R3 for Email - Stage 3: A Major Transition
R3 for Email I guardianmarketing.substack.com I ExperienceR3.com
Welcome to Stage 3 of R3 for Email. In this stage, you've got a huge amount of transition happening. Someone has just become a customer, and you want to build a clear path from just being a customer all the way to Raving Fan.
As a refresher, you can read my intro to Stage 4 here:
Much of Stage 3 in R3, fundamentally, has nothing to do with email.
Email just happens to be a fantastic environment for facilitating this because email is 1 to 1, its personal, its intimate, the person with the email address has invited you into their personal online space and its your opportunity to take that gift and gravitate them forward closer to you and closer to becoming a raving fan.
At the heart of it all, principally, a raving fan is someone who is intimately close in a relationship. So our goal with Stage 3 in email is, keeping in mind the transition and steps of Stage 3 that our new customer is going to be going through, what tactically can we do to continue to nurture and grow that relationship to build a high degree of gravity and internal pressure toward becoming a raving fan.
I say tactically because principally and philosophically we'll be establishing those fundamentals in our email strategy all the way in Stage 1, based on everything we discovered in Stage 4 (the initial communication and transition to your internal world sets the tone for how everything proceeds).
Once someone becomes a customer we know more things about them, and they have committed themselves closer to you.
There's a higher degree of responsibility on your shoulders, but a greater opportunity for developing something much deeper with these people.
The Established Customer
Stage 3 of R3 is all about The Established Customer - taking them from the point of having become a customer all the way to the tipping point of being a Raving Fan (at which point they will enter Stage 4).
We know from Stage 4 that a connection with their deep reasons why they have purchased from you are going to be key to establishing long term effectiveness. As pointed out in Stage 4, the only way to establish and communicate with Raving Fans is if you have an effective way to build and hold readership by email for a very long time.
That process begins in Stage 1, which we'll address at the appropriate time.
In Stage 3, we're continuing the long term strategies, while recognizing that once someone becomes a customer, the relationship changes, and we want to respect and honor that.
This does NOT mean that our regular ongoing email communication is different for Stage 3 than Stage 1. Or 4 or 2 for that matter. Before I get into those details for Email, let's briefly go over the components of Stage 3, what they mean, and some unique aspects of them pertaining to your email strategy.
The 3 steps of Stage 3 are
1. Familiarity
2. Achievement
3. Continuance
For the full principled overview of this, see the base R3 book. The concepts are not agnostic to any particular strategy (they work with all forms of communication), and when you have a solid relationship and predictable behavior established through email, application of Stage 3 becomes obvious.
Continuance
"In this stage we want to focus on helping your established customers make the decision of whether or not to continue to do business with you regularly. They are either trying to decide whether they want to adopt ownership in the business or they have already decided they do, but don’t know how."
The general steps for this include making it easier for them to show loyalty, building systems for rewarding brand adoption, public recognition of your best customers, and building internal pressure to become a Raving Fan.
Achievement
"This stage is understanding that just because a customer achieves something from our perspective, it doesn’t mean that they feel fulfilled."
In other words this stage is not just about celebrating what they have overtly achieved (the feature), nor even what that achievement has most immediately brought them (the benefit), but *the real reason behind it all.*
Familiarity
"The fact is, your customers need significantly more hand holding than we think. Allegiance Capital is important here. This stage goes over how to “hold your customer’s hand” so they become familiar with you, your company, your lingo, and everything that goes along with that."
This part is about taking a new customer and making sure that you communicate well and clearly so that there is no uncertainty in the experience for your customer. The shift from Stage 2 to 3 is one of the biggest black holes, and managing current expectations and creating new ones are important for making sure that a new customer is remains engaged long enough to go through Achievement and Continuance.
Again, see the base R3 book for a more detailed overview of how you can think through those stages.
For email, you might already have picked up the one obvious dynamic that must exist in order for you to be able to walk someone through Stage 3 successfully ...
They must be engaged and looking forward to reading your emails.
It's obvious in retrospect, but just like in Stage 4, if a customer is not engaged and reading your emails, how can you build Familiarity, how can you celebrate their Achievement, and how can they choose to Continue being a customer of yours via email?
Once you have someones rapt attention and they are looking forward to reading your emails, everything else becomes simple and obvious.*
The 2 Factors for Email in Stage 3
The way I look at it, there are two factors which matter most to Stage 3 for Email ...
Ongoing email communication and relationship building
Creating unique experience and environment for customers specifically
Ongoing Relationship Via Email
Most of the effort that you put into ongoing email communication is going to be something you establish quickly after the initial onboarding - typically in Stage 1, but if someone buys right away this will all happen concurrently.
How that looks for you will depend.
You might have 1 or more email automations that a new subscriber goes through before they start getting your ongoing broadcast emails (at whatever frequency you determine), or you might just immediately start sending your new subscribers those broadcast emails with no automations, or you may have some combination of the two.
