I was sitting at my desk working on my article, and it was not going well.

For some reason, I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe the story I chose is not quite right. Questions of doubt filled my mind:

• What if it’s not entertaining enough, or interesting enough?

• What if nobody cares…?

• What if I’m just telling a story for the sake of telling a story?

I shook my head in an attempt to get those thoughts out of it. My fingers back on the keyboard… Come on now.

I closed my eyes, and for the next few breaths I sat completely still – fingers at the ready, and yet I was not able to press a single key. Talking about writer’s block…

I hissed under my breath, frustration making my palms sweaty.

You’ve got this! I said out loud with a frown…

I decided to solve my problem by using a different arc, but after a few minutes of re-writing, I realised that it’s not helping – it was making the story worse, if I’m honest.

Now I had an even bigger problem. I wasn’t sure if the story was right and if the way I was writing it was right, either. Perfect!

This was getting ridiculous, but I pressed on.

Back to the original story structure…

• I re-wrote the lead… no improvement.

• I made the tone slightly lighter… still wasn’t right.

• I looked through all the books that have gotten me out of a story mess before, but all my bookmarks seemed to be about writing more than about selecting…

Perhaps I couldn’t shake that feeling for a reason?

Perhaps it wasn’t the right story to tell after all…?

I stood up and started pacing the room, as if being physically further away from the keyboard would make my problem somehow smaller.

Then, I had an idea!

In a desperate and final push to figure this out, I turned to YouTube. I thought, if I watch a few stories, I’ll be able to make up my mind if my story was worth all that effort.

Typical of my experience with YouTube, I went down the rabbit hole watching some incredible stories for at least 40 minutes. I was so immersed in the world the storytellers were painting with their words that I completely forgot about my problem. I wasn’t thinking about my story – I was thinking about theirs…

So, here I was, almost an hour later, feeling inspired and energised by the wonderful things I’ve just heard, but still not sure what to do about my story.

As luck had it, the last video I clicked on was from Matthew Dicks – whose books on storytelling I read and re-read several times – and in his video he said something that dispelled the doubt I felt in seconds:

“If you’ve got something in your heart and your mind that means something to you, that touches your heart and mind in a meaningful way, I promise you, other people will want to hear it too.”

I closed the tab, leaned back in my chair and stayed still for a good minute. Then, I breathed out the longest sigh of relief, followed by a giggle – the kind of giggle that sneaks up on you after a ‘casual’ game of Monopoly turns into a full-blown battle, but somewhere in the chaos of hotel disputes you realise you’ve actually won…

Another problem solved – I didn’t quit. And now, I finally know what to do with my story.

I sat back up, opened my draft and clicked ‘save’.

It is the right story to tell, I’m just not ready to tell it today…

If, like me, you sometimes find yourself not sure whether you picked the right story, I hope this one helps you decide.

Until next time,

Dot

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And honestly? They’re right.

You absolutely should open a doc — call it “Story Bank” if you’re not feeling creative that day — and spend five to ten minutes writing down a story each day.

Do this. It’s genuinely good advice.

Telling stories will make you more charismatic, more memorable, and more entertaining. People will like listening to you (which, in a world full of boring repeated content, is saying something).

And it’ll help you with customer retention, because repeat customers cost less than new ones — yes, thank you, we’ve all sat through that slide in someone’s webinar.

Okay? Fine.

Agreed.

Filed away with all the other marketing truisms.

But – oh, come on. You knew I was going to say it.

A story bank is like a drawer full of loose Lego bricks. Each brick is perfectly good on its own, but a drawer full of bricks is just… a drawer full of bricks. The kind you inevitably step on barefoot first thing in the morning, which is a pain so specific it should have its own support group.

So let’s slow down and ask the real question:

What are you actually trying to build?

If the goal is just entertainment — being charismatic, being liked, being the guy at the networking event with a great anecdote for every conversation — then yes, the story bank is enough, and this is still a great way to use stories (I use them this way too).

If that’s you…

Stop reading.

Go build the file.

You’re done.

Enjoy it.

Send me a postcard.

But if you want something bigger — a brand that people trust, that makes competitors stare at the ceiling at 2 am, wondering how on earth we're going to compete with that — then a pile of unconnected stories won’t get you there.

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The missing link to your story bank

To truly harness the power of brand storytelling, you need more, and it’s worth doing for one very good reason. (Okay, maybe three reasons.)

• Prices, you can undercut.

• Features you can clone in a product update.

• Slogans, you can practically steal outright (we’ve all seen it happen).

But nobody can steal your story. It’s the one genuinely defensible thing you’ve got. Which is exactly why it’s worth doing properly, and not just… collecting loose Lego bricks.

The twist most brands miss, is that having a good story bank isn’t actually the hard part. Plenty of founders can tell you, over a coffee, exactly why they started their business and what they were trying to prove, and the transformation their customers experience.

The hard part is telling these same stories in different places without sounding like a broken record or five different companies.

You know the type: the website promises a slow, thoughtful transformation — “we walk with you every step of the way”— the Instagram is all urgency and hustle, hinting you’ll be a changed person by Thursday, and the newsletter — several emails deep — has somehow pivoted into selling you a completely unrelated bundle deal.

Which movie is the prospect watching exactly?

You see, having cool stories is one thing, but you also need to know how to connect them.

This is especially true if you’re selling something premium, high-consideration, or high-ticket. Nobody buys that sort of stuff on impulse. Buyers circle these decisions — reading the website today, opening an email next week, watching a founder’s interview a month later, then finally getting on a call or clicking “buy.” If the story doesn’t progress every time, neither does their confidence in their decision.

For these buyers, consistency of meaning matters — but so does variety of delivery. They need to encounter the same brand truth again and again, but in different forms, without ever feeling like they’re being sold the same pitch twice.

An email is not a website. A website is not an Instagram caption. An Instagram caption is definitely not a VSL. Copy-pasting the same version of the “About Us” story into every channel won’t convince anyone of anything.

Narrative architecture to hold the stories together

For this next part — before we get to channels — I want you to think less like a marketer and more like Tolkien.

Yes, we’re talking Lord of the Rings. Stay with me — this is either the best marketing analogy you’ll read this month, or the moment you close the tab. Fifty-fifty, really.

I want you to still think of your story bank as that same drawer of Lego — yes, the one that’s been plotting against your feet — but instead of grabbing a brick at random, you’re going to choose specific ones to build an actual world.

Every story has a job to do inside the bigger one.

Back to Tolkien to show you what I mean…

Middle-earth works as a setting because it’s a whole, coherent world — its own geography, history, languages, and rules — long before any particular story gets told inside it. The Shire, Rivendell, and Mordor are wildly different in tone and detail, but they’re never inconsistent with each other. They’re all governed by the same underlying logic.

Your brand needs the same thing: a whole world, not just a single message. Each marketing channel, then, is less like a repeated advertisement and more like a chapter, or a map fragment. Some channels introduce a region of the world the audience hasn’t seen yet. Others go back and describe an existing region in far more detail. Neither is more important than the other.

Whatever your underlying story is. The thing that made everything into the company and what you offer today, the world needs to be felt in every channel and every smaller story, but without being repeated over and over.

What you want to avoid is showing the same map fragment everywhere, or worse, drawing a slightly different map each time.

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Marketing channels and the stories each one tells

The added challenge is that these days companies have more than one touchpoint with the prospect. There is, of course, the website, and then the email list. Let’s not forget about the whole sea of social media channels, too.

How do they all fit into the story-world you create?

Let’s look at each channel one at a time.

Social Media: A peek into your world

Social is a glance, not a sit-down. Nobody will read your full origin story in a caption — but they will absorb it in fragments over weeks of scrolling.

In world-building terms, social is mostly an introduction: a quick glimpse of something the audience hasn’t fully explored yet, enough to make them want the map.

Think of it as the Shire on a normal afternoon — A single Instagram post doesn’t need to explain the entire quest; it just needs one vivid, specific detail (a doorway, a letter, or something stirring in the shadows) that makes someone pause mid-scroll and think “wait, what’s that about?”

On a more authority-driven platform like LinkedIn or YouTube, you can go a layer deeper — closer to a council scene than a passing glimpse. This is where you start explaining why the journey matters, not just teasing that one exists.

Email and Nurture: Slow-Burn Storytelling

Email is the one channel where someone has actually invited you into their inbox. That earns you room to slow down, and to properly detail territory that social only hinted at.

This could be letting your audience get to know the main characters of the story a bit better, or your equivalent of the Fellowship setting out from Rivendell: a long journey told in stages, not all at once.

Email one might linger in familiar, comfortable territory, gently signalling that something is about to change. A few emails later, you’re deep in the harder middle chapters — the Mines of Moria stretch, so to speak — where the stakes and detail both increase. By the final email in a sequence, you’ve earned the right to arrive somewhere that feels like a payoff, because the reader has walked the whole path with you rather than being teleported straight to the ending.

Website and Sales Pages: The Story as Structural Spine

If email is a slow reveal, the website is the point of reference — the place people return to, sometimes several times, before deciding. This is the map itself: the one place where every region gets shown in relation to every other, the way the front pages of the books lay out all of Middle-earth in one view before a single step is taken.

The About page is where the full legend can be told. The way Elrond’s council finally lays out the full history of the ring for anyone patient enough to sit through it.

A sales or product page borrows the same structure but compresses it into something more functional: establish the world as it currently stands (the problem), introduce the turning point (your answer to it), and describe the world as it could be (the transformation on offer) — all without needing the reader to have read every appendix first.

Sales Conversations and Live Touchpoints

For anything high-consideration, the story doesn’t stop once someone leaves the website — it continues into calls and consultations.

This is where the world gets walked through in person — less like reading the map, more like having Gandalf beside you explaining which path to take and why, adjusted in real time to whatever the traveller is actually worried about. (and just so we’re clear, Gandalf never had to say “does that make sense so far?” four times on a Zoom call…)

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Golden threads that build trust

Why is it important to build a world of stories?

The short answer is: because trust and coherence are close cousins, and they dictate the strength of your positioning.

Disjointed brand stories are confusing, and that makes them forgettable. If the website says one thing, the email sounds like a different company wrote it, and the Instagram reels show something else entirely, premium buyers in particular start to wonder what else is inconsistent.

And the result is…

They take longer to decide to buy, and that is the last thing anyone needs.

How to start with this?

Now, what if you read all this, had a good look at your stories, and found that perhaps your approach has been more unstructured than what you would have liked…

Don’t worry. We’ve all done it, myself included.

Here is a couple of things you can do to turn it all around and start building your story-world:

1. Periodically map every active touchpoint — website, email sequences, top-performing social posts, sales scripts, and so on — against your core story that shaped your world.

2. Ask one question of each: Does this still sound like us, and who we are? Would the stories we tell here help a prospect enter our world with ease?

