Creating efficient e mail sequences can considerably improve your small business’s engagement, conversions, and general e mail advertising and marketing success. On this article, you may discover sensible methods, inspiring e mail sequence examples, and tips about simplifying the manufacturing course of by reusing e mail parts throughout your campaigns.
What’s an e mail sequence?
Think about you have simply signed up for a free software program instrument trial. Inside minutes, you obtain a welcome e mail introducing the platform’s options. A couple of days later, one other e mail arrives with useful ideas for getting began. Then, after every week, you obtain a reminder to improve to a paid plan. That is an instance of an e mail sequence — automated emails despatched in a collection primarily based on particular actions, like signing up for a trial, that information the recipient by way of a predefined journey.
E mail sequences are delivered to prospects, customers, or prospects at strategic intervals. These sequences are designed to perform particular objectives, reminiscent of nurturing leads, rising engagement, or changing prospects into prospects. Whether or not it is a welcome collection, an onboarding sequence, or a follow-up after a sale, e mail sequences make sure that customized, focused messages constantly attain the appropriate individuals on the proper time.
What’s the distinction between e mail sequences and e mail drip campaigns?
One other comparable technique utilized in e mail advertising and marketing is e mail drip campaigns. Nevertheless, there’s a vital distinction between the 2 approaches.
Though each e mail sequences and drip campaigns are automated, e mail sequences are sometimes extra customized and purpose oriented, whereas drip campaigns sometimes observe a preset schedule, sending emails frequently no matter person conduct.
Along with being triggered by particular actions or occasions, reminiscent of sign-ups or purchases, automated e mail sequences additionally reply to modifications within the sequence, making them extra focused and related. This permits e mail sequences to intently match buyer conduct, delivering customized content material on the proper second, which might considerably enhance engagement and conversions.
Right here’s a fast comparability to focus on the variations:
Characteristic
E mail sequence
Drip marketing campaign
Set off
Based mostly on person actions or behaviors
Preset timing is just not depending on person motion
Personalization
Extremely customized primarily based on person exercise
Restricted personalization, with personalization solely at the beginning
Purpose
Centered on reaching particular outcomes
Follows a set schedule
Flexibility
Adaptable to numerous buyer journeys
Fastened, with little room for flexibility
Use case
Lead nurturing, gross sales follow-ups, onboarding
Common consciousness or engagement campaigns
11 e mail sequences methods and examples
E mail sequences can be utilized in varied eventualities, reminiscent of attracting new results in your small business or constructing relationships with prospects. Such methods embrace welcome emails, sign-up, cart abandonment, or lead nurturing sequences. Listed below are 11 of the preferred methods to make use of e mail sequences.
Lead nurturing e mail sequence
E mail entrepreneurs use lead nurturing sequences to construct relationships with new leads by progressively introducing them to your model, merchandise, and providers. The lead nurturing sequence is triggered when a lead supplies their e mail tackle — typically in change for beneficial content material like an eBook — and goals to arrange prospects for deeper engagement within the gross sales funnel. That is why additionally it is referred to as the welcome e mail sequence.
Sometimes, this sequence contains instructional content material, testimonials, or case research to construct belief and reveal the worth of your choices. By addressing potential objections and offering social proof, this sequence helps carry leads nearer to the purpose the place they really feel prepared for a gross sales dialog with out being overly pushy.
Lead nurturing e mail sequence instance from SurveyMonkey:
(Supply: E mail Love)
Onboarding e mail sequence
An onboarding e mail sequence is designed to information new prospects by way of the preliminary phases of utilizing your services or products. It may also be triggered when somebody first indicators up on your product, particularly when you have a trial or free model. This collection of emails supplies essential data and sources to make sure a clean onboarding course of. The purpose is to assist prospects change into accustomed to the product’s options, supply ideas for fulfillment, and spotlight any obtainable help or tutorials. This will get new customers actively utilizing the product and getting outcomes from it.
Right here is an onboarding e mail template instance from the Stripo library:
(Supply: Stripo template)
Engagement e mail sequence
Engagement e mail sequences are designed to generate curiosity and keep sturdy connections with each prospects and current prospects. These emails are designed to be compelling, typically creating a way of urgency or FOMO (worry of lacking out) to encourage recipients to behave on the CTA (call-to-action). Engagement e mail sequences assist gross sales groups observe recipient conduct. By measuring engagement, corporations can decide which leads are prepared to maneuver additional down the gross sales funnel and regulate their messaging accordingly, guaranteeing that the appropriate content material reaches the appropriate viewers on the proper time.
