Grow Your Email List With An Effective Email Welcome Series
You’ve gone through all the effort & trouble to create a product, downloadable, lead magnet – whatever that will help you grow your email list!
Your next job is to make sure people stay with you through your email Welcome Series, so you don’t lose them along the way!
Today we cover:
• The difference between a Welcome Series and a Nurture Sequence
• Strategically designing a Welcome Series that leads people where you want them to go, on purpose.
• 5 things to keep in mind as you’re planning your Welcome Series out
Whether you already have an email Welcome Series in place, or you need to create one, this podcast episode will help you think about how to do it
Intentionally
Simply
Effectively –
So you don’t waste your time, effort, or money! (Especially if you’re getting leads using FB ads)
**This is the 2nd episode in a 3-part series on writing your email Welcome Series!
Know someone pulling their hair out (or avoiding) writing their Welcome Series? Please share and also…
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Full Transcript
Hey, welcome to today's episode of content creation made easy. I'm your host Jen Liddy.
This is episode two of a series I'm doing on welcome series, email welcome series.
Specifically, we're going to do three total episodes on this topic. And if you joined us last week, you heard me unpack some of the practices that can keep your audience from engaging with your welcome series, we talked about why welcome series are so important.
Today I'm going to be talking about a welcome series emails in terms of strategy.
And then next week, I'm going to be talking about welcome series in terms of tactics.
So next week, we're going to get super micro like all of the steps that you could take to actually create your welcome series. But today, we're going to talk about creating a welcome series done on purpose. Strategy is the key to everything that we do in content.
What a lot of people do when they're creating content is they panic, they need to just get something out there, or they have so much to share that they say all of it.
And in last week's episode, I unpacked a lot of those things that people are doing in the in their welcome series that are fire hosing their audience or not strategically leading them someplace.
So let's get started today talking about strategy and the welcome series emails. Now first of all, you know that I'm all about nurturing your audience when it comes to your content. Nurturing is important.
But the first step in nurturing is welcome.
So one of the there's two phrases that get thrown around a lot in the content arena, a welcome series is one any nurture series is another and I want you to think of these as two separate entities.
And the way that it would be really easy to think about this is think about somebody new that you've met somebody you met at a party and you wanted to get to know them better, maybe the first thing you would do is go have coffee with them, or maybe even a virtual coffee.
And that might last, you know, 45 minutes to an hour and a half, and you're chatting and you're getting to know each other that's like what a welcome series feels like for your new audience versus a nurturing.
So think about like, after you've gone to coffee with this new person you've met and you really like them, then you can start to nurture a friendship. But I wonder if you've been on the receiving end of somebody who wanted to nurture too fast and like kind of went too hard, too fast.
That's what we want to avoid in our emails, because we really want to bring people along. And we can really only give them a little bit at a time because of their capacity. And they don't have a lot of time space energy to really dive in deep and get to know you if you're trying to nurture them immediately.
So a nurture sequence would be a much longer sequence of emails where they're getting to know you over a longer period of time, we're not throwing everything at them.
So think of the welcome series as a coffee with a friend. And a nurture sequence as a developing friendship with somebody that you are really looking to get deeper and more connected with.
I hope that visual really helps you because when I thought about the difference between these two, I was like, oh, people throw these around interchangeably, but they're really not interchangeable.
So when you're creating your welcome series, that thing that people get when they download something of yours, it could be your lead magnet or freebie, it could be a training that you provided anything that this is their first kind of connection with you, what are your strategic goals, and we are going to develop your welcome series really strategically.
So let's talk about how to create a welcome series on purpose.
First of all, we want to develop a relationship with this person so that when you do show up in their inbox, they know who you are, they know what your expertise is, and they know you provide value.
So that's something that we're going to be infusing into every welcome email in this series. You want to get them to look at your email and be like, Oh, this is that person who helps me with and they can fill in the blank pretty easily. You don't want them to be like who is this and I have to unpack that in episode in the episode right before this.