3. If the answer is along the lines of, ‘no, it has drifted a fair bit’ — a common fate of “quick” emails written under deadline pressure — it doesn’t need a rewrite straight away.

4. Highlight how far this particular channel is off the mark and build an action plan to slowly get it back on track.

What you’re looking to find and build into your stories are golden threads that make all the pieces fall into place.

Nobody reads your About page, then your welcome email, then your Reel, and thinks “ah yes, structural narrative coherence.” What they feel, without being able to name it, is that they already know you. And that feeling is what makes them trust you enough to stop circling and actually buy.

That’s the whole trick.

One world, full of stories linked together, with your brand at the centre of it all.

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Want more?

If this was useful and you’d like more of this kind of content — how-to implementations, frameworks, templates, or ways to track results (all with some great stories) — drop a comment or send me a message to let me know.

I’ve got a stack of these (yes, in a Story Bank, obviously) and I’m happy to keep sharing them if people want more.

If you enjoyed this, you might also like…

I have a feeling you’ll relate to the story I’m about to tell you.

This happens to me a lot, so I reckon I’m not the only one who suffers through this.

It was one of those mornings when I opened my emails and found 437 unread…

Sigh…

But it’s got to be done, so with a freshly brewed tea next to me, I set off on my quest to have ZERO unread emails by the end of — realistically — the next hour.

My index finger was hovering over the ‘delete’ button. Anything remotely skippable got cut.

I must admit I was quite ruthless.

I was making good progress — the first 100 emails sorted within fifteen minutes, half a cup of tea gone too.

Email number 101 caught my eye, but for entirely the wrong reasons.

Subject line: New product launch. Pre-header: We are pleased to announce our new product…

WOW. How… official.

It got better (I mean worse). It was full of sentences like these:

• “Designed to meet the needs of…”

• “Addresses a critical market need…”

• “We believe this will fundamentally change…”

You know what it reminded me of?

A press release.

Someone put a press release into an email and called it a newsletter.

(I see you, and I see your CEO quote, too.)

In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons newsletters underperform. Not list size, not send frequency (though both matter). It’s how the thing was written.

The tell-tale signs of a press-release newsletter:

• Passive language: “it is designed” rather than “we designed it”

• Distance: “the market” rather than “you”

• Formality: “our CEO” rather than “I”

• Superlatives: “unprecedented” rather than “unique”

• No real emotion: “pleased” rather than “thrilled” or “worked hard”

None of this is wrong for a press release — it’s broadcasting from one to many, so a bit of formality is expected.

But in your inbox? Not so much. Today, email is personal; a conversation, not a bulletin.

I understand where the temptation to use the ‘press release’ style in emails comes from.

Depending on the industry you are in, the law and regulations might make you cautious with how you phrase certain claims and promises, and corporate email writing helps you adhere to the rules.

Or perhaps it’s simply a corporate habit that stayed with you. In the ‘olden days’, formality was part of the image, projecting authority and hierarchy was expected – admired even. Big words that sounded impressive were the style many had used. In 2026, however, things have changed.

So what’s the alternative?

Story-led newsletters, of course, but before you roll your eyes — hear me out.

A story-led newsletter isn’t just “the opposite” of everything we just listed for the press-release-style email — though, conveniently, it does undo each point one by one.

Storytelling – as the name implies – involves telling stories, but they don’t have to be real stories, or very long ones. It can be a short anecdote or a completely made-up scenario that helps the reader ‘see’ what you mean.

It also doesn’t have to be your story. It can be of your customers, business partners or employees. You can have multiple stories (though, personally, I don’t recommend it).

And finally, the story doesn’t have to be at the beginning of your newsletter. You can have a story in the middle, or even at the very end.

In a nutshell, it’s one idea, told through (or illustrated by) a story, one CTA, no “in other news” section competing for attention at the bottom.

Let me show you the difference.

Same product launch, told two ways.

Version one — the press release:

Etc., etc. — you get the idea.

Version two — the story:

Pause for a second and consider the difference. Which version makes you want to check out the website? Which one tells you more about what this company is actually like? And last question to ponder over: which one has more personality and is more memorable?

The part that’s easy to miss is that the story-led version is about the team — their late nights, their coffee gone cold, their relief when the results loaded — and yet it’s somehow more focused on the reader. That’s the whole trick.

The story isn’t really about the team patting themselves on the back; it’s proof, lived out in real time, of exactly how much they cared about getting this right. The reader doesn’t walk away thinking “wow, what a dedicated team,” they walk away thinking “if they cared that much before I even bought it, imagine what I’m actually getting.” The story does the one thing a bullet-pointed feature list never could: it lets the reader feel the quality, instead of just being told about it.

And with that, I rest my case.

How to actually start doing this

Okay — so you’re sold on the idea. Where do you actually start?

Here’s my honest advice.

1. Don’t blow the whole thing up overnight.

As much as I’d love to tell you to rip up your newsletter format and rebuild it from scratch tomorrow, your deliverability won’t thank you for it. Email providers are funny about sudden change. If you go from press-release-stiff to full-blown story overnight, you risk looking like “suspicious activity” to the very algorithms deciding whether your emails deliver to the inbox or the spam folder. So, slow and steady wins this one.

2. Start small.

Pick one send. Trim it to a single CTA. Open with a short story or a relatable moment instead of a headline. Ease the tone down a notch, so it reads a little more like you talking, and a little less like a company announcing something. Small, deliberate tweaks — nothing your subscribers (or your email provider) will find jarring.

3. Test it.

Run that softened version against your usual format with a smaller segment of your list — an A/B test, in the simplest sense — and actually look at what happens. Did open rates hold up? Did people click the CTA you had? Did anyone reply (always a good sign. Replies usually mean someone felt something)? You’re not proving the theory with these tests. You run them to check you got the execution right, too, before you roll it out to everyone.

Small steps, tested properly, and you’ll have your answer, without putting your whole list or your sender reputation on the line to get it.

(And if “just write a story” feels easier said than done at 9 pm on a weekday, staring at a blank draft — that’s completely normal. Storytelling is its own skill; skills feel clumsy before they feel natural. If the blank page is winning, send me a message. Tell me what happened this month, and I’ll help you find the story in it.)

P.S.

Want the long version — with the full breakdown of press-release tell-signs, the stats behind why this matters, and the FAQ? Here’s the full guide.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like…

It was a random day of the week, and it happened not that long ago. This is as precise as I’m going to be, because these details are not important to the story I’m about to tell you.

What you do need to know is that I have just typed in my email address to the ‘sign up to my newsletter’ field, clicked ‘submit’, and was preparing to roll my eyes at what will happen next.

Usually one of two things happens:

1. Nothing at all – which is super annoying, but more on that in a sec.

2. I get a welcome email – and that is, often, just as infuriating as point 1, but for completely different reasons.

Not getting a welcome email is disappointing because I’ve just expressed interest in interacting more with this person (or a brand), and all I got in return was being left at the entrance to a party with no host to point me toward something that would interest me most.

All I got was ‘thanks for coming’, but now it was up to me to figure out exactly what this party was, who was here, and so on. First impression? Like I said – annoying.

Not to mention a wasted opportunity, since the welcome email open rates are among the highest of all emails (an impressive 83%). That’s not a lever you want to leave on the table…

Option 2 is worse.

I get an email, but it’s like being greeted by a host who won’t stop talking.

• If you’re interested in this, here’s the link

• If you want to find out more, click here.

• To see the latest offer, it’s this link.

• To learn more about me, this link

Ironically, the most tempting link is the ‘I changed my mind’ link that unsubscribes.

I don’t get it. Why would you give me so many options? The website had lots of options to ‘browse’ through and figure out if this is something that would interest me. I picked the newsletter option, and all I get is more of the same – options… again!

And the cruel irony is, every option added to an email is a micro-decision handed back to the reader. By the fifth one, the brain does what brains do when overwhelmed — it picks none of them. More choice, less action. The opposite of what anyone wanted.

Here’s what I think happens. The sender genuinely wants to be helpful. They’re thinking: the more I give them, the more value they’ll see. But there’s a difference between a gift and a pile of things left on the doorstep.

It’s as if the host wants to have all the conversations with me all in one go, but I’m not ready to see their childhood photos yet… I’ve only just arrived…

The welcome email really has one job – to welcome.

That’s it.

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I don’t want to know about what you sell, how it all started, or what others thought about working with you… At least not yet.

All it really needs to say is:

‘Welcome! I am so absolutely thrilled you could make it tonight. Come on in, let’s get your coat. Before you grab a drink, I have to introduce you to Sarah…’

Notice what that doesn’t include. There is no mention of the host’s credentials, no tour of the entire house before you’ve taken your coat off. There is no agenda for the evening slipped into your hand, nor any mention of the charity donation box they feel strongly about.

It’s simply a welcome.

Because when someone has just handed over their email address — and let’s not forget that in 2026, that is something — they’re asking one question, and one question only: did I make the right call?

That’s the only thing worth answering in the welcome email. Make them feel that what will be sent to their inbox will be worth the space it takes up. That the promise made on the sign-up page — whatever it was — is going to be kept.

Then, and only then, suggest ONE thing – what they should do next. A next step so obvious and so easy that saying no to it would feel almost rude. That might be: ‘reply to this email with one word that describes why you signed up,’ or ‘read this one piece that explains exactly what we’re about.’

This all sounds almost insultingly simple. And yet the vast majority of welcome emails don’t do it. They skip straight past the welcome and into the pitch, the portfolio, the testimonials…

I get it. We are here to do business, so you do want to tell me about the offers, products, and services that everyone loves you for.

But does it have to be in the welcome email, though?

You can do something else instead.

Send a series of emails.

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Yes! Precisely. You need a welcome sequence.

Because as we have just discussed, there is a limit to how much one email can do. Especially at the very beginning of a new acquaintance.

One email cannot create the connection that only time makes possible. And yet, bless them, so many senders write their welcome email as if it can. As if twelve links will somehow create more value than one thoughtful direction. A volume of options is not a substitute for quality of intention. It never has been, and it’s not going to start now.

Remember also, I just signed up to receive your emails, so let me receive a few first.

A sequence is like a conversation that unfolds at a pace the reader can actually keep up with. Like greeting someone at the door, then catching them at the bar, crossing paths in the hallway, and finding five minutes together before the evening ends.

Each interaction is short. Each one leaves your reader feeling slightly more like they know you.

This works because of one simple truth about us humans: we need more than one interaction to warm to people. Each exchange earns a little more attention, a little more trust, a little more of the feeling that this person is worth listening to.

By the end of a sequence, they know how you see the world, and ‘I feel like I know you’ is the closest thing to a purchase trigger that exists in this business…

So…

Which version of the story does your ‘sign up to my newsletter’ tell?

