Email Marketing: Welcome Emails Made Simple

1. Welcome Emails Made Simple Intro: I'm Ramon Williamson. This is welcome emails made simple. You've made a great decision and I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. First impressions count. It's true in life and it's true online. When it comes to email marketing, the first three to five emails people get from you, can make or break the relationship. This is your welcome email sequence. It's your one chance to let people know who you are, what you stand for, why you're different, what they should expect from you, how often, and what they should do next. Welcome emails work. The latest research tells us that emails get opened as much as four times more often, and can generate up to three times more response. Trouble is, these kinds of emails are not easy to write. If you follow what you see online, those fill in the blank templates, you end up with generic, boring emails that get ignored. Now, you can instantly connect and bond with an engaging welcome email in your voice. In this class, you'll make your first or next welcome email that'll make people love you and want to read your future emails, without hype or needing to learn copywriting. You'll also learn a simple framework that you can use to write all kinds of marketing emails. Simple, easy, done. Here's how this course came about. Beginning in 1999, I used a simple web page with an email form on the Internet to grow my coaching business. Prospective clients signed up for a series of emails leading to an initial conversation. Thousands of people have received and responded to my emails over the years, so I've learned what works and what doesn't when it comes to email marketing. Other coaches, consultants, freelancers, and online business owners started asking me to help with their emails, so I decided to offer a service. The result? Here are a few reviews I've received. Now I've put the method in this course so you can follow the simple steps to create your own welcome email. The plain truth about courses. The trouble with most courses, even the really good ones, is that you get a lot of good-to-know information, but often make little progress because you're left to figure out the implementation on your own. This course is different. Here's why. First, it's designed to guide you step-by-step to complete or improve your welcome email as a class project. That means we're going to do this together. Second, this course comes with a coach, me, and a community, your fellow participants, to help you take action and get results. If you ever got a question or want feedback, just ask. Now, here's what's needed. First, the course, check, 30-60 minutes to complete and post your class project. I've also prepared a class project document to guide you in completing your project. Finally, you'll need a willingness to do the lessons. Ask for help if you get stuck and complete and post your class project. Remember, you're not alone. I'm here for you. Just reach out and I'll help you get this done. Now, here are a couple of important things to understand before we get started. First, there is no one best way. You've probably read articles or seen information online about writing welcome emails. There are models and methods to learn and there are a few secrets that seem to hold true. But ultimately, the best way is the way that works for you and your business. In anything you want to do, test, learn, and improve. Also, focus on completion, not perfection. It's easy to get stuck or stopped trying to get it right or perfect. Your goal here is completion. Follow along and let's get this done. Complete the class project and post your welcome email, then if needed, I'll help you improve it. Let's get started. 2. 3 Mental Shifts: Three mental shifts. Everyone that comes to anything with a certain way of thinking. Our thinking influences how we see things and how we respond. When you see things differently, you can act on it differently, and when you do, you get different results. We're going to explore in this video three mental shifts to help. Mental shift number one, from gimme to guide, stop focusing on you. Arguably the number one mistake I see people making in marketing is focusing on themselves, their products, and their services, what they want. Instead, focus on your audience, who they are, what they are facing, what they want to accomplish. Why? Because people don't buy your products and services, they buy what your products and services do for them, and that's what you want to communicate. Your job here is to be a helpful guide with empathy, authority and a plan. Mental shift number two, from huckster to human. You don't have to become a marketer, or copywriter, or be slick in your presentation. Be human. Listen, have a conversation with people and offer authentic help. Intelligently share your knowledge, your network, your compassion, connect people together, introduce others, be the person in the conversation who cares. Now, authentic help in email marketing looks like this. Write like you talk, give before you ask, be open to helping first. Ask people to reply back to your emails and when they do, help them. When people see that you care, they're going to be open to what you have to offer. Mental shift number three, from promotion to a plan and a path. Have you ever noticed how, what most people do is they send out a bunch of random stuff or when they want you to buy something by email, they're promoting themselves or they're promoting someone else. What people who are looking for is leadership. That's direction, a path, a plan to get from where they are, to where they want to be. Ultimately, they listen to, follow, and buy from the person that provides that leadership. 