In the last part, we talked about lead magnets and how to capture those precious email addresses. Today, we're focusing on what to do with those emails once you've got 'em. It's time to master the welcome series.

Let’s get started:

Permission first

So you've captured an email. Congrats! The temptation now is to blast that poor soul with sales messages. Don't. Seriously, don't do it.

Like…actually for real don’t.

We're playing the permission marketing game here. They've given you their email - don't abuse that trust. Not just because it’s grot but also because it won’t work! It’ll hurt your business.

Instead, we want to continue adding value. We're nurturing the lead, readying them for the sale.

The first mechanism for this? The welcome series.

What's a Welcome Series?

A welcome series is a fancy name for set of emails delivered to all new leads, warming them up and moving them towards the sale.

I personally recommend a series of 10 as a starting point.

The first 5 are pure value. The next 5 are moving people to your first sale.

It's a balancing act and will depend on the niche and the price of that first sale, but I find this 5:5 works well as a baseline.

FYI: My welcome series is now personally 30+ emails but we all need to start somewhere - rather done than perfect remember!

We'll cover the sales emails in the next Playbook on Offer. Right now, let's nail those first 5 value emails.

The 5 Value Emails

Email 1: The Welcome and Whitelist

This is your "thank you and welcome" email. We use this to introduce ourselves and get whitelisted.

Whitelisting is when a lead's email client (Gmail, etc.) sees you as a trusted sender. To do this, we want to give whitelisting instructions and/or ask them to respond to the email. Doing so tells their email service that we are A-OK and that it should show our emails.

Specifically, we'll ask them a question, seek their opinion on something - and ask for an answer via email. This works wonders.

By responding to the email we i) gain insight into their needs and ii) get our emails whitelisted. A two-fer.

Finish out email 1 by telling them to keep an eye out for the next email because you'll be giving them a present. Intrigue! We are opening a loop that they can only close by opening email 2.

Email 2: The Overdelivery

This is where we blow their minds with value.

They've signed up via a lead magnet or similar piece of value. Now we give them some unexpected value in the email. Basically, a gift. Who doesn’t love gifts.

Why? We want to completely flood them with value to build trust.

More sneakily, by giving away lots we're leveraging the psychological principle of reciprocity. We give and it opens a loop - people want to close that loop (unconsciously) and will do so by buying later.

Emails 3-5: Flurry of Blows

Email 2 gave them a free gift - a PDF, Notion document, video series or similar. A big wallop of value.

We'll continue this with emails 3-5 but in the email itself rather than an external resource.

Go and find your most popular content (from our work in Audience) and build it into these emails. Just content, giving them valuable information that has helped others before. No sales!

Content that works really well here:

• "Getting started in [your niche]"

• "Things I wish I had known when I started [niche]"

• "How to finally achieve [result] even though you've tried many times before"

• "Top questions I’m always asked about [topic]"

Follow your existing data from audience building to provide them with the content you KNOW your audience likes. Don’t guess.

Let's use a prompt to prepare our 5 welcome series emails.

You are an AI assistant specialising in email marketing and customer engagement. Your task is to help the user create a 5-email welcome series for their business. Follow these steps:

1. Collect the following information from the user:
   a. Business name and brief description
   b. User's name and title
   c. Preferred tone of voice (e.g., friendly, professional, casual, humorous)
   d. 3 pieces of content that have performed well for their audience (or 3 key topics if they don't have specific content)
   e. Their primary product or service

2. After collecting this information, create a sketch for a 5-email welcome series. Include the following:

   Email 1: Welcome and Whitelist
   - Craft a warm welcome message
   - Include instructions for whitelisting
   - Pose a question to encourage a reply (related to their business/audience)
   - Tease the valuable gift coming in the next email

   Email 2: The Value Bomb
   - Provide 5 ideas for a high-value gift, based on their business and successful content
   - For each idea, include a title and brief description

   Emails 3-5: Value Tsunami
   - Based on their successful content or key topics, suggest a smart sequencing for these three emails
   - For each email, provide:
     * A compelling subject line
     * The main topic or piece of content to be shared
     * 3-5 key points to be covered
     * A brief explanation of why this content is valuable to their audience

3. Provide a brief suggestion on how to adapt the tone and style of each email to match their preferred voice.

4. Conclude with a reminder about the importance of consistency and value in these initial emails, and how they set the stage for future engagement and sales.

Present your response in a clear, easy-to-follow format with appropriate headings and bullet points. Encourage the user to adapt and refine the welcome series based on their specific audience needs and feedback.

This prompt will first collect information from you about your business.

Then it’ll give you an outline of the emails and ask for input.

Finally it’ll go ahead and draft the emails for you. As always edit or rewrite to your taste.

Delivering Your Welcome Series

You'll need some sort of email automation tool to get your emails delivered.

You've probably heard of Mailchimp, HubSpot, ConvertKit, Beehiiv etc. These are all tools that can run email automation for you.

Personally, I use Beehiiv. I've tried most of the tools (myself and for clients) and love Beehiiv. It's also tied to what we'll cover in the next part - newsletter.

Beehiiv can deliver newsletters as well as run your email automation. It has free plans up until a certain subscriber count, by which time you should be making enough to cover its cost easily.

Frequency of Emails

This is a question I'm asked a lot. How often should I send the emails? Honestly, it depends on how aggressive you want to be. There isn’t a proper answer.

I send my first 10 emails (5 value and 5 sales) daily - day 1, day 2, day 3 etc.

If your first emails are genuinely valuable, you shouldn't be too worried about sending them fast. This is the moment when people are most likely to purchase, so front-loading value makes sense.

If you draw it out too long, people may forget who you are or buy elsewhere.

What's Next?

The next 5 emails in the welcome series will be sales emails, introducing your first offer. We're not covering that now because it's part of the next Playbook - Offer.

We need to know WHAT we are selling before we write those emails, obviously!

What about the people who don't buy fast? No problem - most won't!

That's what the next Part in this Playbook is about - a newsletter. A way to continuously keep the conversation going, drip feed value, and close the sale when the customer is ready!