Episode 36: How to Create a Winning Welcome Sequence

Sabahet

We are living now. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Mailmodo’s grow chat today we're going to be talking about welcome emails like we promised and we have with us Eman Ismail who is a copywriter a businesswoman a podcaster, and most importantly a mother and she's taken out you know some time from a busy schedule to be with us and to teach us about welcome emails. Hi, Eman; how are you?

Eman Ismail

Hi, I'm good thank you so much for having me and I feel like the reason you mentioned mother is that we've been trying to do this since November and because my little boy has just been had virus after virus for months, and months we had to keep putting it off so I'm really happy to to finally be here and to be and to be doing this today thank you for having me

Sabahet

It's a pleasure and now actually we want to know more about your story from your end like how you started how you got into copywriting and then you know how you found emails and especially about that wonderful podcast of your “mistakes that made me” where did you get the idea, how did you get it started, so like everything about Iman can we have them?

Eman Ismail

Yeah yeah, okay so, I was working in a charity running the comms Department, I say running the comms department but I was the only person in that department so I was doing like marketing, communications all of the you know copy for the website emails brochures, everything um all our you know most important campaigns, I was helping to run and the part that I loved most about that job was always the copywriting and I was always really amazed by the fact that I could write an email to donors, hit send and then literally watch the donations come in like it was almost magical to me that you could have that you know influence on someone and and persuade someone to donate to a great cause and so um I knew that that was the part that I love most and while I was in this work you know it was a great job I had a good time while I was there but I was commuting, um a lot I was having to travel from one city to another every day almost every day to get to this job and it meant that I wasn't seeing my my son I only had one back then um who was then about two years old I wasn't seeing him very much I'd get home really late and he'd be asleep and it just got to the point where I couldn't I couldn't do it anymore and so you know I spoke to my manager then about potentially working from home more um but it just didn't work out it wasn't something they they wanted they wanted me in the office and so I I left and I gave in my months um I gave it a month's notice so I still had to work for one month and then on a Friday I'd left and by Monday I'd set up my copywriting business I knew that this was what I wanted to do now um I really I realized that the traditional workplace with all its like rules and needing to me to be in the office this was pre-covid when work from home wasn't so kind of um appreciated it just it didn't work for me and the kind of you know life that I wanted to live with my with my son so I

Sabahet

Iman can you hear me, um I think we lost you there for a bit

Eman Ismail

Okay, stop this was I came out of that sector. Hey am I back I can hear you but everything's frozen

Sabahet

Okay and the same from my end actually I can hear you now but your screen seems to be frozen

Eman Ismail

Oh okay and now I'm moving I have no idea what's happened I'm so sorry

Sabahet

No problem, no problem I think it's the internet issue but no problem. So we would like to know the entire story.

Eman Ismail

Okay, you can still hear me. Okay, oh, okay it's slowly getting better so, um where was I yeah basically I started my business and I was with I mean I just come out of the charity sector so naturally like my network was all charities so I ended up working with a lot of charities in the beginning of my um at the beginning kind of portion of my career as a business owner and then I branched out and started working with for-profit businesses and solopreneurs creators, podcasters, authors, course creators, service providers. e-commerce brands as well and initially I was doing a little bit of everything writing anything that anyone needed um but I always had that love and appreciation for email and so it was email that I eventually came back to. So a few years ago I specialized in email strategy and copy and now that's what I do for my clients. So, I you know strategize and I come up with their email strategy I write all their copy and I hope them make money through email and build better relationships with their subscribers through email

Sabahet

Right !

Eman Ismail

Yeah

Sabahet

So, today we're going to be talking mostly about welcoming news like you said and how you can turn them profitable and make dollars to that sequence and I guess you have your master class ready with the presentation and everything?

Eman Ismail

I do everything is set up I'm good to go.

Sabahet

Shall We Begin?

Eman Ismail

Yes, I hope that the internet um cooperates let me just present

Sabahet

I hope so too, okay presentation

Eman Ismail

here we go okay can you let me know if you can see this?

Sabahet

Yes, we can.

Eman Ismail

perfect okay so I think we have a section we have some time for Q and A but I can't see the comment box while I'm presenting so if you put in a comments I'm not ignoring you okay great so you can tell me and let me put my timer on to make sure that I'm timely with this presentation okay let's go how to create a winning welcome sequence, preferably in a day. Question - Do you have a welcome sequence? Don't be shy. Let me know in the comments if you have one and I don't mean do you have a welcome email like one welcome email that goes out I mean do you have a welcome sequence. Sabahet, you can tell me if any answers come in

Sabahet

I will, so I mean we do have a welcome email so we would like to know

Eman Ismail

yes, okay, good you only have one. Is it one?

