Warning: Long article ahead.

If you or your business belongs to one of the following…

  • Solopreneur
  • Entrepreneur
  • Blogger
  • Influencer
  • Coach
  • Author
  • Startup

This article provides you with the blueprint to implement an email automation framework so that you have a clear step-by-step guidelines on how you can automate your online business and sales funnels.


Introduction: The Role of Email Marketing

Marketing is all about ROI & conversion, and email marketing is no different.

It is one of the most common tools for every online marketer to build trust and relationship with the leads that come in through the funnel.

It is one of the lowest cost yet with the highest ROI (up to 4400%)!

While there are a lot of articles out there writing about email marketing, most of them are listicles that tell you what is email marketing and why email marketing isn’t dead. However, there aren’t a lot of practical guides that teach you the “how”, and this is exactly what we are doing now.

This article shows you the email framework that we have implemented for some of our customers with the goal of improving their conversion while automating their online businesses. It involves a lot of segmentation to improve the customers’ journey to purchase.

But wait.

We are not just showing you the framework.

We are also giving you the step-by-step blueprint on what to do at each step so that you can implement it for your online business.

Sounds good?

Great!

Now, we have to go ahead and assume you are not new to email marketing. If you do not have even a single idea about it, you probably wouldn’t even last this far.

The general idea of doing email marketing is you need to first get your leads to sign up to your email list. That usually means you are offering something in exchange for their email address and that something is known as lead magnet. A lead magnet can be many things, ranging from a checklist, ebook, chapter preview, training or even newsletter.

That’s actually where you start building trust and relationship, because you are giving away something valuable for free.

Now, many beginners think this is everything to email marketing; that once you get people in the list, you can keep sending emails after emails with the hope that the leads will turn into a customer as soon as possible.

But how soon?

We can’t possibly let your ROI and conversion rate be determined by just “hope”.

Without reliable metrics, growth is simply not possible, let alone the talk of maximizing conversion while automating the online business.

And surely, your list is not the only list that they’ve opted-in to. They could be getting more than hundreds of emails per day!

That’s not a good thing for marketers, and if you are serious in your business, you need to be serious in your email strategies as well to stand out.

Of course, we can show you a few points and let you figure it out on your own, or we can show you our framework and teach you how to implement it in your online business.

At Funnel Duo, we are all about traffic and conversion. Sales funnels are the tools that brings them both together, turning traffic into conversion. In order to achieve this, a robust automation framework should be in place so that your business can scale on its own

Email automation is not a new technology; the first behavioral email was sent in 2001, which marked the start of automated (triggered) email.

The concept of automation lies in segmentation. Being able to segment your customers mean you gain the ability to send them personalized contents, and we are not referring to just the “name” alone. You can segment your customers based on their demographics, purchase history, types of purchase, open/click, and even their website activities.

While email automation is not difficult to implement, it does require you to understand your audience (customer persona). That means you will need to do your research and understand your leads’ behavioral pattern. However, it can be overwhelming for bloggers, solopreneurs or small business owners who are trying to do everything on their own due to marketing budget constrain.

Don’t worry. You are not alone.

More than 60% of marketers have admitted that they struggle to automate and personalize their marketing efforts too. This is despite the fact that 94% of 1,100 online businesses say that marketing automation and personalization is critical to their success.

And rest assured, at the end of this article, you will know how to rip our framework and do it yourself.


Goals & Metrics: What’s Important For Email Marketing

Now, the ultimate goal of email marketing is to achieve a number of goals. Your goal can be more revenue, more leads, course sales, webinar attendees, event signups, customer engagement, or even community building.

