A Million Dollar Welcome Series
One of the most common strategies we use to onboard new clients and introduce their newsletters to readers is by writing a welcome series. Today I want to share how we outline these emails and the overall series structure.
Email #1 — Establish the Mission
The first email is the most welcoming of the series. You should include kind, encouraging language and say thank you for subscribing. You can also ask the reader to reply to the email, mark as important, or whitelist your email address. All of these help with deliverability.
But one of the main things welcome emails fail at is establishing the mission of the newsletter. Every newsletter has a mission. If yours doesn't, you need to change that, pronto.
The Million Dollar Newsletter mission is to build highly profitable newsletters that are the backbone of successful creators. Everything I write about supports that mission and readers like you! Everything revolves helping you succeed.
The final piece of the first welcome email is to provide a helpful resource that supports the mission. This is often a lead magnet which can be completed within 30 minutes. It could be a short video training, checklist, script, template, or something similar. But it needs to align the mission with action.
Email #2 — Define the Problem
The second email defines the problem or challenge standing in the way of a successful mission. You can position these problems as the topics covered in the newsletter and how staying in the loop will help readers overcome these problems.
For example the Million Dollar Newsletter defines the challenges as limited time or expertise, ignorance about why newsletters matter, a lack of structure or automation, and the inability or fear of selling products.
But you must go one step further defining the problem. You have to show the reader what's at risk if the problem isn't solved or the challenge is not overcome. The reader has to feel what the future will be like without change, and that feeling isn't good.
One way to do this is to share your own story. This has the effect of introducing you to the reader in a deeper way and showing how big of a problem this "thing" became before you found solution(s) that worked.
Email #3 — Show the Solution
The third email shows the reader proven solutions to the problem established in the previous email. This can be shown through your own journey and transformation, but will more impactful to show testimonials from clients or customers.
This email is often the strongest teaching email in the series. If you have a system, framework, or acronym to help explain the solution → this is the email to talk about it.
Examples:
- My 3S Content Library
- Nathan Barry's Creator Flywheel
- Tiago Forte's PARA or CODE frameworks
- Anne-Laure's 3 Components of Motivation
Email #4 — Common Mistakes
The fourth email pulls the reader back a little and reminds them of common issues, mistakes, and mis-steps on the journey to success.
You're establishing yourself as the guide to the hero (reader) by pointing out the pitfalls and traps people often get caught in. At the risk of nerding out too hard, this is where Frodo crosses the Brandywine River to escape the Nazgul, or Luke sees the Death Star for the first time and hides in the Falcon.
This is another good opportunity to integrate a case study from one of your clients or customers. If you don't have clients or customers to use as case studies yet, borrow one.
I'll talk more about this in a future email, but it's taking a successful person in your field and crafting an email around their success story. Chenell Basilio does this on a grand scale with Growth in Reverse, and Tom Boyd does this in quick videos on Bonus Footage.
Email #5 — Call to Action
The fifth email is the call to action. If you have a lower-priced impulse product, i.e. the Justin Welsh course, this is a great place to pitch it.
Ideally, the product aligns with everything you've been talking about and promoting to this point. It helps the reader skip (or be aware of) common mistakes and gives a clear solution to the pain points that keep our hero from achieving the mission.
This doesn't need to be a super-hard pitch. If you've set up the welcome series in a clear, helpful, informative way, then it should be a natural extension of the messages. Even if people don't buy, they at least appreciate a guided resource and are likely to buy in the future.
For an extra tip (only for readers!) make sure you're also tagging those clicks in the CTA email as interested in the product. That way you can filter who bought against who only clicked and run a follow-up email to those subscribers.
Recap: Simple 5 Email Welcome Series
1 - Establish the Mission
2 - Define the Problem
3 - Show the Solution
4 - Common Mistakes
5 - Call to Action
p.s. when you're ready, there are few ways we can work together.
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