Sabahet

so we have different kinds of emails. Welcome emails based on how people stumble upon the business sort of thing okay that's the sequences

Eman Ismail

yeah okay, I'm gonna talk to you about that later in that case okay well let me introduce myself and let me know if any comments come through. Um, my name is Eman Ismail. I'm an email strategist and copywriter. I'm a podcast host as Sabahet had mentioned um my podcast is called “mistakes that made me”. I'm a mama of two and I am a pizza Binger. I love myself some pizza. These are the types of businesses that I've worked with in terms of the email strategy and copy work that I do again and podcasters creators um service providers, e-commerce brands, membership makers, course creates all that kind of stuff and these are some of the results I've been able to get for myself and my clients um through the emails that I've written for them. So, there's one client who is able to hit 300,000 pounds in revenue over the course of three launches in one year. So we wrote that copy once and she's used it over and over again and is still using it which is fantastic. Another client, just had a 170,000 launch in seven days um I had with my own launch, my own Mastermind a 35,000 launch and that was with the launch list of just 422 copywriters so that was a really small segment of copywriters which just goes to show that you don't need a huge list to have emails that are you know working for you and that are making you money as well um and in terms of the kind of stats that we're talking for one client I wrote her a 10 part email onboarding sequence and that finished with an or an average open rate of 78% and an average click rate of 29% so this these are the kinds of responses that you can get when you do email right when you do it properly. “I mean your emails have me hooked. I'm ready to give you 1,497 pounds” , “ oh my gosh! This is the best email I've ever read in my life, seriously so genius !” , “ah Iman that email made me cry love” , “ this email is such a great story to hear”. These are the kinds of responses that you can get when you do email well, when you know how to email your subscribers in a way that you know gets them interested and gets them excited to open you after your email. But wait, can you really make good money from emails? I know for anyone that

actually that really does struggle to see a correlation between revenue and email. It can be really hard to believe that you can make good money especially if you're not someone with thousands and thousands of people on your email list. But here's the truth: 91% of consumers say they want to receive emails from companies they do business with, so the majority of the time people want to hear from you and you know what if they don't they'll unsubscribe which is fantastic. You want them to unsubscribe right and the other interesting fact to know is that email is meant to be 40 times more effective at bringing in new customers than Facebook or Twitter and that's for

a variety of reasons and one of which is that people are opting in to receive your emails which shows firstly how interested they are in you your business your brand whatever it is that you do um and also you know with Facebook and Twitter you and other social media as well Instagram too you can't control who is seeing your message, who is seeing your posts you have followers you have people you know following your stuff but are they actually seeing the content the algorithm determines that you don't whereas with email um it's in the 90s I can't remember the exact stat but it's 90 something percent of people actually receive your email once you send it so which is you know

you can't say the same about social media so the people that you are actually delivering your message to are much more likely to actually receive it via email which is why it's a great um marketing and communication tool but

The thing about email is that it only works when you get it right and the problem is that so many business owners get it wrong. Here's some of the ways that they get it wrong. Maybe you see yourself in one of these you - maybe don't email your list enough okay so maybe you are emailing them once a month and you're expecting results you're not getting them and it's frustrating. Maybe you sell too much, maybe you sell in every single email and there's no space or breathing room around your sales. Maybe you don't sell enough, maybe you're that person who is too scared to sell because it is a scary thing sometimes selling an email, maybe you are just too scared to sell. You're not selling enough and people don't actually know how to give you money or how to buy from you how to work with you and maybe you don't realize that any kind of success that you see with email starts way before you actually start selling. Okay, in order to make money from your email list you need a mindset shift instead of selling first you want to have this um almost like a rule for yourself that you nurture first and then you sell second because you don't ever want to be that friend. Let me tell you about the friend that I mean. I mean that friend who only ever calls you when they want something from you, they only message you when they need something, when they want you to comfort them or maybe they want money or maybe they want a favor or maybe they won't need to babysit but whatever it is they want something from you and when you see their name on your phone. You think, I'm not going to answer that because they want something. Okay, some businesses are that friend to their subscribers. So, you are only getting in touch with your

