How To Write A Story-Driven Email That Sells in Less Than 15 Minutes
4-Step Email Storyselling Formula
Today, we bring you a special guest post from Jim Hamilton.
Jim is a copywriting expert who's written emails for Cole Gordon, Travis Chappell, Justin Moore, and many more in the online space over the last 8 years.
We've been following him since he joined Ship 30 for 30 in March of 2023.
And now, he's here to share his 4-part "Email Storyselling" formula to help you make more sales from your newsletter or email list.
Here’s Jim:
News flash:
“How-to” information is everywhere in the age of AI.
So if that’s all you have to compete on as a creator in 2025, your newsletter is toast.
It’s a race to the bottom where only the top 1% can win.
Luckily, there’s a better way to sell digital products, coaching, community and more to your email subscribers without giving away all your secrets for free.
Or wasting hours writing value emails that don’t convert to sales.
It’s called Email Storyselling.
Here’s how it works:
The 4-Step Email Storyselling Formula
This is how you can turn almost any experience from your personal life or business into a story-driven email that sells your offer in 15 minutes or less.
All you have to do is follow these 4 steps:
STEP 1: Story
→ “What do you see?”
Most people are sleepwalking through life. They don’t pay attention to the world around them. So become an avid observer. Take note of what you see happening in front of you at the gym, grocery store, online, with clients, etc.
STEP 2: Lesson
→ “What does it mean?”
Most people struggle to understand why they haven’t succeeded. If your story was an essay, this is the conclusion. Explain what it reveals about the world or human nature.
STEP 3: Pivot
→ “How does it also apply to your audience?”
Most people are stimulus rich, but context poor. Show them how the lesson also applies to getting the result they want. This is the bridge to your offer.
STEP 4: Call to action
→ “What should they do next?”
Once you’ve connected the dots, all you have to do is give them a link to buy. Keep it casual. Let the story do the selling FOR you instead.
As you can see, this lets you deliver value (and sell) through storytelling instead of step-by-step guides or in-depth tutorials.
Save those for buyers.
(unless you get the chance to do a guest post for Write With AI ;)
As for why this works, the answer is simple:
“Show, don’t tell” is the golden rule in writing. And storytelling is the ultimate expression of it. This is how you’ll showcase your values, beliefs, experience, and personality to attract clients & customers.
Remember: people buy coaches, not coaching.
Now let’s get to work.
What You’ll Need to Write Your Story-Driven Email With AI
Claude is the undisputed champion of AI copywriting.
So we’re going to use Sonnet 3.5 and ‘Normal’ style on a Pro account to write our email.
On top of that, you’ll need to fill in placeholders for:
Your offer
Your target audience
How you developed your unique method for getting results
Now, these don’t need to be super long or fleshed out. But the last one is important because it’s the story we’re going to use to sell our offer.
You’ll see how I did this below.
Let’s dive into the first prompt.
Prompt 1: Create Your Outline
First, we’re going to get Claude to create an outline for us.
This gives us the chance to tweak it before it writes the full email.
In this first prompt, we’re going to:
Assign a role
Explain the framework
Show it a good example (outline + full email)
SIDE NOTE: I’ve used an example of my writing to train it. Once you’ve written some story-driven emails of your own, swap one in so the voice and tone sound more like you. My book can teach you how to do this.
Now, here’s the full prompt:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Write With AI to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.