3. Overview of The Method: Welcome, in this video, an overview of the method. There are three things to keep in mind when writing welcome emails. First, know your reader. What's their situation? What do they want to accomplish? What's in their way? Second, decide your primary goal. What do you want to accomplish with the email? What do you want to communicate? What do you want the reader to do after they read your email? Third, structure your email for response. In the next series of videos, I'm going to step you through each of these three elements, including a specific framework for structuring your welcome emails that you can use to create all kinds of email marketing. 4. Know Your Reader: Know your reader. If there is a master key for marketing success, it's empathy, the ability to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal client and reader, to see it the way they see it, to feel the emotion, the frustration, the aspiration in what they want to accomplish. Based on that understanding, to speak to them in a clear, human and compelling way, so that they understand, that you understand and that you're there to help. I've provided a simple focusing questionnaire. It's a Google doc, the link is in the resource section of this lesson. Find it, and let's click over to the focusing questionnaire and review it together. If you've got a Google account or a Gmail address, login and then look for and click "File" and select, make a copy. To save a copy of this questionnaire in your Google Drive, then you can simply type into the document and use it as a point of reference when writing your emails. You want to ask and answer these questions before you start writing your email. The purpose of this document is to guide you through a series of questions, to ask and answer, to deepen your understanding and your appreciation for what people in your market are facing and what they want to accomplish. I suggest that you begin by asking and answering these questions based on your experience in the market, then reach out to 3-5 people in your market, either existing customers or prospects, and asked for their perspective, listen in the market. What you're specifically listening for is how they talk about the problem, the language that they use. You want to be able to incorporate that into your language in your emails. Now, here's something that I do, especially when I'm working with a client that has something related to commerce or some type of content, but you can also leverage this little secret for services as well. What is it? Well click over to amazon.com, and what you want to do is search for a product similar to what you are offering, and then simply scroll down on the product page and look for two things, the customer questions and answers and then also the comments, specifically those four-star and those three-star and those two-star comment. Why? Because when people leave comments about a product that they've spent their money on, they're emotional, good and bad. You want to listen, read those reviews, read those customer questions and answers. It's going to give you enormous insight into your market, into what your customers want. What they want more of, what they want less of, what they like, what they don't like. This is an enormous shortcut to understanding your customers and your market. Let's say that you have a content or blog type of website. What do you do there? Go to popular blogs in your market and look at the comments on their pages. Read the comments, what are they saying? Not just the comments that are saying, yes, this is great, but comments where they're asking questions or they're adding thoughts related to that blog post. This is a simple thing. It takes a little bit of time, but I'm here to tell you it's more than worth the time and energy and it pays off in a big way. 5. Decide Your Primary Goal: Decide your primary goal. There are three things to keep in mind when writing welcome e-mails. First, your overall goal, which is to create a trustworthy first impression. Second, what action do you want people to take after they read the e-mail? This is really important because it guides what you actually right in the e-mail in terms of content. Also, what you want to do is focus on one primary goal or action in your e-mail. What I've discovered is that the big mistake that people make is they put two or three actions, or two or three different links in an e-mail. Now, if you're doing a blog roundup of posts, in other words, you're my top 3-5 posts on a particular topic, it's fine to put multiple links, but you want to focus the person on one primary action in each e-mail that you send. Now, let me give you a little tip. I've noticed that it's important to restate the action you want people to take in the e-mail at least two times in the e-mail and include the link you want them to click at least two times. 6. The Framework: Structure For Response: Structure your email for response. In this lesson, I'm going to step you through a 10-point framework for crafting effective welcome emails that work. You can also use this as a guide for composing all kinds of emails for marketing. It's based on my ten years of observation and experience reading and writing tens of thousands of emails for marketing. Now, I'm not saying this is the holy grail, but this is the simple structure that's worked consistently for me and my clients over the years. I suggest that you start with this basic structure and then you can adjust it based on what you learn and the feedback you get in your business. Now, here are the ten points within the framework. First, the from line, then the subject line, greeting and gratitude, expectation, positioning, content-based on email type. Don't worry, I'm going to explain all of these in the upcoming videos, call to action, closing, signature sign-off, and a P.S where you restate the key points or the call to action in the email. Now, we're going to bring all of