What is an Email Sequence? (Winner Ideas, Examples)
Email marketing is one of the most effective tools for building relationships, nurturing leads, and driving sales. But sending individual emails manually? That’s not scalable.
This is where email sequences shine—a game-changing strategy that automates communication, ensuring the right message reaches the right person at the perfect time. Successful communication with customers drives the world of business. Conversations where needs are understood and beliefs are shared create strong bonds between companies and their clientele, earning them a special place in their hearts.
Do you know that many leading businesses practice uninterrupted communication? They skillfully combine proactive and reactive strategies to address current problems, predict customer pain points, and anticipate inceptive needs and expectations, making their dialogues meaningful.
In email marketing, this uninterrupted communication is realized through email sequences. From series of brand messages triggered by customers’ actions on the website to those launched before special events, companies conduct worthwhile conversations and deliver value at the right time to maintain strong customer relationships.
Let’s explore this concept in detail. How does it help companies to achieve their marketing goals? How can you create it step-by-step? What does it look like in practice? By the end, you’ll have the tools and knowledge to create email sequences that resonate with audiences and deliver measurable results.
What Is an Email Sequence?
An email sequence is a collection of marketing messages sent one by one in a certain order. It follows a specific pattern and is triggered by time or an event. Depending on the ultimate marketing goal, it might consist of a couple or a dozen messages.
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Free Email BuilderFree Email TemplatesThis series of emails is usually automated through special software. It could be sent to the whole market or only a segment of people in your subscription list. It could also be personalized and changed according to certain criteria.
The main feature that separates email sequences from traditional drip campaigns is that they can be triggered by various events, specific actions performed at a predetermined time, and scheduled by time. In contrast, drip campaigns are traditionally activated only by certain users’ actions on a website. That said, in modern marketing, these two concepts are often used interchangeably as their distinctions are not critical.
Email sequences usually pursue certain email marketing objectives. The most popular are:
- Nurture loyal subscribers.
- Move subscribers down the funnel.
- Increase conversions and leads.
- Re-engage inactive subscribers.
- Maximize return on investment.
- Establish strong and healthy relationships with customers.
- Raise the brand’s visibility and cement brand identity.
To achieve these goals, companies apply either time-based or trigger-based email sequences.
Time-Based and Trigger-Based Email Sequences
Unlike drip campaigns activated exclusively by user’s certain actions on a website, landing page, or digital store, email sequence gives companies more flexibility to reach their customers and achieve their goals, as they could be triggered by various events or scheduled on time.
The trigger-based email sequences are sent in response to the particular behavior of an individual. This could be the following actions:
- Click a link in an email or button on a site.
- Download a product from a landing page.
- Start a free trial.
- View a specific product or information.
- Fill out a form on the website.
- Subscribe to the company’s email list.
- Abandon shopping cart.
- Purchase a product.
- Browse items in one product category.
- Do a site search for a certain product.
Time-based email sequences are sent at predefined intervals or specific times. It could be:
- In several days or weeks after certain events or actions like purchasing or abandoning a shopping cart.
- On the anniversary, birthday, or milestone.
- A period without a purchase or of inactivity.
- On holidays or sale events like Black Friday or Christmas.
- A period for replenishment.
- Long time inactivity.
- End of the free trial.
- After a specific interval over time.
Time and events that could trigger an email sequence differ as they align with the company’s niche, target audience, and email marketing strategy and goals. However, some of them are used by most companies across all industries, underlying several popular types of email sequences.
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Popular Types of Email Sequences
Regardless of the market, target audience, and product, companies widely adopt these popular email sequences in their email marketing strategy.
Welcome Email Sequence
The welcome email sequence activates when the user has signed up to the mailing list or made the first purchase in your store. It usually consists of no more than three branding messages and does these tasks:
- Acknowledge the user’s action.
- Introduce the company by providing some basic branding information.
- Provide all necessary legal information, including a privacy policy and link to a preference center.
- Inform about the next step.
- Make the new subscriber feel a part of the new community.
Some welcome emails might include rewards, bonuses, discounts, shipping info, etc.
Example:
- Day 1: A warm welcome with an overview of your brand’s values.
- Day 3: Highlight key products/services or share your best-performing content.
- Day 5: Include a call-to-action (CTA) to explore more or join a community.
Onboarding Email Sequences
Sometimes, welcome and onboarding email series are used interchangeably; however, they are not the same. While similar events trigger them—a person has subscribed to the mailing list or made a purchase—they still perform different tasks as they pursue different goals.
The onboarding email sequence focuses on technical data and serves as a guide for newcomers. It aims to bridge the gap between the product and customers, create a comfortable and intuitive environment, and provide them with all the necessary information to get the most out of the product.
Typically, onboarding emails consist of more than two or three emails to provide customers with all the data they need in a digestible format. They could also be used to compel newcomers to take action.
Example:
- Email 1: Quick start guide or tutorial.
- Email 2: Tips and tricks for maximizing value.
- Email 3: Invite them to connect with customer support for any questions.