subscribers when you want something from them. You're never giving them anything. They never feel valued and so they stop opening your emails and they stop, you know um, responding to your emails and eventually maybe they unsubscribe or they just sit on your list and do nothing. Instead, you want to nurture your audience really well, way before you start trying to sell to them. The easiest way to nurture your audience really well is with a welcome sequence. So, a welcome sequence (for anyone who doesn't know) is a series of emails that you send to new subscribers immediately, after they sign up to your list. It's usually a series of three plus emails, although I do recommend more it's always automated over a set period of time. So, you set it up once and then it's automated it goes out automatically every time a new subscriber signs up. It triggers these series of emails to go out and this is really your chance to welcome your subscriber to nurture them to introduce them to your business, your brand and whatever it is that you do to yourself. If you're the face of your brand or business and to really build a connection and a relationship with them. This is the place to do that, because we all know that people don't buy because of, maybe of the thing they buy because they believe in you, in what you're doing in the business, in the brand, in the vision, in the mission, you know, because certainly for me, you're someone like me there are millions of okay maybe not Millions I don't know there are a lot of copywriters in this world and but why do my clients choose me, it's because of me and the connection that I've built with them um partially through my emails in this way. So that's something to really think about too, because a business with a welcome sequence generates up to 320 more revenue than a business that doesn't have a welcome sequence. So, if you don't have a welcome sequence it's just, it's a really big missed opportunity, you are missing the chance to you know create this relationship with your subscriber that allows them to get to know you your business, your brand better and to want to you know give you their money and however that looks.

So, what are the benefits of a welcome sequence?

Well, first of all it's automated. You set it up once and then you let it do its job now. I don't recommend that you set it up and then never look at it again ever. Obviously, sometimes they need to be updated as things change in your business. Um, I don't know, maybe you have a new product or you're doing something different, maybe you change direction. You pivoted, of course, your welcome sequence will need to be updated too but generally assuming that nothing has changed you set it up once and you set it up to be automated and then it's done. You let it do what it does best. The great thing about the welcome sequence is that you can create the same journey for every new subscriber. So, for example, if I'm working with a course creator and there are certain things that we know that the audience needs to know about them, in order to really know them and trust them and like them. Well, this is a great opportunity to create this one educational journey that every single subscriber has to go on. Okay, so, then we know that we're hitting all these different points, where okay in order for this subscriber to buy this course later on down the line they need to know that my client, this person, is um trustworthy that they have experience in the field that they're teaching in that they are one of the best coaches that you know is out there. For example, maybe that's with testimonials and social proof and all that good stuff but we have so many points that we need to touch first, before we can even consider um creating this environment where the person, the subscriber is ready to buy a welcome sequence is great because you can feel more confident selling knowing that your audience has been well taken care of. I just came out of a launch, my own launch where I sent a lot of emails to my list over the past week and I felt good about sending the emails I did, because I spend so much time sending non-sales emails to my email list sending send in value doing workshops, inviting them to free master classes and exactly like this, right! So, I've done the work to nurture them and to provide them with value, so when it's time for me to sell my things and invite them to buy from me, I feel good about it because it feels like a good balance to me and I'm not scared to sell it makes me more confident knowing that my welcome sequence has already nurtured them and actually my newsletter has for a while as well . The great thing about a welcome sequence is that you can make money in your sleep if you decide to um to sell in the welcome sequence which you can, um it's an easy way for you to automate sales which is always a great thing.

So what are some of the biggest mistakes that I see in welcome sequences?

Well, the first one is not having a welcome sequence. The second one is only having one welcome email which is again a huge missed opportunity because if you really just sit and think about it for a second, you can really come up with a good email, a good welcome email strategy that has a series of emails in it and well, we'll talk about the worry around that in a minute but you don't need to be worried about sending more than one and the other mistake I see people make is not saying the right thing, in your welcome sequence. So you have a welcome sequence but it's not effective and it's not doing what you want it to do and often that's because you haven't figured out what your audience needs to hear in order for them to say yes to your later offer like maybe you're not clear on your audience, maybe their struggles, their pains their dreams, their goals, their objections, their hesitations if you're really not clear on that then it's hard to know what to what to put into a welcome sequence.

So, what could a simple four-part welcome sequence look like? -

1. an email one want to deliver the goods, um so if ,for example most people do offer you maybe you offer a lead magnet which is you say in block here's this amazing resource or thing that I'm gonna give you but in exchange you have to give me your email address, right there's lead magnet. So, if someone has signed up for something the first email always has to deliver that thing. Don't worry about introducing them to millions of offers. Don't worry about wanting them to go here, they like to follow you here, follow you there, attend this, let's do this and do that. Just do what you said you were gonna do and just deliver the resource whatever it is. Also, set expectations in this email so let them know that you know you're going to be sending them a few more emails over the course of the week. So, they know to expect it, so it doesn't feel like a big shock and this email one would go out immediately as in the moment they subscribe they would receive this first email.

