The 10 Emails You Should Send to Your List Right Now
Although writing reports and making products, submitting articles, and writing blog posts are all great ways to get traffic, you need to follow up with people who are already on your email subscriber list.
Most people, probably including you, do not have enough emails in their autoresponder, and that means when someone joins your list, they don't know what to do or where to go.
I want to help you and give you 10 free email templates to fill up any autoresponder follow-up sequence that needs filling in no time flat. Here are 10 different types of emails you can send to your list either for the same offer or different offers.
Email #1: The Hard Pitch
The easiest way to get somebody to buy something from you is to be direct – ask them for that sale. Even if you're not a writer, you probably already have a sales letter or some kind of pitch page or pitch video that you can swipe from in your email copy. Copy and paste chunks of your sales letter and make each chunk an individual follow-up.
If there's a really good testimonial on your sales letter, that can be a follow-up. If within your sales letter, you give away some kind of free lesson or free tip when you set up your pitch, use that as an autoresponder follow-up. Chances are you already wrote most of your email sequence and don't even realize it.
Email #2: Reminder For That Hard Pitch
Because email is getting more and more competitive and the internet is becoming more and more crowded, many people might not have even seen your email coming to their inbox. If they have seen it, they might have read the email but forgot to click the link. They also might have opened your email, read it and clicked the link but have not yet bought.
That's why you should send them reminder emails about your previous emails just to make sure they have received your information. You'd be surprised at how adding this one email will improve your traffic and click-through rates.
Email #3: The Quick Tip
You want to be recognized as an authority in your niche, right? You want people to want more from you, right? That's why if you can give people a quick tip, one small piece of advice they can read in a minute or less about your niche, schedule that as an email.
If you are teaching people about copywriting, a simple tip to share could be to write 10 or more headlines to settle on the perfect headline.
This way, you're not divulging your entire formula but getting them on the right track and getting them to think in the same way you do. It's also a simple piece of advice they can pluck out and apply to their business right away. You're delivering value and now it's up to them to decide if they want to purchase more value from you.
Email #4: Free Blog Post Reminder
Sometimes, I write quick tips that end up being very long. Instead of sending very long emails, I will post that longer tip to a blog and then send traffic to it. This way, this is free training out in the open, so they still get some free advice, but there's also the possibility for search engine traffic for people to link to it and above all, provide feedback in the form of comments that I can then respond to in public.
Email #5: Post-Sale Content Consumption Reminder
Just because you've given somebody something doesn't mean they have necessarily used it. Just because somebody joined your list in exchange for a free report doesn't mean they've downloaded or even read that report. It's up to you to make sure they do and it's easier than ever before to do that because autoresponders are automatic.
Whether somebody got a free report or paid for a training course from you, figure out where they should be after 3 days and schedule a quick email saying something like: "Have you opened up the report yet, have you read the first page. If you have, you should be writing your first headline," for example.
What about after 7 days? Maybe by then, they should be on page 10, at which point they know how to format a sales letter. What about after 14 days? Maybe by then, they should be creating their very first sales letter and it can't hurt to remind them to open up the report, free or paid, flip to page 10 or 20 or wherever they should be and complete the assignment in that report or at least supply the knowledge to their business.
Trust me, you are not being a bother. Most people who sell products don't follow up and don't make sure that people get the most out of their money.
Email #6: Part 1 And Part 2 (Dangling Carrot)
You definitely want to train your subscribers to be look out for the next email from you. The most common sensible way to do this is to add the phrase "Part 1" to your subject line or to the body of your message.
Let's pretend that in your free copywriting course, you were helping people decide if they should offer a 30-day guarantee or a 60-day guarantee. On one day, you could tell people "here is why you're going to want to have a 30-day guarantee" and at the end of that message, instead of going into the 60-day guarantee, you could tell them that there is a very important time when the 60-day guarantee makes more sense than a 30-day guarantee and to look out for the next email from you tomorrow explaining that.
This gives subscribers a good reason to check in tomorrow and at the same time provides them with a quick training course that doesn't last for too long.
Email #7: Broadcasted Personal Response
Let's use the example of the copywriting course again. What if one of your subscribers who has not bought emails you and asks how long someone can expect to take to write a sales letter or how quickly they can have a sales letter out in the open? You might be tempted to send them a quick response.
But what if you spend a couple of extra seconds on that response and made it about half a page long? Well guess what, now you have an additional email you can send out to your subscribers. If one person asks that question, chances are 10 others have the same question but didn't bother to email you.
That means that your entire list can benefit from one person's answer, plus at the same time you've devoted extra effort into answering that person's question, so everybody wins.
Email #8: Why Didn't You Buy?
If I don't know what to put in my autoresponder sequence next, I'll ask people why didn't they buy. I'll explain to them that I've already gotten around all their objections, I've already given them all the free training they need, the only thing that's left for them to do is buy and take the next step.
