Email Infinity Plus – Part 3: What to say in your nurture sequence

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Email Infinity helps you generate ideas for daily (or weekly) emails. But before you move a new subscriber onto the regular list, a bit of orientation helps: a nurture sequence that eases them from the lead magnet into the wild waters of your daily/weekly broadcasts.

So how does that work?

If they joined for a lead magnet, then your sequence starts with “here’s your free gift” email. Then continues for a week or two – perhaps longer – as they get to know, like and trust you.

There are many ways to frame your sequence. Here’s five…

1: THE BACKSTORY

Tell them about the problems you wrestled with and how you finally hit on a solution. You’ll share lots of actionable ideas here, but this is also about empathy, so they need to get to know you as a person – how did the struggle affect you, how did the solution change your life?

Each email in this short sequence feels like a mini self-contained story within a bigger, over-arching story – your very own Star Wars Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 etc. So each mini story ends with a problem solved, but also reveals a new problem ahead… priming readers for the next instalment.

By the end, they should be on your side and raring to buy… so you close out the sequence with a juicy one-time offer.

2: THE MINI COURSE

Maybe your lead magnet is not a single resource – maybe it’s a short course over half a dozen emails where you show the reader how to solve a specific problem.

By the end, they know you’re the expert and feel ready for the challenge. BUT you’ve also shown them that it doesn’t end there. This is only step one, and they should talk to you about step two…

3: COMMON MISTAKES

This is less structured than a course – it’s more a bombardment of ideas that combine to show the reader why they’ve failed and what they could achieve.

Each email goes into one specific topic – e.g. if you’re a marketing coach, you’d have emails about Google Ads, Facebook Ads, lead magnets, website bounces, remarketing, upsells, offers etc. By the end, you want readers to feel:

  • Enlightened – you’ve reframed their thinking, as they see where they’ve been going wrong.
  • Excited about the opportunity to put things right.
  • Amazed by your insight and expertise.
  • Overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead.
  • Confident that you’re the one to help them through it.

4: THE CHALLENGE

Something more focused, where you set the reader on a mission – to achieve an exciting but doable goal within a short timeframe like 1-2 weeks. If the challenge allows them to apply what they learned from the lead magnet, so much the better – then it all feels like it’s heading in one direction.

5: GREATEST HITS

Maybe you’ve been emailing for a while, but never built a nurture sequence – i.e. your sign-ups went straight to broadcast. If so, there’s one very simple way to bring them into your world:

Choose a small set of your best emails, and load them onto an auto responder.

This can work well, because your best ever email is probably way better than the one you happen to send on the day/week that someone joins your list. In fact, you’ll have a dozen or so that reach a much higher standard than the norm. By starting with these, you’re impressing them early… so if the odd email later on lacks a bit of fizz, they’re sufficiently wowed to forgive you!

There are many other ways to pull your sequence together, but try one of these for now. See how you get on…

Next Up: How to Turn an Idea into a Structured Email
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What is Email Infinity?

If you send regular emails, and you know the agony of staring at a blinking cursor, waiting for inspiration to strike…stare at this instead!

Email Infinity comes from years of geekery, of late night sessions analysing email after email.

Stuff I’d mailed to my own list. Stuff I’d written for clients. Stuff from pros and gurus. Stuff from regular SMEs.

It all went under the microscope, in a furious bid to reverse-engineer whatever “it” was that was working.

The result is 100+ proven ways to generate ideas – enough to keep anyone in emails till the end of their days.

UK Copywriter James Daniel

James Daniel

You might not know who I am, but no doubt you've read my copy. If you've ever bought a hearing aid, a pizza oven, flat roof or vacuum cleaner. If you've hired a will writer, an IT guy or accountant. If you've been to events on marketing, acting or how to buy a business. There's every chance it started with a bit of my copy - a few simple, chatty, gently persuasive words. Ring any bells?