Copy And

25. Welcome Email Sequence Copy - Funnels 101

• Samantha Burmeister • Episode 25

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 20:57

Samantha writes dozens of welcome sequences each year, either for or with her clients. 

In this episode, she breaks down exactly what goes into the first 4 emails of your welcome sequence, and gives two super helpful resources when creating your own!

To submit a Copy Confession, click here. 

Connect with me:

Nomad Copy Services → sales pages, emails, websites, and more.

Get on my calendar → if you’d like me to write your sales copy for you!

Free Opt-In Copy Bot → Write high-converting opt-in pages in minutes

Watch episodes with subtitles on my YouTube

Nomad Copy Agency writes copy that CONVERTS for service-based businesses. Inquire about done-for-you services here.

Samantha Burmeister

Hello friends and welcome back to Copy and the marketing podcast where you learn how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. Today we are continuing to work through Funnels 1 0 1, knowing exactly what copy to put where at every stage of your funnel if you are rewriting your funnel or want it to be converting better. Hit pause. Go back and watch the last couple episodes, or listen to the last couple episodes if you're joining me from Apple, Spotify, or another podcast player. But before we get into talking about your welcome emails, which come after somebody opts in or purchases from you, we are doing copy confessions. This one was submitted anonymously by an accountant, and this copy confession says. My delivery email for my opt-in a checklist was linked to the wrong Google Doc. Instead of being a highly curated checklist that I spent months creating to help people prepare for tax season, over 200 people opted in wherein were sent an email that sent them to a shared checklist between me and my husband. The one that we use every time we go camping. Yep. Over 200 people got my camping packing list before anyone bothered to tell me that I did not in fact help them with their taxes. I guess that explains the ridiculously low conversion into my one-on-one tax planning calls. That has been this week's episode of Copy Confessions, but liaises us really well into talking about our welcome emails. So what this accountant was explaining was that first email that goes out after somebody opts into your free thing, AKA a welcome email. Typically, these are a huge opportunity to start selling to your list, and no, we do not like to propose on the first date. However, I have a unique philosophy about your welcome sequence and believe that yes, you should be selling and no, it should not feel like sales when you first introduce yourself to somebody in the welcome emails. So I'm gonna jump in and tell you what I would put in your first couple of welcome emails. However, if you're writing these, you can go to the link down in the show notes for the welcome emails copy bot, and for less than$35, I will write a sales psychology back to email, actually the first two emails in your welcome sequence that are designed to help you start converting your new subscribers right away. So let's dig in. Welcome emails. If you were to ask a hundred different people, specifically a hundred different copywriters, what should go in your welcome emails, you would hear a hundred different things. What I want you to understand is that you should always do what feels right and is on brand for you. What feels right. Might feel a little stretchy. It might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but you need to be your complete self in your business because people trust you. People want to work with you specifically. And your business. So I want you to do what's right because when you are doing what feels in alignment for you, your business is going to thrive and it's gonna be way more fun for you to run. But as a sales copywriter who wants to see your emails and your funnels converting, we're gonna talk about what you've probably been told and what I would recommend. So. Back when I first started copywriting, this was back in 2019, I was coming off of a sales career and a marketing degree, and I would hear advice that anywhere from five to 16 emails to even a full year long welcome sequence basically had the job of introducing you and your offers and pushing people to purchase from you at some point. I still have a template on my website with, I believe it's eight welcome Sequence emails, and that'll be in the show notes if that's your speed. However, the marketing environment has changed a lot in the last seven years. In fact, most online business owners that I know now weren't in business seven years ago, and our buyers are behaving completely differently. We are in a different economy. We are in a different ecosystem than we were seven years ago. So what I know now. Is this. Let's talk about the data. The very first email that you send, we'll probably have between a 90 and 95% open rate. That means when somebody downloads your freebie, nine out of 10 people are going to go open that email. Why would somebody choose to download something? Why would somebody put their email in and not go open it? I don't know, but we're not gonna concern ourselves with that. One person out of 10 who didn't open your email, we're talking about the nine who did. You will have a 90% open rate of your delivery email, the very first welcome