this together in a welcome email class project. What we're going to do together is we're actually going to write your welcome email as you follow along in the next series of videos. To do this, we're going to use a Google Doc, the Welcome Email Class Project. There's a link to this document in the resource section of this lesson. Find it and let's click over to the welcome email class project, Google Doc together. Now, the first thing you want to do is make sure that you're logged into your Google account. If you've got a Gmail address, you've got a Google account and you can log in to Google Drive. Look for and click on File and select, Make a copy to copy this Welcome Email Class Project document into your Google Drive files. Then what you're going to be able to do is you're going to be able to create a link and share this as your class project with everyone in the class. Now, you're going to use this document to complete the action steps as we go through the framework and build your welcome email. For example, when we cover the from line, you're going to come to this document and simply type it in, the name that will appear in the from line of your email. Then we're going to type in your subject line, the content of the email, and step through all 10 elements in the structure. 7. From Line: The first element in an effective e-mail is the from line. This is important because most people read their inbox left to right. They look for and prioritize e-mails from people and companies they care about. What to put in the from line. My observation is that 99 percent of the e-mails in the important section at the top of my inbox have a person's name in the from line. I've got two suggestions based on your business. First of all, for personal and professional e-mail, use your first and last name. For e-commerce, use your company name or your name plus your company. Time for action, type you're from line into the class project document. Something I suggest you do is leave your welcome email class project document open in a tab in your browser so you can navigate easily between the video training and this document. In this first step, we're going to type in our name or our company name. Now, what I do and recommend, if you've got an e-commerce company, put a person's name plus the company name. People connect with people. Go ahead, type your from line into your class project document. 8. Subject Line: The subject line, the goal of the subject line is to get them to stop and read. Research shows that using the word welcome increases open rates in welcome emails. The number one rule, make it relevant and deliver. No clickbait. What I do and recommend is writing your subject line last and looking for something in the email that you can highlight in the subject line that will be attractive. Now, here are a few subject line idea starters: curiosity, benefit how to, play on popular sayings or quotes, famous names, TV and movie characters, some special offer, use personalization or a story opener. Here's a resource with a 100 subject line ideas. It's a Google Doc. The link is in the resource section of this lesson. Got a story line idea? Start with something as simple as welcome and type it in to the project doc. Let's click over and do it now. Again, I recommend that you keep the welcome email class project document open in a separate tab, so that you can navigate back and forth in your browser. Simply scroll down, look for subject line, and type in, welcome. Now, if you're an e-commerce company, welcome to use the domain name. If it's a blog, welcome to your blog name. Whatever it is, keep it simple. Remember, welcome works great for welcome emails and getting them opened. 9. Greeting And Gratitude: Greeting and gratitude. Here are three examples of how you can open your welcome email. You can start with something informal or friendly, like hi or hey. You can use a professional greeting like dear or an active greeting, every morning, comma. Now, type your greeting into your Class Project. Open the doc, type it in. Go ahead, do it now. Gratitude. The purpose of a gratitude opening is to use some sort of element in your email to thank the reader for signing up and affirm their decision. In other words something like, "Hey, great decision. I'm so glad you're here. We look forward to." Keep it simple. Here's an example for commerce. Welcome to the Happy Feet club. You've made a great decision. An example for a content or blogging website. Hi, thank you for signing up to hear from, your domain name or blog name. We're pleased to welcome you as a VIP subscriber. Here's an example for a coaching type business or business that offers services. Congratulations, and welcome to the five-day productivity challenge. You've made a great decision. Okay, time for action. Type your gratitude opening paragraph into your Class Project doc. Go ahead, do it now. 10. Expectation: Expectation, in this section of your e-mail, let the reader know exactly what to expect and when. Frequency, how often your e-mails will arrive. Content, what topic or type of content they will receive. Optionally, you can let them know that they can opt out or leave at any time. I found this is more common with e-commerce style e-mails. Now, here's an example of expectation with commerce. You'll be first to hear about our new limited edition designs, and special deals, and sales. Look for our VIP customer update every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Here's an example for content or a blog. Every Monday morning, look for our best of update with our five best tips for the week for coaching or some type of service. You'll also get a quick e-mail every weekday morning with a thought, tip, or tool to inspire focus and productivity. Okay, time for action. Type your expectation paragraph in to your class project doc. Go ahead, do