2. Email two, maybe you want to get them to tell you a little bit more about themselves. Okay, so I often send this email the same day but if that feels uncomfortable, you can send it the next day whatever feels better for you but this is the email where I'm really trying to find out, okay who is? Who's on the other side of this email? who's getting this email? and how can I make sure that I send them relevant emails only? So, I have two different audiences. They're all business owners but some of them are copywriters like me and some of them are not copywriters and so the copywriters like me are there to maybe get an inside look into my business, maybe learn from me, maybe join a couple of my master classes or courses for copywriters whereas the non-copyrighted business owners are the ones that will probably hire me, hopefully hire me at some point right. So, right there I have two different audiences and I need to know who you are when you come in so that I can send you the right emails because you need different experiences, you need different welcome sequences and they get different welcome sequences

3. In email three I would, um you can introduce yourself or your brand. Tell a story, share what you do so people really understand you, know who you are or what your business does, what your brand does what's special about you and what makes you different from other businesses or brands that do something similar and tell them how they can (you know) work with you or hire you so that there is no confusion.

4. And then email four could be solely just a value email. You're not asking them to do anything, you're not asking them to buy anything but you're providing them with value. So that they go away and really believe in your expertise and your knowledge.

So, this is an example (um) email that I sent (um) and then I do send when you sign up for my 35 minute (um) free email class, it's called the email rules, so people sign up to get the email rules. They obviously put in their name and their email address and then this is the email that they get immediately now you'll see this is actually a long email (um) and (I wanted to test the) I wanted to test whether people would be put off by the fact that it's a longer email and they're not actually I can't even remember what the open rate is. I should have got the stats for the open rates I can actually check, maybe if we have time and my computer doesn't crash um but the open rate's great. I'm really happy with it and people are clicking on it and the reason this email is so long is because um you still have to sell the freebie so I promise I'm a freebie, yes! They signed up for the freebie, great! but now I still have one more job which is to get them to open the freebie and use the freebie right so I've noticed this is a duplicate image so this image is supposed to be basically the um the call to action that says here's the email rules, go watch them now um and so what this does is it gets people excited about the email rules it reminds them why they signed up I'm not expecting them to just watch it because I create a freebie and they should be grateful for the freebie. No, I'm still trying to sell the freebie to them and prove to them that it's worth the time so that's email one and no, your email one does not have to be this long ever. I just wanted to experiment with (you know) the length of my emails. So, number two, this email is all about trying to figure out who is on the other side right so remember I told you that I have the non-copywriter business owners that are on my list and then the copywriter business owners who are on my list so I'm asking them to click and again this is a very short email so just playing with lengths and varying the length of my emails again I'm asking them to click on the sentence that best describes them and then what happens is, they click on a link, they click on the right one that (you know) describes who they are and then on the back end of my email service provider. I tag them, so I tag them with either the tag (um) business owner or copywriter and so that I can tell the difference

Sabahet

hi, Eman. Am I audible? your voice is breaking a bit but I heard you there

Eman Ismail

okay let me try and go to the next screen

Sabahet

no no you're perfectly audible. Yeah it's working fine now yeah

Eman Ismail

Okay, email three so this is the email where( Ioh okay let me just no,okay am I is my screen still sharing I don't know what's going on)

Sabahet

yeah your screen is visible, references in the email so I think we're on the right emails email number three

Eman Ismail

okay my I can't see anything that's going on everything has disappeared on my screen I one second let me just try and find you again okay, okay great I'm still here so um I don't know what happened so email

Eman Ismail

Email three is all about telling my story. So, who am I? ( you know) What do I do? How did I get here? and I turn it into a bit of a story. So, I take them back to 2018 when I was miserable and you just really needed something to change and so this email is really about getting to know me. Building that no like and trust factor so that the the subscriber feels like they know me and then I also introduce what I do and who I help um and the people that I've worked with so here I'm establishing you know authority and trust and the understanding that I know what I'm talking about and then at the end I also linked to some podcast interviews where I talk more about who I am? What should I do? My journey (you know) so in case anyone wants to know more so they can go listen to (those um) these podcast interviews and then finally email four is the value

email so this is like I have nothing to gain from this email I just want people to enjoy it and to watch the video and feel like I am the expert that I've said I am so this whole email is around this email tie-down that I did where basically I signed up to Kylie Cosmetics emails that is Kylie Jenner's company so I signed up to their emails I got their emails and then I analyzed their emails and then I recorded a video of me analyzing their emails and there was a

lot of things that they didn't do very well so that's what the email is that's what this video is about and I think people really like this because they like to see that wow bigger companies make email mistakes as well like there there are things that even the bigger companies are not doing well and it also gives them an insight into my mind and how I do email and approach email. So, they watch this video they enjoy it I share um screenshots of people saying they love this kind of thing and they love the video just to prove that again it's

worth their time and it's worth them watching it and bear in mind you know I created a little bit of a story around this as well to just make it an engagement email and that's those are the four first emails um in that sequence and just so you know there are more but I stopped it at four for you to make it just you know super simple because your welcome sequence doesn't have to be super, super long it really is just about communicating what you need to

um and that takes as many emails as it takes so now that your subscribers have gone through your welcome sequence and they are nurtured they are much more likely to trust you to like you and to buy from you or to sign up for whatever it is that you have to offer