Abandoned Cart Email Sequence
Abandoned cart email sequence tops our list of the most popular email sequences. Almost 70% of shopping carts are abandoned by their owners, which is one of the most popular events in digital stores. However, recent studies showed that automated workflows intended to resolve cart abandonment may drastically increase conversion rates and solve the issue in 30-50% times.
A typical abandoned cart email sequence has a few separate emails. Although it might have as many marketing messages as you want, many companies do not overdo it and use no more than three emails to avoid looking pushy and annoying.
As for content, it might show products left in the cart, present feedback, demonstrate price drops, and include a special discount.
Example:
- Email 1: Friendly reminder with images of the items left in the cart.
- Email 2: Offer a limited-time discount or incentive.
- Email 3: Create urgency with “last chance” messaging.
Re-engagement Email Sequence
Re-engagement email sequences aim to renew relationships with inactive subscribers on your email list. Representatives from all industries, including B2B, B2C, and e-commerce, have them in their arsenal, as no one is immune to customers becoming inactive or disengaged with the brand or product.
When played right, a re-engagement email series could be a surefire way to reduce customer churn and increase customer loyalty by reminding about the brand and its product, re-igniting interest, reactivating subscribers with a special offer or discount, or removing them from the mailing list to save your sender’s score, reputation, and email deliverability.
Example:
- Email 1: A “We miss you” message with a compelling reason to return.
- Email 2: Showcase new features, products, or updates.
- Email 3: Offer an exclusive deal to re-engage them.
Lead Nurturing Email Sequence
A lead nurturing email sequence is triggered when a user takes the action necessary to convert from a prospect to a lead. It addresses leads’ needs, interests, and pain points at various journey stages. It includes a series of targeted emails that guide the lead through the funnel while building strong relationships with the company.
As a rule, lead nurturing email sequences draw your prospect’s attention toward the product, increase engagement with the brand, and educate them about the product’s features and benefits to move them closer to a purchase decision. They are segmented and hyper-personalized to perform better with different customers.
Example:
- Email 1: Solve a common pain point with actionable advice.
- Email 2: Share a case study or testimonial.
- Email 3: Offer a free trial, demo, or consultation.
Upsell and Cross-Sell Email Sequence
Upsell and cross-sell email sequences are based on the customer’s purchasing history and behavior on the website. Various factors could trigger them, but purchasing products or browsing certain store categories is the most popular.
Usually, companies use them to recommend a complementary product or push more expensive items in the same category by providing a discount. SaaS companies use them to persuade their clients to upgrade the existing plan or buy extended features.
Example:
- Email 1: Introduce a related product that enhances their purchase.
- Email 2: Provide user-generated reviews or success stories.
- Email 3: Offer a bundle deal or discount for multiple purchases.
Feedback Email Sequence
A feedback email sequence has become popular in the SaaS sector as it provides crucial information for product improvement. It collects qualitative and quantitative data, acknowledges the importance of user’s opinions, and further incentivizes clients through offers or discounts.
The series shows users that the company is generally concerned about their satisfaction with the brand and product. It also improves retention and reinforces the brand’s positioning. Therefore, many companies across industries adopt this automated series to improve customer relationships and make them feel valued and appreciated.
Importance of Creating Email Sequence
The importance of creating email sequences lies in their ability to achieve marketing goals, build healthy customer relationships, and establish a strong brand identity.
Consider the welcome and onboarding email series as a case in point. Serving as the first point of interaction with your company in the email channel, they underlie a solid foundation for healthy relationships with customers. Studies show they are among the most wanted and anticipated digital correspondence, with a staggering 80% open rate.
These two email sequences accomplish several crucial tasks. They inspire confidence in customer’s previous actions. They make them feel good about their choice. They maintain a positive experience. They give them the necessary information to move forward. Finally, they deliver value at the right time.
As a result, people require these series to feel comfortable and make the most out of the newly established partnership with your brand and product.
Another good example is the abandoned cart email sequence. It gives a company a golden opportunity to recover revenue loss without investing much money or effort. Recent studies showed that 75% of lapsed buyers intend to return to their carts, so the on-time abandoned cart email sequence might draw them back to the site and encourage them to complete the purchase.
Other reasons why creating an email sequence is important for your business lie in the benefits you can derive if you make it brand-aligned and customer-centric.
Benefits of Creating Email Sequences
Email sequences are scalable and flexible. They are powerful playgrounds where email marketers exercise their creativity, test new approaches, and find the best ways to capitalize on customer relationships.
The best part is that email sequences can be personalized and segmented through professional software to deliver value to the right person at the right time. They could be automated, so companies do not need to adjust them to every person or scenario. They are quickly assembled in Postcards email builder to work consistently across devices, operating systems, screens, and mailbox providers.
Depending on the industry and email strategy, an email sequence helps companies accomplish these tasks:
Move leads down the funnel effectively and quickly.
Delivering the right message for the right stage of the buyer’s journey is the surefire way to meet customer’s needs and expectations, thereby unobtrusively yet persistently pushing them toward an ultimate conversion.
Improve open rate.
Again, delivering value at the right time makes the connection with the brand appreciated and welcome. People are more eagerly open emails.
