Email marketing is the heart of your marketing funnel. Although a lead magnet, landing page, or email opt-in form may attract new email subscribers, the relationship begins with your email sequence.

Why are email sequences required?

These pre-scheduled emails meet your audience where they currently are and provide them with helpful information to get to their desired outcome. And when filled with valuable, educational content, sequences are a great way to prime your audience to purchase your product or service.

But before pitching your offer, you must build the “like-know-trust” factor with them. While customers usually want results right away, they won’t buy or download anything from you if you’re not able to articulate the solution to their needs.

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Your prospects want to feel like you understand their pain points, see where they may be struggling, and care about creating a solution that uniquely helps them. Once these needs are fulfilled, your email subscriber is much closer to making a purchase inside your email marketing funnel.

9 best practices to write converting email sequences for your business

Be clear, concise, and respectful 

Email is not the place to beat around the bush, or type a quick note with the hope that your recipient will “figure out the rest.” There’s no room for misinterpretation or miscommunication. Be as direct and specific as possible in your message else you’ll be relying on luck to achieve your goal.

Source: ActiveCampaign

That being said, don’t write your prospects a novel when a sentence or two will suffice. You should aim to keep things short and simple. First, it will take less time to write. Second, it will take less time to read. Third, and most importantly, it will help you think critically about the agenda you truly want to get across; the more concise you are, the more focused your message will be. The clarity of your message will dictate the actions, and respecting their time makes you successful.

Know your audience and their pain points

Emails are a wonderful way to let your prospects know that you see and understand their pain points and challenges. You cannot build trust with your prospects if you can’t identify their unique pain points. While an email subscription may not sound like a recipe for transformation, the right email read at the right time can change a potential customer’s life and yours for the better.

The idea is to diagnose the problem like a doctor and provide solutions to benefit them in their profession.

Email marketing is highly effective because it’s unafraid to get personal without overstepping boundaries. However, before writing any email a lot of research has to be put in about the prospect, company and news related to their pain points. 

Incentivize your prospects

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If you’re planning to email them multiple times for a month just understanding their problems and writing an awesome email with a superb subject line is not enough. You have to incentivize your prospects with meaningful gifts.

These gifts can be in the form of content like - a recent news article about their problem, a blog you’ve written, some case studies you’ve worked on or completely materialistic like a $5 Starbucks gift card.

The intent is to help them and the motive is to get them on a call/demo. All the above-mentioned content-related gifts help them find the answers to their problem and the coffee gift card helps them take a break from frustrating themselves thinking about the problems, so they can clear their mind and find a suitable solution.

Always proofread your emails

Almost all of us have at least once been embarrassed by a major typo or missing an attachment in a message we sent in haste. The good news is that 90 per cent of these mistakes could be prevented with a simple run-through of the message before you hit send.

But the bad news is that developing this habit takes some time and continuous effort. Sometimes, you’ll click send prematurely anyway—but thanks to Gmail, there’s a way to get a second chance. Google gives you an email undo option (only for a few seconds after you have sent out the email), a nice failsafe to limit your potential embarrassment.

This is one of my favourite email best practices because it has saved me so many times when I accidentally sent an email before I meant to!

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Gauge your emotions before sending

Showing emotions makes you look more like a human but most of the time, you’re much better off sending an email with a neutral tone. 

Showing emotions is good in many cases. But, if your emotions come off too strong in your emails, it might scare the prospects or make you look desperate. So to avoid such situations it’s better to maintain a neutral tone where you’re neither too closed nor open.

Keep the subject line descriptive, yet concise

Subject lines should be descriptive and concise. A descriptive subject line will convey information about the content of your message, and a concise one will ensure it doesn’t take up too much visual space.

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Most converting subject lines usually have a maximum of 3 words. They are catchy and can be read easily using mobile devices.

Plan your automation in advance

Email automation keeps your business running smoothly by never missing an opportunity to generate leads and sales. However, any mistake in scheduling, technology, etc. can be detrimental to all the hard work you put into writing your sequences. 

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So, be sure to choose the best automation tool for your company and team, that way you don’t have to worry about running into technical difficulties down the road. And always, always run a test email before launching your next sequence.

Respond to emails quickly (but not immediately)

Everybody appreciates a quick response time, and the faster you respond, the faster the rest of the team can move forward.

Accordingly, it’s important to respond to incoming messages within a business day, and within an hour if you can. That said, don’t feel pressured to respond within minutes.

Responding immediately will make you a less efficient worker, and could establish an expectation that you’re always ready to respond or engage in conversation.

Follow up if you don’t get a response

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Following up is crucial in many scenarios. Sometimes, the sequences work and you get a response from your prospect then they go dark - a simple, polite follow-up message can help you get the results you need.

However, there are a few best practices you’ll need to follow to make this work. For example, always wait a day (sometimes longer) before sending a follow-up, and don’t send more than a few follow-up messages in succession. Be respectful of the other person’s time and current priorities.

Conclusion

With these lead nurturing and sales conversion email sequences in mind, choose an email sequence type you would like to create in the next week. While you may want to create multiple at one time, we recommend identifying which email sequence type is the most beneficial or timely for you to create and start there.

Each email sequence you create will give you data and experience to bring into the other email sequences you will create.

Once your email sequence is created, you can move it into the marketing automation tool - HubSpot. The simplest way to start is by creating an easy-to-follow lead journey that sets up different paths depending on their actions.

With your email subscriber’s journey in mind, you can pull inspiration from our visual automation templates and if you’re still wondering how to do this and need assistance, contact us here.

Need assistance building top-performance email sequences for your business? We, at fractional CMO can help you build automated email sequences and switch your marketing campaigns to auto-pilot mode.

Wondering how? Contact us today!