Let’s go over a few metrics to achieve those goals:

  1. Opt-in rate — the rate of your lead-turn-subscriber based on your total traffic.
  2. Open rate — the number of people who actually open your email.
  3. Click-through rate (CTR) — the number of clicks you get per open.
  4. Email conversion rate — the percentage of subscribers that actually become your customers or achieved one of your conversion goals. This is a less-discussed measurement because it is not available without a bit of work. However, this is also one of the most important metrics for you to be able to measure and track the profitability of your marketing efforts.
  5. Unsubscribe rate — this is a measurement of how many people out of 100 unsubscribed from the email sent. There are bound to be unsubscribes for every email that you send, but the industry benchmark is around 0.2–0.5%, depending on what you send and how often you send them. It is not a directly controllable metric, and the best one can do is be very relevant from the very beginning.
  6. Complaint rate — the measurement of subscribers who mark your email as spam. This happens when they can’t find the unsubscribe link or you are sending way more than you promised to. Again, nothing you can control other than to be respectful.

These are the direct measurable metrics that can be used to judge the success of a particular email or a campaign.


Single Opt-in vs Double Opt-in: The Undecisive Battle 

Moving on, there’s an important decision to make for your email marketing implementation — are you using Single Opt-in (SOI) or Double Opt-in (DOI)?

First of all, this is a never-ending debate. According to a survey, 51% of the worldwide marketers prefer SOI while the rest of the 49% opts for DOI, so the difference isn’t really that much.

They do have their pros and cons though. For a single opt-in, you can grow your email list at least 20–30% faster than a double opt-in, but that also means your list is more prone to bots, spam traps and bounces for a variety of reasons.

On the other hand, using a double opt-in gives you better list quality where your subscriber is willing to go through the double opt-in process (micro-commit) to get to what you are giving them. It also gives you better data (aka metrics) when you are able to exclude all the bounces, bots and spam. The downside is the possibility that the subscriber forgot to confirm the opt-in, thus resulting slower list growth.

Let’s talk data.

With Double Opt-in, you lose about 2,000 of them to confirmation links.

That leaves you with 8,000 emails.

These 8,000 DOI subscribers show a 3–4% CTR.

In other words, 320 subscribers will make a purchase on the website.

So, with email marketing and automations, you can get a 40-fold return on the initial amount you spent.

With Single Opt-in, you instantly get a 10,000-email long list.

You lose about 1,000 of those to typos or fake addresses, so that’s 9,000.

A small 2% list decay is due to hard bounces in your list equals to 180 subscribers you wave goodbye to, meaning only 8,820 remain on your list.

Finally, getting half the conversion rate of DOI lists, an approximate 1.5–2%, you will have a total of 176 users that convert.

It comes down to the choice of quality vs quantity, acquisition vs retention. Some may argue that subscribers of single opt-ins might not open tens of emails, but what if they finally open one and decide to convert?

Well…

Let’s leave that to your imagination, shall we?

The truth is that, while it may happen, the chances are pretty slim, so we really wouldn’t put our hope on that. After all, you do not want to rely your business growth on “hope” alone, do you now?

The general rule states that, if you are just starting out and are looking to grow your list size, go for single opt-in. If you already have a decent list size (or are very confident that your morale wouldn’t be affected by the slow but quality growth), go for double opt-in.

If you are still having a hard time taking a pick though, in a short moment we will teach you a way to grow your list fast while also effectively controlling the quality and engagement rate.

Before that, let’s get you introduced to our Email Framework for automation & marketing.


The Blueprint to Our Email Automation Framework

Let’s take a look at our email framework.

A framework is basically a proven model that can be reused. Although it is much like a template, a framework is a collection of various components that also outlines how they interact with each other.

Our email framework consists of various different automated series that will provide highly personalized email experience for potential and existing customers.

Depending on where our leads are at during their journey, we send them different emails. That is how we make them feel that we are aware of their journey and send them highly-relevant contents.

What are we doing differently here?

Notice that for most of the branches (or segmentation), we send at least 3 emails.

Think of your funnel. The beginning of your funnel consists of various traffic of different sources. While we seek to do our best to provide the best experience possible to our leads through web design, copywriting and all the marketing channel, the truth is, no two customer journeys are alike. That means there is bound to be a leak or two with your funnel, no matter how good you think you are, and what most beginner marketers do is try to plug those leaks with only one email.

Here, we’d also like to point out that we are more interested in the customer retention and their lifetime value. That means, while list size is a common metrics in email marketing, we are more concerned on the list quality.

