How To Write Great Email Follow Up Series

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If you sell any product or if you want to build a great list, then you HAVE to follow up with your customers and subscribers.
In the first place -at the very least- you have to make sure the entire process was a satisfying for her, but in the long run you DO want to build an ongoing relationship with her, don’t you?

Email is a perfect way to do just that.

Lots of people fail to do follow up and many of them just because they have absolutely no idea how to do that. So, here are some guidelines.

Photo Credit: devcrit

Your follow up starts with your ‘thank you’ page.
On that page, you first re-assure your customer or subscriber that she has made the right choice. Remember that she just took a difficult decision, either sending you her money to buy your product or giving away her email address for a subscription. You just have to remove any nagging doubts that still play around in her mind.

Also, on that same page, you give her access to the product or freebie that you’ve promised, either directly by linking to it or by telling her she will find it in her welcome email that will arrive shortly in her email box.
Please understand what a great moment that is to point out to her that your emails may end up in a trash or spam folder. Therefore ask her to look there if she can’t find an email from you and have her whitelist your email address.

Then, your email follow up series -commonly called autoresponder series- kicks in, and fortunately, since you asked her to whitelist your address, it ends up in her IN-box.

In the first email that is sent immediately after your customer/subscriber took action, you welcome her and again re-assure her that she has made the right decision. This is important, since it takes away any doubts about that decision.
Of course you give her the download links again or a way to get them in case the download failed. Always offer help and support with downloads in your first email!

Make sure you mention the product or newsletter name again, so she can familiarize with that.
If you have some sort of affiliate program, you can mention that in here, but make it a soft pitch. Your customer/subscriber has to make sure she gets her stuff first.

In the second email, you start with mentioning the product or newsletter name, so your customer/subscriber knows what you’re talking about. Kind of branding on a small scale.
Remind her of what she can do with the downloaded files and how she should do it or use them.
If you have any additional resources, you can add them in here. Also mention your affiliate program if you have one, so she knows she can make money using your download file. That makes her want to move faster.

In your third email you can recommend other products, resources, membership sites or free newsletters that you have. Kind of cross promotion, but still keep it a soft pitch.
Also, do ask if they had the time to try and work with your product, resources or freebies. Remind them of the benefits.

Finally, the fourth email you send should contain nothing else than your personal help.
Offer them your personal email instead of help@yourdomain.com or support@yourdomain.com. Let them know only valuable customers or subscribers have that email address and only they are allowed to use it to get in touch with you.

Don’t underestimate this email. I learned this from Paul Myers who reports huge response rates on later emails. That’s exactly my personal experience too. Most of the responses I get are based on this message. Oh, and take your time to answer these emails personally! Give it an extra personal touch, so they know it doesn’t come from the email follow up series.

Make it as personal as possible. If you use a great email follow up management system (yes, here we go again, but it’s just an indispensable resource!), it will allow you to include their first name. Use that!
But also make it short. No selling, no nothing. Just personal help, personal email address.

Take it from there.
At least, your email follow up series have a great start.

Any comments on this?

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