It seems like a silly or a pointless email to send but this kind of email gets me the most responses more than any other email I have ever sent to my list and it works over and over again in any niche for any product.
Email #9: The Relationship Builder
When I'm going through the product launch process, I like to ask subscribers what's holding them back or what have been their experiences in this niche. People might say for copywriting that they hate writing and then I will know in my launch emails or in my sales letter or maybe even in the exact product to explain how to write sales copy by dictating it.
If someone has a really good case study – for example, they found that their short sales letters converted better than the long sales letters, I can use their case study to prove my point. It all comes back to using real results and real people in your marketing than making new things up.
Email #10: Commitment and Consistency
I want to save you a lot of missed opportunities when marketing to your list by telling you right now that people love to respond to things. Look at how many letters to the editors are on the newspaper or how many text in votes come on American Idol or how many people call in to radio stations.
If your subscribers can change the direction of your emails or of your marketing, they feel involved. If you're launching a new product but it's not out yet, what would happen if you emailed your list and asked them if they are planning on buying this product?
Justify this by saying you want to know how many people will be in the membership so you know how much time to devote to it or how many people will be attending your webinar so that you know how long to run it or my personal favorite, will you comment on my blog so I know how many comments to leave open before closing up that blog post.
By getting people to agree to something before they buy, even if it's just with a simple email message, they will feel like they have to do what they promised. If somebody promises to attend your webinar but later on they missed it, they'll feel bad because they promised something to you and did not deliver. This is definitely a fun tactic you should try to not only get more response from your list, but make them feel more involved as well.
I hope now that you've discovered these 10 types of emails to send to your list that you no longer have writer's block when it comes to sending out today's email, tomorrow's email or even filling up an entire autoresponder sequence.
Which one of these was your favorite? Please leave me a comment below letting me know and how you are personally going to use this in….
Filed in: List Building
#3 – The Quick Tip is definitely the most efficient e-mail. I know because it has also been the one I reacted best towards, and usually we can learn much about the sales process by watching our own reactions.
As always, good points in a fine article. 🙂
Robert, great ideas, easy to implement.
I have had a lot of success with a Q&A-style emails (#7 on your list). The open rates for those are very high. Reminder messages (#2) usually generate as many clicks as the original email and sometimes more, so this approach definitely works.
I’m getting very high open rates (50%), but my list is very small.
Most successful in terms of clickthroughs would be blog post notifiers.
Next most successful is straight up sales letter. I do make sales. That feels good.
I don’t email nearly enough.
Robert, I really needed these and your guidance on how to use them. My favorite is the broadcasted personal response. I think the concept behind that is excellent and one I would never have thought of. My second favorite is the dangling carrot. You teach us so much in each one your posts – just as you do in your courses. I have multiplied my knowledge and my action steps since meeting you last year! Thank you.
Terrie
Robert,
Some great tips here.
I have used #8 in one of my AR lists and most of the time the response is that they are broke and can’t afford it. At that point I tend to enter into a dialogue with them and find out that most of them are looking for the easy button and don’t want to spend money on the ‘education’.
As always, your tips are right on and awesome!
By far, the best content on how to structure a follow-up series, ever. Most of the reports I’ve read on this topic are very lacking; they either give no detail or too little.
Thanks for the explainations and examples. You got tweeted AND favoritsistided (favoritested, favorited, ahh; there we go! – haven’t had my coffee, yet)
My favorites are #’s 3, 4, 6, and 7.
I like the idea and the benefit of directing people to my blog, creating anticipation by breaking info up into parts, offering my list a super quick tip or action step to take, and broadcasting the answer to a question.
Today’s post makes me feel like I just got my hands on a “Super Saturday Special”!
Thanks, Robert.
Melanie
I wonder which autoresponder you are using? It seems like you are using your own.Anyway,great tips on email marketing and building trust.
Good post, Robert. I’ll read it again in more detail late tonight.
Jeanne
Hi Robert,
The quick tip is my favorite to give and to receive. The biggest problem I have with writing them is keeping myself from going into too much detail. Even with an outline, I have a tendency to say too much.
#3 and #4 are my favorites, but I want to try out #10 the Commitment one.
Robert, do you send this one out of the blue, or after warming your list up about the specific thing you ask if they want or not to buy ?
#5: I’m done !
I realized that for my free report I haven’t implemented any “Post-Download Content Consumption Reminder”: I’ve added immediately 4 follow ups.
Thanks for the kick in the ass 🙂
Great tips, thanks.
I cut and pasted the content to Open Office for later reference after I built my list.
Sad but true, I ain’t got a list yet, boo hoo!
Probably the quick tip or … the hard pitch. Both are easy to read from the subscribers point of view (no messing about there) and quick and easy to write.
Do you try to have a system in place to alternate them or just use them as you feel appropriate, how you feel or what’s on your mind?