email that you sent. After that, each email's open rate will drop off by about eight to 12%, so call it 10% and then stagnate, depending on your audience size and how you interact with your email list between 40 to 60% for an average open rate for the rest of forever. So that first email's gonna get 90% open rate. Second email is gonna be closer to 80 than 70, then 60. And that's probably gonna stagnate somewhere around there. If that is true, and it is, it has been true for myself and my clients historically. Why wouldn't you use those initial emails to get your offers and make those offers immediately? Would you rather have 90% of people see what your offer is or 50. The answer should be obvious. However, we don't want to, like I mentioned, propose on the first date. We're not here to make it awkward, so what goes in those emails so that we can educate people and put our offers in front of them so that they don't think that we are some person who gave them something for free online, but rather somebody who has a unique set of skills that can help them achieve the solution that they're looking for. In the first email, I want you to deliver the thing that you promised and tell them the next step. This is huge in sales psychology. It's called open loop marketing or creating an open loop. This is called open loop marketing, and what we're doing is we are simply giving them the next step. We are making it seem like they have not completed what they need to to achieve their goals. So if they downloaded your thing so that they. Know what to do next in their design or so that they have a checklist before they can do their taxes. That's great. What do you know is the next step of what they will need to do to accomplish their bigger goal of getting good at design or finishing their taxes in these two example? So your job then is to tell them what to do next. So you say, great, here's your checklist. However, your next step to do the bigger goal is going to be this, and here is the best way to achieve that. That is you positioning your paid offer as the next step, the very natural next step. This can be a lot of things when we create this list. It can be a paid conversion, so it can say, jump on my calendar or get the full template, or, get a one-on-one work with my team, join the membership. It can be something that helps'em continue to achieve their goal. You could also request a reply, which is going to help with your open rates and conversion rates. Down the road, but you must get them to click or engage in that first email. Next week I'm gonna talk about nurture and ongoing emails. And a few weeks from now, I'm gonna talk about deliverability in your emails. But what I need you to know about email delivery is this. You have a reputation online, not just the one that you're aware of, not just the one where you know that people think of you as a certain kind of person, but a digital reputation. And if you are sending emails that don't get opened and don't get clicked, you are signaling to the algorithm that you are not trustworthy, you're decreasing your reputation. Which means your emails down the road have a higher chance of getting flagged. So in this first email, like I said, you need to do two things. You need to deliver the thing, get your people to click to open the thing that they wanted, and then also get them to take a next step. Your goal is to get engagement on this email so that you earn the right to continue emailing them down the road, both socially and for the algorithm. So again, deliver the thing. Tell them the next step. The next step can be paid. It can be a request, a reply. It can simply be, stay part of the conversation. Join my Facebook group here, or say hi on Instagram here. Ultimately, the goal of that first email is to increase your authority with them and your engagement for the magical internet bots. The second. And again, I have a welcome sequence copy bot that writes this first email for you. You just plug in the information about what it is that they downloaded and where you want them to go next, and it will write these first couple of emails for you. So if this feels complicated, don't worry. The link to the welcome sequence, copy bot is at the show notes below. So that's email number one. Is we are giving them the opportunity to start seeing us as somebody that is paid, as somebody that is an authority. Do I think that that first email is gonna convert more often than not? Not really, but we are starting to prime the pump so that they understand that you are somebody that they can buy from. Email Number two, the goal is, again, engagement and building your authority. But what we're doing in this email is that we are reiterating to them why they are on your list. A lot of times people are looking for a solution at a specific time, and then they end up downloading like three different resources that they think is gonna solve their problems, or they are potentially joining your list from a bundle, a summit or something where they have a lot of resources in front of them at once. So we wanna reiterate why they joined your list, not just the thing that they purchased or opted into, which we do wanna give them a link so that they can revisit it so that you get engagement on your emails. But also what were they trying to achieve? Show them that you know them and give them that information in your copy. So we're