Ultimate guide to email sequences

To those who have completely given up on email marketing, here’s an interesting statistic for you:

For every dollar spent on email marketing, ROI can reportedly reach $44. 

Now, I’m not saying that you’re doing your email outreach completely wrong, but you know it’s not completely right!

There are a lot of theories on how to write sales emails and things to keep in mind, we have already covered it in our previous article. But we’re going to talk about an important element of any successful email outreach campaign – Sequences!

Outline – Jump to your favorite Section

1. What is an email sequence?

2. What is the difference between a drip sequence and an email sequence?

3. Types of email sequences

4. How to create an email sequence?

5. Why businesses use email sequences?

6. About Salesmate Sequences

What is an email sequence?

A sequence is a series of emails sent to prospects or customers at the desired time interval with triggers to achieve a certain goal. 

Simply put, you send emails one after another in such a way that it encourages your customers to take certain actions. Your end goal can be anything like;

1. Converting free customers into paying.

2. Increase the audience of your articles.

3. Improve the traffic to your site.

4. Get more subscribers to your channel or blog.

5. Inviting them for an event.

6. Increase the reach of your brand a.k.a. Branding. 

These are the types of email sequences that we’re going to understand in this article:

1. Onboarding email sequence
2. Newsletter or training sequence
3. Cold email sequence
4. Abandon cart recovery sequence
5. Account renewal sequence
6. Webinar (event sequence)
7. Conversion sequence

Let’s start.

What is the difference between a drip sequence and an email sequence?

We have mentioned 7 kinds of sequences above. Just to clear the air, we have to understand the major difference between a drip sequence and an email sequence. They both have a series of emails lined up, but this is the main difference:

In a normal email sequence, the contacts will no longer receive emails once they take some kind of action. For example, I’m sending out abandoned cart recovery emails to my thousand customers. Customers who cleared their cart or made a purchase will be removed from the further sequence.

On the other hand, in drip sequence, the customers or prospects will constantly get emails as per the intervals decided. The finest example of a drip sequence is – Onboarding sequence. 

Can we start our examples with an onboarding sequence?

1. Onboarding email sequence

Onboarding is the process of introducing your product or service with the prospects. Basically, it’s a walk-through for your prospects or new customers. This drip sequence helps customers understand your product/service better. Here’s the onboarding email sequence we’re using at Salesmate for our new signups:

1. Introduction email
2. Email from our support team
3. Features-driven email 1
4. Features-driven email 2
5. An email with useful case studies
6. Asking for feedback from our CEO.

This onboarding email sequence has worked really solid for us with almost 38% of open rate. Here’s the introductory email we’re using. 

Though the onboarding sequence is majorly about support or marketing, you can also include pricing plans to convert free customers into paying. 

2. Newsletter or training sequence

The second best example of a drip sequence is a newsletter or training sequence. Here, you send out a series of emails to educate your readers. 

There are no conversion goals from such a sequence, but the real achievement is branding. People will really start to connect and understand your brand. They will regularly visit your blog to read articles. And when you have something that best suited for their requirements, they won’t hesitate to invest in your product.

Here’s a great example from Customerly – a live chat software. The sequence describes a 14-days online training program. I received 14 emails, one each day with valuable information on how to communicate with your visitors and convert them to paying customers. Here’s the first email I received:

3. Cold email sequence

Cold emails can be a wonderful source of new customers for your business. You don’t know much about the prospects that you’re approaching. All you know is that there’s a slight chance they might be interested in your offerings.

There are no rules in cold emailing. All you have to take care of is not spamming the prospects!

To design the best cold email sequence, you have to clearly understand your customers. In fancy words, you must have your buyer persona.

Once you’re done identifying who can be your future customers, you have to find the right email addresses where you can approach. After you design the right email templates, you can start your sequence.

This would be the perfect cold email sequence:

Email 1: An introductory email telling a bit about your company and your offerings. This will filter out the prospects who are actually interested in your offerings.

Email 2: A follow up email to those prospects who have not read or replied to your email. 

Email 3: A last follow up email with a note that it would be your last follow up email.

For the prospects who showed interest in your offerings, you can handle them manually as the needs can vary a lot. Either, you can also create new steps in the sequence or use workflows. 

I’m putting down two cold email sequence templates: An introductory cold email and a follow up email. Check them out.

Introductory email

Follow up email:

4.  Abandon cart recovery sequence

77% of customers abandon their carts before checking out. That is a sad statistic for the entire eCommerce segment.

But, the abandoned cart recovery emails can help you a lot, because these emails directly add monetary value to your revenue. 

Before designing a sequence for abandoned cart recovery, we have to understand why people hesitate to make the last move:

1. Indecisiveness
2. Found a better deal elsewhere
3. Price
4. Issues with checkout (complicated checkout process)
5. They simply forgot (or got distracted)

Now, abandoned cart emails will not solve every problem, but they will create some triggers that’ll push customers to take a certain action. 

