Do You HAVE to Tell Stories in Your Copy?

It's a bright & chilly Sunday afternoon in Austin...

I'm sipping a latte from my red Yeti mug (a Christmas gift from my aunt) and getting myself into the writing flow.

Today I want to talk about storytelling. You've heard it a thousand times:

"You have to tell stories in your copy!!!"

It's common knowledge at this point. 

Even people who utterly suck at storytelling drone on about it. (Just read your LinkedIn feed any day of the week for proof.)

But is it actually true? Do you HAVE to tell stories? 

No. But also yes.

There are plenty of folks thriving with purely "informational" newsletters. Most of the popular ones on Substack or Beehiiv follow this model.

Take "Ben's Bites" for example. 

Every issue serves up AI-related news and links. And it's valuable, because it saves me hours of research time.

But here's the thing—if a better AI newsletter came along tomorrow, I'd switch without a thought. 

I have no loyalty to "Ben."

Why? Because information is commoditized.

But story-driven, personality-based newsletters don't have this problem.

Case in point: I've been reading Andre Chaperon's emails for over a decade. 

He's a master at weaving details from his life and worldview into his emails.

Another marketer could come along, with a similar philosophy. But I wouldn't jump ship from Andre's list. I'm invested in his world and want to see how it evolves.

But there's an even more practical reason to embrace storytelling: Writing pure information newsletters is HARD.

You've got to constantly hunt down fresh insights, organize them, and package them in a way that adds value beyond what people could find themselves.

Plus—and this is crucial—people can only consume so much pure information. Nobody wants to read a news or how-to content every day. It's way too much.

But story-based emails? You can send them literally daily and people will keep reading.

More emails read = more sales made. It's simple math.

So that's my spiel. If you want to build a moat around your business in the age of AI... 

Don't be an info-aggregator. Be a human being.