Keep in mind to create emails that interact subscribers and use interactive modules and gamification, like this instance from Stripo:
(Supply: E mail from Stripo)
Conversion e mail sequence
A conversion e mail sequence is designed to immediate a selected motion out of your prospects, reminiscent of reserving a demo, scheduling a name, or signing up for a webinar. These emails concentrate on a single, clear CTA and information the recipient towards that purpose by way of persuasive, value-driven messaging. The sequence normally presents one thing in return for taking motion, like a free trial, unique content material, or a limited-time supply, which incentivizes the recipient to interact.
By aligning the emails with the recipient’s pursuits and timing them strategically, conversion sequences can considerably enhance engagement, turning lukewarm leads into keen prospects able to take the subsequent step.
(Supply: E mail from Fortinet)
Re-engagement e mail sequence
A re-engagement e mail sequence is designed to win again the eye of inactive subscribers or prospects who’ve stopped participating together with your emails, web site, or providers. This collection of emails makes use of artistic ways, like sample interrupts — shocking e mail topic traces or particular presents — to recapture curiosity and encourage renewed interplay. The content material typically highlights new options, customized presents, or updates that may reignite curiosity.
(Supply: MailCharts)
In Stripo, re-engagement sequences are configured individually for the reactivation of subscribers and customers. E mail subscribers are reactivated in the event that they haven’t interacted with emails inside 21 days after subscription. There’s additionally a phase of these recipients who didn’t open a single e-newsletter through the course of a month. We begin a sequence with them, with the aim being to get recipients to return to studying emails.
There’s additionally an e mail sequence for reactivating customers. Based mostly on the info, we derived a interval throughout which, if the person doesn’t work within the account (create emails, export, and so on.), we’ll merely lose it. Based mostly on this information, we deliberate a re-engagement e mail sequence.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
E mail advertising and marketing specialist at Stripo.
Comply with-up e mail sequence
A follow-up e mail sequence gently reminds recipients who haven’t responded to earlier messages that you’ve got despatched them concerning a proposal, thus reinforcing the supply and motivating recipients to take motion. These emails are sometimes despatched over time, every turning into extra direct and addressing potential objections or issues. This sequence helps to take care of communication with out overwhelming the recipient, progressively constructing urgency and motivating a response.
For instance, on this e mail from an e mail sequence, MacPaw reminds us that the particular supply will finish quickly:
(Supply: E mail from MacPaw)
Gross sales e mail sequence
A gross sales e mail sequence, particularly an upselling or cross-sell e mail sequence, is a strong option to enhance income by encouraging prospects to discover associated or upgraded merchandise. This sequence introduces complementary choices after an preliminary buy and builds momentum by creating a way of worth and urgency. Providing limited-time reductions or unique offers can sweeten the supply, nudging prospects towards conversion.
(Supply: E mail from City Outfitters)
Renewal e mail sequence
A renewal e mail sequence is crucial within the SaaS world, serving as a well timed reminder for purchasers nearing the top of their subscription interval. Set off-based personalization ensures these emails are extremely related, addressing the expiring particular services or products. These emails usually are not simply transactional; they seem to be a essential touchpoint that encourages prospects to resume their service, serving to to take care of retention and strengthen long-term buyer relationships.
(Supply: E mail from Stripo)
Academic e mail sequence
An academic e mail sequence is a strong instrument for nurturing subscribers by constantly delivering beneficial, free content material that educates and engages. Any such sequence ensures that prospects and prospects are frequently uncovered to your content material advertising and marketing — weblog posts, webinars, movies, or podcasts. Whereas the purpose is not to make a direct sale, instructional emails subtly information subscribers towards your paid presents by constructing belief and showcasing experience.
These emails present worth and maintain your viewers engaged and coming again for extra. The content material is usually delivered logically, with every e mail providing deeper insights or sensible ideas associated to the recipient’s pursuits or challenges.
(Supply: Stripo template)
Deserted cart e mail sequence
An deserted cart e mail sequence is a key technique for eCommerce companies to recuperate misplaced gross sales. When a buyer provides merchandise to their cart however leaves with out finishing the acquisition, this automated e mail sequence steps in to re-engage them. The purpose is to remind prospects of forgotten gadgets and reignite their buy intent. This sequence sometimes begins with a easy reminder e mail despatched shortly after abandonment, which gently nudges the shopper to return to their cart. From there, the emails change into progressively persuasive, designed to immediate the shopper again towards finishing their order.
Subsequent emails within the sequence would possibly create urgency by highlighting restricted inventory or providing a time-sensitive low cost. To bolster the worth of the acquisition, together with buyer testimonials or social proof will be efficient in constructing belief and decreasing hesitation.