Many beginner marketers focused on the wrong metrics. Josh Fechters of Badass Marketers & Founders Media made a good point. Real marketers look at end goal metrics — things like retention and referral value. In layman terms, that means as long as you are able to retain your customers and create a loyal fan base out of your list, you can make a lot more money even with a small list.

Most beginner marketers focus on cost-per-lead and acquisition cost. However, what matters most is the retention and customer referral rate.

Josh Fechter, Badass Marketers & Founders

You can never plug the leak and achieve the end goal with just one email. Our framework shows you how to trigger different series of emails based on the journey of the prospect/customer, thus creating a highly personalized experience for them.

How you can apply the framework

Say for example your main product is your online course. After you have got the cold leads to sign up for your lead magnet, you will want to first send them the Relationship Building Series. The relationship building series focus on establishing trust and building relationship by providing valuable contents while removing their objection along the way, thus guiding them towards buying your course.

Once they have decided to purchase, it is only natural to offer them upsell. For the customer who took up the upsell offer, great. Send them the Onboarding Series to provide additional value and keep the relationship hot. After all, these are now your valuable customers, and it is easier to sell to your existing customers other offers (to move them up your value ladder) as opposed to selling to cold new leads.

If the customer did not take up the upsell offer, do not give up just yet. While your Onboarding Series are giving them more good stuff, use this opportunity to talk about the upsell offer that they’ve missed earlier. Similar to the Relationship Building Series, you’ll want to emphasize on the benefits that they will be getting by taking up the upsell offer or the things that they will lose (such as more time) by not taking the offer.

Now, let’s say they have landed on your landing page a few times but have never gone through with the purchase, you can send them Cart Abandonment Series.

What if they never reached the cart then?

Here comes the Browse Abandonment Series. Certain Email Service Providers such as Drip allows you to trigger campaigns when your leads arrive to a certain page and fulfill certain conditions. You can send them reminders, special discount, or ask them why they didn’t purchase.

What do we do to those who don’t engage as much? For one, we will filter them using the HQ Opt-in method to “verify” their email address. If they do not engage with our first few emails, we will activate the Re-engagement Series to find out the reason and try to get their interest back. If we don’t get the response we expected after a few tries, we will forego this lead.

The same framework can be applied to any online business. Once you understand the framework, the rest boils down to how you write your emails and seek maximum conversion. There are a tons of knowledge involved in how to write good emails that convert so we can’t go too deep with that.

This framework works extremely great for digital products and services that are evergreen such as online courses and consultancy. However, it is not limited to digital products. You can apply the same framework to your E-Commerce business. The key is to establish relationship and provide value so that you can increase the conversion and retention even on auto mode.

Overview of the Framework Components

  1. HQ Opt-in
  2. Relationship Building Series
  3. Order Confirmation Email
  4. Onboarding Series
  5. Browse Abandonment Series
  6. Re-engagement Series
  7. Further Segmentation

Overview of HQ Opt-in & Relationship Building Series

  • Email 1: Welcome Email
  • Email 2: Vulnerable Drama
  • Email 3: Epiphany
  • Email 4: Value Bomb
  • Email 5: Social Proof
  • Email 6: Case Study
  • Email 7: Fear Factor

Overview of Onboarding Series

  • Email 1: Welcome + onboarding tips
  • Email 2: Value bomb
  • Email 3: Ask for feedback
  • Email 4: Offer expiry reminder
  • Email 5: You missed out

Overview of Browse Abandonment Series

  • Email 1: Value Bomb
  • Email 2: Social Proof
  • Email 3: FAQ

Overview of Re-engagement Series

  • Email 1: We’ve missed you
  • Email 2: Unsubscribe Notice
  • Email 3: Unsubscribe Confirmation

Prerequisite to use the framework

You need an Email Service Provider (ESP) that can perform time-based and trigger-based actions such as the following:

  1. The ability to segment based on what subscribers do.
  2. The ability to move users between different series based on their specific actions.
  3. The ability to send broadcast messages based on different conditions.

