Hello there! Welcome to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to talk about your email list some more. We are on Stage 3 of the overall cycle of building our online business; that we are talking about in Coffee Break Blogging and Stage 3 is all about building and using our email list effectively.

Your autoresponder sequence is what allows you to put a large part of your business on automatic. At the very least, it saves you a lot of work. But, what do you put in your autoresponder?

So in this episode, we discuss 7 different strategies you can include in your automatic email followups. These strategies will allow you to provide lots of value to your subscribers, make sales on auto, AND get an ongoing flow of feedback from your subscribers which you can use to make better content for them.

When we started Stage 3; this is going back to Episode 70 or so, we talked the one about how to get people on to your list, we talked about lead magnets, we talked about putting together opt-in forms; things like that. In the last episode we talked about the perfect opt-in confirmation page. That is going to be the first page that they see right after they opt-in.

Today, we are going to talk all about what do you send them after they have subscribed. Obviously, putting people on to your list is useless unless you send them things.  That part should be pretty obvious. Now the good thing about an autoresponder is that you can put a lot of this on automatic. Obviously you can email people, email your list on a one-off fashion. So you type something, you hit send and it is real time. And there is definitely a place for that. You will be doing that with your list. However, you also want to be using your autoresponder; your follow up sequence capability so you do not have to do everything manually. Because I have seen people make a mistake of doing this list and then they are like, “I don’t know what to send them” and then they just don’t send anything and that is such a waste of an asset when you do that.

So let us jump right in to what to do with this autoresponder sequence. And we are going to talk about 7 specific things to do.

7 Things You Can Do With Your Autoresponder Sequence

1. You can run an offer to your new subscribers.

Now this, if you go and look at the Blog Monetization Model, you will see that this is a part of the model itself. When somebody subscribes to one of your lead magnets you are going to send them an offer that goes along with that lead magnet. And so it is going to be a much targeted front-end offer. And it is going to be on the page that they see; it is going to be on that confirmation page. The first page that they are going to see after they opt-in; it is going to be that offer along with the acknowledgement that they are going to get that lead magnet or what have you.

We talked about that in Episode 77. But along with seeing that page, you also want to put them on an autoresponder. That is going to be fairly sure, typically not much longer than about 3 or 4 days and it is basically going to promote that front-end offer. So if they do not take the front-end offer right away, that is fine because they are going to be on the 3 or 4 autoresponder sequences so basically they have got 3 or 4 days after opting-in to the lead magnet to go and then buy the thing. Okay? And so, that is the initial set of emails that they are going to get. You run that offer; you promote that front-end offer to your new subscribers.

2. You can do a Welcome sequence.

Typically the Welcome sequence is what is going to be also sent to them simultaneously along with the front-end offer. So the first few days they are going to be getting more emails than usual. And there is nothing wrong with that. I’ve never had anybody freak out over that, personally. But basically, this Welcome sequence is all about orienting them to you. What it is that you are all about and what to expect. This is where you typically get to highlight some of your best stuff; you are going to let them know what to expect, you are going to perhaps ask them to “white list” your email address so that your emails actually get through, maybe ask them to add your email to their primary inbox if they are using Gmail, things like that. It is all about getting them set up. And again, this sequence also will probably last no more than 3 or 4 days. After that point you can pretty much consider them to be oriented and indoctrinated; if you want to use that word, to you and know what to expect. And they are either going to be a good, loyal subscriber or they are not.

So, number one, run an offer to your new subscribers, no. 2 is to send them a Welcome sequence.

3. You can build-in survey questions.

Now this is a really powerful way to get ongoing intelligence about your audience. And their answers will not only allow you to come up with new product ideas, new blog post ideas, but it will also give you some insight into the wording that you are audience is using.

I am a big fan of using surveys and using open-ended questions because I like people to instead of just clicking radio buttons and check boxes; I want them to actually type what comes to mind for them. And I want to see what words that they use. I want to see the language that they use because that language is stuff that I will build in to my content and also build in to my products and sales and so you can build right in these survey questions.

There is one that I have talked about before, called “The Seven Word Question” and it is very simple; it is just “What is your biggest challenge right now?” And you can build that right into the email sequence to send them a one email that says, “Hey, I really want to find out what is going one, what can I help you with so can you answer for me this question: What is your biggest challenge right now?”

Here’s a little trick that you can do; instead of sending them to some survey form or something which is quite anonymous, you can actually tell them to hit the “reply” button and reply to that email. And you are going to get that email. Do not ever send those things to a bounce address. That is a total stupid idea. You want these emails to come to you. You want to be acknowledged by human beings. So, do that because here’s the thing; when they reply, it is a sign of engagement with your email list. So that is going to tell the big web email providers like Gmail, Outlook and these guys that they are actually engaged with your email list. And what does that do? That makes it more likely that your emails are actually going to get through the filters and get into their inbox, okay?

But the other thing too is that it’s just more personable. People are used to sending emails to other people, so when they send you email and you should acknowledge them back, it just sets up this personal communication between the two of you guys and I think that is very important. It is so much better than just sending them to some form on the internet. Okay?

So that is “build in survey questions.” You can build multiple of these throughout your email sequence so you just have this ongoing stream of feedback coming from people.

4. Highlight your best blog post.

We all have those blog posts that we think, “Damn, that was good!” So highlight that! Pimp it out to your list and really give value to them over time. Again, this is a great way to highlight some of your best stuff and not have to do it manually. These are new subscribers and the thing is, if you got a lot of blog posts sitting in your archives, you can surface those things and continue to use those assets.

