If you’ve been looking into example newsletters, you’ll probably want to look at some sample email campaigns as well.
Email is one of your most effective marketing tools, gathering together warm leads who want to hear more about you, your products, or your services. As a marketer, this is a golden opportunity to turn prospects into buyers… you just need an effective email strategy to do so.
In this article, I want to walk you through one of the most effective email marketing campaigns that we’ve used for our membership websites. By applying this framework well, you should start to see a good percentage of your email signups convert into buyers, whether you’re selling a membership, data service, coaching package, an info product, or a live seminar.
An Effective Four Step Email Campaign
This campaign is broken into 4 different emails presented to new email signups in serial order:
1. The Welcome Email – An email to welcome people to your email list, and highlight the powerful benefits of succeeding in the prospect’s area of interest – your niche focus. Also promises a massive bonus in email #4.
2. The High Value Insights Email – This email provides some significant tips and recommendations aimed at helping your prospect achieve success in your area of expertise.
3. The Dire Warning Email – The aim with this email is to warn the prospect of the major problem that they face on their journey. The solution to this problem is simple: your product or service.
4. The Offer Email – Here, you offer your prospect a special, limited time, once-only offer to get your product or service at some great discount, or to get a major additional upgrade at no cost.
The Welcome Email Framework
This is a very simple email but it may be fairly lengthy. Remember the mindset of the person who receives this email: They just signed up for your email newsletter, so they are keen on you, your brand, and want to hear more from you.
Start your email by thanking them for signing up. You want to show that you appreciate the trust they put in you and that you respect them as people. You should – trust is your biggest asset as a business.
Highlight the fact that you are a member of the same niche / enthusiast community as they are. It seems obvious that you would be, but people like and trust those who are similar to them, so highlight the major commonalities. For example:
“It’s great to hear from a fellow spear fisherman. I started 8 years ago and had to learn the ropes just like you are now, so I hope I can help you speed up your progress.”
“No, the world does not understand our furry culture, so we need to stick together.”
“We are building our network of concerned citizens to help address plastic waste, so I’m glad to get a chance to connect with you.”
You really want to reinforce the fact that they made a great decision to sign up for your newsletter, to help reduce buyers remorse. Yes, people get this even when opting in to receive free stuff, so you want to highlight the smart decision they made and why it was a brilliant move. For example:
“Congrats on taking the next step to upgrade your knitting. Over the next few weeks and months, I have some great knitting insights to share with you that will really speed up your craft.”
“Over 40% of people approaching retirement will not be able to fund the lifestyle they expected. In this email series, I plan to show you simple steps you can take to secure your retirement.”
You want to keep your prospects reading your emails, so it is important to weave some emotion and open loops into your writing. Open loops are stories or pieces of information that need a conclusion in order to be complete. Reading your child a bedtime story, but stopping short just at the climax and telling them that you will continue reading tomorrow is an example of a strong open loop. You leave them on edge wanting to know what happens.
In this email, mention that you have some major gift for them coming in email #4. This will be your discounted offer, free upside, or signup bonus… but don’t mention what you’re going to give them. This will spark curiosity, and cause them to look forward to your coming emails – especially email #4.
Another effective open loop to implement is to tell them the exciting or interesting topics you plan to bring them over the coming weeks. You want them to see your email series as high value, something that they really want to follow. Listing some topics or learning objectives and how they’ll help your prospect is a great way to get them to open your future emails.
In your first email, you really want to paint a picture of success for your prospect. You want them to see themselves having reached their goal, and how great it will be as a result. It can be very subtle, so long as it is effective. So, highlight the major benefits that come with getting good in your area of expertise. This really comes down to the benefits that will accrue to them after mastering what they want to learn about. For example:
“Imagine a night away from your crippling anxiety. You sink down onto the sofa with a bowl of popcorn and a good show. You feel comfortable, at peace, and worry does not enter into your mind. Yes, this is possible, and many just like you who suffer from general anxiety have achieved it.”
Use stats, quotes, and data to highlight the power of success in your domain. The most compelling arguments usually offer a blend of data, emotion, and reason; so, you want to incorporate all of these into your writing.
Lastly, feed your prospect another open loop to encourage them to open your next email. Mention that you’ll share one or two important practical but unintuitive insights in your next email. This will cause them to look forward to your next email and actually open it.
The High Value Insights Email Framework
This is a pretty straightforward email, as well.
The purpose of this email is to share some unintuitive high value insights with your prospects that will really help them to achieve success in your domain of expertise.
It is important that your insight both be highly impactful, and unintuitive. You want the prospect to feel that their success will be greatly improved if they apply your simple yet unintuitive insights.
You don’t want your tip / guidance / insight to be intuitive – something that they could have assumed or thought up themselves. This will make your insight seem less valuable. On the other hand, by offering an unintuitive insight, you let them in on the knowledge that they likely would not have been able to work out for themselves, painting you as more of an expert, as having a wealth of especially powerful secrets to share, and your product or service as an extremely powerful map to arrive at success.
At the end of this email, highlight the fact that as great as this insight is that you shared, your prospect can derail all of their success if they make some dire mistake. Rather than telling them what this mistake is, mention that you will discuss it in detail in your next email.
The Dire Warning Email
In this email, you want to take them from their excitement / high of receiving your unintuitive insight and walk them through the depths of failure by highlighting some major mistakes that are common in your niche.
Remember that your prospect wants success in your domain of expertise. The path to success in any domain involves adopting fruitful practices or techniques while avoiding major pitfalls. So, while your prospect is all excited about applying your high value yet unintuitive insight in your last email, you now steer them around one major pitfall that most people make on their journey to success.
In the email, make sure that you are crystal clear about the trap that most people fall into. Make it concrete and highly practical. Make sure that you explain exactly how they can avoid this trap and the consequences of not avoiding it. Paint a detailed dark picture of failure, and how it will unfold, if they don’t avoid the pitfall you’re highlighting.
Important: You will want to discuss the very problem that your product or service aims to solve for prospects in your niche. Remember that as an entrepreneur you are a problem solver. You are focused on solving problems for other people, structuring that solution into a business, and then offering that solution to people in your niche. This email walks them through the problem that you’ve chosen to solve.
Now that you have laid out the heights of success in your welcome email, the major unintuitive insight that will help them achieve that great success in your last email, and the major pitfall that could derail their entire journey in this email, they’ve been taken on a bit of an emotional journey and are more likely to be enthused about your content.
Selling them on opening your next email – the gift – should be simple. Make sure to remind them that you have some big special bonus coming in your next email that should help them avoid the pitfalls you just discussed. Tell them exactly when to expect your next email and not to miss it.
The Offer Email
Your offer email should be short and to the point. In this email, you encourage them to sign up for your product or service, highlighting the key insights you’ll bring them, the problems that you’ll solve for them, and the guidance that you will provide them to help them succeed in your domain of expertise.
You can mention what the bonus / discount / or gift is in your email but do not mention pricing. Make sure that they need to click through to see how much you are asking for your solution.
The aim here is to offer something that they will see as really valuable and to get them to your sales page. The more people you get to click through to your sales page, all else being equal, the more sales you’ll get.
Here’s how we structured one of our recent offer emails:
Summing Up Our Sample Email Campaign
This email automation series is really designed to capture sales from new email signups, prospects who are among the most excited you will see in the course of running your business.
By walking introducing them through these three impactful emails – the first focused on the beauty of the destination, the second your powerful unintuitive suggestion for helping your prospect get there, and the third your warning about the significant pitfall to avoid – you really get them enthused on you and your company, making the sale a natural, logical, next step.
