StoryBrand Email Sequence, The anatomy of a winning nurture campaign

In this Video, StoryBrand Guide & Marketer Jamie Buttigieg, breaks down the elements of a successful email nurture campaign. 

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hey there, Jamie from Results & Co. I Hope you are all well. I was delivering this email sequence to a client, and whenever I deliver an email sequence, I walk through every single email, talk through my rationale and my approach, subject lines, why I took the approach that I did and how it will get us to our outcomes.

And it got me to thinking that it would actually be a useful video for perhaps you guys to have a look at. It may help you improve your email sequences in the lead up to Christmas.

I know I tend to go back to my email sequences usually once a year and re-look at them with fresh eyes, and now might be a good nudge for you to do the same.

So maybe I’ll talk through maybe the top five things I do in my email sequences and why they work so well. And first of all, you’ll notice that… I should say this is for a pool slide company here in Australia.

They sell pool slides online. Really high-quality stuff; they’re USA-made.

And anyway, that’s probably all you need to know.

First of all, it’s plain text, okay? Wherever possible, send your emails as plain text, okay? That’s the first point.

One, you’ll get through more spam filters. Two, we’re looking at it through the preview pane. It looks less corporate, it looks more personalized, okay? So there is a typically… Well, you’ll get a high open-rate, okay? Plain text has a higher open rate than, say HTML pretty emails. Now there are some brands really want the- Well, they may need or require pretty pictures and HTML and all that stuff. But none of my email sequences are ever written like that.

Number two, subject line, subject line, subject line, okay? Put as much time into your subject line as you do into the body copy, okay? That is because that’s the first thing someone’s going to see in the email preview pane. This will determine whether or not your email gets opened, okay?

And you can have the best-written email sequence on the planet. You can pay for the best copywriters. But it’s not worth anything if no one’s opening it – same thing with plain text.

Why have all these pretty HTML emails if most of them are getting caught up in spam filters?

I want people to read my emails, okay? It’s the same thing with subject lines. Really put some effort into those subject lines, think… Clickbait’s probably the wrong word, but think magazine headlines, think arousal of curiosity. What’s going to get someone hooked, and interested, and dragged into this email?

What’s compelling for them to want to click through to there? I’ll give you some examples, okay?

The biggest problem with pool slides opens a story loop. People starting to think, well, what’s the biggest problem? And if I’m in the market for a pool slide, perhaps I should know about this problem, okay? So that could be compelling to someone.

Need a family holiday? Here’s how you can get a five-night escape for free. Again, who doesn’t like a free holiday? And this is written because this particular company is giving away a five-night stay when you buy any of their pool equipment. So that’s why we’ve included that in this sequence. Slide away, then hideaway, the world’s safest moveable pool slide, okay?

We’re introducing a product here. So this is a product-featured email. Five fun pool games to play without props, a fun, free list, okay? Often when I write my emails, this sequence is a little bit different because Christmas is coming up. It’s very call to action-driven.

If you’re on this email sequence, you’ll notice that 95% of my emails I just give backs. I’m just giving you tips. I’m giving you ideas, trying to help you improve your marketing, okay? Very rarely will you see me ever ask for the sale.

Now most marketers will say I’m insane. But that works for my business. I want my brand to be seen as a generous brand, a brand that gives back because I think that people want to do business with those brands that are perceived as being generous, okay?

So that’s my strategy. It doesn’t have to be your strategy. And this is a little bit different to how I normally write email sequences for clients.

So noticed there’s a lot of call to action in here. A lot of order now, call now to order. Where typically a lot of my emails would just be hey, here’s a cool idea to help you with your marketing or here’s a cool thing you can do to get the most out of your pool.

This is a brand that deals with pool equipment. So what I do is typically write a bunch of these emails that just give value, okay? And the idea is to stay top of mind with the consumer while they’re in that customer journey. So from their trigger point, I have a problem, I need to buy a pool slide to the time they buy might be one month or it might be six months.

In any case, my job is to make sure this brand stays top of mind through this email notice sequence. So that when they’re ready to transact, when that customer is ready to buy the slide, I want them to think about this brand first, okay?

So it’s about getting into their inbox, not being annoying, giving value, and asking for the sale in a subtle manner. That’s my approach, doesn’t have to be yours, but that’s the approach that I take.

It works quite well for us.

Subject line- So okay, something else I’ve done here, right? You’ll notice I keep a lot of my emails really short, okay? I find if I go over half a page or a page, my email is too long, okay? Why, because when you think about how this will be previewed in their web browser, in their email browser, okay? Think about your own behavior when you’re opening emails, okay?

If you get 50 emails overnight or 10 emails overnight, you’ll action the easy ones, the ones you’re interested in or excited about. And then you look at those ones that seem long and overwhelming or those from the boss, right? And you’ll leave them to last, right?

