Automated Evergreen Email...
Automated Evergreen Email Sequences You Can Set & Forget
If you aren’t using ‘autoresponder’ emails in your business, you’re missing out on one of the most consistently powerful - yet low cost and low effort - tools out there.
What are ‘autoresponder’ emails, anyway?
They’re pre-programmed sequences of automatically triggered email messages that offer you one of the most effective and efficient ways to keep in touch with customers and nurture your leads.
The basic technology to do this has been around for over 20 years.
Yet many businesses don’t have any kind of sequence of autoresponders set up – either because they don’t appreciate the importance or because they think it’s too complicated or time consuming.
But actually, it’s well worth putting in the effort to get some in place to help you with some or all of the following areas:
Turning prospects into clients
‘Onboarding’ – ensuring that new clients get attention and support in the critical period when they’ve just started to work with you
Upselling clients on additional options
‘Win back’ campaigns to re-attract lost clients
Once set up, you can have sequences run automatically and therefore require very little of your precious time.
In this article, I’m going to touch on sequencing and content ideas for your autoresponders, with a few examples from some of the better marketers out there.
Ultimately, your business is unique so you’ll only find out the right formula for you through testing. But here are some ideas and considerations to get your brain working, including:
Why use autoresponders anyway?
Should you automate ALL your email marketing?
How long should your sequence(s) be?
How other good marketers use autoresponders
7 key lessons about autoresponder content
How much you should use autoresponders to sell, and when in the sequence you should sell…
Why use autoresponders anyway?
Here are just four reasons to use auto-responders as part of your marketing strategy.
1. Low-cost, low-effort advertising
Once set up, autoresponders don’t require you to do anything (other than perhaps review and, if necessary, update them every few months). And they cost virtually nothing. Yet can they target people you know are interested in your product with carefully crafted offers at the optimum time.
2. Keep in contact with customers – even when you don’t have time
We know it’s important to keep in touch with customers, but all of us have times when we’re very busy, or want to take a holiday. The beauty of a pre-prepared follow-up sequence is that subscribers to your list aren’t neglected at those times. The sequence runs automatically so you can concentrate on other things.
3. Provide an immediate response
So you have a new customer sign up and you’d like to welcome them on board, remind them of all the great things your company does and check if they have any questions. But, rather inconveniently for you, they’ve signed up when you’re in a meeting – or at 3am when you’re fast asleep.
Set up an automated email with all that information and they’ll immediately have everything they need – without you having to do anything.
4. Stay at the front of your customer’s mind
Whatever you’re sending them, regular email contact keeps you in the forefront of the customer’s mind. That means when they want to buy something else, chances are they’ll come to you – particularly if you provide a clear call-to-action, and remind them of your strengths.
Should you automate ALL your email marketing?
So if autoresponders are so great, is it worth sending out broadcast emails as well?
Well, more than a few online marketing setups live by autoresponder alone; it’s certainly a viable option.
Autoresponders are great for keeping in touch automatically and for sending a customer the right message at the appropriate time in the customer lifecyle.
But I suspect most of us will always want to do some time-specific broadcast emails too, and contact all customers at the same time.
For example, if you’re promoting a ‘point in time’ offer (hint: ALL your offers should be time-bound!) or you want to promote a particular event. Or you might want to send out some useful, topical info related to a recent news story.
In that case, autoresponders may appear to be no good, since they have pre-determined messages sent out according to a timeframe related to actions or earlier messages.
However, most software tools these days allow you to add content centrally and have it appear through all your pre-written emails, so even your pre-written auto-responders can have a section in them for new and current content.
That said, the best approach usually is a judicious blend of both autoresponders for evergreen messages, and broadcast messages for time-sensitive stuff.
Sequencing considerations
So - what kind of sequence should you create?
The answer will be different for every individual business, but here are some points to consider.
Goals
As with any marketing activity, the first question is always: what do you want to achieve?
• Direct sales?
• Customer loyalty?
• Improved customer service?
• Timely renewals?
• A combination of these?
Every email you send should relate back to one of your goals, directly or indirectly.
These will determine not just what you send, but when you send it in order to achieve the maximum impact.
Triggers
Unlike broadcast emails, autoresponders are based around particular actions or events, known as triggers.
These might include:
• Initial sign up or registration
• Purchase
• Enquiry
• Booking
• Anniversary (e.g. 1 year after purchase)
• Renewal date
• Expiry
You might want to send an email for any of these, since they’re all significant occasions where a customer might want or benefit from information.