(Supply: E mail Love)
Reminder or event-based e mail sequence
A reminder or event-based e mail sequence ensures that leads or prospects are made conscious of all essential occasions like demos, webinars, or product launches. These emails are designed to supply light nudges that maintain your viewers knowledgeable and excited whereas guaranteeing they’ve all of the logistical particulars they should attend the occasions. Beginning with a affirmation e mail after sign-up, the sequence can progress with well timed reminders, every providing worth, reminiscent of preparation ideas or entry hyperlinks, to make sure all the things runs easily.
These sequences serve a twin objective for occasions: constructing anticipation and maximizing attendance. The primary e mail highlights the occasion’s significance, sharing particulars like audio system or agenda whereas providing a simple registration hyperlink. To spice up attendance, including an incentive like early-bird pricing for paid occasions can encourage swift motion.
(Supply: E mail from Stripo)
You’ll be able to apply all these confirmed methods of automated e mail sequences in your e mail advertising and marketing to unravel completely different issues at completely different phases of the shopper’s motion by way of the gross sales funnel. Subsequent, we’ll share secrets and techniques and methods that can assist you make these sequences more practical and spend much less time on e mail manufacturing.
Steps and greatest practices for creating an e mail sequence
Making a profitable e mail sequence requires considerate planning, collaboration, and the appropriate instruments. The method begins by working intently together with your gross sales and advertising and marketing groups to develop detailed purchaser personas. These personas will enable you perceive your audience’s wants at every gross sales funnel stage, guaranteeing that your sequence speaks on to their ache factors and wishes.
Decide the sequence’s purpose and triggers
Every e mail sequence ought to have a transparent, particular purpose tailor-made to your purchaser’s wants and enterprise targets. The purpose is likely to be nurturing leads, recovering misplaced gross sales, or driving webinar registrations. As soon as the purpose is about, you could determine the precise, measurable set off that can provoke the sequence — whether or not it is a prospect downloading content material or abandoning their buying cart.
Set SMART objectives: To make sure your sequence is efficient, set SMART objectives — particular, measurable, achievable, related, and time-bound. For instance, the purpose of a lead nurturing sequence might be to construct stronger buyer relationships, whereas a cart abandonment sequence would possibly concentrate on recovering a share of misplaced gross sales. Defining these targets upfront will information your technique and maintain your efforts centered.
Personalize and phase: Personalization is vital to constructing rapport and driving engagement. Tailor the content material of every e mail to the recipient’s pursuits and use segmentation to make sure the appropriate message reaches the appropriate particular person. For instance, addressing the recipient by identify and providing related content material primarily based on their actions can considerably enhance open and click on charges.
Establish triggers: Establish the actions or occasions that can set off every e mail in your sequence, reminiscent of a content material obtain or a purchase order. From there, create an in depth plan outlining the emails’ content material, timing, and circulation. For instance, if an individual downloads an e-book on “E mail manufacturing information,” you’d higher set off follow-up emails that share extra details about this subject.
Plan the e-mail sequence
The primary parameters to contemplate when planning e mail sequences are the variety of emails and the time-frame. These parameters ought to be primarily based on the enterprise’s objectives and the client’s wants and ought to be restricted to solely what is important to attain a purpose.
After getting these in place, you’ll be able to plan the sequence and description every e mail, fastidiously contemplating which emails will reply to particular actions out of your subscribers.
To make it simpler to search out concepts for creating an e mail sequence technique, use GenAI. For instance, you’ll be able to ask ChatGPT to generate a follow-up sequence plan to upsell a product. For higher outcomes, remember to specify the precise product or class, describe the audience, and outline the aim of the e-mail chain.
Create the emails
When crafting emails on your sequence, the first focus ought to constantly be delivering worth whereas encouraging the prospect or buyer to behave. Every e mail ought to be designed to handle particular wants at completely different phases of the client’s journey, at all times aligned with the enterprise objectives. Hold your emails clear, concise, and actionable, guaranteeing that the message is straightforward to grasp and drives engagement.
The primary issues recipients will see are the e-mail topic line and preheader textual content, so they should seize consideration shortly. Hold topic traces quick and compelling, specializing in the important thing advantages or actions you need the reader to just accept or take, respectively.
Your CTA guides the reader towards the specified motion. Each e mail within the sequence ought to embrace a transparent, easy-to-find CTA that aligns with the e-mail’s purpose. Whether or not downloading a useful resource, signing up for a webinar, or finishing a purchase order, make the CTA button stand out by way of colour and placement.