So yeah, think about the size of the emails. Short emails will get read more often, right? Or it’s more likely a short email will get read over a long email. We don’t want these to end up in the trash, right? We want them to consi- Again, no point running an email if people aren’t going to consume the information within the email, okay?

The other reason I like to send people to blogs, so in other words send people back to your website. So write an email, set the hook, okay? Talk about the problem. Set the blog up as a solution to the problem, and send them to the blog. Why do we do that? One, if you write a blog, you’re helping your search engine optimization.

Google likes new content. It can help you outrank your competitors number one. Number two, getting people back to your website means two things. Number one, traffic is a search rank indicator for Google. So the more traffic you send back to your website or get to your website means that you can again outrank your competitors in the Google search. But number two, the more time somebody visit your website, visits your website, the greater the chance of conversion.

Simple, get them back to your website as often as you can. You’ll have a higher chance of making a sale. So again, this isn’t an email that is because I was lazy and wanted to write a short email. This is very deliberate, right? Okay, so good subject line, short, compelling copy. Start by agitating a problem, okay? Hook them in, the other thing too, you’ll notice a lot of my first lines.

A lot of them introduce a problem because that draws them into the narrative of that email. If they’re sharing that problem, and they read that first line, and that’s the problem they’re facing, what are the chances are that they’ll read the rest of the email? Pretty high, right? So try and agitate a problem where possible. Include blogs or links back to blogs. Keep your emails short. That’s just some blog content I’m suggesting for the client.

How to get your kids off their devices this summer. It almost has nothing to do with pools, right? Or pull slides, but it does when you actually read- You can pause this if you want and read through the email. But this is again compelling copy giving value and positioning your brand. And of course, you’ll see I use postscripts a lot. And this is deliberate for another reason. So because although this email isn’t a particularly long email.

That’s probably short by copywriting standards. What I also know is even if my subject line’s good enough and even if they open the email, most people, probably 85% of them won’t read the entire body, right? So that’s another challenge we have to deal with as copywriters, right? So the first thing is make the first line as compelling as heck and use a compelling postscript, ideally with your call to action, okay?

So what is it that you’re wanting them to do from this email sequence? Why are you nurturing them? And because the first line and last line are statistically the most two read lines in your e-mail. So get them right. First line, last line, so in order… Now let’s get the subject line as compelling as possible to get it opened. Focus on the first line and last line. And then the rest is okay.

Just it doesn’t have to be as great. That’s probably the wrong way to say it, but it’s less important than those other elements. What else have I got here? Here’s a good subject line. Oops, I forgot to mention this, my apologies, okay? Real simple subject line and first line but that’s enough to arouse curiosity in someone to get them to read on.

And what we’re doing here is we’re introducing an interest-free payment plan. So if they haven’t purchased by email number eight, we’re starting to really throw these cannons or fire these cannons, like this is a… Hey, I forgot to mention this. This is really valuable. You can still have a free holiday. You can get your pool slide before Christmas, and you can pay it off, right? For more information, a call to action. I’ll leave that one there.

Again, we’re sending them back to a blog, five things to consider when buying a pool slide. This is one of the most cliche-type emails. I don’t love these, but they still work, okay? So I do include them. And so rather than expanding on and talking about the five mistakes in the email, send them back to a blog- I received so many emails that talk about problems and the emails go on forever. Make the emails shorter. You’re more likely to have it read.

That’s blog content. Here’s an interesting one, email number 11. What we’ve done here is we’re trying to segment the audience, okay? So in other words if the consumer’s still with us after 11 emails, maybe three or four weeks, what I’m doing here is saying hey, Christmas is here. You’ve been with us for some time in this email sequence.

Click on the money you’re interested in and we’ll tell you if it’s in stock. So there’s no commitment here. We’re not asking for a call to action. It’s just a… It’s almost a lead generator as such, within a lead generator.

So they click on this. Let’s say they’re interest in the slide or they click on that slide, and the CRM will tell us or can segment which one they’ve clicked on. And then what I would do if this were my business, I’d send an immediate follow-up email.

Hey Jenny, looks like you’re still interested in the slide away. I’ve got two in stock, one in gray, one in brown. I can have it to you by Friday. And if you order now, I’ll give you $100 off right now.

So it could be an offer-driven email or a discount-driven email if it needs to be. And that’s really personalized and really targeted. So hope that was interesting. There’s 11 minutes of email sequence gold there for you. You’re welcome to pause and read through some of those. Let me know if you’ve got any questions. Sorry for maybe not keeping in contact. I know there’s been a bit of a gap between some of our last day emails, but hey, COVID.

Let’s just leave that there, 2020, right? All right, all the best. Good luck in your marketing, happy story branding. Have a great and safe Christmas with you and your families. And yeah, bye for now. Catch you on the flip side, chow.