Whatever you do, the goal is to create an environment and reading experience where your email subscribers want to open, read and interact with as many emails as possible.
NOTE: This will be further explored in Stage 1, since that is the most likely stage to be dealing with this transition.
What do you put in your emails?
Most people out there have a focus on "value." Give value and people will show up to keep getting value. I only agree with this if you take a very wide perspective on what the idea of "value" means.
In my experience people open and read your emails for a long time because they want to, because they look forward to your email, because it feels good to read them - this all happens if you become a part of their life.
What’s valuable is what someone wants to welcome into their day to day life from you.
How that looks is going to depend on your business (there are a huge range of reasons why opening and reading an email from you can feel good for someone to read), your audience, and all the minutiae therein. In Stage 1 I'll outline a few different ways of doing this based on my experiences, along with examples (in the R3 for Email book).
That might mean teaching them things. But it could also mean just giving them a reason to smile. There's a whole spectrum of what to do, and the reason to do it is to give them a path to grow closer and closer to you.
For Stage 3, these efforts are colored by the steps that someone takes through Stage 3. Understand that when you send your broadcast emails where your customer is on their path. Familiarity, Achievement, and Continuance.
Familiarity in Email
In my perspective, Familiarity in Email comes with a combination of frequency, connection, and Allegiance Capital.
The frequency and connection you're going to establish all the way in Stage 1, based on your Stage 4 research. Include seeds of principle and philosophy in your communication to weave that connection throughout every stage.
(NOTE: Again, examples are going to be very helpful in spelling this all out - those I'll be putting together for the final R3 for Email book)
To touch one one element, which I'll get more into in Stage 1, Familiarity is one of the reasons I like to lean into personal connection with email. Build your email list around a specific person / personality, so that your readers have an individual they can build a relationship with.
Every email list I've seen and been a part of which takes this approach has a stronger relationship with their audience than email lists which are much more "broadcast by a business" focused. If that sounds obvious, it should. Again, we're just people doing people things, and relationships are how we interact and move through the world.
(If you’re wondering what “stronger relationship” translates to, it’s more opens, more consistent opens, longer “stick,” more clicks, more conversions, more replies, etc)
So, why construct your email strategy against human nature when you can harness it?
Familiarity and Allegiance Capital
One of the unique positions you'll be in, if you can establish the right long term relationship, is your ability to enact Allegiance Capital. The obvious move in email is small clear communication at every step. Letting people know why they've received an email, that they will receive another, what to expect when they click on a link, etc.
Read more about that concept here:
But there's another way of building Allegiance Capital which is highly valuable, and email - especially in Stage 3 - is a really effective environment to do this.
Pre-define the path you know your customer is going to follow. And I mean beyond the obvious immediate steps. You can think about this the same way that you think about Achievement as laid out in R3. It's not the obvious thing they get, not the benefit, but the benefit of the benefit.
For Allegiance Capital, it's not just the things they are going to do (the next steps they will take), it's not just what they will get or what will happen from taking those steps, it's the tertiary outcome from the change which is inevitably going to occur once they start experiencing the results of the steps they are going to take.
Yoga as the example:
Once someone completes a 200 HR YTT, they are now certified to teach yoga. They may wish to take the 300 HR YTT, but they may take some time to start teaching first. They are going to have a lot of new experiences as they work to find a job teaching yoga or just sell workshops to people they already know. Their relationship and experience with yoga itself in their everyday life is going to shift because not only do they practice but they now teach, which changes their perceptions.
All the above is the direct results, and the impacts of those direct results.
What is also likely to happen for these people is that as they change their behavior and experience with yoga in their lives, start to teach yoga and perhaps go down the path of becoming a yoga instructor as a career, they are going to appear to change greatly to those around them. In fact this feeling may be immediately apparent as soon as they come back from their YTT retreat. That feeling and change in behavior can create distance and challenges with their friends and loved ones which is difficult to navigate.
So, in my communication I might guide them in ways to expect this unseen shift in their everyday life and relationships, and give them tools and understanding to navigate and nurture those relationships.
See how that's the outcome of the benefit of the benefit of the thing they got?
Why would I want to go to those lengths in my communication?
Because it's highly likely they are going to experience that situation. I know this, so I can give them those tools or not. If I don't give them those tools and clarity, then when it happens they are going to experience a level of uncertainty which may knock them off track of continuing to move forward and grow. They may even blame me for that experience. On the other hand if I prepare them, and they are able to make everything work and their relationships grow because of it, they will thank me for giving them an understanding that no one else has.
That's Allegiance Capital1.
This is something to consider deeply in your communication, especially with Stage 3 Customers. You'll see Allegiance Capital throughout all of Stage 3.