Although a high open rate does not guarantee high conversions and revenue, it is still critical for ISPs to assign each company sender’s score. The higher the open rate, the better the company’s reputation and the easier it will reach its subscribers. A high open rate might also lead to enhanced deliverability and engagement rates that go a long way in email marketing.
Boost sales.
When played right, lead nurturing and upsell email sequences may help a company increase revenue by triggering repeated customer purchases. Other series, like abandoned carts or re-engagement emails, may also generate extra money.
Better understand your target audience’s needs, pain points, and expectations.
Feedback email sequences and some re-engagement follow-ups are perfect for fetching relevant information about the client’s current desires and pain points. By analyzing their performance and collected data, the company may devise more accurate customer-centric email sequences and adjust marketing efforts in other communication channels.
Build a strong brand identity.
Expressing and reinforcing a brand’s unique personality and values in every communication with customers allows the company to increase its visibility, build a lasting connection, and reinforce brand identity and reputation, thereby becoming a thought leader in the niche.
Increase trust and loyalty among clients.
Last but not least, when email sequences are aligned with customers’ needs, preferences, and expectations, they naturally instill trust in communication with the brand. This builds loyalty, enhances retention, and drives profitability and expansion.
Email Template from Pretty Little Thing
7 Popular and High-Converting Ideas for Email Sequences
Consider the best practices for introducing email sequences in your email marketing plan.
Greet with Welcome Email Sequence
A welcome email sequence helps the company make a great first impression and leave an unmistakable imprint in customers’ minds. Regardless of niche, audience, and product, it is fundamental for businesses. Triggered when a new subscriber signs up to an email list or makes a purchase, it is the first communication between company and customer that could turn one meeting into a life-long partnership.
To nail the welcome email series, it should accomplish these goals:
- Acknowledge the customer’s previous action.
- Provide the necessary information to move forward.
- Set the right expectations.
- Appreciate newly-acquired customers and make them feel valued.
It is also crucial to remember that welcome emails meet prospects when their interest in your product or brand is the highest. Therefore, it is crucial to set the right goals with it and think through its content and every step in the series.
The welcome email series could be as short as two messages and as long as ten, especially when brands use them for onboarding. The number of emails in the series largely depends on the ultimate goal, type of business, and email marketing strategy. However, in general, you might find these brand messages:
- Heart-warming message from the company or CEO to greet new customers on board.
- Introduction of team, product, or brand.
- Necessary information to move forward.
- Privacy policy and links to a preference center to let customers be in charge of their digital correspondence.
- Clients’ feedback and reviews.
- Introduction to the reward system.
- Feedback form.
- Coupon, special offer, or discount.
- A heads-up of what to expect during the onboarding process.
Companies should always focus on their target audience when creating this email series. It is highly recommended that new clients receive hyper-personalized messages.
Bridge the Gap with an Onboarding Email Sequence
The onboarding email sequence might not be as critical and fundamental as the welcome email series (some companies even skip them). Still, it certainly contributes a lot to establishing strong relationships with customers and making them feel happy and satisfied with their choices.
Traditionally, the SaaS sector makes the most of this automated series. Other niches benefit substantially from introducing it in their email marketing strategies. For instance, they reduce the churn rate, improve customer retention, elevate satisfaction with the product, and even increase conversions.
The onboarding email sequence is largely used to accomplish these tasks:
- Educate about the product and its features.
- Make people realize the value and benefit they can get using your product.
- Bridge the gap between the company and new customers.
- Provide crucial information for customers to feel comfortable in the new partnership (this could be a link to a direct chat with the customer support team, for example).
- Answer burning questions in the form of an FAQ.
- Provide information for the next move.
Depending on business goals, the onboarding email flow could be short or long. For instance, if the company’s goal is to convert leads into customers who have signed up for the free trial, it could be as long as ten messages that gradually nurture prospects down the funnel.
Here are some ideas of what you can do in your follow-up messages:
- Welcome new clients with a message from the founder or dev team.
- Restate value proposition.
- Provide all information to unlock the product’s potential.
- Show the next onboarding steps.
- Complete the customer’s profile by fetching crucial data.
- Set preferences for user’s correspondence.
- Increase trust with clients’ feedback and reviews.
- Deliver helpful resources.
- Guide troubleshooting or using advanced features.
- Highlight customer service contact information.
- Invite new subscribers to the community.
- Show appreciation through small gifts or discounts.
At the end of the day, the onboarding email sequence should make your customers feel satisfied with their purchase and confident in operating your products independently.
Elysian Accents – Email Template
Recover Sale with Abandoned Cart Email Sequence
Another great idea for introducing an email sequence in your marketing strategy is handling abandoned cart situations, which constantly happen in the SaaS and e-commerce sectors. While it is inevitable, the good news is that you might bring back some of your abandoners through a well-thought-out email sequence.
Besides improving the cart recovery rate, when played smartly, it may also increase sales and reinforce your relationships with customers by delivering them true value at the right time. It might also build trust with the company and inspire loyalty, which is crucial for repeat purchases.