Most ESPs can perform time-based actions such as sending emails at a predetermined intervals, but not all of them can perform advanced trigger-based actions such as after someone takes an action or clicks a link.

Over the years of trying out different ESPs, we have settled down with Drip. It has all the advanced features that normal ESPs can’t compare with, apart from their powerful integration with almost all major platforms, Facebook included. We honestly think Drip is the best ESP out there, and if you haven’t yet decided on which one to use, you can’t go wrong with Drip.

Another ESP that’s quite powerful and popular as well is ActiveCampaign. There are of course a lot more ESPs other than Drip and ActiveCampaign. If you are a huge company looking to encompass email marketing automation and a full CRM system, Infusionsoft is built for that. In the end, it boils down to what other features you require.


Why does this framework work?

You see, there are two important marketing psychology statements to keep in mind here:

  1. People only buy from whom they trust.
  2. People only buy what they think they want and not what you think they need.

That’s right. They might not even be aware that they need the solution that you provide, or aren’t certain that yours is the right one for them.

By sending them different emails at different situations, we are able to present them with relevant information to guide them along their journey.

At the rate of how the digital technology advances, it is almost certain that people don’t buy the first time they visit your site. They will try to do their own research before whipping out their credit cards.

It’s no longer a direct journey, and they no longer like being sold to, at least not directly.

And if the customers’ behavior has changed, are you still relying on a simple marketing strategy with the hope of performing wonders?

The least you can do is to understand how they think and lead them to the destination you want them to be, even if it means they are side-tracked.

Let’s get started with the first email.

1. HQ Opt-in

email-hq-optin

Email 1: Welcome Email (immediately)

The first email has three goals:

  1. Deliver your promise. If you promised them an ebook, this is where you should deliver the download link to the ebook. If it was a series of training, this is where it starts.
  2. Activate your new subscribers. Explain to them what they can expect starting from the next email. Your email series are built to create trust and establish your relationship with the subscribers by giving them tons of value while leading them to your next goal.
  3. Hybrid Opt-in segmentation. This is more like a hidden agenda instead of a goal. Remember we talked about the difference between single opt-in and double opt-in? Our first email acts as the confirmation email that the subscribers usually get if you are using double opt-in. If the subscribers do not open or click on the CTA from the first email, that means something is wrong somewhere. Maybe the email address doesn’t exist, maybe there was a typo or maybe, it was spam bots.
  • There is practically no point in keeping them on the list for too long, but we maintain our effort to keep trying for 3 times before we remove them forever.
  • Here’s how we segment those inactive subscribers. If they don’t click or reply to our first email, we send them a re-engagement email which basically reminds them about the download or login. If there’s still no action after 7 days, we assume they are no longer interested or has opted in by mistake. We will send them a final email letting them know that they are being unsubscribed.
  • If they do, assign a tag “verified” to the subscriber. Most ESPs allow you to do this.

The open rate and CTR of the first email is usually the highest because they are still very clear of who you are and what they want. Take advantage of this to get their full attention and trust and establish a relationship with them. When you do that, it’s much easier to convert them into a paying customer.

There’s one proven method to increase the open rate of the next email, which is by including the element of open loop.

How do you do that?

Tell them the subject line of the email that is coming up next! For example, build their anticipation by telling them to look out for an email ‘How I got into this internet marketing’ tomorrow around 11am!

Here’s an example of a great welcome email from one of our favourite writer, Sean D’Souza, founder of Psychotactics. He is the guy behind the Bikini Principle which lays the foundation of how we operates our company.

Welcome Email from Psychotactics
The welcome email from one of our favourite writer, Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics.

2. The Relationship Building Series

If they clicked on the download link from the welcome email, they will enter the relationship building series where the real fun begins.

email-relationship-building-series

These emails are like a TV series (think: Game of Thrones). Like a TV series, each episode tells a story which leads to the next episode. If you want to know what’s going to happen next, read the next email.