reiterating why they're there, and then the next step is that we are providing value by telling them the next steps that they can take to achieve the goal that you have already stated. So this might be, remember downloading the freebie is just the first step. You also need this other thing to get the transformation that you're looking for. You can grab it for 50% off here as this coupon code is only valuable for the rest of the week. This could be something like an order bump, which is what we mentioned in the last episode in episode 24 where we talked about checkout pages. You could re-mention your order bump, you could mention a trip wire, or you can help them further with the thing that they already downloaded. So remember they downloaded a freebie or they purchased something small? You are reminding them of what that was and giving them access to it. And then you have the opportunity to either continue to sell to them or provide value by helping them use the thing that they already got. So, some clever ways that I like to see people use to help them get more value out of what they've already downloaded are videos. That make you very real, where you can walk them through that resource and help them take the first step in using that resource. You could do a video walkthrough of the resource. You could give them a small opportunity to get on your calendar and talk about that resource or receiving the transformation. So we've got opportunities to send them to blog posts, to videos, to your social, to working with you and paying you to working with you in a free capacity. There's a lot of opportunity here in this second email to really show people how you work. Is the goal. So we are helping them engage with your emails. We are giving them things to click. We are reminding them that you are uniquely positioned to help them achieve a solution. So that's email one and two is getting people to click your email. And download the thing and start receiving value from you so that they align you with the solution to their problems. You are helping them before they ever pay you so that you become the natural person to pay when they are ready. Your first two emails are probably the most important as far as positioning yourself as an authority and also making sure that your emails don't get flagged. Email number three is where I typically recommend that my clients introduce themselves, and I do have this in the template that's on my website, which is again, linked below. But where I see people go wrong with introducing themselves is they say, I, I, I, me, me, me. I've always wanted to do this. This is why I'm amazing, et cetera. People are coming to you to be an authority, so you do need to make it about you, but only to the extent that it benefits them and their journey, especially in the emails. If you wanna have a longer built out about you on your Instagram grid and in your website, that's great, but most people are only gonna read the first couple hundred words of an email anyway, especially if they are new and it doesn't pertain to them. I often talk about email as if it's a party and if somebody jumps up on a table at a party when they first arrive, and start talking about themselves and why they're cool and why they're hot and where they got their outfit, and think somebody for inviting them to the party and makes it all about them. It's weird if somebody shows up to a party and shakes hands and listens to you and compliments your outfit and then says, yeah, and look at mine. It's got pockets. You're gonna be way more likely to listen to them. So email is a party. Think about it, like a party, say, oh my gosh, I also have this experience, and then I took it a step further to become an authority, and now I can reach back and help you have a positive experience as well. That's how we wanna see our introduction emails and still not just talking about ourselves and how we can help, but saying potentially, these are the three best ways for me to help you, and then align yourself with the solutions and with your offers in this email. Another way that I love to use the introduction email is to showcase your experience and how you help, and then survey your audience so that it stays a conversation so that they are listening to you, but they're also contributing to the conversation. So you could ask them to self segment depending on the types of people that you serve or the problems that you solve, or the ways in which you deliver your solutions. So for example, you could say. I'm Sam and I help people at all parts of their business journey. Where are you at in your business journey? Are you newer to business and figuring it out? Are you established and growing or are you somewhere in between then? I win in two ways. One because selfishly. I, as the email sender, will get data and segmentation and it helps engage with people, engage with your emails, so it's incredibly positive for you. You get data and engagement. It's also an opportunity to start a conversation and to be more personal in the emails that you send in the future because of this data. If you're low volume and have the time, you can also use these survey responses, especially if they're open-ended, to reach back out and connect with your people one-on-one. So email number three is where you can introduce yourself. You can position your offers, or you could also use it to position a survey so that