If you’re selling some sort of product or service online, you already know the importance of having an email list when it comes to selling your product/ service.
Not just an email list, but an engaged one at that. A list that’s warm and ever ready to snatch whatever you have to offer the moment you open the door to your product/ service.
However, this is all easier said than done.
More likely than not, the only kinds of engagement you get are people unsubscribing from your list.
How then do you achieve a list where your subscribers are raring to reply to your emails and ready to click “buy” once you launch your product/ service?
We had John Vishnesky speak at one of our Expert Sessions about how to create email copy that converts. He has built his career around email copywriting, and during our session, shared so many email writing secrets.
Read on to find out!
P.S. You can catch the replay of all of our previous Expert Sessions in our Facebook group Skyrocket Blog Traffic.
Research your audience
First things first, before writing any emails, make sure you research your audience and have asked them what their biggest challenges are or what you can help them with.
If you don't know what your audience is actually looking for, you're going to have a lot of trouble speaking their language and keeping them interested in your subsequent emails.
A Welcome Series that gets email subscribers engaged and ready to buy
When they first subscribe to your Welcome series, you want them to know straightaway that this is right where they need to be, they're in the right place and this is what you're going to show them.
This is how to set up your welcome series to prime your subscribers into customers.
Email #1
Thank them for joining, tell them congratulations, offer them the freebie right off the bat, and show them that they're in the right place.
E.g. "Hey. I really appreciate you [buying something which led them to join the welcome series or signing up to get this freebie. Thanks so much. Congratulations for joining. Before we start anything, here is the freebie I promised you."
Give them that in a link and then next you're going to tell them,
"Over the next week or so I'm going to be talking about [this]. [What's this valuable thing and why it's valuable]. [These are the stories I'm going to tell you], [these are what I'm going to help you with]."
And here's a super-secret bonus email that John has also shared during our Expert Session.
One thing you need to know about sending out emails is, if you're sending out emails and people aren't opening them, people aren't clicking on them, Google's not going to keep showing your emails to people. This will hurt your deliverability.
All your email is going to start going into the Promotions tab or even worse, go to Spam and no one's going to see your stuff.
So one thing that's really, really important to do is to, right off the bat, as soon as possible, get someone to reply to your email or to click on something because that tells Google that you've got valuable content in there, and people are going to continue to want to read your stuff. That way, Google is going to keep sending your emails out to people.
Therefore, in the first email, include a PS and say, "Hey PS, what's your biggest challenge with [topic]?"
This not only gets your "challenge/ struggle" email out there, you get people to start telling you what you can help them with.
Email #2
The other secret email tip is this.
6 hours after you send that first email, you want to send a second quick email that says,
"Hey, I know a lot of times, email service providers like Gmail might not show emails to people that are just opting into a new list. And so I just want to make sure, did you receive the email I sent? Just a quick reply - just type yes - and let me know if you did or not. And if you did reply, just tell me yes, I did reply."
That way, people are going to reply yes either way.
When people are interacting with your emails, it's going to start showing Google that this is a great email list that people are on and a great domain that's connected to this email list. I'm going to keep showing these emails to people that are subscribed.
The main thing is you want to make sure that people are replying to your first email in your Welcome series.
And so email three comes in. This comes in the day after. So these email one, email two, those are both on the very first day.
Email #3
The next day, you'll send your third email, which is your hero story. This is going to be the story that talks about the big challenge you had learning what you're teaching people, and then the challenges you went through.
But you're not just telling any hero story, you're going to write it in a way that piques the reader's interest.
At the end of email #3, you're not going to end with a reveal of how you're able to solve this problem.
You're going to get to the big challenge you had, and then you're going to say,
"Hey, keep an eye out for the email I'm sending you tomorrow. I'm going to tell you about what happened and how I solve this issue."
And so what this is, is leaving an open loop. We're all familiar with open loops. You see this on TV shows all the time. This is the Netflix secret to getting people to keep watching - by ending an episode on the climax of the story. It makes you want to click onto the next episode of the show to see what's going to happen.
Do the same things with your emails. Keep people opening. If they know that they're going to find out something big the next time you send an email out, they're going to want to open that email.
Email #4
These all happen one day apart. Don't wait too long to send people these emails.
And so on the second day, the hero story starts. The next day in Email #4, you close that open loop that you left, finish it, and tell them what this lesson learned was and why you want to share it with them.
That can lead to a call to action, to check out your course, your product, your blog posts, etc.
Email #5
The next day, add in a paradigm shift email. This is an email that tells you that this is the big shift that happened in your life that helped you solve this issue that runs contrary to popular belief or teachings. This will be something that goes in the face of what all your competitors do.
Let's say a lot of times your competitors are saying, "Hey, you need to water two times a day, every day."
For you, your paradigm shift is, "Hey, instead of watering two times a day, when I only water once a day at this certain time, my gardens started to flourish and everything started to grow."
That's a big paradigm shift. It's a difference from what everybody else is saying, but that's what you do that differentiates what you offer than from what everyone else does.
This works for a few reasons.
It gives them renewed hope. They've probably heard the usual tips and tried it but didn't find them working that's why they're subscribed to your email list to hopefully find another solution to their struggle. They're hoping that you can shed some light.
And when you introduce a new perspective to their problem, because of the renewed hope you've given them, it makes everybody question what they were taught by the mainstream and be open to your novel advice.
Email #6
The next day, if you've already been sending emails, you want to add in the most popular email you've already sent.
Start looking at your open rates, your click-through rates. I know that there's a lot of issues now with the new Apple update that makes open rates not as easily trackable, but you should know if people are buying something from your email or if people are clicking and interacting with emails.
Email #7, etc.
After that sixth email, you can just start dropping in your most popular emails afterwards and just make a big list of your most popular emails, a Seinfeld email sequence.
It's what happens after that welcome series after you've nurtured your subscribers' trust. From then on, they get dropped into just a weekly or monthly email.
You see, you don't have to reinvent the wheel and focus on always writing new things. You can reuse these emails that you're writing as broadcast emails, just every week or every couple of days. And if you see one that's working really well, just drop it into the back of your sequence.
And so when someone enters your list, they just keep getting your best content. That's what's really going to help you to continue building that relationship with them.
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