Now here is a little marketing tip; if you send them to blog posts that also have good, solid calls to action inside of them, that every single time that you promote your best post it is also a potential money-maker for you. Okay?

So be strategic in the blog post that you decide to highlight to your audience. But you can still highlight these things; send them out to your subscribers on a follow-up automatic basis. And that puts your business a little bit more on auto pilot.

5. Run promotional sequences.

This again should be fairly obvious; it is very similar to no.1 where I talked about running an offer to your new subscribers. But in no. 1 I was talking primarily about people who just got on to your list. The thing is, with this one, I’m saying you can run promotional sequences over and over again for different products and you can send those out to your list. So let’s say, one month or two months after, they subscribed to your list, you run a promotional sequence.

So what I mean by this is that you are going to have a series of emails that you are going to write in advance and they are going to tend to jive together pretty well to… Maybe tease a product and then you will promote it to them. Just like you probably been to the subject of email promotions many times from other people. You can build that up into your follow up sequence and run it into automatic. And you can have this little sales coming in all the time. Every subscriber on your list is going to be on their own unique schedule but they are all going to see the same promotions at the right time for them. So run promotional sequences. And these can be for your own products but they can also be for affiliate products if you do not have any of your own. You can definitely do this.

6. You could promote different lead magnets to your list.

So if you go back to Episode 70 and 71 where we talked about lead magnets, I made very clear that you should not only have one. You shouldn’t have just one thing that you give to your list. You should have a bunch of them because the purpose of these things is to promote certain types of people with different interests. And then based on those interests you can then sell something to them related to that interest.

So if a person comes in to your list from lead magnet “A”, whatever that might be for you, it does not mean they might not be also be a good fit for lead magnet “D”. So what you can do is just over time, you can promote, you can cross-promote your other lead magnets to your existing subscribers. And if they opt-in for one of those other lead magnets; and yes, you should have them opt-in again, do not just say “Well, they are on my list already, let me just give it to them.” No… You want them to take an action. So make them opt-in again, okay? That is because that action is their actual action of raising their hand. You want them to not just collect stuff from you. You want them to actually take some action.

Now once they have actually done that, then you will know that they are interested in whatever that particular lead magnet is. So what you could do, you can follow up with a product promotion of some kind related to that lead magnet. So basically, what this is… It is kind of hard to show it here without the diagram; but if you look at the Blog Monetization Model, it’s kind of on there… But you are basically cycling your subscribers around. They come in to your list on one pathway and you send a certain set of emails over time but then periodically, you can bring them back up to the top again and send them in to a different “shoot”, so to speak, into the same list. And based on what lead magnet they enter, you can send them a different promotion. So this is a real powerful one. Promote different lead magnets to your list. And also, why you do this? You are segmenting your list. You are dividing your list up and you know what these people are interested in based on what they are opting-in for.

7. Do an Evergreen Launch.

This is very similar to running a promo sequence that we talked about in no. 5. But an evergreen launch is set up a little bit differently because essentially you are launching a product. You are maybe opening up the cart for something; opening up a course for sign up but with the idea that it is going to be closing back down again. And you can run this evergreen launches; the same kind of things that you would see with a typical product launch but you will put this on automatic and you can run this to your list.

Now you can do with many different ways. You can do the whole “Hey the cart is open, this course is available for sign up” and then you run a promo for 5 to 7 days and you say “Okay, I’m closing it down now.” Another way that you can do that is to lead up to a webinar and you can have this on automatic. In fact, you can even automate the webinar; although we are not going to talk about it right now. But there are various ways that you can do this and it works best for your own products but they can definitely be done on affiliate products, okay? So that is the idea of doing an evergreen launch. This is a launch sequence, a launch process that will run on an automated basis; very, very powerful stuff. Okay?

So let us quickly review…

1. Run an offer to your new subscribers
2. Send them a Welcome sequence to orient them just what you are all about and send them some of your really tough stuff.
3. Build survey questions into your sequence so you can actually get ongoing intelligence from your subscribers.
4. Highlight your best blog post. This is beyond the welcome sequence; this is just an ongoing thing. So going out into time, you can go back into your archives and promote some of your best stuff.
5. Run promotional sequences. So this is going to be for any of your own products, it can be for affiliate products, it really doesn’t matter.
6. Promote different lead magnets to your existing subscribers. This allows you to segment them at a different interest and also send them more targeted promotions.
7. Do an evergreen launch.

If you want to dive deeper into this and get more instructions on how to set these things up; there is a one hour training lesson inside my course called “List Building Simplified.” This List Building Simplified Course is basically a course on how to set up all the mechanics of your email list and what to do with that email list. So I go down to basics. This is like a one-on-one level course. If you are already a little bit advance with email marketing, this course is not for you. But if you are kind of new with this and you are still trying to figure out how the different pieces connect to each other and what to do with the list, List Building Simplified was definitely created for you.

Now, this course is only available to members of the Blog Monetization Lab. Right now, that is the only way that you can get this course. The good news there is that you can actually get started on that course right now for only $29.60 because that is the cost of getting in to the Blog Monetization Lab, okay?

So if you want to learn more about that, go over to blogmonetizationlab.com and you will learn about all the benefits of being a member of the Blog Monetization Lab.

With that, I hope you found this episode useful. If you did, I would highly appreciate it if you would run over to iTunes and that is at blogmarketingacademy.com/itunes, and post an honest review of the podcast. It really helps me out. I do check that thing at least every week to look for new reviews and I really appreciate your review and your star rating; hopefully a 5 star rating if you think that I deserve them. 😉

So thank you so much, I will see you in a few days with the next episode where we are talking a little bit more about writing awesome follow up emails.

I’ll see you then! 🙂