So go back and listen to that for two simple strategies to make sure that you don't overwhelm your audience or confuse them.
We also in your welcome series want to start to get your voice clear.
We want them to know like this is how I talk this is the way I this is the way I phrase things.
This is my vernacular.
This is my tone.
This is my style.
This is my personality.
So in your welcome series, again, strategically, we're going to start to infuse you into it right away. And we want to provide value so you're welcome series can provide a quick hit be impactful but what you don't want to do in your welcome series and I actually suggest you don't do this in most of your content. You don't want it to be all about giving away all the house or a million freebies in your welcome sequence.
We don't want to fire hose them or overwhelm them or like love bombing them right So the number one thing about creating a strategic welcome series in terms of everything else I've already talked, in addition to everything else I've already talked about, is leading them somewhere purposefully.
So you want to start with the end in mind, where eventually will this welcome series, leave them. I'm going to talk a lot more about that next week.
This week, I'm really just asking you to think strategically about when somebody lands into your world for the first time, and they're on your email list in your real estate. What is their experience like?
So the first thing we're going to unpack, I'm going to unpack five things today about your welcome series to make it more strategic.
The first thing is to remember, this is not a sales sequence, can it lead to sales, of course, lots of different ways that it can lead to sales, you can have an upsell, you can have, you know, a code that you give them, you can get them on a call, then surely you can lead them to a sale.
But this is not a sales sequence. So the energy of this is very different.
Your new people don't know you yet.
Remember, their whole, the whole purpose of the welcome series is to sit down and have some coffee and go back and forth and get to know each other. Of course, you can lead to sales. But that is not the focus of this series.
Second, you want to reverse engineer exactly where people will be headed.
What do they need to know, understand, think, feel or believe, to get them there and ready to take that action, whatever that action is.
So you always want to start your welcome series thinking about the end result?
Where are you leading them to your welcome series might just be like, I just want to get to know you and we're gonna go back and forth, or your welcome series might result in you know, I work with people one on one, and I'd love to get on a call with you, or your welcome series might be, "Hey, I have a series of digital products that I'd really love for you to check out. And this is the one that I think you could really benefit from the most."
Remember, starting with the end in mind helps everything else be better, because then you can be purposeful, intentional and strategic about why you're saying what you're saying. When I asked you what does your audience need to know, understand, or believe, or think or feel that's a lot, right?
Like, you probably have a lot of answers there. So you're welcome series doesn't need to do the heavy lift for everything.
It's to just get them primed to know you help them get to know that you're an expert, and how you can help them and provide value.
Again, I'm going to talk much more about that tactically next week. So do not strategically do not take on all of their needs, all of their pain points, all of their desires, and all of the results you can possibly provide in the welcome series, the focus in the welcome series is small.
So keep it small, you're doing yourself a favor, because you don't have to do all the hard work here, remembering that if you get them through the welcome series, then you have lots of other opportunities to nurture them after they get through this welcome series.
Three, let's talk about the details of a welcome series done strategically.
The big question here is How long should your series be?
And also when should you send it?
The other best practice?
What are some other best practices about the sending aspects?
So let's let's dive into this a little bit.
First of all, how long should your welcome series be?
Well, this really depends, because you can I've been part of welcome series that are like actually 12 weeks long with the person dripping out one email over the course of 12 weeks. That's a fabulous way if that really resonates with you.
I've been part of welcome series where my goodness, it's like an email every day for seven days. I've been part of a welcome series where it's five emails over the course of eight days, maybe once every other day. And all of these are totally valid.
There is no one right way.
The first thing you have to ask is, what do I know about my audience?
You know, is your audience completely overwhelmed.
And having a an email every single day for seven to 10 days would just be too much for them?
Also, what has worked in the past?
Like go back and look at what your welcome series has done?
Where do people opt out?
Where do they unsubscribe?
Where do they kind of die off?
So you actually can use your own data to figure out like what works best for you?