But there are two ways that you can really take your welcome sequence to “The Next Step” so the first way is to personalize your welcome sequence and no I don't just mean you by using the first name tag and I'll go into that more in. A second and the second way is to use trigger-based automations to sell more. So, for example um my first point personalized your welcome sequence personalization is so much more than just including first name in your emails and actually if you do that wrong it can just feel really creepy nowadays right if you overdo it as well um but you can personalize your welcome sequence based on where your subscriber is joining from for example, are they joining your welcome sequence after they've listened to you on a certain podcast? Are they joining your list after buying a certain product? Mention it. Show them that you are paying attention to where they've come from and what they've listened to you? What they've bought already? So that they really feel seen where they've come from matters their journey to kind of getting to you matters um. You can also create a personalized experience, well created a personalized experience creates this kind of seamless um experience and helps people feel like they are relevant and it helps you create emails that are relevant and it makes people set up a notice because so many businesses don't do this okay um that are even if you just personalize the subject line. For example, even if you just personalize the hook the opening of the email the first few lines or the first email in a sequence um by personalizing your welcome sequence in this way you can also add a tag to the subscribe to the subscriber that tells you you know where they came from or what they bought and that's important for you to know so that you can sell them relevant products or services in the future so if you know that someone has done your free master class. For example, already then maybe you want to sell them your paid masterclass next um so that tag allows you to know okay well they've taken the free master class. So, they are primed and ready maybe to try and buy the paid one, so this actually gives you more information about your subscribers and allows you to use that information to um send them relevant offers and information. So here's an example for me so I had a welcome sequence and then I went on a podcast called “The Quiet Rebels” podcast and I created a specific landing page for anyone who would listen to this specific interview on The Quiet Rebels podcast and then I created this new welcome sequence but instead of creating a whole new welcome sequence for my ebook, what I did was I actually just added and one line at the top of the email um hey man I hope you love my quiet Rebels interview as much as I loved recording it as a little thank you for signing up to my newsletter I want to give you a copy of my free ebook this was the only line that I changed and I think this maybe this half a line as well I added and this this email already existed but I personalized if I just adding one and a half extra lines and so by sending that out the person who receives it is seeing that I appreciate them listening to my interview it makes them sit up and notice that I'm paying attention to them okay these emails are not just your regular box standard emails.

The second way to power up your welcome sequence is to use trigger-based automations to sell more so subscribers reveal their interests through their behavior EG clicks what they click on they're usually interested on right so you could set up trigger-based automations that um are triggered when someone in your welcome sequence clicks through to a certain sales page. For example, but don't buy so them clicking on that link allows you to tag them you know that they didn't buy because they didn't get the buying tag and because of that they actually triggers a whole new sales sequence where you are trying to persuade them to buy the thing that they just abandoned um and then the other thing is can (am I still there Sabahet because you weren't very quiet yeah okay okay I just didn't want to interrupt you in between no that's great thank you um) so the other thing is that this allows you to sell to a smaller settlement that has already expressed that interest so instead of sending everything to everyone um you can send relevant emails to the

right people who've already expressed interest in something and get higher conversions than happy subscribers. So this isn't a what's the word like it's

not always going to be perfect right um because what happens is sometimes people click on things that they're not actually interested in buying they're just curious and are just I don't know want to have a read or want to find out like what you're doing or what's going on but they have no interest in buying the thing but until that happens but we can assume that most people who click on a certain link and they know what that link is before they you know I had like

before they go into the page we can assume that they're clicking because they're specifically interested which means that now that you have registered

