Make Your Email Series a Slippery Slide
R3 for Email I guardianmarketing.substack.com I ExperienceR3.com
If you've ever run lead gen onto an email list for your business, chances are you've wrestled, on some level, with how to get those new leads into your world, engaged, ready and interested to read more (and buying if they are ready now).
The most common tactic for handling all that is some kind of new lead email automation.
(There are effective ways which don't involve an automated series, but those details are for another time)
If you get into R3 for Email1 you'll probably find yourself making these email series potentially quite lengthy. 5, 7, 12, 15 emails.
There are many benefits to using email series like this.
You get to provide a consistent and precisely planned out experience which each reader always goes through, and which can be measured and optimized over time
That 'sets the stage' consistently for moving your readers through the stages of become customers and ultimately raving fans
These series are great for behavior tracking and training
They are great for pacing out large amounts of content into digestible segments. If you have a manifesto you want everyone to understand when they come into your world, figuring out how to string that out in an engaging way through a series will probably greatly increase it's consumption
These series are great for taking new momentum and translating that momentum consistently toward you and your business
These series are great for storytelling in general, and leading people down specific paths
You set the tone, you identify your ideal readers, you guide them into the behavior you want them to have with your emails.
But
There are also some inherent challenges with most email automations like this.
A series forces people on railroad tracks. While this has distinct advantages of controlling the experience and framing, it can be limiting for a certain subset of your prospects and audience
Some people are more ready now than others. We understand this when it comes to buying, so we always open the door in one way or another for new prospects to buy if they are ready ... but by and large this is not done for consumption of the content itself.
It forces people to wait to get further into your email world - and sometimes that wait can be a long time.
You can probably see the "two sides of the same coin" situation going on. And it's really for the subset of your audience which is ready NOW, who wants more content NOW, who wants to dive deeper NOW that the strict structured series can potentially be a detriment.
It's that last scenario which led me down a path to a particular tactic ...
Which I'm going to share with you today.
Now ages ago (about 8 years ago) I did an iteration of what I'm about to show you where I built a side by side email series and expanded series on my website (this was for a digital magazine I published all about coffee) ...
I had figured out those people who are ready for more now will dig in and go down a slippery slide of consumption and get it all right away, and that the more you gave them and led them the more likely they were to take actions.
Here's a couple shots of what that looked like (the originals are long gone):
(The email links to the page, and the page links to the next page in the series)
The magazine forced me to think through this interesting conundrum because I wasn't selling anything anyone needed ... I was selling entertainment and enthusiasm - obsession and nerdism.
Finding that route to guide the "ready NOW" people deeper into consumption vastly increased the likelihood they also bought now.
The overall result (even beyond just the hyper obsessed) was more people engaged up front AND higher level of long term stickiness. No surprise, when you let people dig aggressively into something they are passionate about they are much more likely to get hooked for the long term.
In that setup I had email sending daily in the series, each one linking the reader to a corresponding page on the site with different expanded engaging content, and on the site you could click through to the next page (so the idea was, get people from email to the slippery slide on the site).
I never occurred to me to try it ALSO in the email itself, until
pointed me to Daniel Throssell2.(If You want a masterclass example in the fully integrated version of this tactic, go subscribe to his email --- just be aware, his style is not appreciated by everyone ... but if you are a student of copy you'd be wise to study his work regardless)
All of this has landed me to one of my most frequently used email tactics today:
"click to read the next email"
Now there are two ways to implement this.
Let's call them ...
Simple and Integrated.
Simple first.
The simplest way to do this is, at the end of each email in your series, say something like "ready to read the next email now? click here - OR just wait 24 hours for the next one"
Something along those lines. A simple link to click.
Here's an example:
Then in the technical setup you do two things.
You need a page for them to go to. I tend to make simple pages on site which say something to the effect of "you want the next email? you got it! go check your inbox" (Email services require a page link click to trigger an automation)
You set up an automation trigger which sends them to the next email.
An example of how this works in Go High Level. There are two ways:
After someone receives an email in an automation you can have them sit in a 'wait' that has a condition on click of that trigger link which expires after 24 hours
Set a Goal for that trigger link right before the next email
(in my experience the first one is easier to manage, but the second one is sometimes necessary depending on other automated stuff you're doing in the workflow)
There's too many variations of email services to outline how to do it, but in my experience there's usually some kind of "goal" type trigger in an automation/workflow which causes a contact to jump forward if X happens.
That's it.
It's not sophisticated.
But so far across every market I've established the simple method for this (broadly speaking through health, marketing, financial), I've found that 5-10% of readers will click through and read many or all of your series in one go, and that those people are highly engaged and likely to do something.
Now, can you think of a way to leverage the information of specific contacts on your list who are highly engaged and likely to take an action?
Next …
The Integrated Method
The integrated method most likely involves multiple layers of content - like the original side by side series I built for the magazine which I mentioned above.
The best example of this is Throssell's welcome series, which I'd recommend exploring (see above, or footnotes for the link).
What set's apart the integrated method?
In short,
The click to send the next email is built in as an integrated component of the experience the reader is getting with the intro series.
You're not "clicking to get the next email," (even though that is happening and may be part of it), the click through creates an opportunity, provides something to them, advances the story, or otherwise is the most logical next best step for people who are emotionally invested.
This is NOT easy to do.
It's probably overkill for 98% of you reading this.
BUT
When done well, it can make for a very fun, engaging, and addictive experience for your readers.
Almost like a "chose your own adventure" type book - only there's just one path. But each time you get to the end of the email you have the option to advance a story, make something happen, or otherwise be involved in the unfolding of your experience.
Much more sophisticated than "click to read the next email."
I ran a small test of this on my own list (before hibernating that project) and used the link click as a part of the experience of the reader advancing through an unfolding story, while offering them little enticing 'upgrades' and insights on the other side.
This is from one of those emails:
In Throssell's list, he calls his mechanism a "time travel" device, and invites you to skip forward in time - whenever you click the time travel device you end up in a different reality (through a "parallel" world experience on his website).
I'm not recommending you do this.
I'm just showing you what's possible with a bit of creativity.
Start with the simple one.
It's dead easy to implement, and has immediate positive returns - even if they are not huge, they can be valuable.
Give Your Hyper Engaged An Opportunity
This is what it's all about.
I used to have a very strongly held opinion that your automations, especially new lead gen automations, should be intentionally spaced out (typically at 1 a day) over a period of 1-2 weeks because you wanted and perhaps needed that time to "train" your readers to read your stuff and interact with you.
But not only does the data refute this,
Logic does as well.
Some people will take time, of course.
But some people are ready now.
What builds an initial relationship with someone can often be intensity. Spending several hours reading through all of your emails and related content obsessively over a day or two is the start of someone who's ready for a lot more.
And if you saw someone wanting to consume everything you have like that ... why would you stop them?
On the flip side,
If you have the opportunity to provide that level of obsessive depth to new people ... why wouldn't you provide it?
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
Joseph Robertson, CMO Man Bites Dog
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