The most important question I'd love for you to ask is How do you like to receive a welcome series as a consumer, because that will help you be in much more alignment about how you want to be out there in the world energetically.
So there's no one right answer about how long your series should be.
What does your audience need in order to get to the results that they're looking for that you set up the strategic results?
Next week I'm going to talk about, you know what a five email sequence could look like, but your email sequence might be you know, over the course of 12 weeks to hit all of them. have different needs.
Or you may decide like, "Oh, I want to hit more of their needs in the nurture series, I'm just going to focus on X, Y, and Z and my welcome series."
But the only person who can answer this is you there is not a quote unquote best practice.
Even though I'm sure there's gurus out there who would tell you there is a best practice, you have to know yourself, your audience, look at the data, and decide how much information they need to achieve the goal that you've set in your strategy.
Okay. Number four, in terms of your welcome series, yes, your audience needs to get to know you.
But your welcome series is not all about you. So if you are talking a lot of I mean, me, me, me, me, this is my experience.
This is me, this is my life. This is my my passions, my hobbies, they don't care yet, they haven't fallen in love with you. Yet.
They do want to know who you are, how you can help, so we can infuse you into the welcome series.
But if you look at your welcome series, and everything is about me, me, me, me, me, you're probably going to see the engagement die off.
So having your voice and your style and your personality infused into everything will help you make more impact.
Go back to Episode 195, where I really talk about how to make better content, using your voice, your style and your personality strategically.
So if you listen to that episode, it might help you think about how you want to show up so that you can naturally and organically just kind of show up as yourself and they get they're getting to know you without it being all about you what we really want it to be is about what they need, serving them, speaking their language, using the words that they use and providing value without making it all about you. But you can infuse your personality without talking about yourself.
Okay, number five. In a strategic welcome series, we want to tell people what we're doing like the jig is up folks, we all know that once we opt into something we're going to be put into a welcome series, and then we're going to be nurtured by you.
Like we all know, this is the way things are done in 2023.
You know, back in 2013, when I started in business, and then 2017 2016 2017, I started an online business, we had very different consumers and people were kind of like unsure about what what's happening here when I'm getting these emails from people now.
No, it's a welcome series.
So one of the things you can do to start to develop trust and relationship with your audience, your new audience is to let them know, "Hey, you're receiving this because you downloaded X, Y and Z. I'll be back tomorrow. If you can count on me to be in your box in your inbox once a week!"
You can actually acknowledge what's going on in their life, I know that you're busy.
And so I show up once a week with a valuable email.
I do mine on Sundays. Basically, strategically, you can set expectations to help them understand like, "The jig is up."
We're not playing any games, we know what this is.
This is a welcome series, I want you to be in my life, because I would eventually like to sell something to you and help you.
But we don't have to pretend like it's not happening.
So you don't have to be crafty about it.
Just tell them what you're doing.
Those are five things that you can do to more strategically and purposefully and intentionally create a welcome series that doesn't overwhelm you to create, but also doesn't overwhelm your audience.
And if you have any questions, you can always email me at [email protected] I would love to answer your questions about welcome series.
Next week we are talking tactics.
Where should you actually go with your series?
What should you actually do with your welcome series plus, I'll be sharing one of my most favorite secret ideas about creating your welcome series that will make it a lot easier without starting from scratch or using like a script that doesn't feel like you.
So I am excited to see you next week, we're going to be talking more tactical. In the meantime, go back and listen to last week's podcast if you didn't, that was the episode on the most the two mistakes that people are making that are super simple to shift.
And then if you go back to Episode 195, that is all about actually I think that's episode 194.
It's called better content for your 2023 business. I talk a lot in there about how to find your voice.
If you haven't gone to listen to those yet. It'll really help when you're creating your welcome series.
I hope this is helpful today. If you can leave me a review.
I would so appreciate that because my goal this year is to really help more people find their voice and make content creation much easier with minimum content and maximum impact.
I'll talk to you next week.