Unlike the welcome and onboarding series, it could not be long, as you might scare away your customers and leave a bad impression of your brand by being too pushy or noisy. A typical sequence includes three follow-ups. Here they are:
- A gentle reminder about the product or products left in the shopping cart with corresponding images and call-to-action buttons.
- A reminder that highlights the benefits of the product. It is usually sent one day later.
- A reactivation email with coupons or other incentives, such as free shipping, gifts, or extra reward bonuses, is usually sent 3-5 days later.
If you feel like your target audience may tolerate more brand messages, you might also try these ideas as well:
- Display social proof in the form of customer testimonials.
- Add recommendations.
- Play the influencing card.
- Play psychological tricks like establishing a sense of scarcity, exclusivity, and FOMO.
- Cross-sell products from the same category.
- Put a time limit to infuse a little urgency.
- Ask questions to uncover the customer’s specific needs and preferences.
Alternatively, you may create multiple abandoned cart email series to grasp more opportunities to win back customers. Using segmentation and data from customers’ purchase history, you might adopt different tactics.
Finally, aligning your email copy with your brand voice and personalizing it is highly recommended based on customers’ purchase history, cart size, and product preferences.
Decrease Churn with Re-Engagement Email Sequence
Customer churn is a term all businesses are familiar with. It happens with every company across niches, regardless of their product or market segment. People lose their interest and become disengaged with the brand all the time. There are so many reasons for that situation to happen. It could be pricing concerns, poor user experience, bad customer support, lack of value, tough competition, negative brand perception, etc. However, whatever the cause, companies still have a last chance to fight for their clients using re-engagement email sequences.
The re-engagement email sequence targets inactive and disengaged subscribers. It gives people reasons to stick around by giving them more options and ways to interact with the brand. It delivers a message centered around the theme of getting back together at a gradual pace and avoiding being too pushy or overwhelming.
The typical re-engagement email series includes these messages:
- The reminder that initiates a win-back email series (usually, companies ask their subscribers if they are still interested in receiving emails from them)
- Invitation to review email preferences.
- Reaffirmation of a product’s value is based on the customer’s pain points or through social proof, accolades, or achievements.
- Announcement of new features and performance improvements.
- Gift, discount, or reward for getting back.
If the re-engagement series does not work, it usually concludes with an apologetic email in which the brand confirms unsubscribing the client. Some companies use the last email to invite their customers to join them in other communication channels to stay up-to-date with the brand.
To make it work, you must understand the reason behind the churn and segment your target audience accordingly. Every email must be personalized and meet a specific individual’s needs and expectations. Optimizing the sending time and frequency of follow-ups for individuals would also help.
Boost Revenue with Up-Sell and Cross-Sell Email Sequence
Did you know that penetration techniques (including cross-selling and upselling) can boost sales by up to 20%? They work in brick-and-mortar shops (heads up to McDonald’s and their French fries offered to every order) and in email marketing.
When done properly, cross-selling and up-selling offer businesses numerous benefits. The most direct and obvious advantage is increased sales and revenue. They also boost product visibility, escalate customer lifetime value, and provide greater customer satisfaction.
To make them work in email channels, companies send not one but a series of interconnected up-sell or cross-sell messages to offer their customers various opportunities to interact with the brand and make a repeat purchase.
This sequence is based on the customer’s previous purchase or buying intentions. It is short, sweet, and valuable. It might accompany abandoned carts or re-engagement email sequences.
Messages that are typically presented in this series do these:
- Highlight the product a customer is looking to buy or has already bought.
- Offer a handful of related or complementary products.
- Indicate the benefits of upgrading or buying premium versions of the product.
- Demonstrate social proof.
- Address FAQs or possible concerns and confusions.
- Include a special offer.
Companies might initiate this series to remind customers to stock up, celebrate customer milestones, tease loyal customers with a product launch, or accompany a post-purchase stage.
Maintain Relationships with Lead Nurturing Email Sequence
A lead-nurturing email sequence is one of the most popular tools for generating conversions and achieving marketing goals. It builds and maintains relationships with prospects at every stage of their journey, from awareness to advocacy.
Sent over weeks or months, it drags potential customers deep into conversations and nurtures them down the funnel by addressing their pain points and meeting their current expectations. It keeps them engaged and gently pushes them toward becoming repeat clients.
Tasks that lead to nurturing email sequences help companies accomplish include:
- Stay top of mind for subscribers who are not ready to purchase but have an intention.
- Build awareness of the product and its benefits.
- Increase the visibility of the product.
- Educate about the product and its potential.
- Inform about new features or improvements.
- Engage with a prospect and build strong relationships with them.
- Nudge your prospects when they are ready to make a purchase.
The lead nurturing email sequences come in all shapes and sizes. The most popular are:
- Repeat the customer email sequence.
- Reactivation email sequence.
- Event email sequence.
- Follow-up email sequence.
The lead nurturing email sequence largely depends on the company’s marketing strategy and ultimate goal. However, it is crucial to understand the target audience’s needs and follow the best practices in the niche, such as introducing hyper-personalization, creating high-converting subject lines, authenticating every message, and doing A/B tests to determine what works best.
