WELCOME EMAIL

The most important and critical aspect of an email marketing strategy is the welcome email.

If you don’t have one, it’s time to start working on it.
It sets the tone for how customers expect to be treated from that point forward.

Now, here’s a brief explanation on how an email marketing sequence should be created.

With the welcome email you need to set expectations for what kind of content they will receive and how often they will receive it. This can even determine whether or not your customers open your emails at all in the first place because they don’t understand your content strategy or frequency, which would cause them to unsubscribe from receiving any more emails from you.

Take the time to do this right.

 

Doing this well will lead to higher customer satisfaction, lead to better rapport with your customers and increase your lifetime investment in the relationship with your customers.

 

You are literally sending out a message that says you are a trustworthy, reliable and competent company which is critical when selling online or offline products and services.

 

Furthermore if you do not follow up on these requests for information or further communications from your customers they will have no reason to continue doing business with you.

You want a high quality welcome email that is readable, engaging, does not spam them and helps build rapport with them so they will respond properly in the future. This is critical to build trust and rapport.

 

Make sure your welcome email gives people a sense of who you are, why they should choose to be customers of yours and what they should expect from you going forward.

When you get their email address they have given you direct permission to send them content.

 

This may include sales emails, marketing emails or just business updates. Your welcome emails sets the tone for all of these things that they will receive in the future.

One of the most important things is to provide your customers with value in ways other than just selling them back what they originally came to find in your site but instead give them content that helps educate, inspire or helps solve a problem for them.

This helps build their trust in you and gives them more reason to want to buy from you in the future.

Provide them with email content that educates them on what they are looking for so they will be able to make a more educated decision about what they want and need.

 

Show that you know your customers by returning business information like how many times the customer has visited or if any of their orders were cancelled or fulfilled. These are all great indicators of the customers overall satisfaction with your company and products and services. This builds trust for future purchases.

 

 

 

 

TIMING

 

Your first response email should be sent within 5 minutes of someone signing up for your list. This is crucial for your email marketing sequence.

 

This is where you can ask them specific questions that will help you get to the bottom of why they are signing up, what they are looking for and how you can help them.

 

It doesn’t have to be a long email but the point is to show that you are capable of delivering value on a consistent basis.

Have information available in your welcome email that shows people how they can engage with you on Facebook, Twitter, etc… if they have any problems or questions about what they received in their welcome email or anything going forward.

 

This is a great way to help them solve problems and for you to be able to track that your customers are having problems with your products or services.

Find out what the customer’s main purpose for being in your website is and how their experience was.

 

Send them an email asking why they visited or what they were looking for. If they didn’t find it, let them know how you can help them find it in the future. This builds rapport with the customer because you care about their experience at your site and want to get better at providing value to people who visit.

 

Find out if people are having problems with the information they received and if they need more information to make a decision.
Use this information to feed into your future email campaigns.

What you learn here can help you create different offers or content for different types of customers on Facebook, Twitter or in your next email campaign depending on the results.

If they decide to purchase something in the future or sign up for your newsletter and want more information about what you offer, simply send them an email saying that they can find it on this link and send them there.

If they have any problems getting what they are looking for, let them know where the problem is at, when it is expected to be resolved or send them an email showing that you care about their experience by showing time in your calendar that you reacted to their requests. 

 

Show that you can serve your customers well and meet their needs.

 

EMAIL SEQUENCE

The second response email should be sent out immediately after the welcome email. They should also be very similar but focused on a different aspect of what you are offering or your business.

Since you likely don’t have all of their contact information from this customer, use the email as an opportunity to build rapport with them.

Answer any questions or solve any issues they have with the product or service. If there are problems with something that is not your fault, throw it back on your customer!

 

Explain that they should tell you if any of their products arrive damaged that it is their responsibility to tell you and to reject delivery if they want and send it back to you.

Let them know you will be in touch if they need anything in the future and send them a link to your Facebook, Twitter or any other social media presence.

Do not mention anything about the product or service you are selling unless it is relevant to their problem. You want to solve their problems without making a sales pitch!

 

The third response email should be sent out immediately after the second response email and a little more of a sales pitch than the second one. It needs to focus on building expectations around what they are going to receive from you but also give them information about how many products or services of that type that you offer.

The third response email should be sent to the exact same groups of people as the previous two emails. If they have not purchased anything yet, this should be the last opportunity to ask them to buy something or take any action with your product or service.

If they have found a problem with your product or service, let them know and give them a number to call you on so that you can resolve it for them. If their problem isn’t fixed, let them know when you are expecting it and how much you will be able to fix it.

The fourth response email should be sent to the exact same groups of people as the previous three. If they have not purchased anything yet, this should be the last opportunity to ask them to buy something or take any action with your product or service.

If they have found a problem with your product or service, let them know and give them a number to call you on so that you can resolve it for them.

 

 

Now, in your email marketing sequence everything depends also on the niche you’re in.

Let’s pretend you have an ecommerce business: the fifth email should be sent out immediately after the estimated shipping date. It should ask them for a delivery date that suits them and give them an opportunity to return the product if they would like. Give them the opportunity to postpone it if longer than 2 weeks from their expected date of delivery. This gives you time to arrange pickups etc.

The fifth response email should be sent to the exact same groups of people as the previous four emails. If they have not purchased anything yet, this should be the last opportunity to ask them to buy something or take any action with your product or service.

This is a good time to thank them for their purchase and invite them to leave a review or anything else that they would like to do with your business.

You should be regularly updating your progress on the product page using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever marketing platform you use. This is also a good time to update them on what you have been doing while they have been waiting for their product.

If your product is currently in production then you can ask people if they would like to be updated by email regularly and give them the option of receiving updates daily, weekly or monthly and set up different email campaigns for each of these options.

Now considering you are promoting an online business.
The first email in the sequence should be an interesting and engaging one. With this email, you are trying to tell a story. This is not an advertisement. It’s something that your subscriber will enjoy reading and will want to read the next email in your series as well.

 

The next emails should also have some call to action so that your subscriber can take the next step toward building their own website or blog from scratch.

 

 

 

 

Templates

 

Keep in mind that you might need to create a few different templates for each campaign, depending on how much content you want to include around each subject matter. If you are writing about more than one topic in this campaign, then you’ll need different templates for each one of them.

The templates can help you organize all the information you need to include in your email, as well as the order in which it should be presented. This will save you time, and more importantly — save your clients time.

Do not use a template that is boring or looks like it was thrown together in 10 minutes. To look professional, you need a template that has been tested and tweaked by many people. It’s like writing a paper for college.

Now, if you want to know more on how to use Email to Build Your Online Business, simply CLICK HERE