Template mailings are dead: how to create the perfect sequence of e-mails for mailing



    This time we would like to share a first-person article by Lincoln Murphy. It can be useful to many owners of Internet businesses: from it you can find out why trigger mailing is usually more effective than template mailing, and what types of e-mails can be used in a sequence of emails. We supplemented the article with examples of the most successful mailings.

    Newsletter evolution: from template to trigger

    Whatever the monetization model - free trial, freemium, demo version or paid tariffs, the founders of the services constantly ask how to organize the most effective newsletter and choose the correct sequence of automatic emails.

    For most internet business leaders, finding the perfect sequence of automated email responses seems like worthless hard labor, low-level work. In contrast, high-level work is when the right settings go down from the corporate top. Only company leaders can develop the right methods of working with clients for employees who are responsible for the newsletter.

    Setting on successful work with clients and properly organized activities are the key points of modern Internet business.

    Senior executives must fully understand and think through the business model in detail, and then incorporate this understanding into the organization. It is also important to realize the need to use the full potential of the chosen model.

    Quite often, the choice of tactics comes from the strategic decisions of the bosses, and if the organization is not aimed at successful work with clients and does not try to think through a business model, then in the end its rooted strategic mistakes will appear in its tactical decisions.

    No later than February 2012, I shared with a group of top managers my PDF associative card, which I thought was the perfect sequence of emails in automatic mailing.



    The source can be viewed here.

    At that time, the best way to distribute and compose automatic emails was to send out at an initially set time interval.

    But ... in the end, I saw that the model does not work so well.

    When I shared it with the members of the project team that I am conducting, I already started working with trigger mailings, which are based on activity within the application, they are also called event mailings, in contrast to traditional ones - temporary.

    But, despite the fact that trigger mailings based on user behavior began to gain momentum in 2013, they still have not become ubiquitous.

    Almost 2 years ago, this type of mailing planning was hardly used by owners of Internet businesses.

    At that time, people needed template mailings, despite the fact that the effective operation of the “answering machine” - a sequence of letters with a given time interval - still depended on those things that most of the users did on your service during the free trial period. In turn, this set of actions depends on the buyer, the product, its complexity, price, positioning, and so on.

    But it's time to put the cards on the table.

    Automated e-mail distribution systems have outlived themselves at predetermined intervals.

    In 2014, the use of "advanced" automatic sending e-mails without focusing on user behavior is already a past century.

    In fact, if you still send emails that are not based on anything other than a certain frequency and time of sending, instead of linking them to user activity, then you are already doing it 100% wrong.

    Speaking softer, of course, using automatic mailing with a given frequency will still be much better than not doing anything at all (which, unfortunately, many entrepreneurs do). But you should know that such a newsletter, firstly, is far from ideal, and secondly, you can do better.

    In 2014, it is simply unacceptable not to take into account the actions of future buyers and customers when creating a system of responses to letters, and to interact with all of them according to one template.

    As Nick Meta, CEO of Gainsight told me earlier, the buyer's voice is in his actions. This is undoubtedly true.

    I repeat, there is no common successful template sequence of response emails for all users of SaaS services.

    But this does not mean that the idea of ​​sending letters in a certain sequence is dead ... just the opposite (an interesting approach to this problem is with the Russian company SailPlay. You can read more here ).

    Focus on the right “perfect sequence”

    There is a sequence that you really can and should develop. During the trial period, you need to do monitoring of user activity on the site and do not forget to conduct Customer Development.

    You need to find out what sequence of events will lead your future customers and customers to success using your application, and form your trigger newsletter based on this information.

    Do this and get the perfect sequence of letters.

    The most successful e-mail marketing services are still used by autoresponders, but they already use trigger mailings.

    Example MailChimp



    Example Campaign Monitor



    Thus, temporary sequences of emails are a relic of the past, and trigger sequences based on actions and user behavior are the things to look forward to.

    An example of a traditional automatic mailing list that simply informs about a product, service news, and does not rely on user actions (“product”):



    And which emails do you send?

    Choosing market-oriented and customer-oriented newsletter content

    What exactly do you put in a letter? It depends on so many factors.

    Here we are immersed in tactics, but it should still be based on the strategic decisions already made.

    Who your customer is depends on the decisions you have made (or haven’t done yet) in your market segment, your position in it, your ideal customer, estimated prices, product, sales process, and so on.

    You should keep this in mind when you start working on the contents of the letters in your newsletter.

    For example, did you know that there are 5 types of e-mails that you can send to your future customers during the free trial period of using the product (and not only)?

    5 types of messages in the mailing list

    1. Letters of instruction - teaching the client how to use exactly your product.
    Example LinguaLeo



    2. Educational - about how your product is useful. If he is from the field of content marketing, talk about how best to build a strategy for content marketing in general, but so that your proposal organically fits into this concept. Headhunter 3

    example . Inspirational


    - cases of using this application from enthusiastic customers. Buyers should have a desire to use this application by reading about the result that it gives. Kongru

    example 4. Transactional - from recommendations for using the account to daily updates of the application, from reminders to account statements. This type of e-mail is the most neglected, although it is most effective in encouraging the acquisition of a product. For many simplified applications, educational / inspirational messages will not work, and instructions are simply not needed. Business, everyday e-mails in response to each user action is the key to success. Senturia Example 5. Personal







    - these messages are automatic or written by hand, they must be addressed to a specific person from some other specific person from your organization, or at least it is implied. Unlike other letters, the purpose of such e-mails is to start a dialogue, and not push a person to any single actions (click on the link, for example). Workle

    Example So what kind of emails will you use? As I said, it depends a lot on what: you need to know your client thoroughly. And to attract it, most likely, you need a mix of several types of letters, if not all of them. The choice of the type of messages to send should be based entirely on client behavior.






    During the trial free period, you should paint all the possible actions that the user performs in the service in order to monitor the behavior of the future buyer and adjust your newsletter to him.

    Buyers should send the right types of emails at the right time, in accordance with your ideas about successful work with clients.

    Stop trying to do the impossible.

    I'm no longer trying to create template mailings that work equally efficiently for everyone, and I urge you not to do this either.

    Remember, an online business is a business model, not a product category. This means that applications, even from the same category, are very different from each other, and completely different people use them.

    It is important to understand who you are doing business with, find out all the characteristics of these people, and then create all the conditions around them for the successful use of your product.

    Source: http://sixteenventures.com/email-follow-up-sequence

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    What e-mails do you use in your mailing list?

    • 26.9% Instructions for use 7
    • 26.9% Educational 7
    • 30.7% Transactional 8
    • 30.7% Personal 8
    • 38.4% Inspirational 10

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