you get to know your audience better and engage with them more deeply in the future. The final email that I think that you need in your welcome sequence is to remind them of your other offers. This is you getting permission to tell them why they should work with you, not just what you offer. And you also have the opportunity here to send a hyper segmented email based on their responses from the last email if you surveyed them, based on if your survey lends to it. So remember, your first email is to deliver the thing and create an open loop so that they stay in your circle. The second email kind of monkey bars from that and gets them to click, reminds them of what they downloaded. And provides that next level of value, whether that is to position your offer or to help them walk through the thing that they've already downloaded. Email three gets super personal. This is where you introduce yourself and establish yourself as an authority and potentially gives them the opportunity to introduce themselves back to you with some sort of survey or response. And then email four is where you then frame up your offers. This can be based on the survey beforehand, or it can just be when you're feeling blank. This is the best way for you to go. If you need this, this is the best way for you to go and just line up your offers so that you get all or some of your offers in front of the right people. While there are still 60 plus percent of people opening your emails. To recap, I have a lot of opinions on the welcome sequences and some people are gonna tell me that I'm wrong, and that's okay. This is just how I would do it if you were my client. Ultimately, I think you need to keep these emails relatively short. You don't meet somebody at a party and talk their ear off and have them walking away thinking you were great. No email is still a conversation, an open and an opportunity. In sales, we learned that you should only talk 20% of the time and be listening 80% of the time. That's the goal in all marketing. Be listening, collect data, give your people the opportunity to give you feedback. Also, it is okay to sell in your welcome emails. In fact, I think you're doing them a disservice if you don't sell in a welcome email and leave them hanging. If I were to walk into a spa and I was traveling or had forgotten my towel, and they said, welcome to the spa. These are all the pools that you get to go in. There's a steam room, but you need to sit on a towel. I would feel like they were doing me a disservice if they didn't say, and you can rent one for$5. It's not because it's an upsell. It's because it is what is necessary for me to accomplish my goal of enjoying the spa. Is that I need the towel. So they need to be doing me a service by selling to me. So you are doing people a disservice often if you don't sell to them, if you don't position yourself as the person who can help them accomplish their goals, and also helping them accomplish their goals while they're thinking about it. If you wait five or seven emails in before you start selling, they might have already solved their problem. They might have decided that it's not that big of a problem anymore, or they have found somebody else who will do it quickly. So it's okay to sell in your welcome emails and to sell to them while you are getting the most eyeballs on your welcome sequence and while they are thinking about it. There's a lot of opportunity within your welcome sequence to start segmenting. Ultimately, I think you need at least four emails in your welcome sequence to go out every day or two. After they have downloaded your thing, to welcome them and showcase your authority. Next week I'm gonna talk to you about nurture emails and what to send when you have no idea what to send when you know that you need to be connecting with your email list. But for right now, your job is to go back and look at your welcome sequence, open up a Google document, and think about what are you sending them after they opt in. Do they all have buttons in them so that you are getting clicks so that you show to your email service provider that you are an authoritative person to be landing in people's inboxes rather than their spam? Are they converting? Are you making sales? Sometimes the welcome sequence is a long game, but it'll be even longer if you don't catch the 80 to 90% of people who are opening those first couple of emails. As I mentioned, the template for the welcome sequence are going to be in the show notes. If this is something that you'd rather hand off to me, or if you have it written and would like my eyeballs on it, you can go to, can you write this for me.com and by a couple hours of my time where I go through your welcome sequence. If it's longer than four emails, we'll probably need a VIP day, but that's something where you can always find me@nomadcopyagency.com slash contact, and that's where you can fill out a form. Get on my calendar for some done for You projects. I know that this was a long episode for Funnels 1 0 1, and I'm so glad that you're sticking with me. The template for the welcome sequence are available in the show notes. When you have questions for me, always feel free to reach out. You can find me on Instagram at nomad dot copy and on LinkedIn at Samantha Burmeister. I'll see you next week where we're talking about what goes in those nurture emails when you have no freaking idea what to send.