that interest and you can then, for example, set them up so that they receive another sale sequence that's focused on that one thing that they're really interested in now all this can sound really complicated um but it doesn't have to be. Here's how to make it really easy on yourself you can create a simple welcome sequence in one day because the reality is that you probably already have a lot of the content that would go into your welcome sequence so you want to repurpose your content have a look at the content that's already in existence you don't have to create new things for your welcome sequence so for example that Kylie Jenner, Kylie Cosmetics tear down email that I told you about that had that was already a thing like I'd already created that I'd posted it everywhere and it was really popular and because of its popularity I thought this is something that I want more people to see, so I put it in my welcome sequence so that everybody sees it when they first come into my kind of world (um especially you know) my email world and so that was already that already existed I didn't create a video for my welcome sequence I had a look at the content I already had and then I repurposed it into an email turn it into an email and sent it out and that's what you can do. So think about your popular blog posts, your popular maybe podcast, interviews, maybe you have a podcasts, maybe you were on a podcast, maybe have a look at your popular social media posts which are the ones that really resonated can you turn that into an email I once um I have a client who's an e-commerce brand they had an Instagram post that performed really well and that I felt spoke really well to what was going on with their audience so I took that Instagram post almost word for word turned it into an email um in their welcome sequence added a CTA to buy a certain product sent this email out and this email that was an Instagram post is now making their money on um as an automation in the welcome sequence and so have a look for those kind of opportunities as well for the the intro email where you introduce your business your brand yourself or whoever it is whatever it is repurpose the copy from your about page or bio and rework it for an email you don't have to start from scratch you don't ever have to start from scratch so you can create this welcome sequence in one day by sitting down for a few hours and just having a look at the content that already exists and piecing it all together and turning it into this kind of email journey that people go on um with you and that can really work for your business brand so thank you that is the end of the presentation.

Before I let you go, I want to leave you with some more email conversion tips. So I mentioned the email rules it's a 35 minute crash course in email marketing and it's totally free and it's only 35 minutes long because I know you're busy and you don't have time to be watching our master classes and but this teaches you how to boost your conversions and sales through email very quickly and it's super actionable it's stuff that you can start using today in your emails and they're really easy steps so hopefully you'll feel like you um are able to take what you learn put it into your new welcome sequence and you know email can just start to make a little bit more sense for you and be more effective as well. So, that is everything. Thank you so much. Let me stop sharing

Sabahet

So that was a great great presentation, Eman. Thank you so much. I'm sure all of us have learned a lot. We got a lot of new ideas especially about the repurposing and blog posts, all the things that you mentioned about repurposing the social media personality. They're definitely going to use them in our record sequences now we have a few questions here one of them is from Neelabja and she is saying, What do you think is the appropriate trigger for a welcome series flow for a service based organization?

Eman Ismail What do you think is the appropriate trigger for a welcome series flow for a service based organization?

Well you want to think about what is and it's really hard to answer because it'll be usually be a lead magnet right you're offering something to your subscriber so that they sign up to your email list which then triggers the welcome series and the welcome sequence but what that thing is that you are giving to them initially or offering them really depends on your audience like what are they struggling with? What do they want to know more about? What are their pains, their struggles, their goals? and what are their frustrations? How can you help them or how can you help your business or your organization? How can you help them? Where do you fit in? How do they like to consume content? Do they like ebooks or master classes, video series or podcast episodes? It's so personal to your audience that it's really difficult for me. I would be just lying if I just said whatever because it doesn't matter what I say it really it really means it you really have to go back to kind of your audience and figure out okay what do they need where can we help and if you don't know ask them survey them interview them find out um there's there are so many answers within your audience we just sometimes we forget to ask them right?

Sabahet

So like you mentioned right now you know getting to know more about your customer probably through surveys and you know interviews do you think emails are the good tool for doing that? because we believe that it is so and also with interactive image there's so many ways where you can actually understand user's preference within the email itself without them having to go to another landing page and filling out a form so like do you have some ideas have you ever used these kind of surveys and forms in a welcome sequence or any other email sequence for that matter and how has that impacted your like you know the way you create emails later on in the sequence and conversion ultimately.

Eman Ismail

Yeah, I mean firstly that's what I love about Mailmodo, is that you can insert the surveys and forms inside the emails and which will, I can only imagine how much more that boosts (the the um the) response rate of people actually doing the survey filling, in the form. I do a lot of surveys, in a lot of forms and so much of the work that I do is about things like audience research and customer research because before I can write any emails I need to know who your audience is right and everything that's going on with them. So, yes, I do loads of forms loads of surveys but my surveys have always been you have to click out of the emails which is you know it I mean it is what it is um but yeah I really like that Mailmodo doesn't need you to click out um but in terms of how that helps my emails absolutely so I'm asking things like why did you join my email list what is it that you um need help with how can I help you

because again there's just there's so much knowledge in your subscribers mind this is a place to an opportunity to generate content ideas um to figure out your next services and offerings you know and there's so much, so yes I do depend on them a lot and I put them in different places I always have a survey when im when someone's bought a product I usually ask initially when they first buy it why did you buy it like what are you struggling with that made you buy this thing and then also at the end I'll have a feedback form it's good and it's interesting to see those two different perspectives when they first start and when they finish the thing when they join my email list I want to ask like why did you join? Sometimes it's not even putting in a form or a survey sometimes it's just asking them to reply and tell me why they joined or what's going on that you know they're struggling with or whatever it is and so