Achievement in Email
I touched on this a little bit above with Allegiance Capital. But let me talk tactically about recognizing Achievement by email and what this means for your customer as they move through Stage 3 toward 4.
Start with automated email series following achievement. It's pretty easy these days to weave in some automated acknowledgment of their achievement through whatever it is you are selling to them - especially if it's something they are learning, a process they are going through, something they are building, etc.
Remember in base R3, it's not just what they've done, but the benefit of the benefit. They haven't just lost weight, gained more energy, but they are now able to more freely and consistently play and be active with their kids (what they really want from it all).
This is also a key transition point.
Don't just acknowledge the achievement, take advantage of the transition point to guide them onto the next path. Most achievement isn't just "ok now I'm done," it's "great, now what's next?"
How to tactically apply this will depend upon your business and how it is structured.
Always think about the experience and expectation of your customers. Once they complete something, they will always ask "well what next?" Even though that may be subconscious, the question still presents itself whenever finishing something.
They are shifting from an intense focus on completion, to having that tension GONE, and the void begs a new question.
So we want to acknowledge their achievement, celebrate them for completing it to make sure they feel accomplished and that they are moving toward the thing they desire, and then consciously set their sights on the next goal of their path.
Another example from Yoga:
In some business structures this is simple, overt, easy, obvious. In my work with yoga clients that participate in the international structure for teaching yoga teachers, it's common for people to start with a 200 HR Yoga Teacher Training - basically the foundation which gets you a certification to teach. So you complete that course, you get acknowledgement and reward (certification), and then you know that your next step is the 300 HR Yoga Teacher Training.
In those cases that is something most people going into a 200 HR YTT are aware of before even discovering the business. They know the structure because it's an international certification program. As a business working in that structure, there are nuances you can apply to your email since you can easily segment by which stage of accomplishment someone is at.
If they have completed a 200 HR YTT it's the obvious choice to offer them the 300 HR YTT, but there is also nuance you can apply to the language of your emails which points them toward that next level as their next step. You don't even need to offer them the next solution to buy, all you need to do is make sure they are now on that path and have established personal momentum in that direction.
"Now that you've accomplished your 200 HR YTT, go start teaching, you're going to discover a whole new set of questions that will lead you down a new path."
That is language suggestive of having moved forward. You harness momentum and give guidance building Allegiance Capital.
We're making the next step the obvious choice for them without needing to spell it out.
If you did your work in Stage 4, you may have uncovered Philosophies and Principles which connect more deeply after someone has achieved different steps along the way. It's quite possible that some of the underlying Principles which ultimately lead someone to be Stage 4 aren't made clear until they have achieved certain things and are well into Stage 3.
To take an example from The Guardian Academy: Engaging the Field2 is a principle we live by. However, what that means to you is going to evolve over time. Someone who has just subscribed to
Substack may feel a call and an affinity for Engaging the Field, they may see how they have been stuck in knowing but not doing, and are only now just starting their first steps into that new paradigm.It's a Principle which connects deeply, but it's one which reveals new information and understanding about yourself through time.
Those who've been in TGA, who have joined, and made progress in The Arena3, are experiencing and thinking about Engaging the Field differently than those who are new.
We know this because that's what learning looks like. You have an idea, you engage the field with it, you observe what happens, and now the idea looks different to you. If you learned your behavior looks different to you and now the outcome of your actions in the same situation look different to you.
That means part of your work in Stage 3 is to figure out those Principles that have meaning which evolves over time as people gain achievement through your systems.
It could be all the Principles. And that's just fine. The point is to understand the kinds of shifts people experience with their perspective and understanding because now you can speak differently to those people about those Principles.
In a way which continues to call them forward, from where they are now.
Continuance in Email
Finally we have Continuance. The dynamic that is all about making it obvious to people that they want to keep continuing with your business, and also how we'll build internal pressure toward becoming a Raving Fan.
Again, Allegiance Capital is used throughout.
But more tactically for Email, we're going to really build on the Unique Environment which you have created in your email strategy, and use that to make them feel special, desired, and like they want to never not be a part of what you are doing and what you have.
Creating a Unique Environment
This unique environment is a way I like to think about the email strategy for a business. Remember, email is an environment. It's a virtual space in which people can enter and be a part of your world. Every time you communicate with them it's a little doorway into your world, where they get to have a unique and special seat at the table.
When someone becomes a customer, it is a good idea to take advantage of this dynamic plus the fact that they chose to spend their money and time with your business, to enrich the texture of your unique environment. Make them feel like they have a special seat at a special table where only customers of your business get to sit.
I've put this under Continuance because I think it's one of the most powerful dynamics you can use to pull people from Stage 3 to Stage 4. It's the kind of "wow factor" you can build into your email strategy which no one else can possibly replicate or steal, which is like throwing gasoline on the fire of that internal drive to become a Raving Fan.