There are two primary goals that you should keep in mind when you are crafting the relationship building series:

  1. Deliver tremendous amount of value, building trust and establishing the relationship.
  2. Overcome objections to your ultimate goal — conversion.

One of the most frequently asked questions is, ‘how often do I send’? If they are new leads, schedule your emails 1–2 days apart, because their memory towards you is still very fresh.

Send at least 7 emails for your relationship building series. You want to give your subscribers enough time to know you and what you are offering.

We have covered the welcome email, so let’s look at how you can write the remaining of the relationship building series.

Email 2: Vulnerable Drama (1 day later)

The best way to gain trust is by showing your vulnerable side to the audience.

What was the problem faced by you or your audience that you want to solve?

Without a problem, there will be no need for a solution, and every product and service exist to solve a certain problem.

Talk about that problem.

Set up a story about the problem you faced before you found this solution.

Close the email with a cliffhanger.

“Tomorrow I am going to show you how I managed to overcome this problem. Can’t wait? Click here to receive the next email in advance!”

See what we did there?

We allow our prospect to get the email in advance if they can’t wait. Now we also know that they are at the peak of their interest!

Email 3: Epiphany (1 day apart)

In the last email we talked about the problem. Now, we show them how we’ve discovered the solution to the problem.

It should lead back to your core offer.

Again, close the email with an open loop.

“Tomorrow I am going to tell you something that will blow your mind!”

Email 4: Value Bomb (1 day apart)

In this email, you reveal the hidden value and benefits that they will get by purchasing your service or product.

Remember to NOT just talk about what it is, but about how it will benefit them as well.

Benefits sell!

A good tip for writing this email is to think from the customers’ perspective: “What’s in it for me”?

  • What will happen if I buy this product?
  • Is this gonna make me more money?
  • Is this gonna help me lose weight?
  • Is this solution easy to apply?

Email 5: Social Proof (1 day apart)

There’s nothing better than social proof. Show them the feedback from existing customers.

People trust people. Your customer wants to see or hear or read about others using, enjoying, and succeeding with the help of a product or service before committing to it themselves. Safety in numbers.

Email 6: Case Study (1 day apart)

Case study is an advanced form of social proof. However, it doesn’t have to be your own customers if you are just starting out. You can do analysis on an existing product or service.

What have they achieved after using your product or service?

What can they achieve if they use your product or service?

#7 Fear Factor (1 day apart)

We are not a fan of fake scarcity or urgency. It has been overused and most customers have learned to ignore it.

Apart from scarcity or urgency, you can choose to utilize fear instead. Fear is one of the reasons people buy things.

Below are some common fear factors that you can capitalize on:

  • Fear of missing out
  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of not knowing
  • Fear of inadequacy

Fear is the most universal, dominant, and primal human motivator.

You can structure your email in this manner:

  • The good thing that will not happen if you do not take action.
  • The bad thing that will happen if you choose to not take action.

3. Order Confirmation Email

This can be the shipping confirmation email as well. It is the kind of transactional / system email that customers will be expecting after their purchase.

And you know what?

They get the highest open rates compared to ANY emails you send!

The problem is… not all marketers make full use of them. If you are doing e-commerce, make suggestions to what they can add to their existing purchase. If you are selling an online course, add a subtle reminder to grab your upsell offer or one-time offer.

It doesn’t have to be intrusive. What you are doing is maximizing every opportunity you have to make extra sale while you are at it.

4. Onboarding Series

The onboarding series are usually sent together with or after the order confirmation email.

email-onboarding-upsell-series

The purpose of the onboarding series is to onboard your new customer on what they have just purchased. You are basically providing additional values related to your product while letting them know about the additional offer that will benefit them further.

Most business owners don’t do this. Just because your customers have purchased from you, it doesn’t mean it’s all over. Trust is like a compound interest — the more you give, the more they trust you. You have to continue to earn their trust and remind them that they have made the right choice by buying from you.

Email 1: Welcome + onboarding tips (immediately)

Apart from the order confirmation email, this is one of the emails with highest open rate. The reason is simple: your customers have just purchased your product and are hyper-excited to get started.

