What Is An Email Sequence? 5 Email Marketing Sequences You Should Set Up for Your Business

Intro

If you’re not running email marketing campaigns just yet, you’re leaving revenue on the table. Email marketing is among the most powerful strategies in your digital marketing toolkit.

Why? Because you have permission from your subscribers to send marketing and sales material to your subscribers’ inbox. That access can help you develop a relationship with your subscribers and sales. The stats bear out the case.

According to one study, 59% of consumers say that emails influence their purchasing decisions. Also, 73% of millennials.) use email as their preferred form of business communication.

So email marketing does work, and that’s unlikely to change.

If you want to master email marketing, you need to learn how to create email sequences. With that in mind, let’s talk about email marketing sequences.

Email Marketing Sequences: What Are They?

Email marketing sequences are a series of emails sent automatically to customers or prospects. They can be sent based on predetermined time intervals or triggered automatically (or even both). Let’s break it down further.

1. A time-based email sequence refers to messages sent at predetermined intervals. For example, a customer will receive a message after signing in 30 days after buying a product or one year after subscribing. Time-based sequences are also called autoresponders.
2. Trigger-based email sequences occur when a visitor performs an activity on your website or takes action within your email sequence, like clicking a link in a sent email.

You start to see the true potential of email sequences when you combine these two types. Use good email marketing services that allow you to run highly-targeted campaigns, and you’ll reap the best results.

Why Should You Use Email Sequences?

Targeted emails are a crucial part of any customer acquisition strategy. Sending these types of emails to your customers and prospects at the right time is instrumental in driving action.

Messaging people immediately after they have taken action increases the likelihood of a positive outcome. Just picture this scenario. You just bought a dog collar from an ecommerce site. A few seconds after your purchase, you get an email from the site recommending a nicer dog collar that glows in the dark. Wouldn’t you be tempted to get that collar for your dog, too?

That ability to deliver timely content is where the true power of email sequences emerges.

Email marketing sequences are used to move your customers along the customer journey. You can tailor them to particular buyer personas. That way, your messages speak directly to them.

In other words, any business can benefit from email sequences. Good email sequences can help build long-lasting relationships and ultimately lead to conversions.

How Many Emails Should Be Sent In A Row?

Expert email marketers like GrowthLab’s head copywriter, Ryan Johnson, strongly suggest sending no more than six emails in a series. The reasoning behind this number is simple. You can only automate so much of a conversation before people lose interest in the sequence.

That’s not to say each of your email sequences should have six emails. Although that’s the maximum you can have, the truth is, coming up with six different emails that are related to each other can be difficult. Remember, each email in the sequence has to provide value and naturally lead onto the next message.

This is why most marketers tend to use shorter sequences. Here’s a sneak peek at how Ryan lays out the 5-day email sequence for the Mental Mastery course.

As you can see, Ryan begins by capturing the attention of recipients by asking a compelling question. Next, he targets the interests of his contacts by introducing the concept of Mental Mastery. The email is aimed at arousing the desire of recipients for the product.

The next two emails focus on increasing the desire for the course, which creates the ideal avenue for generating a sale. In the fifth email, he moves in for the close.

Whether you opt for five, six or even less emails in a sequence, just make sure, overall, they follow a logical structure and get your message across.

5 Email Marketing Sequences You Should Use

There are other email marketing sequences you can use to build relationships and ultimately generate conversions. Let’s look at those in this section. But let’s start with the first two we briefly touched on above:

1. Welcome Email Sequence

Why use the welcome email sequence? First of all, you can generate a 2x more open rate and a 7x more click-through rate just by using them. In other words, you get massive engagement.

Let's say you invite some people to your dinner party. They accept your invitation and take the time to come to your party. The most decent thing to do is to greet them at least and show them around. That's what the welcome email sequence does.

Thank them for coming on board, welcome them to the community, and tell them how frequently they’ll be hearing from you. You should also set expectations by explaining the type of content you’ll share in the future.

In short: make them feel part of your community. Go through the same steps you’d take when you welcome a stranger into your home.

2. Cart Abandonment Sequence

According to research by Sale-Cycle, more than 68% of online shopping carts get abandoned. Unfortunately, it's a significant problem that affects most e-commerce businesses. The good news is, it's something that can be fixed, thanks to cart abandonment emails.

Cart abandonment email sequences are sent automatically when a customer doesn't place an order when they leave your website. This type of email sequence can act as a reminder, especially if the customer was genuinely interested in the product. That can boost your conversion rate.

Here’s one sample email from a cart abandonment sequence:

(Source: GetResponse)

Just make sure you make it easy for your subscribers to access the abandoned cart. If they have to look for the product again, place it in the cart, and input their details to pay, they most likely won’t push through with the purchase—again.

3. Re-Engagement Sequence

Re-engagement sequences are used to elevate your subscriber care when they stop engaging with your content. There are several reasons why people stop engaging with emails.

One reason could be that they’ve got a lot going on in their lives. It could also be that they are overwhelmed with too many messages from your company. Whatever the reason, a re-engagement email sequence is the last effort to bring such customers back.

You can offer a gift for a continued engagement or give your customers the option to optimize their email preferences. That way, they can receive only relevant information. Check out the example from a Skillshare re-engagement sequence.

4. Upsell Email Sequence

Businesses always want their customers to purchase more, and it’s not surprising since they all want higher ROI. One successful strategy that can help you get higher results is upselling. It’s often done through product recommendations on landing pages.

However, you can also upsell customers through email automation messages. All you have to do is send those emails at the right time.

But when is that right time?

Well, after a purchase, of course. Since your subscriber already shelled out money for a product, the chances they shell out money for an upgraded version of that product are high. It’s a “strike while the iron is hot” thing.

Check out this upsell email Asana sends as part of its SaaS marketing strategy:

Upsell email sequences are also quite popular among accommodation sites like Airbnb. But you can use the upsell sequence if you’re in education, internet marketing, sports, among others, too. Make sure you don’t bombard your subscribers with emails from the sequence, though. They should be sent with appropriate time intervals in between.

5. Free Gift Sequence

People, including your customers, love receiving gifts. You can use the gift sequence to send gifts on their birthdays or any special event or anniversary.

The gifts don’t necessarily have to be physical gifts. A simple discount voucher can be more than enough to put a smile on your subscribers’ faces.

When you offer gifts, you can increase customer experience and interaction while building a more loyal following. That can ultimately lead to sales and an improvement in your ROI.

Conclusion

Email marketing can be critical to the success of your business. With marketing emails, you can promote your brand and build relationships. Ultimately, marketing emails can help you generate conversions.

Email marketing sequences, in particular, are effective. You can set the time the emails are sent to the time they are likely to make the most impact. That saves you time, too, since you don’t have to send the emails yourself.

This article looked at some email sequences you can incorporate into your email marketing. If you have a small email marketing team, just pick the ones you need and implement them. If you have more resources, then it would be good to try all of those sequences.