it now. 11. Positioning: Positioning. The next section in your email is a paragraph that states the problem your reader wants to solve and how your product or service solves that problem. If you provide a personal and professional service, you can also use this section of the email to re-introduce yourself as a trusted guide with empathy, authority, and a plan. Here's an example with e-commerce. We understand that it's hard to find the type of product, that's why we created the website. Whether you're looking for or find your next favorite pair or the perfect gift at, your domain name. Here's an example for content or a blog. More than 28,000 subscribers already rely on your blog name as a trusted source for digital currency investing news and analysis including trends, strategies, and ICOs. Here's a coaching example, or for a service, authoring a book can be one of the best ways to attract more clients, but writing a book can be hard especially if you don't see yourself as a writer. That's where I come in. The, whatever the method is, makes authoring and publishing your book simple and fast. Time to type your positioning paragraph into the Class Project doc. Remember, you don't have to get this right, just get it going. 12. Content: Content. This section of your email is your content. The meat of your email. It's different depending on the type of business and the purpose of your welcome email. For example, if you run an e-commerce store, you can highlight a product. If you blog, list your top three blog posts. Here's a commerce example; Animal lover? Check out our new designs for animal lovers and a link. For content or blogging. Our website is a comprehensive guide to digital currency investing. New to digital currency investing? Begin with Bitcoin for beginners and a link. Content for a coaching or service type business? Three simple steps to achieve your goals, plus two mistakes to avoid. Mistake number 1, mistake number 2, and so on. Time for action. Type your content paragraph or paragraphs into your Class Project doc. Go ahead, do it now. 13. Call to Action (CTA): CTA or call to action. What do you want your reader to do no or next? Tell them and make it clear. You can also integrate a call to action in other sections of the e-mail. For example, in an e-commerce welcome e-mail, you can add it before and after the Expectation section. Also, remember, I've found that stating and restating the call to action two times in an e-mail works great. Here's an example of a call to action for commerce. Shop Now, Save 10 percent. Here's your coupon. Link. Let's begin with 10 percent off your next order, visit the domain name and use the code, when you checkout. Here's a call to action for a content or blogging website. Got a question or topic you want us to cover in an upcoming article, let us know by emailing our editors at the e-mail address or clicking here. Here's a call to action for coaching or a service. Take a moment right now to reply and let me know your top three goals for the next 90 days. I'll listen and help. Time for action. Type your call to action paragraph into the Class Project doc. 14. Closing Paragraph: The closing paragraph. Keep it short and simple. One-sentence works. Offer help, reassure with a guarantee, etc, whatever is appropriate for this type of e-mail. Here's an example of a closing paragraph for commerce. Want free shipping, just order at least $40 worth. Wondering about returns, love our socks, or send them back within 30 days for a prompt and cheerful exchange or refund. Here's an example for a content or blogging site. Again, welcome. We look forward to serving you. For coaching or our service, congratulations on taking action. So you tomorrow for day two. Time for action. Type your closing paragraph into your class, project dock. Are you coming with this? Are you building that welcome e-mail? Go ahead, make sure you're doing it. I look forward to seeing your welcome e-mail as a completed class project. Remember you don't have to get it right, just get it going. 15. Signature Signoff: Your signature sign-off. Use a signature sign-off to reinforce who you are and what you offer. Here's an example in e-commerce. Here to help, name and website. Closing for content or a blog. You got this. Yours for, your topic, success, name and website. For coaching, keep it simple. Your coach, your name. Time for action. Type your signature sign-off into the Class Project doc. Go ahead, do it now. 16. PS: P. s. Use your P. S to restate a key point from your email or the call to action. Here's an example in commerce. One more thing, please reply to this email and let us know your favorite color. What? Why? Replying back tells your email provider that you like us. Our email makes it through, and just for fun, we'd like to know your favorite color. Here's an example for content or blogging. Did you know your domain name is now available in three different languages? Use the language option at the top of the menu then the link. For coaching or a service, go ahead, tell me your top three goals for the next 90 days and your link. Type your P.S into your class project document. 17. Congratulations: Congratulations. Now you've got a basic welcome email. Go ahead post it, let us celebrate this completion with you and give you any feedback to help you improve it. I appreciate and value you as a participant in this course. My goal is to deliver a five-star learning experience. If there is anything I can do to make this course or your experience with me better, please let me know. I'm grateful that we've met and I hope you found value in this course. Please take a moment to let me and others know what you like best about this course and your interaction with me by leaving a review, and if you can, recommend me and my courses to others, I'd appreciate your saying so in the review.