Episode #012: Writing An Email Sequence for New Leads
Join Zach as he walks you through a simple 5-email sequence you can use to nurture new leads and get them into your offers. When you tune in you're gonna learn...
The EXACT flow that Zach uses to move people into his corner of the internet
How to write the emails so that people engage with your content and buy your offers
A simple strategy to grow your socials while you grow your list.
So tune in and create a flow that engages, nurtures, and converts new leads!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 12. And in this episode, we're talking about what to do once you get new leads. Are you following up with them? Are you bringing them into your ecosystem? So if you are generating leads but not doing anything when they get onto your list, this episode is for you, so stay tuned.
Hey, hey, hey not so average marketer. I am so pumped for today's episode because when I first started my business, I realized that a lot of people were saying like the money's in your list, grow your list, build your list, get people on your list. And I was doing that, I really was. I was hustling to get people on my list. I was doing live streams. I was running ads. I was posting on Facebook and Instagram, and it was great in the sense that my list did start to grow.
But I realized that I was missing this key element. And that key element is that when people were joining my list, nothing was happening. Maybe they started getting my weekly podcast or weekly emails, I would send out a blog from time to time, but I didn't have a clear system to bring them kind of into my fold and actually move them into a sequential offer. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. That is, when someone joins your email list, they are primed to be able to take action. They just opted in for something that hopefully solves a problem for them, because we don't just give out our name and email for the sake of, oh, I want to be on a newsletter, or, oh, I want updates. We do it because there's something specific that's being offered to us.
It could be a discount. It could be a freebie. It could be a webinar. It could be a challenge. But what happens once they get on your list? What we recommend is that you set up a really simple email sequence to get people into your world and make an offer to them. And that's what I want to talk to you about today is how to actually create a really simple sequence. First off, I'm going to use the word sequence a lot today and we should talk about what exactly I mean by that. A sequence is simply a set of emails that go out automatically after someone joins your email list. That's it. It's once somebody joins your list, you want to send them a series of emails.
So, I recommend that you have about five emails to get people started that go out every single day after they opt in. So they get one email immediately after they opt in and then another four emails every 24 hours. Now, conceptually, what goes into those emails? I want to give you the high level overview of what I recommend for these five emails, and then I'll dive into each of them so that you understand the content that goes within them so you can actually write them for yourself. The first email is the opt-in delivery and the engagement email. So this is where you're going to send the content that people ask for and then encourage them to join you in your ecosystem. And we'll talk about what that means in a minute.
This second email is what I call the value bridge. It's a bridge between the free content and the paid content that you're going to position in the next email. So the next email, email number three, is a pitch email. It's where you take a piece of content, if you don't have anything for sale, or a low ticket or mid ticket product that you do have for sale, and give them the opportunity to buy it. The third email is another value based email. I call it my top tip email. I like to give them my top tip related to my industry. And then the last email that I send out is a final call to action, a last chance to take me up on a paid opportunity.
Now, once people go through that sequence, I may send one more email, but I'll then dump them into my regular scheduled emails. So that could be a weekly podcast, promotions, invites to webinars, launches, anything that I'm doing with my emails after that because now they've kind of been, for lack of a better word, indoctrinated into my business. And I don't love the word indoctrinated. It's something that was taught to me by other marketers, but indoctrination can be really negative connotation, but it can also be really positive when you're trying to influence people for the better. We're not indoctrinating in the sense that we don't want people to think for themselves, I want you to think of indoctrination as this is me proving that what I say I know I actually know. What I say I can serve with I can actually serve with. That's what I want you to think of when we think of the word indoctrination.
You can set these up in any email system. We personally use ConvertKit. ConvertKit is our go-to email system provider. It starts at 29 bucks a month. It's absolutely fantastic. It has a lot of the functionality you need. There's simpler options like MailChimp, but I feel like it's really easy to outgrow and there's more robust options like ActiveCampaign, but when you're getting started, it can be a little complicated. So we're huge fans of ConvertKit. So you're going to set up these emails in ConvertKit, but let's talk about the content of each email.
The first email is the opt-in email. This is what's going to go out right after they opt in for your freebie. What I do is I start by making sure, number one, I give them the free thing at the top of the email. At this point in the game, people don't really know you yet. They haven't consumed a lot of your content. They may be like seen you online possibly, but there's a good chance, especially if you're running ads, that they have no idea who you are at this point in the game. So if they don't know who you are, you don't want to just start sending them like, "Oh, here's my offer. Here's this, here's that." What you want to do is at the very top of the email, give them a link to download their free thing.
Once you've done that, you introduce yourself. For example, in my email, I say, "Hey, my name is Zach Spuckler. I'm the founder of Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast and the Not Your Average membership. So in my introduction, I like to seed what it is that I have for sale. Now, I may not be pitching it quite at this point but I'm mentioning it. I want to start putting the idea out there that I actually have something that I run. Then you tell them a little bit about what you do. I like to share a fun fact, like how I spend my days. And then I say something along the lines of like, why should you listen to me, or what do I know that I bring to the table?
