Brennan's 4-step welcome email sequence (adjusted for OOCs)

September 22, 2022 · ooc-design

After hugely overthinking my onboarding emails, Brennan gave me a big gift in his 4-part welcome email template. I’m gonna quote Brennan to the point of plagiarism here, because Brennan knows his stuff about email. (And because he’ll probably forgive me.)

I’ve made some minor edits for clarity and OOCiness, but it’s all Brennan’s insight:

*Email #1: You’re At The Right Place * The very first email you send to someone should let them know they’ve made the right decision in joining. […]

It shouldn’t be all about you. 

This email needs to explain that by sticking around, they’re going to be able to tackle the challenges that they’ve shared with you - and that you’re going to be responsible for helping them get from where they are today to where they need to be.

Nice. Strong start, reassuring message, and not too much content-overload or reading homework, to follow the best practices of Skrob and Sierra.

*Email #2: Here’s What You’ll Become*

A day later, a second email goes out. 

This email is all about transformation: how will “Jane” be better off because of her relationship with this new group?

I like using this email to show a bit of empathy - I’ve *been* in Jane’s shoes - and to also illustrate what tomorrow could look like for her.

This touches on Skrob’s idea of “bringing the future forward” by painting a clear, aspirational picture of how their future-life will be different and better thanks to the journey you’re helping them on. 

*Email #3: Here’s Someone Just Like You*

The third email should be a case study or story of someone similar to Jane. 

I recommend choosing an examplep based on the *why*, which in this case would be “I want to work full-time for myself.” […]

If you’re just starting out and don’t have segmented case studies or testimonials, then you can safely ignore this email temporarily or, ideally, just pick out one hard-hitting example of someone who you’ve helped. 

In the last email, you showed someone who they could become. You painted a picture for them of a better tomorrow.

But can *they* actually get there? Are they good enough? Is it within reach for them? They’ll probably fail somewhere along the way, right?

This is why you need to show them an example of a trailblazer.

Someone just like them. Someone who’s already successfully crossed the chasm. And this is why segmentation is so critical - if I were to feature the story of some agency owner who went from 2 employees to 10, that’s going to probably intimidate Jane because *she’s nowhere close to even being able to sustain ONE employee: herself!*

This third email is hitting on the member success stories, which I’ve been trying to get better at using – we’re good in the authors’ community about including quick ones in our email heartbeats and events, and it would be even better to have some long-form, detailed ones in this spot of the onboarding…

*Email #4: Here’s What’s Next*

In your fourth and final email, you should explain a bit about what’s coming next from you, along with other ways to connect. […]

If you’ve done things right, you’ve already made a clear case for why they should listen to you. After all, you’ve listened to them. You’ve taken into account what they’ve shared with you and explained how the content you send them will ultimately help transform them. […]

I also like using this as an opportunity to break free of the text-based nature of email. Send them to your podcast, or maybe a recording of a talk you’ve given, an interview from someone else’s podcast, etc. Allow them to associate a face and/or voice with the emails they’re getting from you. 

And finally, use this email to automate the collection of raw, voice-of-customer language. This will help you better understand your audience. … By asking people to reply, in their own words, to a few pointed questions, over time I’m able to aggregate specific pain points, objections, doubts, fears, and more that I can use to more holistically understand who’s on my list (while also giving me exactly what I need to craft great sales copy!)

This fourth email dovetails serves a couple purposes for an OOC. On the one hand, it’s re-nudging them into action. (Or towards a special action that’s aimed at someone X days into joining, as opposed to on day 1.)

It’s also tying into the Content & Concierge stage by showing that your inbox is open and that you’re there to help and talk.

Folks are used to being ignored when they respond to an auto-email, so one way you can really plant this flag is to reply to them diretly, and then ALSO make a post in the community saying that you got a great question in reply to this week’s newsletter, and here’s your answer – this turns 1-on-1 guidance into 1-to-many knowledge, and also encourages others to start reaching out to you directly, which allows you to understand and help them. I think I’m going to try implementing this more or less verbatim for the authors’ community. Any thoughts or ideas on it?

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