Are your subscribers coming to the party not knowing what is going on, or are you talking at them for 10 minutes before they even came through the door?

Or perhaps you already have a sequence running, and you’ve been nodding along smugly since paragraph three — in which case, you may carry on.

An egg-blue box with small, elegant writing right in the middle of the lid. White satin ribbon is elegantly wrapped around it, unfurling with a single pull. In fact, client advisors know exactly how to tie it so the experience of opening the box is simply perfect.

This particular box has become as iconic as the diamonds it often holds:

“[Charles Lewis] Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy for any price; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes.” – The New York Evening Sun, 1889.

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All of this can seem rather over-the-top.

It isn’t.

Not in the world of luxury business.

This is the world of high-class service. Nothing is left to chance. Everything is intentionally designed, prepared and made. Every detail matters. Every interaction has to carry a specific feel, creating a perfect experience every time.

The box is an important element of this. Before you’ve seen what’s inside, you already know it’s worth something. The box told you. The ribbon confirmed it. Someone thought carefully about this moment and made sure that every aspect of it contributes to the joy of receiving a gift.

Pedantic? Not in the slightest.

For premium service, this is a must-have. It takes a certain level of obsession and dedication to build a luxury brand. Though it’s not about perfection as much as it is about intention. That’s what sets luxury brands apart. They thought of the smallest detail, and designed it (whether in physical form, in the service provided, or in the impression it leaves on a client) to match everything else.

Almost everything else…

Ironically, the part that is often overlooked in the luxury market is also a box, commonly at the bottom of the web page with the ‘Subscribe to our Newsletter’ title right above it.

It’s just an email sign-up, you could think.

It’s not.

It’s the beginning of another experience with the brand.

Consider the following scenario with me for a second.

You visit a brand’s website. It loads almost instantly, graphics are perfect, design is slick, you don’t have to look for anything – all the information is in the right place. The copy reads beautifully. It even reminds you of your interaction with a client representative in the store. Everything works, and every detail simply fits. You feel looked after, noticed, and cared for, as if your digital presence is just as important as your in-store one.

So you fill out the ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ box, and you’re expecting this excellence to follow you home and be sent to your inbox every week.

But then, the message after you hit submit says: ‘Thanks, you’ve been added to the list.’

You’re a little taken aback, but you head over to your email, anticipating that the excellence will resume shortly.

Except, it doesn’t. You check your inbox, and there is nothing there.

ZERO email.

You have even checked the spam folder, just to be sure – nothing.

Like the interaction you just had never happened. Like the information you just provided didn’t matter.

It’s as though the detail in the email is not as important as the impeccably handmade items you were just browsing. Without it, this aura of premium service disappeared without a trace.

The welcome email isn’t a formality. It’s the most-read email a brand will ever send. The open rate of a welcome email tends to hover around 83%, which makes treating them as an afterthought a particularly elegant form of self-sabotage.

It’s like Tiffany putting their stunning Tiffany Knot pendant in a clear plastic bag instead of their signature box.

For luxury brands, even a small lapse like this can plant the idea that the consistency and care promised elsewhere were just for show, and once that seed is sown, it is hard to undo. The magic and trust that took years to build can be undone by one neglected detail.

Email is that important detail.

Its design matters, cadence matters, tone matters, word choice matters.

It’s the difference between saying…

• ‘Thanks for subscribing’ and ‘We are delighted to welcome you to our newsletter’.

• ‘Don’t miss out’ and ‘This one deserves a place in your jewellery box.’

• ‘Don’t want to receive our emails? Unsubscribe’ and ‘Should we ever stop earning your attention, please unsubscribe’.

• ‘Last chance — sale ends midnight’ and ‘A few pieces remain. We wanted you to know before they’re gone.’

• ‘We haven’t seen you in a while — here’s 10% off to come back.’ and ‘It’s been a little while. We’ve kept a few things aside that feel perfect.’

• Or even ‘T&C’s apply’ and ‘Please take a moment to review our Policy’.

One feels like a tick-box and a generic update; the other, like a personal note and tailored service.

Tiffany recognises this.

This is how they currently invite visitors to subscribe:

This is how they set themselves apart. With every aspect of their service simply perfect.

Email neglect can get particularly costly for luxury brands. Luxury buyers purchase just 1.2 to 1.8 times a year, which means every touchpoint carries more weight precisely because there are fewer of them. Each email is not one of many – it is one of a handful.

An email is also the most direct way to a person who just spent £3,000, and to continue the experience beyond what they found in the box. That connection is how they come back, and from a brand perspective, it’s worth it. Luxury customers have the highest lifetime value of any retail category (between £1,400 and £1,900 per customer), and improving customer experience can increase lifetime value by up to 2.3 times. Plus, it costs up to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Every word and phrase that doesn’t reflect the high standards the brand strives to uphold everywhere else makes the email experience feel like an afterthought. And with a repeat purchase rate of less than 10%, that’s an expensive afterthought to have…

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If you work in marketing – or perhaps have a brand of your own – take a moment to think about the emails you send out.

Do you have the ‘1837 Blue’ that looks the same everywhere it appears, because someone (or you) decided it mattered enough to make it so?

Or do you have a subject line in default Arial and an unsubscribe link that sounds vaguely dismissive?

Are you putting diamonds in an iconic box or in a plastic bag…?

If this resonated…

…and you’re wondering whether your newsletter or welcome sequence is doing justice to everything else you’ve worked to build – let’s talk.

No obligation, just a conversation about whether your emails are earning their place. Send me a message.

And sure, it’s an important story to tell. It helps prospects and customers get a sense of what drives the company, the motivation that led to it being formed, and answers the general ‘who are these lot?’ question.

But using only the origin story is treating the storytelling as a nice-to-have add-on that lives on the About us page or on an introduction slide in the pitch deck.

Storytelling is a powerful competitive edge that not many companies recognise. Fortunately, some do. These companies understand that there are many other stories hidden in a business that are worth telling, and they use them the way others use data – as proof of character and exceptional craft. That distinction sets them apart as a brand people remember and talk about.

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In this issue…

I am going to show you a company that has understood this better than almost anyone else in their market.

Let me introduce you to Bremont, a UK company that doesn’t have a 100-year-old history, yet they compete – effectively – with some of the most prestigious brands in the luxury watch market.

Consider what they are up against. Rolex has been making watches since 1905, Omega since 1848, Breitling since 1884. Then there is Zenith (1865) and IWC (1868) too. These brands have heritage you cannot buy, century-old reputations, and generations of loyal customers.

When a new British watchmaker turned up in the early 2000s and said “we’d like a seat at that table, thank you very much”, the industry’s response was essentially: good luck with that.

And yet here Bremont are selling watches from £3,000 to well over £10,000. Stocked alongside those very Swiss giants.

How?

You guessed it – by telling remarkable stories.

Bremont’s storytelling

Richard Palk, who previously led Bremont’s Head of Customer Marketing, is refreshingly direct about why storytelling matters:

[Storytelling is] absolutely essential! With luxury brands in general, and with luxury timepieces in particular, the end customer’s purchase decision is generally very considered, with brand truths and authenticity being critical top-of-mind drivers, as well as product truths and excellence.

Bremont weaves in their story even into your experience of visiting their headquarters. The Wing is a two-storey structure styled after an aircraft wing, making the connection to aviation evident. Inside, vintage touches, watch displays, an actual Martin-Baker ejection seat (more on that later), and a production floor with sample components to illustrate how the company designs and builds its timepieces…

But there is something else.

Something far better.

The HQ tells you who Bremont are, but what comes next tells you far more about what they stand for and why that matters.

Every single watch they make carries its own story. And I don’t mean a marketing story – a real one.

The story of the Martin-Baker watch

The Martin-Baker series has an extraordinary story of the rigorous testing the watches underwent to ‘survive’ an ejection-seat escape. The story takes you through all the design alterations and considerations that went into building the watch with each testing failure. You can even watch the ejection test on YouTube!

But here is the part of this story that will stop you in your tracks.

There is a version of this watch – the MBI – that you simply cannot buy. You cannot buy it because Bremont will first verify whether you have actually survived an ejection from a Martin-Baker seat. Your ejection seat serial number is checked. If it checks out, you get one watch, engraved with your ejection number and fitted with a distinctive red barrel. One ejection, one watch. No exceptions. The owners of the MBI include US senators, CEOs, and chiefs of six air forces. None of them particularly wanted to qualify.

Pretty spectacular, but Bremont doesn’t stop there.

The story of the Supernova Chronograph series

The latest Supernova Chronograph series has another impressive story, and this one is still being written – quite literally. This story is about the Supernova watch going to the Moon (and staying there integrated into the chassis of Astrolab’s FLIP rover) in the second half of 2026. Its story describes the rigorous Spacecraft Protoflight Qualification testing, to ensure the watch is up for the job.

But this story does something else that’s remarkable. Something that goes beyond the romance of it. Bremont invites you to follow the story as it unfolds. You can sign up for updates on the story, which is a bold move but also a genius one too. A live story keeps people coming back. It gives Bremont a reason to communicate that isn’t a product launch or a sale. Every update from the mission is a reason to open an email, visit the website, and think about the brand. The story becomes an asset that compounds over time. Plus the watch you buy today is a ticket into that ongoing narrative.

Still, as spectacular as it sounds, perhaps the most extraordinary example of all predates both of these stories.

The story of the Codebreaker watch

Bremont has one more incredible story I’ll mention. The one about the Codebreaker watch and how it is connected to the codebreakers of Bletchley Park who decoded the German Enigma machine during the Second World War. The connection is direct: the pine wood from the floor of Hut 6 at Bletchley Park is incorporated into the watch’s crown, the rotor of the watch contains materials from the Enigma machine itself, and tiny pieces of actual punch cards feature on the watch as well. Which means that what you are essentially buying is more than a tribute. You are buying an artefact, and that is a distinction no competitor can manufacture.

The competitive advantage of storytelling

Step back for a moment and consider what these stories are actually doing for the business.

A luxury purchase is rarely rational. Nobody needs a £6,000 watch. What their customers are buying is a feeling, a story they can tell about themselves, an object that carries meaning beyond its function.

Bremont’s Swiss competitors sell meaning with heritage. After 150 years, the name on the dial carries the weight of generations of buyers who came before you, and that is an extraordinarily difficult thing to compete against.

Unless you find a different game to play entirely.

Bremont’s stories create an emotional claim on the buyer that is entirely theirs. No other watch can tell the Martin-Baker story. No other British brand is sending a watch to the lunar south pole this year. These stories are not available at any price to a competitor. Their stories don’t say “trust us, we’ve been doing this for centuries.” They say “nothing like this exists anywhere else.” And in a market where distinction is everything, that is a more powerful claim than longevity.

