Follow Up | Ep. #32

In Ep. 32, 1 Start with a plan of your follow ups What will your follow ups be about? How often will the subscribers receive them? At this point, you need to come up with a general plan – something like this: Day 1 (right after getting the email address): the first welcoming follow up (gratitude for the interest to your store, brief business introduction, tempting welcome discount coupon) Day 2: an appealing product selection from your store (best sellers of the week / new arrivals / trends of the season / items similar to the viewed or purchased ones) with product links Day 3: some interesting facts about your products (buyers’ testimonials / industry secrets of the products manufacturing / unexpected ways to benefit from the products use) with product links Day 5: special offer (creating a sense of urgency and differing from the first-time discount coupon) Day 7: a preview of your valuable article from the in-store blog with the links to the related articles or products As you can see, this sample follow ups plan covers 7 days, includes 5 messages, and uses every opportunity to motivate the reader to check out the store once more. Of course, it’s not a must-follow sample plan. You can come up with any other ideas for the letters’ topics, mailing frequency, and time period. It all depends on your store niche, business brand, and the potential customers’ preferences. #2 Pay attention to the first follow up email Basically, the first follow up introduces you to the readers. It lets them understand what they can expect from you, how they can benefit from your offers, and how many of their problems you can solve. In order not to make them disappointed, you only need to give them the information they were looking for while browsing your store. That’s why it’s a good idea to create different follow up sequences for different types of actions taken in your store. Obviously, a ‘thank you’ letter after a product purchase won’t be the same as the ‘these items are still waiting for you in your cart!’ message, right? In any case, it should bring value to the readers. Otherwise, they will quickly assume that your emails are not worthy of their attention. #3 Combine marketing elements with transactional details Your readers are smart enough to see a difference between a spammy promotional text and a piece of valuable information. That’s why some email marketers use payment confirmations, notifications about an order, etc. as the basis for the first email in their follow up sequence. Normally, such action-triggered notifications are sent directly from the website where the user’s activity took place. But you can also add a transactional element (download link, order confirmation, etc) manually to your very first follow up. In this case, you can fill it with FAQ links, store contact details, or other elements that bring value to the readers, re-engage them and bring them back to your website. #4 Work on your subject lines It must be clear from your subject lines that the emails contain something really important: not just useless boring information, but meaningful bonuses, tips, or other helpful and valuable elements. It makes it more likely that the readers will open the emails, and not simply ignore them. These insights will help you create powerful subject lines!