I talk about how much I've managed in Facebook ads, how much revenue I've generated in my business. And then I say something like I'm not sharing that to brag, I'm just sharing that I've done this before and I want to teach you based on what I've seen work for me. Then I always lead into several things that they can do to start working with me. When I say working with me, maybe that's not even the right word because it's not working with you, it's engaging with you and kind of coming into your fold, your corner of the internet. So, I always start by saying, "Hey, come listen to the podcast. Here's how to subscribe. Here's when I release new episodes."
Then I always invite people to follow me on my highest priority social channel. For us, that's Instagram. I want people to follow me on Instagram because we are trying to grow our Instagram channel to engage more people in our business and ultimately we want to grow our Instagram to a higher authority place. And so that's what we do. We push people to our Instagram. And then I always mention an opportunity to work with me. And this is an actual opportunity, a paid opportunity. So I just say, "Hey, if you want to go deeper with me, I've got this offer, click here to check it out."
That's it. I don't pitch it, I don't outline what it is. I literally just link to a nice sales page and I send people there, because what I'm doing in this email is I'm basically saying here's how to get free content from me, podcast. Here's how to connect with me on social, Instagram. And if you want to go deeper on any of this, here's an opportunity to pay and work with me. And then I just wrap the email up by saying like, "Hey, we're so excited to have you." And I always mention, "I'm going to send you several more emails over the course of the next couple days just to continue to support you in what you're working on." That's email number one.
Email number two, I call the value bridge. What I do is I start connecting the fact that I've got free content and I've got paid content. So I call this a bridge because the first email is really not talking about a ton of paid content and neither is the second email. It's bridging them to a point where they're ready to work with me. So I always start by saying, "Hey, how are you finding that freebie?" And I link to it again. And then, this is really key. I say, "Feel free to hit reply to this email and let me know what you think. I love hearing from you." The reason I do that is because if somebody replies to your email, you're less likely to go to their spam folder and you're less likely to go to their promotions folder when you email in the future. So even though you might start getting email replies, it's worth it.
Once I've done that, I link them to either a blog or a podcast specifically that answers a question I know people have related to the freebie. Whew, that was a mouthful. So let me read you a sentence to give you an example. I say, "One of the things people wonder a lot after downloading my ultimate guide is how do I plan out a course launch beyond just running Facebook ads." It's very simple. I address what their common question might be. And then I link them to a blog post or a podcast. That's all I do. I just send them the content and I give them a link and they can go read it. And then I always do a little PS that says, "PS, if you want to go deeper, if you want additional support, click here to learn more about my paid offer." So again, I'm starting to bridge it. I give value. I lead with value. And then I casually mention my paid offer. Email number two.
Then we get into the third email, which is the pitch email. So I basically use a subject line that's like, have you joined the blank yet? Have you joined our bootcamp? Have you joined our toolkit? Have you joined our course? What I do is I say, "Hey there. I know you're thinking about why should I join this program that I've mentioned a couple time." What I personally like to do, if you don't have this, I'll give you an alternative option. But I personally like to use customer testimonials. So if you're not sure you should do this thing, here's some testimonials on the results our clients are getting. Check them out. These are the exact results we're seeing inside of our program, inside of our bootcamp, inside of our training.
And then I say, "Here's what you're going to get out of this training." And I just recap the outcomes. What are they going to get when they join this training? Are they going to learn to run Facebook ads? Are they going to lose up to five pounds? Are they going to learn how to write a sales page? Like what are they actually going to walk away with? Then I talk about what they get in terms of like the stuff. In one scenario, we invited people to our $10 Facebook ads bootcamp that we ran live and we said, "This training includes community. It includes education. It includes feedback. It includes the training content."
So you really want to tell them like specifically what they're going to get. If you just say, "Hey, you're going to learn to run Facebook ads in five days," they'll be like, "But what do I get?" So it's like the outcomes, what they get, and then calls to action to get them to join your offer. And that's it. That's email number three, it's a pitch. So it's got the content, the call to action, the testimonials, the outcomes and the deliverables.
Email number four is what I call my top tip email. This is something that I've been running for a while. It works really well for us. We get a really great click-through rate and we just basically say, here's my top tip for blank success. In one case, we ran a Facebook ad sequence. So we basically said, "Hey, when I got started with Facebook ads, I found myself spending hours in the ads manager tweaking, changing, rebuilding, because I thought there was some sort of magic sauce. And I realized that the real magic of Facebook ads is copy and creative. Write good copy, you get leads. Write bad copy, you don't get good leads. And if you want to learn how to actually write copy and creative, click here to read this awesome blog that I wrote about it." And that's it, that's the only call to action.
In fact, in this email, I don't even mention the paid product. I had a PS that says, "Hey, DM me on Instagram and let me know what you're thinking about this free blog or this free podcast or this free training." Because again, I'm trying to pull them into my social media ecosystem. And if they DM me and actually leave me a comment, that's great. I can start a conversation. I can engage with them. So that's email number four. Very, very simple.