Improve Product with Feedback Email Sequence
The idea for creating email sequences is to involve subscribers in feedback and reviews. Unlike all the series mentioned above, this one will be the shortest, as there is no point in bombarding your customers with too many requests. As a rule, such a series includes no more than three messages to achieve these crucial tasks:
- Gather relevant information about the market’s needs, preferences, and expectations.
- Derive information on how to improve the experience for your customers.
- Make customers feel valued.
- Drive engagement.
- Increase conversions and leads.
- Improve relationships with customers.
- Boost brand identity.
The feedback email sequence is activated after these events:
- Interaction with customer support.
- Product improvement.
- Any changes in user experience, website, application, brand representation, pricing, privacy policy, etc.
- The end of a free trial.
Ask subscribers for feedback whenever you want. Finding the right moment and making them feel valued and appreciated will work like magic.
The typical feedback email sequence includes these two messages
- Invitation to participate in a short questionary or quiz to get relevant data. You might use interactive elements like forms, surveys, rating systems, and emojis to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback without feeling overwhelming or boring.
- Acknowledgement of receiving feedback. Usually, it is a thank-you note. In case of negative feedback, you might mention how you plan to address the issues or concerns.
If the first email fails to compel subscribers to provide feedback, companies may send an extra incentive newsletter with a special bonus, offer, or reward. This incentive must be exclusive to the people they target so they feel it is something special.
Crucial Tools for Creating Successful Email Sequences
Email sequences yield great results for companies. They boost conversions, enhance customer relationships, improve brand identity, and increase revenue. But managing them can be a true challenge. Companies need professional software that does all the heavy lifting and helps unlock the true potential hidden inside this marketing tactic.
Here are key features to look for in email sequence software, with some recommendations for finding the right tools.
Customizable Templates
Running an entire email sequence of three, five, and sometimes even ten messages can be daunting, to say nothing about being time-consuming and resource-intensive. Here, you need customizable templates that can quickly adjust to various needs.
The best way to create them is to use Postcards email builder, a professional email template builder. It offers an intuitive, feature-rich environment to create consistent, professional, branded, fully responsive, and accessible messages quickly. You might build your newsletter from scratch or use one of the preformatted templates available in the gallery to A/B test your theories or kick-start your email sequence immediately.
Deliverability and Anti-Spam Tests
If something is wrong with delivery or deliverability, your efforts will be in vain, as your message will be rejected or land in the spam folder. Use Unspam – email spam checker, an advanced email spam checker that analyzes the message’s content, design, and technical side to optimize delivery and ensure the message gets right into the customer’s inbox.
Personalization, Segmentation, and Automation
Personalization, segmentation, and automation are the cornerstones of every email sequence. Hyper-personalized messages that deliver value to the right person at the right time and stage of their customer’s journey will emerge victorious. The good news is that many professional email marketing services offer their clients these features under one roof. Check out MailChimp, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, and others to see which plans work best for you.
Analytics and Reporting
Gathering, analyzing, and reporting data about subscribers’ behavior over time is crucial for adjusting your email sequence to new realities. Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Hubspot allow you to do this through automated tools and AI-powered algorithms. They provide detailed insights into various metrics, analyze campaigns across numerous factors, and present data visually appealingly.
Scalability
The day will come when you need to scale your marketing efforts, cover a wide audience, and jungle numerous email sequences. Therefore, when choosing professional tools, ensure they meet short- and long-term email marketing goals. They should streamline your efforts across teams and parallels, adapt to changing market conditions, provide security, follow relevant laws and regulations, and support businesses’ growth and development.
How to Create an Effective Email Sequence
Crafting a high-performing email sequence involves more than just writing a few emails. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
1. Define Your Goals
Clearly articulate what you want your email sequence to achieve. Are you nurturing leads? Driving sales? Re-engaging inactive subscribers? Each goal requires a different approach.
2. Understand Your Audience
Use segmentation to divide your audience based on their preferences, behavior, or demographics. The more personalized your emails, the better the results.
3. Map Out the Sequence
Plan the flow of your emails, including:
- Number of emails in the sequence.
- Time intervals between each email.
- Specific triggers for sending each message.
4. Write Engaging Emails
Focus on creating emails that resonate with your audience:
- Subject Line: Grab attention instantly (e.g., “Don’t Miss Out!” or “Here’s How to Get Started”).
- Body Content: Keep it concise, relevant, and actionable.
- Call-to-Action: Use clear CTAs (e.g., “Shop Now,” “Download Guide,” or “Schedule a Demo”).
5. Set Up Automation
Use email marketing tools to automate your sequence. These platforms allow you to set triggers, such as sign-ups or abandoned carts, and deliver emails at optimal times.
6. Test and Optimize
Regularly analyze performance metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Use A/B testing to refine subject lines, content, and timing for better results.
4 Core Practices for Effective Email Sequence
At the core of every email sequence lies the brand message. Whether you want to welcome new users on board or recover disengaged customers, the success of your series largely depends on what message you deliver and how well it resonates with the target audience. Follow these four best practices to ensure that every digital newsletter in your series contributes to the overall impact.
