Helping business owners use email marketing to grow their business

In our previous articles, we discussed how to build a contact list, how to increase email deliverability and how to improve your email open rates. Now that you have a group of verified contacts, your emails are getting through and those contacts are happily opening your emails, you need to decide what you are going to email them. Today, we are talking about creating an effective email follow up sequence.

I’m not talking method in this post – I’m talking content.

By now, you should have your sending method down pact. In other words, you should have signed up for a free email autoresponder account through Response Magic, started using the tools and previous posts to begin building a quality list of contacts and letting Response Magic ensure your emails are getting delivered through their verified high-deliverability servers.

There are three very important factors to creating an effective email follow up sequence: frequency, content value and clicking through.

Frequency is the rate at which you choose to send emails to your subscribers. The correct frequency can vary according to the list and types of emails you are sending. If your subscribers have knowingly signed up for your ‘Daily Training Video’ mailing list, for example, then you would want to keep true to that expected frequency and time your emails to go out one per day. If your subscribers have signed up for an ‘Offers and Discounts’ type of mailing list, you don’t want to hammer them with daily offers that could begin to feel more like junkmail than valuable content. We also recommend that you set up the reader’s expectations for frequency both in the very first email you send them and in subsequent emails. This way, they know what to expect.

Content value is the reason your subscribers signed up in the first place. An effective email follow up sequence ensures that the content of your emails continuously provides value while following up with your prospects. You don’t want to have your capture form advertising a daily training video and then begin emailing them a bunch of advertisements instead. You can certainly tuck in an offer or two within the emails or in between value content emails, but you don’t want to alienate your subscribers. Making subscribers feel like they are not getting what they signed up for is a quick way to get them to flag you as junk mail and unsubscribe from your list.

Your first email to them should always:

• Give a reminder of what they have just subscribed to receive
• Set an email frequency expectation
• Introduce yourself and your content a bit more
• Give them a teaser of what they will be getting in the next email and when it should arrive in their inbox
• Ask them to add you to their safe senders / contacts list so they can be sure to get all the great emails you are going to send to them

Subsequent emails should then follow up on the promises and expectations you have made for your subscribers.

Clicking through is the goal of your emails – the reason you are emailing them. It may be getting them to take part in a survey, purchase an item or join your team. An effective email follow up sequence will often have a much higher click-through rate because you are providing them with value content at a good frequencing, leading them to join your efforts or take you up on your offers. The best offers won’t seem like offers at all – they will seem like gifts, no-brainer decisions or a way for the reader to participate.

Remember, you aren’t just emailing subscribers. Your goal is to build a relationship with them and turn them into friends. You want them to expect and look forward to your emails, to enjoy and find value from the content you provide and to feel like they are clicking on a no-brainer ‘offer’ from a friend.

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