventional wisdom and help readers see their problem differently.
3. The Framework: Give them your model. This is where your thinking becomes memorable and useful.
4. The Example: Show the framework working in real life. Tell a story, use a client example, or share the experience that changed your own thinking.
5. The Next Step: Help them act. Maybe that's taking your assessment, reading the book, joining a workshop, replying to you, or simply trying one exercise.

That's it.

Five emails.

Not five advertisements.

Five lessons.

And notice what we're doing.

We're not asking:

“What should I send?”

We're asking:

“What should this person understand next?”

That's a much better design question.

Give Them an Early Win

This might be the most important part.

Don't make your welcome course purely intellectual.

Help somebody do something.
Clarify one sentence.
Take an assessment.
Make one decision.
Recognize one pattern.
Have one better conversation.
Experience one small improvement.

Because trust changes when someone moves from:

“This person knows something.”

to:

“This person helped me.”

That's a massive jump.

And you don't need to change someone's life in Email #3.

You just need to prove that engaging with your thinking creates movement.

That's why I think the best educational sequences feel generous.

You're not withholding the good stuff until somebody pays you.

You're demonstrating what your work feels like.

Your Keynote Creates Attention. Your Welcome Course Creates the Relationship.

This is where last week's discussion about speaking fits perfectly.

Imagine you give a keynote.

It works.

Someone walks out thinking:

“That was fascinating. I want more.”

Fantastic.

They scan the QR code.

And land on...

“Join my newsletter.”

Ugh.

We did all that work to create curiosity, then gave them the least interesting next step possible.

I'd rather say:

Now there's continuity.

The keynote opened the door.

The course continues the conversation.

And after those five emails, the person understands far more than they did walking out of the room.

That's how the pieces of a Modern Author platform should work together.

Your keynote isn't separate from your book.
Your book isn't separate from your assessment.
Your assessment isn't separate from your email.

They're all different ways for someone to experience the same body of thinking.

Curate. Don’t Dump.

One warning.

When authors hear “welcome course,” they immediately want to include everything they've ever created.

Their best 27 articles.
Eight podcast episodes.
Four PDFs.
A book excerpt.
Seven frameworks.

Please don't.

Orientation isn't an archive.

It's curation.

Imagine a great host greeting you at a party.

They don't walk you into the room and yell:

They say:

“Come here. There's someone I think you'll like.”

Then they make the introduction.

Do the same thing.

Give your new reader your greatest hits in the order that makes the most sense.

Not everything you've created.

The few things that help them understand you fastest.

That's generous.

More isn't always generous.

Sometimes more is homework.

People Stay Where They Understand How to Belong

This is ultimately bigger than email marketing.

It's about community.

A subscriber becomes more valuable to your work when they start recognizing the language.

They know your frameworks.
They understand your worldview.
They can anticipate what you'll probably say about a problem.

Eventually, they begin using the language themselves.

That's when you know something has changed.
They're no longer just receiving emails.
They're participating in the ideas.

And that's how audiences become communities.

Not because you sent more newsletters.

Because people increasingly understood what they were part of.

So, Kill the “Join My Newsletter” Box

Okay, maybe don't literally kill it.

But at least make it earn its space.

Ask yourself:

If someone discovers me today, what would make them genuinely excited to give me their email address?

Then ask the more important question:

What happens immediately after they do?

Don't send a thank-you note and hope they figure you out eventually.

Teach them.
Orient them.
Give them language.
Create an early win.
Show them where they fit.
And then invite them to continue.

Because getting the email address isn't the victory.

It's the invitation.

The relationship begins after they say yes.

And if you do that part well, your email list stops feeling like a list.

It starts feeling like people who actually understand what you're building.

Which, frankly, is a whole lot more useful than another 10,000 people who clicked “Join my newsletter” sometime in 2024 and haven't opened one since.

Happy writing, my friends.

And here's to welcoming people like we actually want them to stay.

Eric