Then any other autoresponders you choose to send essentially stem from these initial triggers: they will simply be set for a specific amount of time before or after the trigger event.
Intervals
How long’s a theatre interval?
Not very. Just enough to space things out, get a drink and pop to the loo before the action continues.
Why?
Because if they made it much longer the audience would probably forget what had come before.
And it’s the same with the intervals between your autoresponders.
Many business owners are worried about sending emails too frequently, but you need to make sure your prospects don’t forget who you are – or what you’ve told them previously.
Many of the most effective autoresponder sequences are based around daily emails for a period of time – and that makes perfect sense, when you consider that it’s in the earliest stages that people want/need/are receptive to the most communication from you.
How long should your autoresponder sequence be?
Veteran marketer Drayton Bird has 200 in his sequence. An old client of mine had 101. Until recently we had 54.
Now, don’t let those long sequences put you off - but do consider that research shows it usually takes at least 7-12 exposures before most people will even consider buying from you.
Auto-responders are the easiest way I can think of to reliably deliver those repeated exposures for minimal effort so don’t be timid and don’t make the mistake of thinking people will get ‘sick’ of you.
They might if you bore the living daylights out of them but if your emails are interesting or entertaining - and relevant to them - they absolutely won’t.
And I’m sure you’ve got lots of different benefits to highlight, or different products to sell, so keep those emails coming.
Yes, it takes some time to write and set up emails, but you’ll get quicker at it once you’ve done a few.
You can stagger the writing of them too…
My sequence of 54 was assembled more or less at the rate of 1 per week over a year; I wrote three or four initially, then each week I’d simply allocate an hour or two to tacking another email onto the end of the sequence.
The only downside I can see to having an autoresponder sequence that’s as long as possible (and indeed added to regularly) is that it can get unwieldy.
So avoid including content that will date quickly if you want to minimise maintenance.
How other good marketers use autoresponders
Drayton Bird – veteran direct response marketer has a sequence of 200 autoresponders, essentially evergreen content, going out 6 days/week.
Perry Marshall – until recently, has for many years used a core lead magnet of ‘The 9 Great Lies of Sales and Marketing’, a drip-fed autoresponder series of 1 email per day day (each covering one ‘lie’) x 9 days.
On top of that, Perry has numerous different sequences of auto-responders based around the same idea of drip-fed mini courses on a given topic, that eventually lead to a sale of a product on the same topic.
Justin Brooke – I really like what Justin does; when you opt in to his list you get his lead magnet, but in his first email he explains what you’ll get from him in the first 7 days (a bunch of value, and then a clear sell!).
Here’s an extract:
“Welcome to our email newsletter my friend…
Here's What To Expect:
• Today - Download my 202 traffic sources spreadsheet
• Tomorrow - Download my famous EPC calculator
• Day 3 - Download my HIGHEST converting template
• Day 4 - How I turned $60 + Adwords into 6 figures
• Day 5 - 1 trick to DOUBLE your website traffic for less than $100/mo
• Day 6 - How to drive 1 MILLION visitors to your site
• Day 7 - I'm going to sell you something awesome…”
Builds curiosity and anticipation for the value-added content AND the sell… beautiful!
Beyond those 7 days, he’s doing a ‘live’ broadcast email once/week.
To me, this feels like a nice balance of simplicity and impact, taking advantage of the autoresponder functionality to build ‘credit’ up front with new prospects in those first few days when they’re arguably the most hot to trot they’ll ever be.
Ian Brodie – has autoresponders running on 3 set days of every week. Allows him to use other days for broadcast emails
7 key lessons about autoresponder content
1. Don’t be boring!
I don’t care what you’re selling, or how serious you think it or your customers are… good marketing by definition is NEVER boring.
That doesn’t mean you have to play the clown or fill your emails with verbal pyrotechnics…
It does mean you talk one-to-one in clear language about the things your prospects and customers care about, you inject some personality and you avoid jargon and dull corporate-speak at all costs.
2. Encourage interaction.
Email is a very frictionless mechanism for getting feedback and interaction.
Quite a few good marketers will ask in their automated ‘welcome’ email a variation on the question ‘what is the one thing you are struggling with the most right now in relation to [their niche]?’
What easier way to quickly initiate relationships and keep your finger right on the pulse of where your prospects and customers’ pains are?