Give them that.

Say hello and reiterate on the epiphany you have for this product to reestablish trust. (refer to Email 3 from Relationship Building Series)

After all, they have just paid you some money and while excited, they feel vulnerable at the same time too, trying to judge whether they are getting the value for what they’ve just paid for.

Provide some tips to help them move forward and get started.

Email 2: Value bomb for upsell offer (1 day apart)

In this email, give them a few reasons on how things can be better if they purchase the upsell offer.

  • Can they save more time?
  • Can they save more money?
  • Can they improve their work efficiency?

Remind them that the upsell offer is still valid for a limited amount of time.

Email 3: Ask for feedback (2 days apart)

Don’t waste the opportunity to get valuable feedback from your customers. After 3–4 days, now is a good time to ask about their progress and feedback to show that you care. Again, this is to keep the trust going so that they know you are not just another hit-and-run marketer.

Drip allows you to track replies right from their platform, thus allowing you to trigger additional emails (to say thank you) or actions such as tagging if you need to.

Email 4: Offer expiry reminder (1 day apart)

By this point, the interest towards your upsell has declined. To re-engage their interest, throw in a mix of case study, social proof and fear factor.

Highlight how the upsell can benefit them further.

Consider including some additional bonus if they take action within a 48-hour time limit.

Email 5: You missed out (2 days apart)

After the offer expires, send them an email to let them know that they’ve missed out on your special offer. This is very effective because it will train your customers to trust you.

We have seen higher increase in traffic to the upsell page once this email is sent. Some might even reply to your email asking whether they can still get the offer.

5. Browse Abandonment Series

This is a tricky one. The idea is to send special-triggered email to the prospect based on certain activities. For example, they have visited your sales page, pricing page, or a certain blog post more than 3 times.

It has the same concept of Facebook retargeting ads, except that this is done via email and can only be sent to those who are already in your email list.

However, while this is a good feature to maximize all possible ways to increase sales, you need to do this with caution. You don’t want to bombard your customers with a few different browse abandonment series or onboarding series at the same time.

There are several ways to do this in a subtle manner:

  1. Only send to those who have not opened or clicked any of your emails in the past 30 days.
  2. Only send to those who have completed the existing campaign, e.g. Relationship Building Series or Onboarding Series.

Email 1: Value bomb (30 minutes or 1 day apart)

Don’t be creepy and tell them “I saw you are browsing this”.

Instead, this email can appear “timely” by telling them more benefits about the product they were browsing.

Email 2: Social Proof (1 day apart)

As always, social proof works best as a nudge to get them to join the crowd. Highlight what others are buying, who endorsed you, awards and so on. You are making it easier for your prospects to invest in your business.

Email 3: FAQ (1 day apart)

What are the top 3 objections for them to buy?

Use this email to overcome the top 3 objections and get them to take action.

6. Re-engagement Series

There are a few situations where we’d send the re-engagement series:

  1. Never clicked on the lead magnet download link (hence, not verified).
  2. Never clicked on the link to sales page after the first few relationship building series.
  3. Never opened your emails after more than 30 days.
  4. Before we decide to remove them from the list.

Maybe their inboxes are flooded or maybe they’re no longer interested in what you are selling. The Re-engagement Series is your last effort to bring them back by offering some type of reward for continued engagement.

email-relationship-building-series
The red envelopes are some of the scenarios where we send the re-engagement emails

Email 1: We’ve missed you

You’d want to remind them to download or ask them what went wrong. You can offer a discount or bonus if they perform the CTA (click or reply).

Email 2: Unsubscribe Notice

If they never open, click, or reply to any of your previous emails, instead of keeping them on the list, unsubscribe them in order to maintain your list quality.

Before you unsubscribe them though, you’ll want to send them a notice to clear things up. Take this last opportunity to overcome their objections.

Email 3: Unsubscribe Confirmation

If there is still no response, they are as good as gone.

After they have been unsubscribed, send them a notification giving them a final chance to resubscribe.