That is what a competitive edge from storytelling looks like.

Each story removes Bremont from direct comparison with its competitors. You cannot compare the MBI to an Omega Seamaster. You cannot weigh the Codebreaker against a Rolex Datejust. The stories make the watches categorically distinct, and a product that cannot be directly compared cannot be directly undercut.

That is more than branding – that is strategy.

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Stories as a strategy for your business

Most businesses treat storytelling as something that happens around the product. On the website, in the brochure, at the bottom of the About page. Bremont treats it as something that happens inside the product.

That’s the approach worth thinking about – what stories are we building into what we do?

The stories that create genuine competitive advantage are hiding somewhere less obvious than the About us page. It can live in how something is made, in a partnership that has real meaning behind it, in a material or a method or a moment in your company’s history that you’ve never thought to mention because it just seems like the way things just are.

Bremont found theirs – several, actually – and they used them to walk into one of the most heritage-saturated markets in the world and earn a seat at a table amongst giants.

The question is (two, actually): what are your stories, and do you use them to your advantage?

Action step

Take a moment now and jot down a story from your business that carries meaning.

Here are a few prompts to help you get started:

• Is there a customer you went above and beyond for, with an outcome that says something unique about how you work?

• Is there an object, tool, or material you use that has a backstory?

• Have you partnered with someone that reflects your values or sets you apart?

• Is there a process in your business that’s different because of lessons learned the hard way?

Reflecting on questions like these can reveal stories hiding in plain sight, stories that go deeper than your company’s beginnings.

If you like, share what you discover in the comments. Not only does this help you spot strengths you might have overlooked, but it could also inspire others.

Until the next story,
Dot

I’m subscribed to more newsletters than I am willing to admit. They all offer something useful. Some encourage me to consider things I would not have done otherwise, others share tips, and a few summarise trends. There are even a couple that just keep me up to date on what a particular organisation is up to.

The list is quite extensive, and, I’ll admit, some of them are brilliant, actually.

But…

If I’m completely honest, I don’t open every single newsletter I receive. I have the best intentions to – I flag them, even keep them marked as unread – but there are days (even weeks) where I skip them.

Except for one.

There is one newsletter that will make me stop what I’m doing and read it. Every. Single. Time. Without fail. I’ve burnt dinners because of it, I was late picking up kids, I even found myself sitting in the supermarket’s car park reading rather than going to get groceries…

It’s quite remarkable!

Not the content, mind, not even the pull it has and how it controls my attention. It’s remarkable because it’s very subtle in the way it does that. It doesn’t have the ‘read it or else’ vibe, it doesn’t have offers that are too good to pass up or even cover topics that are controversial.

What it does have is stories. And apparently that’s enough to take over my life.

I’m not that surprised, though. Stories can significantly influence newsletter readership. In fact, there are 7 ways story-led content improves subscriber retention and engagement, which, if you think about it, is exactly why we all write newsletters. We want our readers to keep reading and keep coming back for more.

Why does including stories in a newsletter have such a strong influence on retention? Let’s go through each reason to understand exactly why.

The 7 reasons stories increase retention

Stories are chemistry experiments with consistent results

Stories encourage our brains to release oxytocin – the same hormone our bodies release when we hug someone (and is often referred to as a ‘love hormone’).

It sounds too good to be true, but it’s been tested. Paul Zak’s research showed that character-driven narratives trigger oxytocin production, just as a face-to-face interaction does, and this is great news for story-led newsletters.

When we read something that triggers the release of oxytocin, it encourages cooperation, empathy, and reciprocity. Which means each story you share is a small trust deposit. Do that consistently over several issues and you’ve accumulated a fair amount of goodwill.

A story is the reason they open the email

You have probably heard the advice to send your newsletter consistently on the same day and around the same time. The reason for this is that you create a habit for your readers. Over time, they start to expect your email.

As Duhigg explains, part of habit forming though is not just the cue (sending the email), but also the reward. That’s your content. Informational content that teaches your reader something is a good reward all on its own, but what’s even better is content that engages the brain in a lot more ways. For example, if you make your readers laugh out loud on their commute home, they will come back reading every single week, and the anticipation of your next email increases.

Unsubscribing feels oddly personal

Sharing stories in a newsletter feels personal, and that’s the point. Readers who have read your stories for a few weeks or months will start to feel like they know you. They will form a personal connection with you, making your newsletter part of the ‘friendship’, and unsubscribing will feel like leaving a friend.

This might sound like a small benefit, but if your readers relate to your stories, they will also be more likely to overlook a slight off-week where the issue didn’t quite deliver on the level it usually does. They will be more understanding based on the personal connection your stories created – and everyone is allowed to occasionally drop the ball.

Stories get quoted three weeks later

We are wired to remember stories (that’s how we passed information for generations).

Chip Heath’s experiment on information recall put some concrete numbers to prove this. He showed that people are more likely to recall stories than statistics (63% and 5% respectively), which is another great point for story-led newsletters.

I’m sure you have come across a piece of content that said ‘save this post’. Perhaps you have even used it yourself in your content. Nothing wrong with that. This is, of course, useful. The problem is, we have saved those types of files from everywhere and about everything – myself included – so we still have to remember what we saved.

If the information in your newsletter is memorable on its own, that is – risking sounding cliché – a ‘game changer’. We can still save it, but we will be more likely to use the information, apply it to something we do, and recommend it to someone else, and that is gold.

That is the value of your newsletter multiplied.

Your readers are recruiting for you

HubSpot 2025 newsletter report states that 42% of newsletter creators say word of mouth is one of the most effective methods to grow their newsletter. If you think about it for a minute. We recommend things we find valuable – true.

Now add on top of that something we can easily recall, something that stays with us for a while, something that makes us feel entertained or understood, or inspired in some way, and you have the perfect engine to grow your newsletter – That’s the new subscribers completely free of charge. All because you shared a memorable story.

One thing AI can’t steal from you

When you share personal stories in the newsletter, there is one thing that is guaranteed – you sound authentic, and that, in the current AI-slop world, is a differentiator worth having. People want to engage with other people, not with AI robots that give us the average of averages. Your content being authentic is a huge loyalty bonus.

Authenticity is not the only advantage. Your content becomes harder to replicate by AI too. AI is extraordinarily good at producing the average of everything ever written – this is how the algorithm works. If you post something unique, it won’t replicate you – it can’t – so your perspective and value you put into your content stays yours, and that certainly is a great incentive to continue subscribing to your newsletter.

A small, engaged list is worth considerably more than you’d think

Engaged newsletters with low churn get valued at 30–45x monthly profit. Sponsors pay premiums for engaged lists, not big lists. Story-driven retention isn’t just nice — it compounds into an asset.

We humans like to know what other people are up to. That’s why content that includes stories creates greater engagement. And we all know that a newsletter with greater engagement is an excellent vehicle for any commercial gains. Sponsors prefer to pay for an engaged list instead of large ones.

An engaged audience means offers will actually get seen and considered by more people. That means that even a small list can bring huge rewards.

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Would stories help with your newsletter?

There is only one way to find out. Have a quick audit of your last 5 to 10 issues. Look at the metrics: how many opened, how many clicked through, then ask yourself – is this at the level you would want?

If the answer is yes – congrats. Keep doing what you’re doing.

If the answer is ‘not really’ – start small. Add an anecdote or a slightly awkward moment to your newsletter. Be honest and real. Then, check the metrics for the next 3 to 4 issues. You will notice.

And if the idea of writing it still makes you break in a cold sweat, I’m right here. You bring me the story and I’ll put it in words. Message me and let’s have a chat.

I break down exactly what they did with the story, and what you can take into your own writing and marketing.

If you like it, make sure to subscribe to Sold on Stories.

In this post, the spotlight is on one of the most-watched Christmas ads in Britain, and the CTA you won’t even notice…

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In case you’re not familiar, every year John Lewis, a UK department store, releases a Christmas campaign that is not really an advert, but more of a short movie with one central character.

In 2024, the Christmas advert was ‘The Gifting Hour’. It follows Sally who faces a challenge many of us face at Christmas – finding a perfect gift for a loved one (in Sally’s case, her sister):

Panicked Sally runs into the department store, her coat flies like a cape behind her. Her eyes move quickly, scanning every shelf. Suddenly, as she steps through a rack of dresses, she is transported somewhere unexpected…

A Narnia-style wardrobe takes her on an emotional journey of childhood memories and sisterhood.

Surprised at first, she recognises the moments. Each gives her a gift idea, but it’s not quite right, so she continues to search. It has to be perfect…

As you watch, you can feel the love and the special bond between sisters. You understand why any gift won’t do, and why it is so important for Sally to buy the perfect gift.

Mesmerised, you are following Sally’s search – will she succeed?

A wave of happiness is washing over you as you see Sally finding the gift, and even though you can’t see what it is, you know it’s perfect.

The story is memorable, emotional and very relatable – in other words it’s a masterclass. But John Lewis managed to do something else masterfully too. They have made the CTA of the ad clear, and yet it’s invisible.

I’ll let you experience it for yourself.

Watch the ad below (it’s 2 minutes).

John Lewis spent two minutes and several million pounds telling you a story. A story about Sally – someone just like you or me. They didn’t focus on their brand; instead, they used the store in service of the story. The store is where Sally’s answer lives, not what the ad is about.

Let’s look at what’s actually happening at each stage of that story:

• John Lewis showed you a problem you will likely have – looking for the perfect gift.

• They made the story relatable, because you were able to relate to Sally’s problem.

• You became emotionally invested in Sally’s quest, rooting for her to succeed.

• You were given a solution to the problem.

• The tagline at the end helps you interpret the meaning of the story, but nowhere in the ad did John Lewis suggest what you should do, and yet you come away with a clear idea after watching the ad.

That’s the invisible CTA – built perfectly into the story itself.

The slogan at the end of the ad feels more like the moral of the story than persuasion to buy. The persuading part was already done in the story, so the CTA doesn’t have to. People trust conclusions they arrive at themselves far more than conclusions someone else gave them.

By the time the strapline appears – “the secret to finding the perfect gift? Knowing where to look” – John Lewis only confirms what the story had made you decide already.

And that’s the effect worth making in your own writing.

The question to ask before you write your next CTA is not so much about what do I want them to do? You already know that. What you want to decide is: what do they need to feel before they’re ready to do it? Write to that feeling. Build the story around it.

Allow the reader to come up with the idea of what they should do next. Guide them to that realisation, but don’t tell them specifically what that is. Provide means to do it, of course, but do it in a way that supports the story. Let it be a thought that stays with the reader for when they are ready to act.

That’s what John Lewis did in two minutes. You can do it in two paragraphs.

Until the next story…
Dot

This might sound familiar.