Authentication
Starting in 2024, authentication became a must-have for every business wanting to reach their audience through Google and Yahoo mailbox providers, as both updated their authentication requirements and spam prevention policies. To meet their standards, take these steps:
- Send an email from your own branded domain.
- Authenticate emails with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Provide easy one-click unsubscribe.
- Honor unsubscribing requests within two days.
- Keep spam complaints below the common industry threshold.
To help you better understand these changes, check out New Gmail protections for a safer, less spammy inbox.
Hyper-Personalization
The future of customer engagement lies in hyper-personalization. According to recent studies, over 70% of respondents expect their brand to provide genuine, user-centric experiences at every interaction point and show them they truly understand their needs.
With AI perfecting this direction by providing email marketers with tools to thoroughly analyze customers’ preferences and send them the right message at the right time, hyper-personalization goes beyond knowing your customers’ demographics.
Today, companies that create successful email sequences dive deep into customers’ current preferences, purchase history, and online behavior to create experiences that resonate at every buyer’s stage.
Segmentation
Email segmentation helps companies target the people most likely to become engaged and satisfied with their brand message. This tactic saves companies from wasted resources, but most importantly, it optimizes delivery, improves campaign performance from various angles, and achieves the ultimate marketing goals.
There are many different kinds of market segments you can create. The most popular are based on demographics, behavior, geography, and psychographics. There are endless variables you could use to divide up your email list.
However, when it comes to email sequences, it is crucial to analyze your target audience, competition, and product to understand what type of segmentation works best for you. Much like hyper-personalization, segmentation requires a personal approach unique to your brand.
A/B Testing
Segmentation, authentication, and personalization underlie a solid foundation for your email sequences. However, this still could not be enough. Companies face numerous variables, and many factors are involved in a successful outreach. A/B testing enters the game and helps companies make data-backed decisions to achieve goals more efficiently.
The A/B testing stage gauges email campaign performance data, analyzes metrics over a specific period, defines goals for each email sequence and brand message, and formulates hypotheses about which might perform better.
This stage can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. It is highly recommended that you use professional software such as a testing engine, which allows you to build as many modern, mobile-friendly, and accessible templates as you need to test your theories in minutes.
How to Create an Email Sequence
So, how do you create and set up an email sequence? There is no one-size-fits-all answer, as every series largely depends on the goal, audience, and niche. Plus, it might depend on the software that the company uses. However, some common steps underlie each routine.
Analyze Your Brand Presence and Audience
An email sequence is arguably one of the most effective tools for achieving email marketing goals; however, it does not mean it will work for your business. Before planning and implementing a series of brand messages, it is crucial to understand whether you need it.
Continuous communication might be overwhelming and annoying for some market segments. For instance, the older population might be intimidated by the many newsletters in their inbox. At the same time, some businesses and entrepreneurs who prefer making decisions based on other information sources might find it inappropriate in their relationships with brands.
Therefore, start by analyzing your target audience’s needs, preferences, and expectations. Consider your company’s presence and reputation in the market. Is the email sequence aligned with your brand image? It might also help to inspect your competition, especially when you are new in the market.
If introducing an email sequence in your communication aligns with your brand and target audience, decide what email series you need. For that, dive deep into your prospect’s journey during each stage. This knowledge gives you relevant insights on what might work for moving prospects through different pipeline stages.
Set Goals
The first step in creating an email sequence is determining its purpose. As you might create any set of brand messages, they might function differently. Setting the right goals for each sequence is crucial as it will channel all your efforts in one direction and provide necessary data for improvement. Here are some goals for popular sequences:
- A welcome email series should reinforce the first impression and establish strong relationships.
- The onboarding series should educate and bridge the gap between product and customer.
- An abandoned cart series should re-ignite interest and generate conversions.
- The re-engagement series should bring back lapsed customers.
When deciding on goals, it is worth mentioning that they should be S.M.A.R.T. Not only will they give you a sense of direction, but most importantly, they help organize and reach targets effectively.
Segment Audience
Customers are different even when they pursue the same goal. Understanding their distinctiveness is important to reaching them with the right message at the right time. Wholly-grained segmentation helps to do that. It increases a brand’s chances of addressing a recipient’s unique demands and expectations. Segmentation is the next step in creating an email sequence.
The most popular criteria for breaking your market segment into targeted clusters are:
- Demographics such as age, gender, occupation, family size, etc.
- Geographical data that covers a specific customer’s location.
- Behavioral data that provides insights into customer’s activity at various interaction points.
- Psychographic data that describes a person’s habits and lifestyles.
Depending on your business model and target audience, you might also use criteria such as customer list size and purchasing power, frequency of interactions, lifetime of a subscriber, and others.
It is important to note that segmentation must be measurable, accessible, substantial, differentiable, and actionable for it to be effective.
4 Types of Market Segmentation (visual snippet by Referral Candy Blog)
Identify Triggers
Specifying conditions for every series is another critical stage in creating an effective email sequence. If done wrong, your company will miss a golden opportunity to deliver the right message at the right time. If done right, your company will meet your customers’ expectations and build upon momentum.
