Designing The Perfect Welcome Series - A Case Study (In Progress)
What is the perfect email welcome series? How many emails should you have in it? What are the best send times and email cadences? Does it change for big-ticket items where budget planning may be required vs less expensive and therefore easier to purchase in-the-moment items? These are all important questions that must be considered when designing a new welcome series strategy. If you're thinking about the broader strategy, the lead magnet plays a role in this and must be included in your planning.
This article is going to explore this in more detail as I develop my strategy for an email welcome series that uses the AIDA model to encourage the purchase of an expensive product. We start with a new lead magnet and follow a 2:1 ratio of value-based content and transactional requests.
This follows (in a way) Les Binet’s theory of brand building vs activation. Your Welcome series gets more time to warm up new prospects and plays more of an “I’ll be there when you are ready to purchase” vibe to your audience. Your Activations in Email are the monthly campaigns, seasonal specials, flash sales etc…. you choose to run throughout the year. Lastly, this article assumes you have in place the necessary Abandon Cart and Browse Abandonment flows that all good businesses have. Equally important Post purchase flows will be discussed in another article.
THE CLIENT EXAMPLE
Our client in this case study sells a more expensive item that may take some planning to purchase, prospect feedback surveys indicate that while some prospects may purchase in a relatively quick time frame (90 days) there is another large bucket of prospects that can take up to 12 months. This is important information because it can help us set expectations on what we should seek to accomplish with our new series, and affects how we set up our flow. For this specific client, it makes sense to take time to demonstrate the product’s value to the target audience. Further, this client has a history of offering a discount as a lead magnet, we will be testing our new lead magnet & welcome series against the existing discount code. We have decided to retain the discount code as part of the new magnet, our test is to see if we can drive higher email signup rates by improving on the overall value of the offer. In this case, we want to offer a Digital catalogue.
Why did we choose a Digital Catalogue?
There is a lot of competition in this product category and new competitors come to market regularly. Product category search terms lead to buying guide-type search results, and few competitors seem to have mastered the digital space. The ones that have mastered this space do so with large budgets. Fortunately, these companies tend to speak to larger or broader segments of the audience than we do so there is still an opportunity to be had, but that’s another article for another time.
Our Digital catalogue lead magnet will feature each core product of the clients, a page about financing, a page about accessories, and one for merchandise. In between we will introduce the brand story, prospect stories & testimonials, and the overall community. We will do this in as few pages as possible.
This new lead magnet will incorporate the existing discount code however the code will be de-emphasized in favor of the buying guide copy. “Get our 2024 Buyers Guide, which includes your personalized discount” The hypothesis is that by giving prospects more information on the product in an edutainment way, we can reduce friction to purchase and increase our conversion rates.
Okay, What About The Welcome Series?
For our email series, we are going to write the following emails, I have indicated where in the AIDA model they stand. for a quick refresher, AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. To keep this more useful to everyone I’m being very generic in my content description. I believe this makes it easier for people to apply the concepts to their own business.
ATTENTION
Day #1
Email #1 - Welcome to client
Content: This email briefly introduces the brand with a short powerful paragraph and a CTA button to check out the guide. This button will prompt a download of the pdf guide to their phone which can be viewed right away. At the bottom of the email, we will include a unique discount code for money off the first purchase.
INTEREST
Day #3
Email #2 - About the product
Content: Provide a general overview of the product and highlight its best benefits by talking about its capabilities. This is a soft-sell email that is designed to reinforce the lead magnet by providing new information and building more awareness. Primary CTA is to go to website.
Day #5
Email #3 - About the Client
Content: Provides information on the brand owners + any staff by positioning their role in the company, product knowledge, and prospect service abilities. CTA is to follow the brand on Youtube, IG, TikTok
Day #7
Email #4 - What can you do with the product
Content - expands on Email #2 by demonstrating key use cases for the product and key benefits that appeal to the target audience
Day #9
Email #5 - About the Community
Content: presents the Facebook owners group and any post-purchase resources the client has access to including social giving. reinforces prospect service of the brand as part of the community. CTA is to check out one of these resources.
DESIRE
Day #11
Email #6 - What can you do with the product
Content - expands on Email #2 by demonstrating key use cases for the product and key benefits that appeal to the target audience
Day #13
Email #7 - Social Proof
Content: High-value User testimonials and review snippets,
Day #15
Email #8 - Personal Story
Content: One very personal story or long-form testimonial that fully articulates the value of the product and the benefits of ownership.
ACTION
Day #17
Email #9 - Purchase Request
Content: Asks the prospect to purchase the product by using a stronger CTA, asking if the prospect is “ready” to go ahead, encourages the purchase with trust signals, shows options for purchase (financing etc..)
Day #19
Email #10- Personal Story #2
Content: Sends another email with another long7-form testimonial that articulates the post-purchase experience, pride of ownership. encourages the purchase again by appealing to the positive emotion of ownership
THATS IT FOR THE MAIN FLOW
At this point, if we want to continue the series our options are to revert back to value-driven emails or take a short detour and keep pushing for the sale. Let’s call them path a (value path) and path b (transaction to value path). I argue that we do another split here and test this out
PATH A (The Value Path)
On the value path we keep adding emails every week for as long as we have valuable content to send, this content could include feature callouts on the bike, more prospect stories, how-to articles, interesting interviews etc… until the prospect makes a purchase and drops out of the flow.
PATH B (Transaction To Value Path)
On the transaction-to-value path we will test a steeper discount email with more urgency over the course of two additional emails. These two emails will encourage the client to take advantage of the improved discount for a limited time. If the prospect does not convert on either of these they will fall back to the value path.
Once the welcome series is complete, our prospect will fall into receiving the regularly scheduled emails the brand sends. These emails should also follow a cadence of 2 pieces of valuable content to one specific ask. Consider your promotional cadence when you set this up.
With regards to results, we will run this a/b test until we have reached statistical significance. Winning emails will be chosen based on Open and click rates as the primary metrics, purchases will be viewed as secondary (except in the case of the Discount split which will be evaluated on its ability to generate sales)
We also want to segment new prospect data as we acquire it, the goal here is twofold. First, we want to be able to identify higher value audiences based on their actions. If prospects open and click all your emails, it would seem logical that they have an interest in your product. What’s stopping them from purchasing, and what can you do to make them feel comfortable to purchase?
On the other hand, if people are ignoring your emails entirely - you want to ensure that they are removed from your list regularly (every 90 days) this preserves your list health, keeps your sender reputation good, and in some cases, helps keep your monthly email service provider fee down.
The results of this campaign will be added to this article at a later date so consider giving it a bookmark and as always feel free to add your comments and thoughts!