You found a binge-worthy series on Netflix.

From the pilot episode, you are hooked and fully invested in the story. You recognise yourself in one of the characters, and the challenge they are facing is just so captivating that you don’t want to stop watching (even though it’s 2 am, and you really should get some sleep now).

It’s one of those series you will happily cancel your plans with friends for, just so you can sit with a bowl of crisps (or ice cream) and watch another episode.

You simply HAVE to know what happens next.

Finally, the story is at the point where the tension has been building, the main character has an impossible decision to make, and you are sitting on the edge of your sofa, waiting with the anticipation of what will happen and how the story will end. You’ve enjoyed the rollercoaster ride up to this point, and you are excited for the finale…

And then the spell breaks.

You toss your bowl up in the air with fury, crisps fly everywhere, and you yell at the screen in disbelief, Are you kidding me?!

The ending is… yes… TERRIBLE!

The guy gets the wrong girl, the hero doesn’t defeat the villain, the twist is flat and predictable, and the story just ends. Like the writers took a lunch break and forgot to come back to finish the job.

Game of Thrones is an example of many viewers experiencing that very disappointment. For seven seasons, it was arguably the most ambitious storytelling on television. Audiences watched it and re-watched it. They were invested in a way that most stories never achieve.

Then came Season 8…

The story broke somehow and left the fans unsatisfied. It just stopped being what it was.

Story-led email has the same kind of risk.

It starts with something real that happened. An experience the writer had gone through, or maybe it was their client’s transformation. Either way, it reads great, it has tension, the pace allows you to think for a moment and soak up the emotions the story showed you. You could see yourself in it, and you were genuinely thinking, perhaps this could be me…

And then it said: ‘If this resonates, book a discovery call’.

And you feel like someone pressed an EJECT button, that rudely broke the magic of the story. You had that same temptation to shout seriously? as when you were on that sofa with crisps flying everywhere…

What happened?

The story ended. You – the reader – were following the hero, you were with them the whole way whilst they realised something that changed their perspective or improved their situation in some way, and just as the story reached the emotional connection, it all stopped. The story is over, and we are now doing business.

It feels jarring because you stepped out of your world, and into the story, and at the exact moment where you were right in it, you hear, Cut! Let’s break for lunch.

But what if instead of ending the story and then presenting the ‘business’ option, the CTA was part of the story itself?

What if the writer gave you a choice similar to the one the hero of the story was just facing? Exactly what you were just rooting for the hero to choose?

The story wouldn’t end. It would transition from one character (the hero of the story) to another (you, the reader). The emotional connection the story created would remain intact, and the decision the CTA was asking for would feel logical – like the story has led you to it.

Now there is no EJECT button. You are still being presented with the option to buy or to sign up, but now it makes sense to consider it.

It could look something like this:

Sarah was tired. It was that specific kind of tired when you have done something so many times before and it’s just not getting any easier. Still, it was one of those things that had to be done, so Sarah sat down in front of her computer, sighed heavily, and opened her spreadsheet. Just like she had done every Friday night for years. Accounts. Not exactly a thrilling way to spend Friday night, but she had to check and update every cell. She did it by hand because that was her way of knowing that things were done correctly. You could say it gave her piece of mind, even though she did not enjoy it one little bit.

That particular Friday night, she was making good progress and was getting excited about the idea that perhaps tonight she would get to join her girlfriends for a drink after all. She worked non-stop for 3 hours – not one break. Her coffee had gone cold, and she didn’t even notice. Then it happened. The spinning wheel of Excel not responding… ‘I’ll give it a minute, it’ll sort itself out’ she thought to herself, but five minutes went by, she even managed to finish that cold coffee, and nothing had changed. She knew she had to press that ‘restart’ button, but she also knew that her night just got a lot longer, and the drinks would have to wait another week.

When Excel rebooted, she had tears in her eyes and she swore under her breath, so instead of starting again, she opened the email she had saved a couple of days ago. A 7-day free trial with Count-It software. ‘No more Excel’ she thought as she followed the sign-up steps…

That was three months ago. And Sarah hasn’t missed Friday night drinks since.

If, like Sarah, you are tired of doing things the hard way, just know that this can be your moment to stop the late Friday nights too. What will your decision be?

The story continues, and the CTA is simply the next scene in the story. This is exactly where the power of storytelling lies, but to capture that power, the words themselves have to stay inside the story. Traditional CTA phrases like ‘book now’, ‘don’t miss out’, ‘click here’, or ‘limited spots’ don’t fit. Story-led email requires more creative phrasing. The story has to keep moving; you need to tell the story about the CTA too.

Why does it all matter?

Because the reader doesn’t make a decision to buy in a vacuum. For decades, behavioural research has pointed to the same truth: we don’t choose based on rational evaluation of options. We choose based on who we understand ourselves to be, and a story we tell ourselves about who we want to become after the purchase.

If you spend all that time influencing that internal dialogue with the story-led part of the email, extend that story all the way through, so we can arrive at the decision to buy with the right story in our mind. That’s how you make it easy to say yes.

Where it works best

Not every offer needs a story, but there are instances where it can make a significant difference to making the sale. Let’s have a look at both sides to help you decide if this is something you might want to try in your emails.

Story helps for…

High-consideration decisions.

Something that involves significant commitment – time, money, identity, professional risk. The prospect is already reflecting whether this is something that will give them the future-version of themselves they are looking for. That promotion, that dream house… They’re not looking for a nudge, per se, but more for permission to trust their own instincts. The story-led CTA gives them that. It says someone else stood here, they chose, and here’s what life looks like for them.

Consultative and relationship-based services.

If your work involves ongoing collaboration – coaching, consulting, creative partnership, advisory work of any kind – the way you invite someone into that relationship will set the tone of what it will look like once they choose. A story-led CTA helps you demonstrate how you operate, and how you approach every new sign-up.

Trust-building sequences.

Not every email needs to convert; some emails exist to deepen the relationship, to make the reader feel that you understand something about their situation. In those emails, a story-led CTA doesn’t need to generate a click. It needs to generate a feeling of recognition that accumulates over time and eventually tips into action. It’s a slower game, but the readers who eventually act are the ones who already trust you completely.

Where it fails

Transactional offers.

If you’re selling something time-sensitive, straightforward, or low-consideration – a workshop with a closing date, a product with limited availability, a clear and simple yes or no – the character-choice structure might not be needed. The prospect needs information and a clear next step. Give them that.

When the story isn’t genuinely yours.

The story-led approach only works if the story is real. Engineer a hero for the reader to project onto, and they’ll feel it. Something will be off, and they stop trusting you. A manufactured narrative is manipulation, and it’s not worth it.

When you need volume.

If your goal is a high click-through rate across a large, cold, or loosely segmented list, this is not the tool. The story with built-in CTA is designed to resonate with the right people and wash over everyone else. That’s a feature in a trust-based business. When your metric is aggregate response, a different approach will work better.

When you over-use it.

Perhaps the most practical caveat of all. This structure has genuine power, but if every email in your sequence ends with a character-choice CTA, the cumulative effect stops feeling intentional and starts feeling formulaic. Use it for the moments when it’s truly helping the prospect consider a decision – when the decision is significant enough for the reader to need a little help with carrying its weight.

Your next email could have a story in it. Something that has happened to a client, or something that has changed the way you work. That story can help your reader make up their mind. Let it carry your CTA too, so it can fully support the decision you are asking your prospect to make.

Until next time,
Dot

We were on our way to an aquarium. It’s our first trip there, so the kids were, of course, giggling excitedly all morning. But, 10 minutes into the journey when we settled nicely into the calm cruise of the motorway, the initial ‘yay, we are going to the aquarium’ stopped and the interrogation began – we were suddenly flooded with nervous questions:

• ‘What does the building look like?’

• ‘Are there turtles? How many?’

• ‘Is the car park far? Do they have a shop?’

• ‘Will we get a map?’

• ‘Will there be sharks, penguins, sea horses, ducks …?’

I tried to answer the ones I could using a brochure to help me out, but every answer spawned more questions. And the phrase ‘I don’t know, we’ll find out when we get there’ made things even worse.

I tried the ultimate thing that tends to work on our kids – changing the subject – but the overwhelm had reached the critical mass, and no amount of logic was going to ease the worried tension our car turned into.

The parent in me wanted to put the radio up to distract them, but the marketer in me couldn’t stop trying to figure out what the root of the problem was. What has made them feel so anxious about an experience they were genuinely excited about?

We parked the car, and still trying to avoid the questions, made our way to the reception. The big posters with dolphins and turtles hung tall from the ceiling. I was too busy looking for the tickets to really look at them, but the kids stopped in their tracks, paused and said, ‘Look, Mummy. A dolphin!’

Before I could answer, a friendly member of staff said to them cheerfully, ‘Here are your pink wristbands,’ which caused exactly the smiles I was hoping they would have on the way here.

By the time we walked through the main door and were standing in front of the big aquarium with clownfish, the questions got replaced with pointing out everything that fascinated them. And as we stood there admiring the clownfish’s orange stripes, I figured it out.

The challenge of selling an intangible product

The problem was that the idea of visiting an aquarium was completely invisible to them until we were there. They couldn’t hold it, touch the walls, or stand in front of the giant aquarium counting the fish. All they had up to this point was a few pictures from the brochure and a backseat full of imagination with no reference point to anchor it. The questions were their way of trying to make something invisible feel real.

This is exactly the type of challenge a prospect buying a service, a coaching programme, or a digital product is facing.

They can’t yet see the value of what they are about to buy.

They see features and what’s included, just as my kids knew that we would see animals in aquariums. What they don’t see is the change the offer promises – the future version of themselves after the experience or the training. How the skills and the knowledge they’ll gain will make their lives better.

This uncertainty is scary. Our brain is naturally risk-averse and will default to avoiding situations it’s not certain of – this is how we survived for centuries. The brain doesn’t distinguish between a saber-toothed tiger and a coaching programme it can’t evaluate. Uncertainty feels like danger.

Add to this a decision to buy, and you are faced with one of the biggest challenges of selling intangible offers. As a marketer, the big task is to describe value in a way that feels real, even though it isn’t.

If you want to learn how to sell a feeling, you could do worse than study the people who’ve turned fairy tales into a multi-billion dollar business.

Disney have been masters at storytelling for decades. Their copy is written in a way that ignites your imagination and engages all of your senses, making a fairytale feel real. But don’t take my word for it. Here is how they describe Disney experiences:

“A Disney experience is more than a story you’re told — it’s a story you live, breathe and feel. It surrounds you, immerses you, engages all your senses. It’s an open invitation to a place we long to be, where anyone is welcome and everyone believes in happily ever afters. A place where the memories you make are shared over and over again.”