Trigger is an event that kick-starts your automation workflow. It must be accurate and relevant as a starting point for customer interaction. Here are some popular examples that you might use:
- When a company gets a new subscriber.
- When a subscriber joins a new group or sets new preferences.
- Start of free trial.
- Completion of form.
- Clicking on the link or button.
- Downloading lead magnet.
- The anniversary of a date or achievement of a certain milestone.
- The exact match of a date.
- Abandoned checkout.
- Purchase of any specific product.
Finding the right trigger for email sequence requires a company’s thorough understanding of every stage of a customer’s journey.
Plan an Email Sequence
Once you have segmented your market and identified the types of sequences and their corresponding triggers, the time has come to plan each email sequence. Mapping provides a framework for creating brand messages necessary to push prospects along their journey and get them closer to making a decision.
Outlining is different for every company, but as a rule, it involves determining these factors:
- The number of emails in a sequence.
- Intervals between messages.
- Cadence for each market segment.
The key is to be strategic about every series. Keep it aligned with marketing goals and purposes, and do not overwhelm users with too many and frequent emails. Start low and increase the messages depending on the customer’s demands and reactions.
Planning email sequence in ESP
Create Email Templates
After mapping your email sequence, the next step is to create templates for every brand message. You might adapt each series for a specific market segment to achieve hyper-personalized and targeted customer conversations, so you need reusable email templates.
Reusable email templates are reliable tools in a marketer’s arsenal. They cut down the time needed to build and create unique brand messages. They boost teams’ efforts so they can focus on other important things like creating eye-catching subject lines or testing emails against deliverability mistakes. Plus, they have a collaborative environment.
The best way to create email templates is through email builder and email templates. This professional email template builder has a hundred hand-crafted blocks and modules that can be assembled into any layout, from welcome messages to abandoned cart notifications.
The biggest advantage of Postcards is that it takes care of compatibility. Whatever layout you build, you can rest assured it works consistently across devices, screens, and email providers. Download or integrate the code into your marketing platform (Mailchimp, Hubspot, Klaviyo, SendPulse, CampaignMonitor, and others) to kick-start your email sequence immediately.
Set Up Automation
Automation is critical for email sequence. It handles the entire process and, most importantly, allows the company to scale its email marketing efforts and grow. It takes care of the tiniest details and boosts productivity from various angles.
Introducing automation in email marketing routine to charge email sequences requires companies to use professional software like ESP. An ESP provides all necessary instruments to connect the sequence with the targeted market segment activated by a certain condition.
As a rule, companies do these tasks in their ESPs:
- Specify trigger or enrollment criteria.
- Determine what emails to send and to whom.
- Set intervals.
- Define actions for specific scenarios.
They also assign tasks and their priorities, which must be done manually during the routine.
Test Everything
What could possibly go wrong when delivering the right message at the right time through an automated routine? But mistakes happen all the time. Email sequences tend to fail expectations. It is here where testing might improve your chances to emerge victorious.
By analyzing vital details of the newsletter, including performance metrics and customer reactions, you can gain insights into what works best for your brand and market segment. This knowledge helps to optimize and improve not only one instant but the whole series.
With email testing that might include a series of inspections, companies may drastically increase the quality of interaction and capitalize on the sequence, achieving their goals more efficiently.
Therefore, devise a plan for testing your emails, including these actions:
- Validate content and subject line.
- Inspect deliverability and key performance metrics.
- Validate technical side (authentication, code, formatting, syntax)
- Validate accessibility.
There are many ways to test your emails to catch errors and improve performance. However, it is pointless without a goal. Make sure you know what you are testing and why.
Tracking Performance and Timely Adjusting
As the market changes, even the most optimized emails may fail. Much like testing, tracking the performance of your email sequence is a fundamental stage that provides information on what works and what does not.
Monitoring email performance and analyzing key details gives the knowledge to eliminate weak spots, build upon what works best, and adjust email sequences to deliver the best results.
As a rule, companies look at popular factors like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. However, it is crucial to determine factors specific to your email sequence and track them. These could be engagement, deliverability, or traffic.
Examples of Email Sequences
Welcome Email Template by Designmodo
The welcome email series is arguably one of the most powerful tools for setting an incredible first impression and starting with new customers on the right foot. The BurnSnack SuperFoods template by Designmodo demonstrates how to do this.
- It opens with an overly positive hero image that immediately puts a smile on the viewer’s face and sets a welcoming and friendly tone.
- It greets users with a heartwarming personalized message addressed to the person, letting them know they are appreciated.
- It highlights the benefits of joining the community, demonstrating the worth of this new partnership and instilling a sense of belonging.
- It displays the most popular products, reminding readers where to move next with their requirements.
This well-thought-through welcome email template hits all the essentials, from the hero area to the conversational tone in the email body. It builds friendly and healthy relationships with customers from the first interaction.
