Email Marketing that Feels Awesome (Especially If You’d Rather Be Drawing)
Most visual practitioners I know would rather ink a twelve-foot mural than write a twelve-line email.
You’re great with markers. Your meetings are alive. Your sketchnotes get passed around like contraband at conferences.
But when it comes to email marketing?
“I don’t want to be sleazy.”
“I’m not a writer.”
“Who even wants to hear from me, anyway?”
That’s exactly what Karina Branson tackled in her NOVA Scribes webinar, “Email Marketing that Feels Awesome.” It’s an encore of her IFVP workshop on building an email practice that actually supports your visual business, without turning you into a spam bot.
Here we go, visual-practitioner style.
1. Why Email, When You Could Just Shout Into the Algorithm?
Social media is borrowed real estate. One TOS update, one cranky algorithm, and your carefully curated audience disappears into the void.
Email is different:
You own the list. No one can throttle your reach or shut down your account.
Your best clients actually read email. Especially the ones who approve budgets.
Email scales relationship-building. You can’t hop on 50 coffee chats a month. You can send one good newsletter.
Karina’s premise: email isn’t about blasting offers. It’s about building connections with the people who already care about what you do.
When you treat your list like a community instead of a “funnel,” the whole thing stops feeling gross.
2. “I’m Not a Writer” Is a Convenient Lie
Visual practitioners love to claim, “I’m not a writer, I’m a drawer.”
Meanwhile:
You caption your charts.
You frame sessions with clear questions.
You summarize three hours of chaos into one clean headline.
Hate to break it to you: that’s writing.
Karina’s framing for the IFVP crowd is simple: as visual practitioners, we already translate complex ideas into clear stories. Email is just another container for that skill.
You don’t need to become a copywriter. You just need to:
Use your own voice
Talk like a human
Share the parts that are “obvious” to you but magic to everyone else
(Exactly what she discovered when she first taught her email workshop to the visual community.ConverSketch Graphic Facilitation)
3. What to Send: Email Content for Visual Practitioners
The blank-canvas terror is real. “Okay, I have a list. What do I say?”
Karina’s work focuses on helping you understand why and how email newsletters and blogging can market your skills in an authentic way, hook readers, and give you a calendar full of topics so you’re not reinventing the wheel every month.
Here are email formats that play to your strengths:
1. Behind-the-scenes breakdowns
Show a photo of a chart or mural and explain:
The client’s challenge
The process you used
One insight that surprised the room
2. Visual tips in tiny doses
Short posts like:
“3 ways to make your meeting notes more visual”
“One simple icon set for your next strategy session”
Include a quick sketch or phone snap. Imperfect is fine.
3. Story + lesson
Tell a short story from a real event:
“A team walked in furious with each other and walked out with a shared roadmap. Here’s the visual move that helped turn the corner…”
End with a practical takeaway your reader can use.
4. Event invitations & recaps
Use email to:
Invite people to your webinars, trainings, or jams
Share visual notes from events you’ve scribed
Highlight quotes and decisions your clients will want to revisit
Think of email as the after-action report that keeps your work alive long after the markers are capped.
4. Make It Feel Awesome, Not Awful
The “feels awesome” part isn’t fluff. It’s a design choice.
From Karina’s workshops and IFVP session, three ingredients show up again and again: authenticity, consent, and usefulness.
Authenticity
Write like you talk. You’re allowed to be quirky, nerdy, earnest, dryly funny, whatever is actually you. Your goal is to sound like the trusted thought partner you already are in the room.
Consent
No dark patterns.
Clear opt-in language
No pre-checked boxes
Easy unsubscribe
When people choose to be there, you don’t have to shout.
Usefulness
Every email should answer at least one of these for your reader:
“That clarified something for me.”
“I can try this at my next meeting.”
“Now I understand what you do and when to call you.”
If it’s not useful, don’t send it. Simple.
5. The Calendar: Turn “Someday” Into a System
One of the explicit objectives from Karina’s training: participants leave with a calendar full of email topics and publishing dates so it’s easy to put ideas into action.
Steal this skeleton and adapt it:
Month 1
Week 1: “Who I help and how visuals support your work”
Week 3: Case study / chart breakdown
Month 2
Week 1: Quick tip + sketch (“Try this template in your next retreat”)
Week 3: Behind-the-scenes story (“What I’m learning from facilitating hybrid meetings”)
Month 3
Week 1: Resource round-up (books, tools, or other practitioners you love)
Week 3: Invitation (webinar, open studio, office hours)
Rinse, repeat. Move slots around as needed. Your calendar doesn’t have to be fancy; it just has to exist.
6. How to Start This Month (Not “Once I Redesign Everything”)
You don’t need the perfect platform, full rebrand, and custom illustrated opt-in form to begin.
Here’s a starter path that lines up with Karina’s “emails for the win” philosophy:
Choose one platform.
MailerLite, ConvertKit, Flodesk, Mailchimp, pick something you won’t hate opening.Create a simple opt-in.
“Get visual meeting tips & behind-the-scenes stories 1–2 times a month.” That’s it.Write a 3-email welcome series:
Email 1: Welcome + who you are + what they can expect
Email 2: Your best “signature” story or case study
Email 3: A useful template, checklist, or tip bundle
Commit to one ongoing email per month.
If more happens, great. If not, you’re still staying present.Tell people about it.
Add the link to your website, LinkedIn, Insta bio, slide decks, invoices, anywhere clients already see you.
7. Your Email List Is an Asset, Not an Afterthought
The longer you work as a visual practitioner, the more relationships you build:
Former clients
Conference organizers
Colleagues who refer you
People who see your work and think, “Someday…”
Your email list is how you keep those relationships warm without living on social media.
That’s the big shift in “Email Marketing that Feels Awesome”: seeing email as a natural extension of your visual practice, not a separate “marketer hat” you grudgingly put on a few times a year.
You help groups see clearly and act together.
Your emails can do the same.