Before you send out thousands of emails to your customers, you have to make sure that your checkout process is smooth. 

This can be your ideal abandoned cart recovery sequence. Take a look:

According to MooSend, roughly 11% of the customers actually complete their checkout after a series of such emails. 

5. Account renewal sequence

The email sequence no. 5 is a very important set of emails. To those customers who have been paying you for a period of time but they have stopped for some reason, these emails will definitely help. 

There are only three steps to this operation:

1. Understand why customers have left.
2. Resolve the issues they’re facing.
3. Help them join your platform again.

Pretty simple!

This would be a great first email for the account renewal email sequence.

Resolve the issues they’re facing:

A quick follow up on your last email:

The last follow up email:

6. Webinar (event sequence)

Let’s say that you’re organizing a really big event for Dentists in New York City. You have a genuine list of all major dentists in the city, and you want to reach out to them if they would like to attend the event.

An email sequence can do everything for you as long as you have designed the steps mindfully. 

This is what I would do:

Step 1: An introductory email about the event. Include basic things like venue, subject of discussion, guest speakers, etc. Create a trigger that can help you separate interested dentists from the list like a Google form. Or ask them to drop a reply.

Step 2: People who have dropped a response will receive another email describing more details about the event and other perks. You can include a link to the payment that’ll confirm the exact list of people joining the event.

Step 3: A follow up email for the dentists that missed your last email. Just like the first email, include all the basics and also include a trigger.

Step 4: A follow up email for the people who opened your last email but not responded. You can add a bit more details about the event and provide a special discount if needed.

Step 5: Send out a congratulatory email to all the dentists who have confirmed.

Step 6: Send out the last email to all the contacts who have either opened your email or not. This email would be a final reminder to join the event. You can use catchy subject lines like “Last chance to listen to Dr. John about AI developments in dentistry!”

7. Conversion sequence

The conversion sequence is also a revenue-generating email sequence. This would be a very important set of emails if you provide a free trial to your customers. This would be the ideal flow of these emails, and I’m dropping examples of each email:

1. Your free trial is about to finish (one day before the free trial ends)
2. Last day of your free trial
3. Your account information will be deleted in the next 10 days (after the trial ends)
4. Last day to recover your account (10 days after the trial ends)

These are some useful templates for all these four emails:

Your free trial is about to finish (one day before the free trial ends)

Last day of your free trial

Your account information will be deleted in the next 10 days (after the trial ends)

Last day to recover your account (10 days after the trial ends)

Besides these 4 emails, you can also squeeze a feedback email!

How to create an email sequence

Now that we’ve explored some important email sequences, it’s time to understand how to create an email sequence. Well, there are two main ways:

1. Use an email marketing tool (like MailChimp)
2. Use a CRM with the same functionality (Like Salesmate)

If you pick the first option, you have to create some kind of integration to pass your CRM data to a marketing tool. If you pick the second option, well, it’s a better choice. You don’t have to rely on any integrations, you can use your own data to create lists easily, and much more.

This is a sample of an onboarding + conversion email sequence in Salesmate, check it out:

You can have some important settings to automate your email sequence with Salesmate CRM, check them out:

1. Define timezone.
2. Execute sequence on weekdays only.
3. How many times can a contact be added in the sequence?
4. Stop the sequence if the customers reply.
5. Add tags to the contacts.
6. Add a tag if the email bounces.
7. Add a tag if the contact replies.
8. Add a tag if the contact doesn’t reply.
9. Pause on Out-of-Office emails.

Such settings will make sure the email sequence is running as per your plan. 

Why businesses use email sequences?

Ohh, there are thousands of reasons why any business would choose email sequences. But the most important reason would be Automation!

Yes, no manual work. No typing the same email again and again. No adding contacts manually. No wastage of useful time!

Basically no labor work!

Besides automation, these are some appealing reasons to use email sequences:

1. Get insights like how many emails were opened, unsubscribed, clicked, replied, etc.
2. Make the campaign better with data.
3. Make sure not to spam any customer at any cost!
4. Filter out contacts who are not interested in your product (Unsubscribe).
5. Higher productivity of sales & marketing teams.
6. Close sales at a faster rate.
7. Target the right prospect and improve the conversion rate!

And much more!

About Salesmate sequences

No need to remember taking sales follow ups anymore. Salesmate’s sales email sequences feature allows you to automate your follow ups and make your campaigns more effective. You can create a follow up sequence using a mixture of emails, texts, activity, and reminders, to run campaigns according to your schedule

With 20+ important settings, you can automate your email sequence exactly the way you want. With the combination of emails, texts, activities, reminders, calls, you can design your dream email sequence with Salesmate.

You can take a 15-days free trial of Salesmate and explore Sequence and all other features.