5 Essential Email Sequences Every Business Owner Needs
Are there holes in your email marketing strategy? Learn the five essential sequences every digital course creator needs to take subscribers from “Hey, new friend!” to brand new customer.
This post is all about the 5 essential email sequences that just about every business owner needs.
Welcome Sequence
Your welcome sequence is the first impression that you make on subscribers and it should be the first sequence that you set up. This sequence introduces you to new subscribers, gets them excited to hear from you, and can help with your future open rates.
These emails can establish you as someone that they actually want to hear from so that they're looking for your name whenever it hits their inbox. It's important in these emails not to be boring and not to ignore them. And depending on the strategy you use, you could even use this sequence to make sales.
You’ll probably hear me talk about welcome sequences a lot because they are one of my favorite sequences to write and they are so crucial for just about every business out there. It's my number one must-have sequence. So if you don't have one yet go ahead and get started!
Scrub Sequence
Another essential sequence that more business owners need to be using is a scrub sequence. This is a sequence to use when you want to clean your list and remove inactive subscribers.
You can use the sequence to re-engage subscribers that have gone cold, try to win them back, and give them a chance to stay on your list if they want to. Using a scrub sequence regularly keeps your list nice and tidy, helps your list stay healthy, helps with your open rates, and helps to make sure that you are not carrying (and paying for) subscribers that aren't reading your emails anymore.
And this might be the most surprising part, but you can even get sales from this sequence as well! I created a scrub sequence for a client of mine and she recently messaged me to tell me she had someone reach out to work with her after getting the scrub email.
It's another great touchpoint that you can have with subscribers. It doesn't have to be as bland as: “You're not opening emails. We’re deleting you unless you click this link.”
You can do a lot of fun things with the sequence to get people excited to hear from you again and reinvigorate those subscribers that at one point were interested and have stopped opening.
If you don't have a scrub sequence yet or you haven’t cleaned your list a long time, this is another great email sequence to work on.
Show Up Sequence
The next three sequences I recommend are related to your launch. Whenever you are selling something, you want to make sure that you have all three of these in place.
The first sequence you want to have is your show up sequence. This is the sequence used to get people to engage with your pre-launch content.
For example, maybe you're running a webinar and you want people that have signed up to actually show up live. Maybe you have a video series that you're running throughout the week before your launch that you want people to engage with and watch. Maybe you’re doing a challenge that you want people to get involved in before you actually open the doors to your program.
That's where your show up sequence comes in. These emails get people to actually engage with the stuff you're putting out and not just ignore it.
One of the biggest mistakes I see when people are launching is they let those automated emails that go out from their webinar software take care of the show up for them. And those emails are not doing you any favors. They're not giving people a reason to take time out of their busy day to actually show up to your webinar. They're just a basic reminder with the time and link.
But just because they registered doesn't mean they're actually going to show up. That's where the show up sequence could really work some magic. A great show up sequence can boost your webinar attendance. It can make people excited to actually learn from you rather than just think, oh, it's another webinar.
You can really use these emails to demonstrate why this is a can't miss event and what they'll get out of coming and spending that time.
By getting people to buy into your launch early on, you'll see a lot higher engagement throughout the launch sequence. So, don't skip the show up sequence.
Sales Sequence
The next sequence is your sales sequence, which of course is probably what you think of when you think of launching your course. These are the emails that you open the cart, you're sharing client testimonials, you're giving all the details about the course, you're talking about the bonuses.
You've got the FAQ emails. The last chance emails, the cart closing emails. Those are all must have emails — plus a ton more that I forgot to mention.
This is probably the biggest sequence you'll have in your business with some of the longest emails that you'll write. If you're launching something, this is a must-have sequence.
Onboarding Sequence
The final sequence you'll need for your launch comes after the cart closes. This is your onboarding sequence. This is a series of emails someone gets after they buy. You want to use this sequence to help them feel taken care of and help them get the most out of your program, product, membership, or even your service.
A great onboarding sequence does a lot more than just send their login details and a link to the course site. You want to welcome them in, show them how to get the most out of this thing that they just bought, and help them get back to it if they get off track along the way.
There are some huge benefits to using an onboarding email sequence. It could help up your course completion rate. The industry average for course completions is less than 10%. So that means 9 out of the 10 people that are buying don't actually ever finish your course.
Using a strategic onboarding sequence can help more of those people actually get the full value that they paid for. And it can help you get better testimonials and case studies because if you have more people going through your course and getting great results, you'll have more people wanting to share it too.
An onboarding sequence can also help reduce your refund requests. If you've got some great emails that are actually helping students get the value that they paid for, you're going to have less people regretting the decision or thinking they’ve just wasted their money. So it's a win for you and it's a win for them!
Those are five email sequences that I recommend every digital course creator have running in their business. If you need help creating any of these sequences, reach out to see how I can support your growing business.