As savvy marketers, we know the biggest factor in a successful email sequence plays into three of the most defining characteristics of the human personality: their habits, their emotions, and their impulses.
Here are the six essential parts of an email sequence that convert subscribers into customers.
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1. Welcome Emails & Indoctrination
The first thing to realize about welcome emails is they aren’t meant to sell anything. They’re meant to give the customer value. Make them love you and get to know you. This first email is super important if you want to keep subscribers and grow the size of your email list.
You want the welcome email to show your new subscriber what they’ll get each time they open an email from you. If they see that you’re giving them value, they’ll be more likely to keep opening your emails—and you can avoid the dreaded spam folder.
Welcome emails need to do three things:
- They need to introduce yourself (or your company)
- They need to tell your subscribers why they’re here and what to expect
- They need to clearly explain what you can do for them
Be creative, use pattern interruptions, trending topics, news, etc. to get your new subscriber’s attention.
These are the three characteristics of a great welcome email:
- It sets the tone
- It promotes engagement
- It has fun
2. Tripwire
Now that you have your subscriber’s interest and you’ve taught them that your emails are worth their time, you can implement the first low-dollar offer of your funnel.
This is called a tripwire.
What you want to use as a tripwire:
Let’s say your main product is a $500 digital marketing course for email marketers. Your tripwire could be a $9 PDF with 15 proven email marketing templates that have generated over $1M+ in sales.
This PDF would be a section of your digital marketing course that shows the value someone would get from purchasing it. It’s like giving them a sneak peek, in hopes that they’ll be more convinced to buy your higher-priced product.
The tripwire should be a small commitment with the goal of turning the email subscriber into a buyer. The product that is the tripwire needs to make logical sense for the next product you’re going to offer them. It’s always a low-priced offer, in comparison to your end product, that gets customers over the initial hump of their first purchase. This is also known as a micro-commitment.
3. Hard Sell Emails
The hard sell email is delivered to everybody who bought the tripwire product. Each of these subscribers has shown a major interest in the end product and we want to use marketing strategies to convince them that the time to buy is now.
This is when we’re going to start speaking to their emotions about the problem your product solves.
The goal here is to engage subscribers and motivate them to buy using:
- The Power of Persuasion
- FOMO (Fear of missing out)
- Subconscious Triggers
- Future Pacing
- Product Positioning
- Visualization
In a hard-sell email, you want to agitate the pain that your product is solving.
For example:
“Are you struggling to get over a 5% conversion rate on your email campaigns? These marketers averaged a 2% conversion rate before starting my digital marketing course for email marketers. Now, they average a 5-7% conversion rate on every email campaign.”
Another verbiage to use:
- There is a better way to…
- Have you thought of this…
- Consider this option for a moment
Read this blog post for more welcome email sequences examples.
4. Down-Sell
Based on the success or failure of your hard-sell email, your funnel is going to take a fork. Either direction is going to play off of the same human personality characteristics, that we’re impulsive.
If you succeeded in getting the subscriber to buy the end product, they’ll go left at the fork and into an upsell campaign.
If they didn’t, they’ll take a sharp right and receive an offer for a less expensive product.
This cheaper option is called a down-sell.
For example, if the hard sell email for your $500 digital marketing course for email marketers didn’t work on a subscriber—send them an email for your $100 slimmed-down version of the course. Tell them they’ll be missing out on some major value pieces, but they’ll still be able to see at least half of your course.
5. Upsell
When your hard-sell email works, don’t leave money on the table… you get to upsell them! In fact, guess who is most likely to buy your highest-priced programs? Those who have already purchased an upper-tier product.
Let’s explore this using our email marketing course example…
If somebody buys your digital marketing course email course, you can offer them your email mastermind coaching program for $1,000. There’s an opportunity here to offer them some discounts and exclusivity, for example, “Normally this mastermind is $2,000, but since you’ve already invested in my programs, you get it for 50% off.”
Make sure that your upsell is so exclusive that if it isn’t purchased now—the offer will never exist again at that price and they miss out.
6. Affiliates and Joint Ventures
Now, to throw you for a bit of a loop—your email funnel doesn’t necessarily have to sell your product. You can use affiliate links to create funnels for other products. For example, MailChimp, Infusionsoft, and Convertkit all have affiliate programs that give up to 30% commission for every sign-up they get from someone’s affiliate link.
You can also use these affiliate links as upsell or down-sell offers.
If you want to sell to more people than just those on your email list, you can have other businesses promote your product. This is called a Joint Venture (JV)—the other influencer/business will have an affiliate link for your product. For each person they get to sign up, they’ll receive a commission on the sale. This is also a great way to build your list because you’ll be getting new leads and buyers from your partners.
Use these six components of an email funnel to teach your subscribers your emails are worth opening, get them used to engaging with you, and convert them into buyers.
At Brandetize, we create entire email sequences for our clients that engage and convert.
This is informative. Thanks.