I’ve seen a lot of welcome sequences in my day. And so have you. Can we both agree that most of them…kinda suck? Let’s make sure yours doesn’t in this episode. Liz answers: What do I say? How long should it be? What goes in each email? How many emails over how many days? And more!
Liz’s Email Marketing Membership
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Transcript
What’s up? We are on episode 84 of the email sound booth podcast. And that is what you are listening to for mistakes you’re making with your welcome sequence. That’s right. Episode 83 was about why you should write a welcome sequence. Now I want to talk about the mistakes you can make while writing your welcome sequence.
Let’s hop into it. Number one. writing emails that are too long. Yes, I said it. Remember in episode 83, I talked about Um, you know, following the email staircase, follower, friend, customer, and the welcome sequence starts that friendship. But remember, these people, they’re not our friends yet, so we don’t want to wax poetic in these emails, right?
Unless, you know, you are a special snowflake where you write novels that are a thousand pages long and people are waiting on bated breath for every word, you know, we want to keep our emails short. Brevity. Look up that word if you don’t know what it means. Brevity is our friend. Okay, so don’t write your emails too long.
Um, if you get my freebie at lizwilcox. com, it is that templatized welcome sequence. You’ll notice that the longest email is probably about 400 words. So I recommend that first email being, you know, 150 words or less. That second email, about the same. The third, we can have three to 400 words. And the fourth one, you know, probably three to 400 words as well.
We want to keep those emails. And again, this is a rule of thumb. You know, if you’ve got 420 words. Don’t panic, my dear. Uh, but you know, you wanna, that’s, that’s about the length. You know, 200 to 400 words is great for your welcome sequence. Remember, they’re not our friends yet, they don’t really care yet, uh, save the long emails for when it counts, aka when you’re trying to make a sale or a big point or change someone’s mind about something.
That’s not what we’re doing in the welcome sequence. We’re just setting expectations. We’re telling them where we’re going and we’re making sure that they know they’re in the right place. All right. Uh, mistake number two. Your frequency is too slow. Very often. And remember my freebie is for email for welcome emails, right?
And almost every week without fail over in the email sound booth, Facebook group, people ask, Oh Liz, I’m going through this welcome sequence. But when do I send these out? I’m thinking these four emails over a month or four emails over two weeks. That’s much too slow. Remember, we’re following that email staircase and if the frequency is too slow, if I send four emails over four weeks, By the third week, you might forget who the heck I am, right?
So we want to introduce ourselves. We want people to get excited. They’re never more excited than when they first sign up, right? They just found a solution to their problem. Woohoo! Let’s take advantage of that. Let’s capitalize on that, so to speak. So I really recommend about four emails. I do it in four days.
But I’m aggressive. That’s probably why I’m divorced or that’s what I’ve been told anyway. Um, but I really recommend those four emails in no less than 10 days. Again, we don’t want people to forget about us. We want them to know what’s happening. And we want them to know that quickly. The third mistake I see is not sharing the vision you have With your people and also not sharing any sort of personality, right?
So let’s talk about the personality piece really quick Um, honestly this podcast I would say is probably the least amount of personality I have I don’t know what it is about what turning on the mic suddenly I become, you know Barbara Walters and I just want to be super professional Um, but I always say like, I’m only semi pro.
I love a lot of color. I got a headband. I love the nineties, right? And so I share that in my welcome sequence. I say, Hey, I love the nineties, but also share your vision. Where are you going with your people? If you’re, if I’m your ideal client and I just joined your list, you got to tell me where we’re going, right?
And so for me, I say, you know, as much as I love the 90s, that’s my personality, right? I love the idea of you making money with email even more. That’s my vision for you! I want you to make money with email so badly. It literally changed my entire life. So I want it for you. What do you want for your clients?
Or where are they going? If they’re graduating from U University, what’s the degree you’re handing them? Say that in the welcome sequence. They have to know where you’re going. And the fourth mistake I see in welcome sequences is your sequence is a million emails long, right? I recommend four. You could have one if it was one really good email and you followed it up with daily or weekly newsletters, right?
Um, but But when we try to hold on to every newsletter we’ve ever written and we add it, uh, to the welcome sequence or the nurture sequence and suddenly they’re not getting a fresh email from us for a month, two months, 12 months, that It’s just, uh, how do you say in Spanish, demasiado, that’s too much, right?
It’s a lot. And so, I really recommend your welcome sequence being, you know, four emails or about a week long, and then getting into those weekly newsletters. Now, of course, if you are more advanced, and you have a very advanced funnel, that’s great. But you should only be doing that when you’ve been talking to your audience.
in a timely manner, aka newsletters, for at least a year. So you know what they respond to, what they purchase, what they don’t, so that you can put it into a longer funnel. But especially in the first zero to three years of your business, where you’re still kind of, you know, we’re meandering, uh, trying to figure out who we are, what our message is, and who will buy our products, you know, your sequence.
Should be shorter so you can get them into those timely emails so you can receive data and feedback so that one day you can create that funnel. Alright, to recap, four mistakes from your welcome sequence, writing emails that are too long, having your frequency be too slow, not sharing your vision or personality in those emails, and having a sequence that’s a million emails long.
All right, if you need help with your welcome sequence I’ve got you covered. You can go directly to lizwillcox. com Hit that hot pink button. You already know i’ve got those four emails templatized for you If you want to go deeper, I have a 49 welcome sequence workshop. You can purchase And then, of course, you can always join my 9 a month, uh, membership.
You can get weekly newsletter templates for after you write that sequence. You can see how to get those, uh, subscribers engaged, buying, so you can collect that data I talked about. So that one day, Maybe you can write that automated funnel. It’s 9 a month. Link in the show notes. As always, I’m Liz Wilcox.
You are amazing, and I’ll see you on the next episode, my friend.