3. I’ve found there are pros and cons to explicitly identifying your sequence of autoresponders as numbered episodes in a series.
Pros: people like serialised content.
Numbering your sequence can help build anticipation and a sense of achievement as people progress though it.
Cons: when I abandoned numbering my auto-responders as part of the subject line, open rates improved quite a bit.
I’d theorise that the reason for this improvement was that some people may have felt they’d ‘fallen off the wagon’ of my sequence and therefore tuned out of subsequent emails that were obviously part of the sequence; alternatively maybe the numbering of the sequence made the automation more obvious and therefore the emails less interesting.
The counter-argument is: how interested should you really be in the people who tune out anyway?
4. Encourage viral sharing.
Drayton Bird makes a point in his emails of repeatedly including a message saying ‘if someone you know would like these emails, please reply and let me know and I’ll invite them’. So simple, so effective.
5. Sell one thing at one time to one person.
I don’t know who first said that, but it’s pure wisdom when it comes to sales messages in general, and email in particular.
And autoresponder sequences are ideally suited to breaking up the selling of numerous products into separate messages.
Also, selling doesn’t always mean transactions - in an ‘onboarding’ sequence, you may just be ‘selling’ new customers on the idea of completing a customer satisfaction survey for example… but the same rule applies.
If you want the maximum response to your survey, don’t bury it in an email with three or four other points; make it the sole theme of one email.
6. Don’t forget you can use your autoresponders to drive traffic to your other ‘outposts’ consistently.
LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, Meetup groups, review sites, your own blog posts…
7. How much you should use autoresponders to sell, and when in the sequence you should sell…
Perry Marshall argues that every time you provide value, it’s akin to putting a penny into a piggy bank; and every time you ask your audience for something, it’s like taking a penny out. Therefore, you have to balance selling messages with value messages.
My observations are these:
• You’ll never achieve open rates as high as you do in your first few emails. Therefore, if you’re not showing people the next step to working with you (i.e. selling!) in your first few emails, you’re virtually guaranteed that only a minority of subscribers to your list will ever be exposed to those next steps.
• When people join your list, they are probably – by definition – hot for whatever it is you’ve got, right there and then. Why waste that momentum by making it hard or impossible for people to see how they can actually give you money… now?!
• Now, ‘selling’ doesn’t have to mean smashing people over the head with your offers. A simple ‘P.S.’ at the end of your email saying ‘If you want to move faster, we also offer service x. Please reply for more details’ can be all it takes.
• The reality is that people never really like being ‘sold’ in an overt fashion anyway, so I have a problem with the logic that, say, three emails of pure value-added content ‘justify’ one pure ‘sales’ email.
I’ve never heard anyone get to the nub of the content/selling question better than subscriptions marketer Peter Hobday, who recommends:
‘Give them something, and then tell them how they can get everything…’
In other words, the real trick is to provide a nugget of value AND move the sale forward in EVERY email.
Don’t forget to test and review…
The beauty of autoresponders is that they require very little attention as everything is automated. But don’t forget about them completely!
Make sure to review your automated emails every few months to check they’re still relevant, particularly if you make any changes to your products, sign up processes or contact details.
The last thing you want to do is annoy your customers by sending them the wrong information – or give them the impression you’re out of date.
And as with all your online marketing, it’s important to measure, track and test everything – taking care, of course, to ensure you have enough data to be confident of statistical significance.
Subject lines are an obvious - and easy - variable to test once you’ve built up some data.
You should also look at which emails are getting the most clicks, and the most conversions.
Perhaps you can replicate the approach of those successful emails in some of your others?
Experiment with time intervals too. You may find that sending a follow-up email after two days instead of one is more effective – or vice versa.
Small tweaks could make a big difference to sales so don’t be afraid to tinker with what you’re sending.
A little bit of work now goes a long way if you can fine tune an automated, trust-building money-spinner.
Time to write some autoresponders?
Just taking some time to create a 7 day sequence like the one outlined above could do wonders for you.
But if you really don’t have time to set it all up, you’re struggling to get your head around the intricacies of your email software, or you just don’t know what to write, please get in touch - our team are doing exactly this kind of work for numerous clients right now.
Our writers have created over 3,000 promotional emails (over 1.5 million words in total!), mainly for financial clients.
And having seen all the results, we’ve got a pretty good idea what really works.
So if you’d like us to write and set up a sales-driving autoresponder email sequence…