Yes, survey forms are invaluable. um for email strategy yeah right so like

Sabahet

You said sometimes you know people do tend to opt out of your email list also and that's where also the survey comes in handy another thing that most people struggle with and have a question around is how many emails are too many emails? Especially in a welcome sequence so when people are strategizing they we brainstorm a lot between the time gap that should be there between emails and you know like should we be saying are we sending them less emails should we send more or is it too much so do you have some sort of a tip or something that you have practiced for any of your client and you know arrived at a certain number. What would you suggest to the market is who are building this kind of strategy?

Eman Ismail

Yeah, I think the first thing is to map out the email sequence so ideally like what would you how many emails would you have what would go in each email like map that out first and then you can start thinking about the frequency because then you know okay we only have three emails or we only have five emails or maybe we have seven or eight emails so you want to figure out well how many do we have before you even start thinking about when to send them how frequently to send them um so for me well I just did a five part welcome sequence for a client and I think the first three emails went out once a day and then for the fourth email. There was a two-day break and then that went out and then there was a three-day break and then the fifth email went out so it you know increased in time um the amount of time between emails increased as the sweet welcome sequence went further along at the beginning of the welcome sequence. It was really quite like a Snappy fast-paced sequence because that's what I want for that sequence like when people first sign up and they're excited about signing up I want them to be excited to open an email every day but now remember most people don't mind um oh you sending them emails every day for a very short period of time you know a few days but let them know that you're doing that so that they're not surprised and they're not shocked and they'll they won't see it as being spammy or whatever else um and then the other thing is if they don't like it they'll unsubscribe which is fine um don't be afraid of unsubscribes. I just had my own launch where I sent out a lot of emails over the past week and I had um I don't know I want to say 20 to 30 unsubscribes which is a lot more than I usually would get but I'm really happy about those unsubscribers because those people were clearly never invested enough in what I am doing to even um to stay on my list like alone to buy something up later on down the line and at the end of the day I'm a business so I'm here to sell things. I'm not paying for you to be on my email list to flap around I got a business to run so um don't be afraid of unsubscribes and then the other thing is to note is that you know the more emails you send for a welcome sequence as you get further and further down the welcome sequence um the open rate will drop so less and less people will open the like emails later on down the line so you want to make sure like anything and that's totally normal but you want to make sure that anything important that is time sensitive or you want them to do quickly or they you really really want them to know when they cannot miss out on that you should really front load that and make sure those are at the front of the email so that they don't get you know um lost towards the end

Sabahet

Right, so those were actually very useful tips and there are some really good takeaways that we can take from here is one of the thing is you should always tell your subscribers about how many emails they're gonna get and you know they should know exactly what to expect and another thing that you said was never be scared of the unsubscribe button it's good if people it's you know it's better to have like an engaged list than a long list with a lot of unengaged subscribers. So that's pretty interesting to another point that you said was for open rates that it's going to get lesser as you progress in the welcome sequence, so those are some really interesting takeaways Eman thank you so much for that and I think one more question that I really wanted to know was you worked with a lot of brands there are so many businesses that you help and of course like as a copywriter as an email strategist there are so many business emails that you must just observe from distance and probably like you said Kylie Jenner's brands and you were like you know these are not good emails so are there any emails that you really like like for example do you think some brand is doing good or some creator that you kind of like you know hats off you you're nearing your emails right now so would you like to mention something

Eman Ismail

That's a good question. Okay, so I really like is it the Honest Company um what's she called Jessica Alba she has a company called yeah “ Honest” honest and I think their emails are absolutely fantastic um I haven't I have an entire email account dedicated to just being signed up to newsletters so I'm like opening this account now to see whose emails am I always opening um their company um ah is it “bombus”, “the sock, the sock company” I like theirs um and then there are individual creators individual business owners like “Tarzan Kate” I love her emails um who else is am I always open in ] um I mean I'm like I'm just looking at I've got “Amy Porterfield” in my newsletter thingy but I'm not opening all that all her emails um yeah you know I like being boss um being boss was a client of mine and they have a great podcast as well called “being boss” um so go check that out if you like podcasts um and they have a really great newsletter because they they curate content from around the internet that is relevant to their subscribers and then put them all in a weekly email so they they create yeah they curate fantastic content for you so I don't have to go around searching for like cool interesting articles and they send them to me every week and so that's a different style of newsletter that I I really like, I read those emails a lot

Sabahet

Right, so that's interesting Eman okay so like as you said there are certain emails that you open immediately and there are certain emails that you don't so what is it about emails? Like, is it the subject line? What is it in the subject line that kind of you know that peaks your interest and you have to just open that email? And see what's there so like from a marketeer to a marketeer what impresses you the most?

