What happens after somebody joins your e-mail list?
Do they hear from you right away, or do they get silence?
Maybe you’ve spent some time going through my free 30 Day List Building Challenge and growing your email list…
But you’re stumped with what to do next.
E-Mail List, Check. What’s next?
You already send regular newsletters to your list (or you should be)…
Newsletters are important touch points to provide value and stay in touch with your tribe.
But an autoresponder series works like a charm to build that relationship early on after somebody joins your e-mail list.
The Key to a Successful Autoresponder Series
There are many different ways to set up an autoresponder series, some that will build a great relationship with your customer… and others, not so much!
What you want to aim for, especially if you have products or services that people can purchase on an ongoing basis, is to set up a sequence that gets people to buy your offerings.
Usually when I talk about this topic, people feel resistance to selling via email because they don’t want to send a bunch of promotional e-mails to their list and ruin their chances with this new subscriber.
However, following up early and often after somebody joins your list is really important because that’s when the person is the most interested in solving a problem you can help them with.
Every email that you send should have a valuable piece of content in it, even if the goal of the e-mail is to sell something.
The most important thing you can do to make sure your autoresponder series is a valuable and successful one is to start with the story in mind.
If you think about it, a series of e-mails could be like a television show series.
You want each email to build on the previous one, and to include cliffhangers so that people are looking forward to the next e-mail in the series.
How can you write emails so people feel like they’re watching their favorite TV show?
Usually a show will have an over-arching story that keeps you hooked from episode to episode, or in this case e-mail to e-mail.
Yet, each episode has its own beginning, middle, and end with a self-contained take-away.
This gives readers some satisfaction in every e-mail, because they get a piece of great actionable content, and it also answers some of the curiosity from the overall story, too.
Sample E-Mail Sequence
Here’s an example of an e-mail sequence that you might write:
1. Start out with the story of how you got to where you are today and why you started the business that you have. Everyone is curious and wants to know the back story, especially if they’re interested in your business, working with you, or buying your products.
2. Next, you’ll want to go into something that is super actionable, and preferably ends with a cliffhanger so that the next piece of content in the e-mail series will quench someone’s thirst for knowledge.
For example, if you have a process that has three steps, you can have three different e-mails that go into each of the three steps, and why they are so important to someone’s success with your method.
3. Another email I like to include in this series should contain a case study of somebody who has gone through your process and experienced great results.
4. The last email in the series is the only one where we actually ask for the sale by telling people about your product or service.
You’ll notice that none of the other e-mails were pitching, or asking people to buy your program, they were simply educating and delivering value.
This last e-mail is timed perfectly to take advantage of the reciprocity you’ve built by giving away great content… before asking for anything in return.
5. To increase conversions, add another e-mail after the last one that reminds people about your offer, and gives them a deadline to sign up for your product or service.
People are busy and it’s easy for us to put off making decisions, so giving them an incentive to make a decision is a really important part of the sales process.
That’s it!
Writing an e-mail autoresponder series is as simple as that.
This email autoresponder should get you off to a good start, and the good thing is that you don’t have to manually contact each new subscriber… it’s all done for you.
Over to you now…
Do you have a great auto responder sequence in place? Leave your opt-in page link in the comments below so we can check it out!
