Passing the Pen This Week
I’m Bev Feldman, aka Your Personal Tech Fairy. 🍄 Through my work as a ConvertKit consultant & email automation strategist, I transform your tangled email funnels into a system that’s streamlined, simplified, and effective.
In other words, I am totally nerd out about email automation systems. 🤓
Judi invited me to take over her newsletter today with you to bust a myth about one of my favorite automated email systems: welcome sequences.
(In case you’re wondering, a welcome sequence is a series of automated emails your new subscribers receive the moment they sign up for your email list.)
They’re a fantastic tool for starting conversations, learning more about your email community, and connecting with new subscribers when they’re most excited to engage with and learn from you.
The great thing about them is you set them up once and let them work their magic.
Sorta.
When it comes to welcome sequences, I’m actually opposed to the mantra, “Set it and forget it.”
Yes, you should absolutely write your welcome sequence and leave it be for a period of time. But it’s not something to forget about. Here’s why:
📊 You need to make sure it’s doing its intended job.
Every email you send should have a goal. That could be learning more about your audience, encouraging your subscribers to book a call or make a purchase, or inviting them to connect with you on social media.
When setting up any automated email series, such as a welcome sequence, it’s important to look at the stats after you set it up to see if it’s doing its intended job.
In essence, are people opening, clicking, and responding to your automated emails? If they’re clicking, what are they clicking on?
For example, I worked with a client who had great engagement with their emails. Their subscribers opened and clicked on them regularly. However, when I dug deeper during my client’s Email Automation Audit, I saw that my clients’ subscribers clicked on the links to their free offerings much more than their paid ones.
Their emails were not doing their intended job, and the list of freebies was distracting subscribers from paid offerings.
After I pointed this out to my client, they put more emphasis on their paid offering in their emails (while still sharing information about their free offerings). This adjustment led to more people clicking on that paid offering - and an uptick in new clients!
Had we not looked back at their email stats more closely, we wouldn’t have realized that their emails weren’t doing their intended job.
⚙️ Your welcome sequence might not be playing nice with other automated emails
This is particularly true if you’ve been using your email marketing software for a while and have multiple ways for people to join your email list.
Sometimes, when you set up a new lead magnet and follow-up series, it doesn’t play nicely with what you have already set up. Suddenly, you have new subscribers being pulled into six automated email series simultaneously, and their inboxes are flooded with emails from you.
Whenever you add something new, you should also check to see how it impacts what you already have set up, including your welcome sequence.
💬 Your messaging or offers might change
As business owners, how we talk about our work evolves. Heck, even the work itself changes.
A few months ago, someone told me they realized their welcome sequence doesn’t mention their core offering because they added it months after they initially wrote their welcome series.
For this reason, it’s important to look at the content of your automated emails periodically to make sure the messaging is still in alignment and highlights your current offerings.
While "set it and leave it for awhile" is way less catchy, it will benefit you and your business to schedule time to periodically review your welcome sequence and ensure it is still working.