And here is an example of how they do it in practice:

Notice how they used specific details that help you ‘see’ what meeting Kevin is like. They have included both physical details (13 feet tall, poking her beak) and specific descriptors such as cheerful caws and preening for the camera, that give your imagination a good indication of what to expect.

Most importantly, though, they have drawn you into a story of meeting Kevin. You can feel being part of the experience. Disney have drawn you in by mentioning the camera (that is clearly yours) and the little ones (who also belong to you), giving you a sense of ease knowing that everyone will have fun.

There is no uncertainty here, only a definite picture of how the intangible will become a reality.

I understand now that my kids didn’t need to know that there will be clownfish to see. Instead, they needed to ‘see’ how the deep blue background of the aquarium and the fluorescent light made the orange glow, and how, from afar, the tank looks like it is full of twinkling lights.

When your prospect is considering whether or not to buy your product, they are sitting in the back seat, asking questions. They’re trying to make something invisible feel real before they commit to it. They are looking for detail that will give them the confidence that clicking ‘buy’ is the right choice. The detail that lets their imagination go somewhere safe instead of somewhere uncertain.

The best way to do that is with stories.

And you already have the stories you need. You already know what the value of your service feels like. Now you need to tell it. Deliberately and in service of someone who needs to see the clownfish before they’ll believe the aquarium is worth the journey.

What detail would make your offer feel real?

I’d love to know – leave a comment.

It was Saturday morning and I was on my way to tick off one of the biggest tasks on my ‘to do’ list that has been on top of the list for weeks – buy a car.

I’d done my research and I’d found a car I really liked – a small VW Fox. It had everything I wanted in a car, and from what I could deduce from the description, this particular Fox was perfect.

Of course, the description is not enough, and it’s why this morning I was on my way to the dealer to see the car and, hopefully, buy it.

As I was approaching the dealership, a knot tightened in my stomach and my palms got sweaty. I stopped to take a breath. You’ve done your research and you know what to check, I told myself. You’ve got this.

For a brief moment I did consider turning around, and coming back later – perhaps with one of my male friends for moral support and better car knowledge – but before I could make up my mind I was surprised by a question:

‘What can I do for you?’ asked the salesman walking out of his office.

No turning back now.

‘I’m interested in one of your cars,’ I replied, ‘the silver Fox.’

‘Let me grab a key,’ he answered.

So far so good, I thought to myself.

The salesman came back and started to show me the car. He pointed out that it was in good condition, had recently been serviced, and showed me the interior. I asked him about the tyres, he answered confidently and with conviction. He was polite and patient, and you really couldn’t fault him, but then he said something that got my hackles up.

‘Trust me. You’ll like it.’

Two words. That’s all it took to freeze me. Not a pushy sales tactic, not even a lie. Just two words I had no way to verify.

Up to this point, he’d done everything right: He’d answered my questions, he gave me time to think, he hadn’t patronised me, and still, something in me wouldn’t budge. I had no reason not to trust him, but I also didn’t have a reason to trust him either.

And then I got it. “Trust me” is almost always said by the person who needs you to; never by the person you already do. Nobody has ever had to ask me to trust my best friend.

That’s the tricky part about trust. Talking about it doesn’t encourage it. And yet, you’ve got to earn it to make a sale.

So how do you earn trust?

Especially if you’re not standing in a car park with someone, answering their questions face to face?

There’s a reason marketing experts keep talking about origin stories. Sometimes, it’s because your backstory is inherently fascinating, but most of the time, it’s because people buy from people. And before anyone buys from you, they’re running a quiet background check. Not such much on your credentials, but on you. Would I go for a pint with this person? If I met them in real life, would we have anything to talk about? Essentially: do I like them?

Think about the last time a friend recommended something to you. A restaurant, a book, a service provider, or a recipe. You probably didn’t ask for their qualifications. You just... trusted them, because you knew them. Because of a hundred small moments: stories they’d told you, opinions they’d shared, the way they’d reacted to things. Through all of that, you’d built up a picture of who they are, and that picture made their word matter.

That’s why word of mouth still beats every algorithm. It’s the trust that was already there, doing the selling in the background.

We often assume trust is built through authority. Certifications, credentials, years of experience, the letters after your name. And sure, those things help – they signal expertise. But authority alone is a cold foundation.

Think about your friends. You trust them across a wildly uneven range of qualifications and accomplishments. You trust your friend who never went to university just as much as the one with a PhD. Sometimes more. Because trust is more about who you are than what you know.

Which brings us to stories

Cast your mind back to the last conversation you had with someone you really trust. I’d put good money on the fact that it was full of stories. A terrible day at work, a ridiculous thing that happened on the way to get the kids, an amazing bargain they found on their lunch break, an accidental discovery of an amazing takeaway place... Stories are how we share ourselves, our opinions, and our way of seeing the world, our values, our humour, and our blind spots. Stories show the texture of who we actually are.

And that is exactly why stories are one of the most powerful tools in marketing.

Especially if what you sell is personal. If you’re a coach, a consultant, a course creator, a personal trainer – anyone where the relationship is part of the product – your audience needs to know you before they can trust you. And the fastest route to being known isn’t a credentials page. It’s a story.

I can already hear your objection: I don’t want to be too personal. I want to keep it professional. Here’s my opinion. Stories and professionalism aren’t opposites. You don’t have to share your therapy notes. You can tell stories about your work, about how your thinking evolved, about a client situation that changed how you do things, about the moment your offer came to exist. Professional stories are still stories, they still show who you are, they still build trust.

What stories should you tell?

Honestly? It depends. (I know. Everyone’s least favourite answer, but bear with me.)

It depends because we are all different. What you sell is different, the people you’re selling to are different, there’s no universal story template that works for every business, every audience, and every offer.

Nevertheless, here’s a tip simple enough to use today:

Start with your offer – what you sell, and what changes for someone after they’ve bought it. And then ask the harder question: why you? Why should someone buy this particular thing from you and not someone else?

The stories that answer those two questions are the ones worth telling. They help your reader see the value in what you offer, and they help them see the value in getting it from you. Both matter.

It sounds simple, it’s not necessarily easy, but it’s a start.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, I could explain all of this perfectly if someone just asked me the right questions. It’s the writing it down part that’s the problem; you’re not alone. Many people find this tricky.

I’m an introvert, so I would always rather write a thing than say it out loud. It’s probably why I ended up here, sending words into the world instead of standing in rooms talking at people. Writing suits me. It’s how I think. But I know that even for people who are brilliant in conversation, writing it down feels like a different game entirely – and it is.

Knowing what stories to tell is one thing. Getting them out of your head and onto a page – in a way that actually sounds like you, and makes a connection with your audience – is another thing entirely. If that’s where you’re stuck, I’d love to know.

Your turn

Comment and tell me if it would help to go deeper on the craft of writing stories that build trust? That’s a topic that deserves its own article (or two) entirely.

Let me know, and I’ll get writing.

Until next time,
Dot

I was on a Zoom call and I’m not proud of it, but by the third time I asked “why,” I was very close to hanging up.

At the time, I was responsible for choosing the help desk software for the entire company, so naturally, I did what any reasonable person in that situation would – I became slightly impossible to convince with standard answers.

• “But why do we need this feature?”

• “Why is this the right plan for us?”

• “Why X, Y, and Z?”

The sales rep was trying to answer my question, and bless him, he was doing his best not to show the frustration himself, but whatever he said, I kept thinking, “but that’s not what I’m asking”.

We were both stuck. He couldn’t understand why his explanations weren’t working. I couldn’t understand why I kept needing to ask the same question. And round and round we went – him over-explaining, me under-convinced and asking “why”.

The most frustrating part was that I couldn’t even fully articulate what my question really was.

I just knew that something was missing – a thread that connected all his answers to my team and my specific chaos. I felt like I was being handed puzzle pieces with no picture on the box.

He wasn’t wrong to walk me through how the software worked, but what we both didn’t realise was that I wasn’t just buying software. I was buying confidence. I needed to walk away from that call equipped with enough information to make me certain that this was the right choice for the whole company. And that is not something an explanation of how features work can give you.

It’s easy to assume that when the prospect asks so many questions, the problem is clarity. That if we just explain it better, or add one more FAQ, or make the feature list a little more detailed, they will get it. But that’s not actually the problem.

The problem is memory.

What made that call even harder was the fact that it wasn’t the first software I’d evaluated. I’d already scrolled through comparison pages and watched more ‘how to’ videos than I care to admit. And in that environment, features don’t stand a chance. Features, pricing tiers, integrations, limitations – they all start to blur together into one giant, forgettable cloud of information.

So the real challenge becomes sticking in the memory, so that when the moment to buy comes, your solution is the one the prospect reaches for.

You can’t rely on the charisma of your sales rep and their ability to effectively follow up. A Gartner survey of 632 B2B buyers in 2024 found that 61% prefer a completely rep-free buying experience. Which means they’re scanning and they’re deciding, within seconds, whether something is worth their time and attention.

So how do you become memorable?

The answer is the oldest trick in the book: Story-led content

It’s no secret that we are naturally drawn to stories. A study by Stanford professor Chip Heath found that 63% of people tested could remember stories, while only 5% could recall a single statistic.

If your prospect can walk away and remember your story – or better yet, retell your story – you have automatically gained an unfair advantage. If you are remembered, you are winning.

Peloton used this concept very well with their campaign ‘We all have our reasons’. It featured 9 real members sharing their stories of why they chose Peloton and what motivates them.

Think about it:

Peloton is a complicated product. Hundreds of features, multiple subscription tiers, live classes, on-demand libraries, performance tracking. You could spend a week just trying to understand what’s included. On paper, it’s overwhelming.

And yet they took that complexity and wrapped it in memorable stories that resonated and stuck in the mind of many.

They made the change from feature-first to story-first and from clarity to memory.

That is the power of storytelling.

You might worry that to use story-led content with your offer, you will need to do a complete overhaul of your marketing messages. That’s not true. You start by finding that one story only you can tell. A moment someone felt the difference, and someone else can recognise it as their own.

And you go from there.

Speak soon,
Dot

P.S.

If you’ve made it this far – genuinely, thank you. It means a lot that you gave this your time and attention. If any part of this resonated with you, I’d love for it to reach someone else who might need to hear it too. Sometimes the right idea at the right moment changes everything – feel free to pass it on.

Underestimating the emotions your prospect is feeling when reading your sales page can cost you some serious sales.

Melodramatic? Maybe.

But I also know what the disappointment of getting no sales feels like. And let me tell you, the feeling is not great.

Here is what happened.

I was writing a sales page for one of my personal projects - I was so excited. It was my very early days as a copywriter, so I was careful with the structure, making sure all the right elements of the sales page were there. The hero section was good, the objections were handled, the CTA was clear and low risk, the copy was flowing with a nice upbeat tone.