The design of your e mail ought to help your message with out overwhelming the recipient. A clear, uncluttered structure with strategic use of white area helps information the reader’s eye to probably the most important parts, just like the CTA or crucial data. Incorporate your model’s colours, fonts, and imagery to create a visually interesting and cohesive expertise throughout all emails within the sequence.
Methods to hurry up e mail sequence manufacturing
Many emails could also be in automated sequences and will adapt in accordance with subscribers’ actions, so it’s important to optimize manufacturing, make assessments, and measure the outcomes.
Use modular design to hurry up manufacturing
A modular e mail design is without doubt one of the greatest methods to streamline the creation course of and keep model consistency throughout a number of campaigns. Modular blocks help you create reusable sections — like headers, footers, product highlights, and CTAs — that may be shortly adjusted and deployed throughout varied sequences.
For instance, you may need a product block showcasing key options, which will be simply swapped out or up to date relying on the sequence. This protects time and ensures that each e mail displays your model’s feel and look, whatever the marketing campaign.
Modular design hastens and simplifies the method of making scalable and customized e mail sequences whereas sustaining consistency throughout campaigns. This protects time and ensures higher engagement and better conversions by delivering the appropriate message to the appropriate viewers each time.
We scale back the time it takes to arrange every shopper e-newsletter utilizing private and synchronized modules in Stripo. First, the designer prepares all of the blocks beneath the model’s pointers, after which the e-mail entrepreneurs work with the ready-made blocks in Stripo. We put together an e mail guideline for the shopper, the place we draw all the mandatory blocks — product playing cards, blocks with promotional positions, and proposals. So, the e-mail marketer collects the complete or a part of the e-mail with out involving a designer and asks them just for the primary banner or customized header.
Svitlana Fursa,
Head of the retention advertising and marketing division of the Promodo company.
My favourite characteristic in Stripo is the power to save modules to reuse in different emails. After getting a module saved, you merely drag and drop it into one other e mail template whenever you wish to use it. It means the emails look constant, and there aren’t any errors with spacing or sizing — all issues that contribute to constructing belief with the recipient. It additionally saves loads of time as you solely should do the onerous work of constructing a module as soon as!
Stefanie Mainstone,
Head of CRM at Exclaimer.
Create grasp e mail templates or use prebuilt templates
One other option to pace up manufacturing is to make use of templates. For instance, you’ll be able to create one grasp e mail template containing all the mandatory blocks and construct every new e mail primarily based on this template.
We’d work as a lot as we may on a grasp template after which duplicate this as required. I feel now getting the grasp template proper, even from scratch, in Stripo takes as much as 1 hour. So I’d say 8 hours all the way down to lower than 1 hour for a base template for a marketing campaign.
Stefanie Mainstone,
Head of CRM at Exclaimer.
It’s also possible to take ready-made templates for the complete sequence and construct your emails on them. Right here is an instance of an e mail template for all collection:
(Supply: Stripo templates)
Check and optimize
E mail sequences ought to be examined earlier than being despatched to a big group of recipients. This may be completed by first sending the sequence to a small group and monitoring the outcomes. Use the findings from this take a look at to refine the sequence and improve its effectiveness.
A/B testing is a strong instrument that goes past testing content material — it is equally essential to check e mail layouts, topic traces, and CTAs. Utilizing modular design blocks makes this course of sooner and extra environment friendly. For instance, you’ll be able to simply swap out a CTA block, take a look at completely different designs, or rearrange content material with out creating new emails from scratch. This method permits for faster iterations and extra exact optimization, serving to you discover the best-performing model of your emails and guaranteeing larger engagement and conversion charges.
Measure the efficiency of e mail sequences
E mail sequences ought to be tracked and measured to find out their effectiveness. This may be accomplished utilizing e mail automation software program and analytics instruments. The outcomes of monitoring and measurement ought to be used to refine sequences and enhance their effectiveness.
Make sure that to measure key metrics like open charges, click-through charges, conversion charges, and bounce charges. Additionally it is essential to watch unsubscribe charges to make sure that the sequence doesn’t overwhelm recipients.
Wrapping up
Creating an efficient e mail sequence is all about understanding your viewers, setting clear objectives, and optimizing each step of the method. You’ll be able to craft sequences that drive outcomes by working intently together with your gross sales and advertising and marketing groups, leveraging automation instruments, and personalizing your content material. Keep in mind to constantly take a look at and refine your emails to remain agile and conscious of your viewers’s wants. With the appropriate technique, your e mail sequences will interact prospects and information them by way of the gross sales funnel to significant conversions.
Create your e mail sequences sooner and simpler with Stripo