7. Further Segmentation

With ESP like Drip, you can perform other types of segmentation easily by filtering contacts based on certain criteria.

For example, you will only send broadcast emails to subscribers who are not in any of the automated series such as Relationship Building Series and Onboarding Series. You do not want to interrupt their experience with a random sales mail.

You can also do this by automatically adding subscribers to a broadcast list once they’ve completed one of the conditions below:

  1. Become a customer and completed Onboarding Series.
  2. Verified leads, completed Relationship Building Series but didn’t purchase.

A broadcast email is your day-to-day email that doesn’t belong to any automated campaigns. Maybe you have an upcoming launch and you would like to warm up your existing audience and create anticipation. Maybe you want to promote a joint venture partner’s product.


Final Takeaway: Automate Your Business & Make Money While You Sleep

Email automation has made our job as marketers easier. It allows you to automate the lead generation of your entire business and only focus on the important parts such as closing sales and delivering high quality products.

Studies show that email marketing, if done right, delivers more ROI than any other marketing channels like social media or paid ads. After all, it’s a traffic you own.

The framework above provides you with a step-by-step blueprint for your email automation and marketing strategy, and we have also provided some tips on how to write each email.

We are sure you will be able to take away a tip or two from it.

We will end this post with a story.

An extra tip to help you write better email.

Your emails have to be addictive. Starting from the very first email that you send out, there must be hidden or obvious elements that will make your subscriber excited and want to know more.

What’s the key to writing an “addictive” email?

catch-me-if-you-can

There was a movie back in 2002 called Catch Me If You Can by Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s about the story of a famous con artist, Frank Abagnale, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, who impersonated a pilot, a doctor and even a lawyer, all before his 18th birthday. It’s one of our favourite movies of all time.

There was a part in the movie where he started teaching a sociology class to a whole bunch of university undergrads, and no one ever figured out that he’s not even a real teacher. Later when the FBI finally did catch him, Tom Hanks asked, “How in the world did you teach that class? You don’t know anything about advanced sociology.”

That’s when Frank replied, “All I had to do was read one chapter ahead of the students.”

While this has nothing direct to do with how to write a good email, the underlying concept is, if you want to be good at something, you need to think one step ahead.

And so, the answer to writing a good, addictive email is that you have to think at least ONE email ahead. End your previous email with an open loop to the next email, thus creating the cliffhanger effect like what TV shows do!

Are you already capitalizing on the power of email automation for your marketing effort?

Do you have a framework in place that generates you sales every single day?

Share your thoughts with us below!

7 Comments

  1. Anne Jones November 8, 2018 at 2:06 am

    Thanks a lot for the detailed guide! Wondering do you have email swipes available for download?

    Reply
    1. Jackson Yew November 10, 2018 at 2:57 am

      Not yet, but soon!

      Reply
  2. Payton November 10, 2018 at 2:07 am

    Should I send a newsletter daily or weekly? I’m afraid if I blast daily then many of my subscribers will unsubscribe/report as spam.

    Reply
    1. Jackson Yew November 10, 2018 at 2:58 am

      Hi Payton.

      This seems to be one of the most asked questions when it involves Email Marketing. However, there’s no right answer for it. If you promised them a weekly newsletter, you should only send it weekly. If it’s a relationship building series then it’s a different story.

      Reply
  3. Andy Wilkes November 13, 2018 at 2:08 am

    I am managing the email list for my client. The open rates are so little – about 3-5% on average. I can assure they are targeted leads, albeit acquired some time ago, but for some reasons they don’t seem to engage with my email series. Is there any way I could verify if they are still active?

    Reply
    1. Jackson Yew November 14, 2018 at 1:58 am

      Hi Andy.

      How long is long? If it’s more than 2 months, you can segment them into a new active list by sending a few re-engagement emails to them. From there, you can start a new relationship building series to get them warmed up to your client’s name and brand again.

      Hope that helps!

      Reply
  4. John November 21, 2018 at 5:17 am

    Awesome info.
    This goes into quite a granular level of email AR series setup for products.

    Reply

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