‘Sounds perfect’, you would think. I thought so too…

Except, it wasn’t.

The page was not converting… No matter what tweaks I did, it wasn’t working.

Propped up on coffee and chocolate digestives, I was furiously searching through my copywriting books to figure out what to do. And I had to figure it out - calling it quits is not how I operate.

Much head-scratching later, the penny finally dropped. Thank God.

I knew why the page wasn’t working and that, to me, was everything.

What I learnt from that sales page stuck with me to this day. Ever since that project, the things that were missing then, are the things I now keep top of mind every single time.

Here is what my lightbulb moment was about.

Prospects never really evaluate your offer with a blank mind.

Prospects are not neutral readers. They come with history, past experiences, a certain level of distrust, and an internal dialogue that is already making assumptions about your solution. They have seen social posts, adverts, or even heard opinions from other people on offers similar to yours. Perhaps they have even used something similar in the past and it worked (or not).

In other words, not every prospect will see the sales page with an open mind, full of optimism and rainbows. Some will come driven by interest and intrigue, but with high scepticism, and the sales page needs to start the right internal conversation, so that they warm up to the idea regardless of the state of mind they are in.

Uri Hasson from Princeton University found that when the speaker tells a story, the mind of the listener syncs with the mind of the storyteller. Which means, if the sales page includes the right narrative, you can influence the story that runs in the prospect’s mind so that it says what you want them to hear and turns the volume down on any preconceived opinion they came to your sales page with.

The decision will be rational.

Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman found that 95% of purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind – we decide with our emotions – the rational mind only looks for ways to justify the decision.

If the sales page only focuses on presenting the offer, what’s included, what are the guarantees, what are the credentials of the seller, etc., it will speak to the rational mind. While these elements are important to include – they facilitate the justification of the purchase – a good sales page will also have elements that speak to the real decision maker – the emotions. And there is no better way to engage emotions than a story.

Remember, the prospect is likely to come to your sales page with a certain level of scepticism. A page that absorbs the prospect in a story will quiet down the critical side and create a good set up for the persuasion to happen. With the right story that makes the reader feel genuinely seen, the sale becomes much easier.

The sale page can seem like a transactional step. It’s also the most important step. This is the part when the prospect confidently says ‘yes’. There is, however, a subtle force that makes the click happen – feeling confident to buy.

It’s easy to underestimate emotions, but they are in charge of the wallet. Get the emotions right, and the rest of the page is just paperwork.

Until next time,
Dot

P.S.

If you’re interested in reading more about the research I’ve mentioned above, here are the links to some great articles.

• Uri Hasson’s research

• Gerald Zaltman’s research

It’s so frustrating, isn’t it?

People replied to emails, said how excited they were about your offer, posted comments and liked all the social posts, and yet when the offer launched, the cart barely filled up. You made fewer sales than these positive responses led you to believe you would.

For me, this stings worse than if no one said a thing, or even flat out rejected it. At least you wouldn’t have lured yourself into a false sense of security, thinking that it will work.

What’s gone wrong then?

• Must be the offer, right? That’s why they engaged at first but didn’t buy?

• Maybe the price was wrong?

• Maybe you didn’t explain the features well enough?

All of these are possibilities, and it’s worth checking if the offer has been set up competitively. But there is also another variable worth looking at…

The copy.

You could argue that a great offer will sell itself, and that is true – it can. But it won’t sell as well as it would with a great copy behind it. Weak copy really can ruin a great offer. And when a warm audience responds below the level you expect, it is likely that your copy needs a lift.

Here are two signs that it is in fact your copy, and not the offer, that is holding your revenue back.

1. Metrics look good but the revenue is low

We’ve touched on this already. This is where people told you they loved the idea, but didn’t buy. The copy made a connection – they loved it – but didn’t persuade. The messages were likable but didn’t create certainty that the offer is worth investment.

The words made elaborate explanations that made the prospect feel seen and excited but, unfortunately, didn’t answer the questions they had at the back of their mind: why this, why now, etc.?

The first instinct is to look at the sales page, and see where the weak spots are.

But, it might not be the sales page that is a problem, though.

This can be a sign that the prospects came to the sales page unprepared. They still were sceptical, they still didn’t know enough…

There is also one very important job earlier touch points need to do – they need to allow your audience to self-select correctly, so only those who can actually benefit from your offer are guided to the sales page to say yes and buy.

2. Your open rates look good, but your click-throughs are struggling.

If open rates are high, then your subject lines, headlines, first paragraphs, hero sections, etc., are strong. They created curiosity and interest, and your audience wanted to know more.

The problems started further down. If people didn’t click the link, they were not compelled to act. Perhaps the headline grabbed attention with something that was not carried through the rest of the copy. Or maybe, the messages did not build enough confidence to make that click a no-brainer.

A warm audience will often give you hints about this. You will start receiving questions you thought your copy answered:

• “How soon can I start seeing results?”

• “Are there any guarantees?”

• “Will this work for me and my circumstances?”

Every question shows where the copy didn’t deliver. It didn’t pre-empt objections or didn’t articulate your offer in a way that helped the prospect see that this purchase is the right choice for them.

Hesitations mirrored in questions can easily turn into reasons not to buy. Addressing them in copy strengthens the funnel overall.

When the numbers don’t add up, the problem is not necessarily with your offer.

Look critically at your copy first. Perhaps the tone was slightly off, like it’s trying to be something it’s not. Everything sounds too perfect or too good to be true. The argument is built in an awkward way, or the emotions feel superficial… Prospects can sense these things even if they can’t quite put their finger on it. It’s those little things that will leave crumbs of hesitation that over the purchasing journey will become reasons not to buy.

Problems with copy can be easily turned around without starting over.

The trick is to know where to look.

Sometimes that means reaching out to someone who can hear what your audience heard, and spot where the certainty dropped out.

That’s what I do. If your launch didn’t perform the way you thought it would, I’m only a message away. Start a conversation and let’s find out what the copy was working against.

Speak soon,
Dot

I’m on a call with a prospect, chatting through a potential project.

The conversation is flowing. I’m going through all the points from my pitch. My, hopefully soon, new client is nodding along. Everything feels calm and competent.

Then a high-pitched voice cuts through the air like a fire alarm.

“I want a biscuit!”

I freeze.

It’s my toddler. Despite Paw Patrol playing in the other room and the carefully prepared tray of snacks I left her, she has decided that life is now incomplete without a biscuit.

Trying to keep my carefully curated aura of professionalism intact, I smile politely at my screen and say,

“My apologies for this. I’ll be just a minute.”

Ten seconds later, I’m back in my chair attempting to stitch the conversation back together like nothing happened.

“I don’t like it!”

Pause.

“I want to do drawing.”

So much for subtlety.

At this point, I realise the professionalism I was aiming for has officially been upgraded with a generous dose of reality.

My head is spinning.

I’m thinking about the clock, the call, the impression I’m making, and whether it’s socially acceptable to negotiate with a toddler mid-sales conversation.

Fifteen minutes. That’s all I needed, but family life and working from home had other plans.

So I did the only sensible thing left.

I laughed and I surrendered to the situation.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my life at 4 p.m.”

In that moment, something interesting happened. Something I did not expect.

The tension disappeared.

The conversation became warmer and more genuine.

“Don’t worry,” my prospect said “it’s not a problem”…

That’s the thing about authenticity. We often think it’s risky. It’s something to smooth out or hide behind better lighting and quieter rooms.

But most of the time, it’s exactly what makes people trust you.

Knowing that, just like them, you are simply doing your best, occasionally interrupted by someone who really wants a biscuit…

If, like me, you had your family life interrupt your work, share your stories with me in the comments.

P.S.

If you’re new to my posts — Hi 👋 I’m Dot. A direct response copywriter. I write copy that carries one consistent story across every touchpoint, converting sceptical prospects into confident yeses.

To find out more how I can help you get more sales, send me a message. I’m surprisingly easy to talk to.

It was supposed to be one chapter. ONE.

It had been one of those days with a to-do list that just kept on growing.

By the time the kids were in bed, I was done. All I wanted to do was collapse on a sofa and have a little pity party about how long and stressful my day had been.

I was tempted to scroll through social media mindlessly, already half-horizontal across the sofa cushions, but looking at a screen was not exactly what my puffy red eyes needed.

I picked up a book instead. A brand-new novel from one of my favourite authors, still with that smell of fresh pages. That would cheer me up.

I put my feet up, pulled the lamp a little closer. Page 1, chapter 1, first sentence… Here we go.

‘Read one chapter, then sleep.’ I said to myself.

Except…

I didn’t notice when the house went completely quiet, or hear my husband call down ‘you coming up?’ before giving up and going to bed without me.

I didn’t notice my tea going cold, still sitting on the side table exactly where I’d left it. I didn’t notice my neck starting to ache from the angle I’d been holding the book, or that the lamp was the only light left on in the room.

It was 2 a.m. when I finally looked up. I was on chapter ten. How had I got to chapter ten?

Somewhere in those first few pages, the writer made a decision – or several – that meant I never quite reached a natural stopping point. I kept reading because stopping felt like leaving a conversation mid-sentence.

That’s a hook.

Not a single line at the top of a page. A hook is anything that makes stopping feel harder than continuing.

A prospect reading marketing content, emails, or sales copy is holding a metaphorical book. They’ve already decided how much of their time they’re giving you – until the point where they feel they can stop.

The question is whether you give them a reason to stay for one sentence or ten paragraphs.

How you hook them depends on who your audience is and what you want them to do. But there’s one hook worth knowing about particularly if your audience has seen it all before.

That hook is a story.

Most hooks are predictable. A bold claim, a surprising statistic, a question, or a controversial statement are all familiar formats – the prospect knows what’s coming.

A story-led hook does something different. It just starts, and suddenly the reader is somewhere else. In a kitchen at 11 p.m., in a meeting that’s going badly, or in a moment they recognise without being told to. They’re transported into the realm of the story. They are seeing the cold cup of tea, hearing the quiet of the night; they are in the story.

Most importantly, they’re not scanning for the pitch. They’re just reading. The ‘am I being sold to?’ reflex only fires when there’s something to trigger it. A story, told well, gives it nothing to catch on.

Is the story hook always the best one for your content? Of course not.

There is a simple test to figure that out. Ask yourself, ‘What does my prospect need to feel before they believe what comes next?’ If the answer is ‘nothing’, skip it. If it’s recognition, trust, understanding, desire, etc., you are in story territory.

Once you’ve decided a story-led hook is the right call. Now you need to know where to start. Not every story opens the same way. The first sentence sets the pace of everything that follows, and the strength of your hook. Too slow and you’ve lost the prospect before the content delivers; too dramatic and it feels manufactured.

Here are a couple of ideas on how to do it.