Then in email number five, this is the final call to action. This is the big pitch email. This is where I'm like, "Hey, this is your last chance." Now, you might be like, well, is it really their last chance? How am I going to include scarcity? I don't stress about that too much. I really don't. All I do is I say, "Hey, first things first, I just wanted to make sure that you got your free copy of the freebie. And while you're here, I want to share something with you." And I like to tell a story. In one of my emails, I have this picture that I took of my notebook back in 2015 or 16 and I basically say, "Hey, this was my plan to launch my product five years ago. And back then everything was like Periscope. Periscope was huge. This is how I was planning to launch my how to launch my course and how to get everything out there, but that's not working anymore.
What worked five years ago doesn't necessarily work now. And that's why I think you should join me for my live training about Facebook ads because what was working then doesn't work now and I'm trying to help you get relevant and current and consistent with the changes that we're seeing in online marketing. So the current strategy that I'm using is bringing in some of our best leads at our lowest cost." Once I do that, I basically say, "If you want to learn more, click here to join our Facebook ads training. Here's what you get. Here's what we'll cover. Here's the takeaways. Click here to join and check out the sales page." And then my little PS is like, "Hey, if you didn't read the whole email, the short version, I'm offering this for this price. If you want to get in, click here." And that's it. It's that simple. It's a pitch email. I'm just pitching my offer.
Now, some people are like, you need scarcity or you need a countdown timer. I don't think you do. We get a decent conversion rate without a countdown timer. I think that that's totally acceptable and that's totally fine if you want to do that. But what I will say is make sure whatever you write in the email is true. So use software that actually cuts them off from buying if you're going to say the cart closes. If you're going to offer a temporary discount code, make sure the discount code expires. What I like to say is, "Hey, I won't bug you about this again via this email sequence, but if you want to learn more, you can always check it out at this link." That's my go-to because it's like, hey, I'm not going to keep emailing you about it, but I also want you to know it's available.
That's my sequence. That's what I do. I want to run you through it one more time just so that you understand the full sequence. When someone opts into your freebie, we immediately deliver the free freebie. And then we bring them into our ecosystem with a call to action to listen to our podcast or our blog, a call to action to follow us on social, and a mention of our paid opportunity. The second email is a value email. We link them to our blog or our podcast with something related to the freebie. And then we casually mention the paid product in the PS. The third email is a pitch email. So we include testimonials, outcomes, calls to action, everything that we need to get somebody to click over to our sales page and learn more about the opportunity that we're presenting.
Three days later, we send what I call the top tip email, which is just, "Here's my top tip about whatever the topic in my sequence is. And if you loved it, come mention it on Instagram to me via DM because I want to start one-on-one conversations." The last email is the final call to action, the big pitch. You may include scarcity, you may include a countdown timer. Just make sure that whatever you say in that email is completely true because you want to train your audience to trust you. So I simply say, "Hey, I won't email you in this sequence again about this, but I just wanted to let you know that this is a great opportunity to work with me on your Facebook ads."
Now, for those of you listening to this who are saying, "Oh my gosh, this sounds great, but I am not a copywriter at heart. How the heck am I supposed to write these emails from scratch?" Well, I want to let you know that inside our membership, Not Your Average membership, we actually have this entire training. We presented it in October of 2021. We actually created an entire sample email sequence and an email sequence template where you can go in and fill in the blanks with how to actually write your email sequence. We teach you how to schedule it. We teach you how to write it. We teach you everything you need to know.
Now, if you're considering Not Your Average membership, I just want to run you through exactly what you get inside the training. When you join, you get instant access to everything we've offered so far. We actually have a training on how to generate leads to get them into your sequence, a training on how to write your email sequence, a training on how to develop a low ticket offer to put inside your email sequence. And then if you're listening to this live in December of 2021, this month we're actually doing an entire training on how to plan your 2022.
We're going to give you a workbook that teaches you how to actually map out your plan for the entire year and then by quarter. We're also going to do a live workshop on training. We're going to have an implementation week where we have you day by day actually map out your plan for 2022. And we're also going to have a live coaching call all around how you plan out everything that you want to achieve in the next year. And all of that is waiting for you inside the membership. For December, we have the entire training workshop and workbook waiting, and then the live workshop is on December 13th. Then we do our implementation week the week of December 13th, and then we have a coaching call that happens on December 20th. We're really excited to share this with you.
Every month you get an action plan, a workshop, an implementation week, and a live coaching call where you can ask any questions about your business and it's just $49 a month. So if you want to check it out, you can head over to join.notyouraveragemembership.com. Again, that's join.notyouraveragemembership.com, and you can check it out. We'll also link it up in the show notes. For those of you who are brand new to the show or didn't know, we actually get a transcript of every episode.
So if you head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap012, again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/nyap012, you will see that we actually have the entire transcript of the episode there for you. So you can go back through. We link up all of our links that we mention, my Instagram, the ConvertKit, the membership. We link it all up in the show notes, and then we have a long form transcript of the entire thing. So if you want to check that out, just head over to heartsoulhustle.com/nyap012, and you will be able to access everything. We'd love to see you in the membership. We hope you check out the show notes. And until next time, stay not so average.