Black Friday is one of the biggest sales events in the world. It is not just one day of discount madness but the whole period stretching across several days. Starting with pre-Thanksgiving campaigns and ending with post-Cyber Monday deals, it is a perfect opportunity to run a series of brand messages to capture customers’ attention and convert them into leads. Here is an incredible template by Designmodo that you can use to adopt this tactic in your email marketing strategy.
The Hedset template is ideal for creating a sales event email series. It announces your best offer to your list of customers and prospects while making the first impression count. It has several blocks that you can use to highlight personalized picks or the best products. Clever CTA buttons instantly grab attention, whereas well-highlighted benefits inspire trust. The template smartly concludes with a banner with a discount, giving readers a final nudge to purchase.
You can use this template equally as the first or last in the series. Adjust its content in Postcards in seconds and hit your loyal customers with fantastic deals.
The only flaw in the Black Friday email sequence is that it happens only once a year. However, it does not mean you cannot capitalize on those moods again. Holidays and festivals, which we have in abundance during the year, could be perfect opportunities to create similar email sequences. From big events like Independence Day and Easter to small yet significant festivals, companies may connect with their customers and boost sales every single month.
Consider Uglymitten, a Christmas-inspired, highly-converting email template by Designmodo, to introduce this tactic in your email marketing plan. It already has non-generic intro sentences and an attractive design that makes the brand message stand out. Its powerful hero image and festive charm maximize a short attention span, immediately drumming interest.
Despite being a long read, it maintains attention with its clever message delivery, holiday-themed coloring, and authentic visuals. The layout perfectly adapts to different messages, allowing companies to communicate meaningfully.
Events open golden opportunities for companies, as they may run several pre-event and post-event email sequences to nurture their clients and generate conversions. Consider Impactfest by Designmodo, a perfect email template to start your pre-event campaign in your email channel. With some tweaks and customization, it could also be transformed into a post-event follow-up.
Originally tailored to the IT sector, it establishes the right atmosphere with its high-tech-inspired entourage. The well-structured stripped layout delivers crucial information in digestible portions, guiding readers from top to bottom and comfortably revealing key details. Several compelling calls to action are skillfully scattered across the layout to generate conversions.
Note that the template focuses only on critical details to avoid information overload. It starts the campaign on a positive note by delivering nothing but value.
Still Deciding Email from Fiorucci
An abandoned cart email sequence is a proven practice for turning the tables and winning back your customers. It is increasingly popular in the e-commerce sector as it might recover over 50% of loss interest. Consider the Still Deciding email from Fiorucci as a great example of how to re-ignite your conversation with customers who left their carts.
The email is a gentle nudge to engage with your product page again. It is minimal and compact yet still impactful as it encompasses crucial data that could compel customers to reconsider their items in a shopping bag and act eventually. It uses most of the email’s real estate to highlight its best and most wanted products through high-quality images. There is a clever copy, an eye-catching hero image, and a pleasant discount with a free shipping announcement.
The Spotify email marketing team provides us with a great example of how to adapt one of the most popular upselling techniques in marketing. They use email channels to encourage existing customers to buy a more expensive version of their service by inviting them to upgrade their existing plan to the next level.
They played smart by talking about business right away. The compact, incredibly oversimplified digital newsletter includes a three-month trial period offer and a call-to-action button. There is no more clutter or tricks—just a bare offer. Plus, a clear disclaimer adds transparency to the message and inspires trust.
This email is a perfect start for an upselling email sequence that might include a range of follow-up messages highlighting the benefits of a more expensive version and some arguments for choosing Spotify over others.
Sometimes, all it takes to reduce churn is a short yet customer-centric email sequence that compels users to act. Consider Flock’s first message in the retention email sequence, which reminds clients about the benefits and privileges they might lose if they stay inactive.
Coming as a quick hello in the form of a customer retention newsletter, it naturally grabs users’ attention and re-ignites interest in the product. The team has skillfully highlighted the product’s core values without wasting their precious time by embracing minimalism in delivering the message.
The email has three main parts. The hero area stresses time. The main body displays hyper-personalized benefits and provides a CTA to enable the extension. The footer includes crucial information for subscribers to contact the company or leave whenever they want.
Conclusion
An email sequence is more than just a series of automated emails; it’s a carefully crafted journey designed to guide your audience through their decision-making process. Whether you welcome a new subscriber, convert a hesitant lead, or re-engage dormant customers, a well-executed email sequence can significantly boost engagement, trust, and conversions.
It takes more than one email to catch a prospect’s attention and generate revenue. With the shortest attention span ever and tons of emails knocking on users’ doors daily, even industry leaders experience problems driving engagement and conversions. However, with a well-coordinated, hyper-personalized email sequence, they have a big chance of succeeding.
Email sequences come in all shapes and sizes. They could be triggered by the user’s actions or inactivity or aligned to some events or marketing goals. Sequences are solid methods to establish an uninterrupted dialogue with clientele and derive tangible benefits.
When creating an email series, it is crucial to adopt the best practices. At a minimum, this implies authenticating and personalizing every brand message, segmenting the market, testing, and using professional software like an ESP and Postcards to ensure high-quality communication and delivery.