In medias res – drop into the middle of the action

No setup, no context, just good momentum. Let the prospect figure out what is going on as they read. Think how some films start in the middle of the car chase, and you can’t look away because your brain is instantly flooded with questions: ‘Who’s chasing them?’ ‘Why are they chasing them?’ ‘Will they get away?’ Etc.

This works well for ads, email subject lines, and the top of a sales page where stopping the scroll is the only job the first line has. Keep in mind that if the scene isn’t immediately recognisable, it just reads as dramatic. You don’t want the reader to think ‘What’s going on?’

The observed scene – something the reader watches

You’re not in the story. You’re pointing at someone else who is – and the reader watches, slightly removed, until the moment they recognise themselves in what they’re watching. Think of the opening of The Social Network. We watch a conversation between two people in a bar, one of them slowly, obliviously losing the other. You’re not either of them. But you recognise some part of you in them.

This works well for thought leadership, ads targeting a specific behaviour, or any piece built around a habit your audience already has. The risk is the observation can tip into judgement if you push too hard too fast. You want the reader to think ‘that’s me’ – not feel like they’re being told off.

Two options, different contexts, different reader relationships. But both bypassing the part of your reader’s brain that’s already decided how much attention you deserve.

That’s what separates a story hook from every other kind.

A story relocates the reader. And once they’re somewhere else – in a car chase they didn’t expect to be in, or watching a conversation they recognise a little too well – they’re not evaluating your credibility, or scanning for the sell.

They’re just there. Giving you their full attention.

There’s a specific kind of paralysis that hits when you know you should be telling stories in your content, but every time you sit down to write one, you feel like you’re about to overshare at a work Christmas party.

So you close the draft, open a new one, and write a list of tips instead.

Safe but forgettable. Which is a strange place to end up when you had something worth saying.

The irony is that the story you were too embarrassed to tell is probably the one your audience needed the most.

Most of the time it’s not the vulnerability that stops you, but not knowing how to tell the story without it sprawling into something that does belong at a Christmas party.

• Where do you start?

• How much context do you need to give them?

• How much detail should you go into to make the story powerful?

If these are the questions that float in your mind when you try to include a story in your content, I’ve got something for you.

This is the template I use on a weekly basis. It’s simple and will keep you focused on what’s important. No going off on tangents, no oversharing.

My storytelling template – four steps:

1. Hook – a micro-scene the reader can relate to on some level

2. Conflict – real stakes; something has to be at risk or the story has no teeth

3. Lesson – reframe the conflict so the insight feels earned, not stapled on at the end

4. CTA – one question that makes your reader sit with it

One story, done.

You don’t need to bare your soul. You need one honest moment, a clear point, and the nerve to hit publish. A bad meeting, a moment of doubt, a decision you nearly got wrong.

What would you write about if you knew exactly how to structure it?

I know how that sounds, but stay with me.

Once you see it, it will change the way you think about every word you put in your offer.

Here’s the provocation in plain terms:

Two offers. Virtually identical in cost. One skyrockets sales, the other doesn’t. The difference is a story each one tells.

That’s not a copywriter’s hunch. It’s a pattern documented by Dan Ariely in his book, Predictably Irrational, where he shows that humans are not the logical, self-interested decision-makers we like to think we are. We’re something far more interesting.

We’re predictable in our irrationality, which means if you know the patterns, you can work with them.

One of the patterns he documented involves the power of a single word on how we buy. The example he used is of Amazon and their promotion ‘buy a second book, get free shipping’.

When Amazon launched the offer, sales spiked across almost every market. Almost.

France was the outlier. No spike at all, just a quiet, collective shrug from an entire nation of book buyers.

What happened?

Turns out, the French version of the offer had been set up slightly differently. Instead of free shipping, customers were charged one franc (about 20p). Less than the cost of a biscuit.

From a purely economic standpoint, the two offers were nearly identical. The rational mind should have processed them the same way. A negligible shipping charge on one side, zero on the other. Barely a difference.

But one franc is not free. And that difference was everything.

The moment France changed their offer to free? Sales jumped. Just like everywhere else. The shipping cost didn’t change meaningfully. The product didn’t change. The customer didn’t change.

The story did.

One franc tells a story of a transaction. An exchange: something given, something taken. Your brain hears it and starts running the numbers: Is this worth it? Do I actually need this?

Free tells a completely different story. A story with no loss in it, only gain. Free feels safe, and safe is what encourages people to decide. So we reach for free. Almost every time.

Behavioural economists call it the zero price effect; copywriters call it storytelling. Amazon didn’t intend to run a masterclass in copywriting, but that’s exactly what they did. One word changed the story entirely.

When the words on the page only describe the offer, the reader writes their own story. And left to their own devices, they’ll write one full of hesitation and reasons to come back later.

The best copy changes that. It feels like permission to say yes without feeling foolish about it. Not because it tricks anyone, but because it tells the story correctly.

The only question is whether you put that story there, or your prospects did.

It’s Monday morning.

The office is quiet, but it’s the wrong quiet. Something feels off… Your marketing manager is sitting with his head in his hands, looking stressed. Not an unusual thing for him, but still, today he’s looking extra worried.

You get to your desk, log on, and that’s when you see it. Slack is exploding with panic emojis, and ‘what do we do?’ questions are flooding every channel. Your inbox pings with subject lines of ‘urgent’, ‘panic’…

Baddies took over your email list!

They have been sending emails all weekend, and THEY ARE MAKING MONEY!

Lots of it.

You have to give it to them.

Email can return £36 for every £1 spent, so they picked the right asset to highjack.

Somehow, you manage to access the performance metrics, and this is where you realise how big of an asset you just lost.

Their open rates are way higher than yours. Their click-throughs are impressive too.

They are making THOUSANDS of pounds from the list YOU built.

‘How?’ You exclaim to yourself. And it’s not about how they bypassed all the security measures. What you want to know is how they are making so much cash from your list.

You’ve been sending emails every week. You thought you were doing quite well, and somehow, these baddies showed you that really you were collecting scraps.

But here is the scarier thought – has your audience even noticed it’s not you who sends the emails?

So far, not a single message from anyone to say ‘these emails don’t sound like you, what’s going on?’ Not. One. Message.

Instead, they are clearly enjoying the emails, and they are spending money!

Your competitive business streak can’t take it anymore.

‘That’s it.’ You say through gritted teeth as you log in to one of the test email accounts you snuck into the CRM so you can keep tabs on the AI and make sure it actually does send the emails.

You HAVE to see how the baddies managed to execute this stunt so successfully.

You click on the latest email. You read it. ALL OF IT.

What?

The email is fun, engaging, has real personality; you are even tempted to click the link.

‘How are they doing this?’ You cry out.

Is it Claude? Is it ChatGPT? Jasper! Must be Jasper. Or perhaps they trained the AI themselves?

And then the penny drops.

You sit with it for a moment. The embarrassment of it, mostly. You’ve been congratulating yourself on being efficient with emails, and somewhere in all that efficiency, you forgot that the people on your list are actual humans who want to be entertained.

The baddies, whoever they are, didn’t use better technology. They used better people. People who understand that an email is a conversation and a relationship builder. People who are skilled in catching attention, entertaining, and, by the looks of things, telling great stories.

They used COPYWRITERS!

You’ve been sending consistent, on-brand, perfectly adequate emails. And ‘perfectly adequate’, it turns out, is its own kind of slow surrender.

Your list grew because people chose you: your perspective and your particular way of seeing things. The moment you swapped that out for machine writing, you started to gradually dilute down the very thing that made them subscribe.

The baddies took your asset in one dramatic swoop. But it was you who did all the damage, just slower. The baddies just showed you what your list was worth when someone treated it like the asset it actually is.

Would your audience notice if baddies took over your email?

If the answer to this question stings a little, good. It means you know what to do next.

Speak soon,
Dot

P.S.

If you’d like a hand with your emails, a real human one, I’m here. Get in touch and let’s have a chat.

Most people trying to improve their storytelling are focused on the ‘telling’ part. The pacing, the protagonist, the emotions, the suspense… And yes, all of that matters, but the decisions that actually determine whether a story makes an impact happen before you write a single word.

Think of the last time two people told you the same story.

One person said it in a way that made you feel every second, and you forgot your coffee was getting cold. The other one sounded like a news reporter simply relaying the facts, and you found your mind wandering off.

The same story. Two very different experiences.

Regardless of whether you use a story to educate, illustrate a point, inspire, or to sell, your story needs to have something that will keep your readers glued to the screen (or page).

And that brings me to the first aspect to get right – how you tell the story.
This includes which story arc you choose to use, how you structure the timeline, etc.

Not every arc will fit every story. Some stories are better told as a Hero’s Journey; others as Before and After Transformation…

Some stories are better told as an ABC timeline (starting at the beginning and following chronologically); others are better following BAC (starting in the middle, then going to the beginning before continuing on)…

Don’t rush this part. It’s worth spending some time on this. It will make the overall results so much more impactful.

I like to write a story more than one way before I decide. The version that reads better usually makes itself obvious, but only if I give it the chance.

So that’s the ‘how’ sorted. Now for the bit most people skip entirely…

… you need to pick the right story to tell.

For example, let’s assume that you want to use a story to illustrate how something works. Something quite complex and abstract… Something like…. Digital twin technology…

The trickier the subject, the more load-bearing your story choice becomes. Abstract concepts, things your reader can’t see or touch, need a story that creates a bridge, not one that adds another abstraction on top.

For something as abstract as a digital twin, if opened with a story about buying a new mirror, you’d read along politely, waiting for the penny to drop. By the time I tried to connect it to software that replicates physical systems in real time, you’d have already mentally checked out. The bridge would be so long you’d have lost the will to cross it.

Now the alternative: You are building a paper airplane. You fold the paper carefully, adjust the nose, send it across the room, watch where it lands. Then you adjust. Fold again. Send it across again. That cycle – build a model, observe, refine – is exactly what a digital twin does, just with a jet engine instead of A4 paper. The connection is easier and your attention is focused.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ is a very good question I like to ask myself when I’m trying to decide which story to use in my content. If the answer is obvious and practically jumps out at me, I’ve picked well.

If I find myself building a long, convoluted bridge between the story and what I am using it for, this is my sign that I should pick a different story…

Structure and selection. Two decisions made before you write a single word.

Get them wrong, and you can dress the story up all you like with the right pacing, the emotional beats, and a protagonist worth rooting for. It still won’t have the impact. You’ll feel it too, that nagging sense that something’s off, even if you can’t name it.

Try it with your next story. Ask yourself these two questions:

1. Have I tried this story in more than one structure before committing to it?

2. Is there a moment where I’d catch myself asking, ‘why are you telling me this?’

See how they help your story carry itself.

Until next time,
Dot