Eman Ismail

um oh okay, the emails that always get me are the ones that are really good at creating some kind of like connection or make me make me think that this is a very this is a personalized email sometimes they open an email and I think the person has actually written it to me because they just absolutely nailed maybe even just use of the first name tag in that subject line nailed it and I open it thinking it's actually an email for me and then realize oh no it's a newsletter emails for everyone um so yeah there was one I remember one time being really disappointed because who was it someone had done this and I literally thought like this famous person had read me anymore I was like Oh my God! they know who I am no they hadn't it was it was just a really well executed email so I think sometimes when when businesses brands are able to do that well like make me feel like I'm the only one in the room I'm the only person that right into it's really powerful and that that is first the subject line and then you open this up you, open the email and then it continues on in the email

Sabahet

so like again recognize an individual what do you prefer do you do you prefer like a heavily text based email or would you like do you like emails that are like really nicely designed there's a lot of imagery going on as a marketeer? What would you prefer? What do you think works also like since you work with a lot of clients you must know?

Eman Ismail

Yeah,with my clients it's different right so I work with e-commerce brands and with e-commerce brands you know um images work really well as you can imagine people want to see what they're what they're buying they want to they want to see it first right so that works really well for e-commerce Brands but for like my course creators,my solopreneurs, created service providers that kind of thing I find that text-based emails work much better a few images like maybe some images or gifts just to add like personality to break up the text so it's not just like a big you know block of text but for those I feel like the more natural those emails come across the more effective they are so people don't really in those spheres want to be reminded that this is a sales email and you're trying to sell something to me which is what you know a newsletter banner you know a perfectly beautifully designed email does when it really feels more like a note to a friend or to someone then it feels much less market and more again personal and and I think it's they're more successful there at building that connection but it's different for e-commerce brands so again it really depends on what you're selling and who you're talking to

Sabahet

Right right so, if I know you don't work a lot with SAAS brands but if you had to give one tip to all the SAAS email marketers there what would you give them like you must have observed a lot of emails from these companies as well then you know you feel like you know I wish I could do that I wish I could tell them that so like this is your chance maybe

Eman Ismail

Oh that's a good question. Um that's a good question I mean I had a situation recently with oh no that that's not helpful, I think, that's a really hard question um I'm just trying to there was one SAAS company that annoyed me recently um because of because of an email they sent to me um I don't know I think the SAAS is doing a good job it has a hard job as well um and he's doing a good job of wanting to help the subscriber so for example I'm talking specifically here about maybe the onboarding piece where you're trying to help someone like figure out how to use the tool you know learn to like a new tool or system whatever it is and that's a big job and I think they're doing a really good job I think where I see maybe the most successful um efforts are again I know I keep popping around about the same thing but even SAAS companies can do it that like connection piece where it's just you and me like it's me and you it's not you know you're not talking to the whole world you're making me feel like you really have time for me you're really trying to help me figure out how to use this tool um you know I'm not just another number I'm not just another email subscriber um yeah I like that and I think also okay maybe this is the one maybe this is my answer I think it's the follow-up some SAAS brands do it really really well where they will follow up with me if I'm not using the tool if I'm not in there if I have you know given up on it a little follow up with me try to help me um keep me going and then others just won't and then I will forget that it even exists so maybe that's the one I'll go with I think that's the one there's power in the follow-up right?

Sabahet

That is a very interesting tip where you know it's important to keep people engaged but if you see that their subscribers who are not maybe using your product that much or they're not as engaged maybe it's time to kind of a check in to understand what's going wrong and that's where emails come in that is why they are so powerful you can have like one-on-one conversation with everybody

Eman Ismail

So exactly

Sabahet

So yes thank you so much Eman I think we had a wonderful session and I learned a lot I'm sure all the audience also learned equally well and it was great having you and I really hope you had time too

Eman Ismail

I did I did thank you so much for having me and I hope everyone enjoyed it I hope so too

Sabahet

So we'll keep in touch then

Eman Ismail

Definitely, thank you so much

Sabahet

Thank you, Eman and see you all in the next chat bye. Have a great day. Bye

Eman Ismail

Bye