BUT
Even though I've put this under Continuance, it really starts from the moment someone becomes a customer.
I like to think about it as the texture of your intimate private world by email. This can be special communications which explicitly only go to customers. It can be introduction of more unique language and deeper connection of Principle and Philosophy which they may not have received in the regular broadcast emails everyone else receives.
It's an opportunity for you to reveal more and in some ways show more vulnerability. Show what's happening. Give them the closer intimate look.
Think about it like you would any personal relationship. You've now been on some dates. You have private references you can make. Inside jokes. You can text more familiarly, more intimately about what is going on.
Bring Them Closer.
There's no specific way to do this. Everything is entirely up to who you are, what you want to do with your business, your resources available, how your business is presented, your brand, your customers and their interests, your market, your products, etc. There is no way for me to spell out a step by step process for making this happen. (In R3 for Email book I'll provide some examples of ways I've done this in the past)
In addition to the Texture of your private world, you can work more overt techniques for giving your customers unique experiences and opportunities.
Customers are a fantastic segment for testing new ideas. The way to do this which is a delight and a value add is simply to present the new ideas to your customers as something new you'd like to try out which you think they'd love, and since they are a customer they get exclusive access to the first seats (the first test run, the first broadcast, the beta book launch, whatever it is).
It's one of the simplest win wins you can put together where both sides know exactly what's going on and it doesn't matter. You know who loves getting special unique access to you before everyone else?
Your Raving Fans.
So, if you are treating your Stage 3 customers like you do your Raving Fans ... would you be surprised to learn that more of them just straight up become Raving Fans?
Tactically I like to use email series as the structure to execute on a lot of these ideas. If we're talking about a launch of something new, I'll either prewrite a series to launch the thing, or I'll write it live during the launch.
Why a series? Expectation management and event relevancy.
Event relevancy is basically the reason why someone might open and read your email. It's got to connect with some level of relevancy to an "event" that is happening in their life - but *really* this means that is has to connect with relevancy to the expectation that they have set around what is happening in relation to YOU.
Events are the easiest way to explain this.
Take a daily email for example. Event relevancy can be as simple as writing an email talking about something huge that's happening in the news or pop culture. It can also be writing about something going on in your market or industry. It can also be something going on in your business that your reader is probably aware of or probably wants to be aware of.
These are all things which have direct connection to the experiences happening in your readers day to day life.
If you have built an expectation that you will send a daily email and that becomes a part of their day to day life then when you send that daily email it is event relevant.
If I want to send something new outside of the established expectation (which might be a daily or weekly email) - I like to create an event so that relevancy is established.
A launch of a new product/service is an event. Just picture telling your audience that you have something new going on, you want to share it, and you're going to reveal what that is and how it will impact them in upcoming emails.
As I write this, there's a great example I can provide from
. The short context is, for many years he ran a widely praised mentorship program for copywriters until he decided to go on hiatus. Now he is back and presenting something new which he is unveiling to his audience one email at a time.If you are a copywriter who follows Lukas Resheske and you're interested in the new way he is going to teach and help copywriters, you're going to now have a much more heightened awareness of the emails coming around that subject. Here's the first one as the example:
This all may look obvious in retrospect. You may very well have just done this kind of approach naturally - where you have something new to share and you unveil it over a series of communication to your best audience.
It's all just behavior.
How we behave and perceive the people we communicate with. We're going to be more tuned in when something is going on which may impact us. Even if that impact is just a bit of delight, or some new information or clarity or understanding.
But especially if it's something we might want to be a part of, or we might benefit from, we're going to pay attention.
So, use that.
CREATE EVENTS. Make people feel like they are a part of an event, part of something special, unique, interesting.
Don't go out of your way to manufacture this, be authentic. Just pay attention whenever you have something new and interesting, or you want to do something special for your customers ... make an event out of it and they will enjoy being a part of that.
A Note To You Dear Reader -- I'll be honest, I've written over 7k words for Stage 3 already, and I feel like I'm only scratching the surface tactically. I've got an extensive list to continue, but at this point, I'm going to give you the section as is, and then expand and go into details with examples in the R3 for Email Book.
Likely the final version of this section as it appears in the book will be different, expanded, improved, etc.
If you have questions thus far based on what I’ve shared, let me know in the comments and I’ll will give you my best most complete and detailed answer (and it will in one way or another be answered in the book)
Be Useful. Be Present. Love the Journey.
, CMO Man Bites Dog
Ready to Step Into The Arena?
Ready to engage the field? Man Bites Dog paid subscribers have comment access unlocked below. (They’re also sent a killer welcome package in the mail with all kinds of opportunities that are not available in digital format)
Here are some other options:
Get on the waitlist to join the Arena: engagethefield.com
Check out the Engaging The Field Handbook
Grab your your own copy of the R3 system (it’s a book and it’s not cheap)