6 Rules For Creating A Successful Email Promo Sequence

If you’ve already done the work of writing the other 4 email sequences you need in your online business (CATCH, nurture, welcome, and weekly), then it’s finally time to create your promo sequence. The promo sequence is the one where you leverage all the connections you’ve nurtured and actually sell your signature product.

Just to be clear, you’ll likely need multiple promo sequences in your business. But let’s take this one step at a time. 

In this post, we’ll cover the 6 basic rules for promo sequences and outline the 4 main types of promo sequences you’ll need.

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Yes, You Need Conversion Copy

One of the biggest differences between the promo sequence and all the others you’ve written is the addition of conversion copy. All of the other sequences were focused on connection and had a more conversational style. 

Now your focus is on conversion and helping your audience decide whether they should purchase.

The content of your promo sequence will be about coaching your audience away from the pain of inaction and toward the pleasure of the transformation they’ll get through your program/product. You’ll be building up the value of the transformation, highlighting the benefits of your product, and dealing with objections.

Take Your Subscribers On A Journey

When you create your promo sequence, you want to think of it in terms of taking your subscribers on a coherent journey from the first email to the last. That means you need to be consistent in your language, message, and theme throughout.

But don’t worry — this doesn’t mean you have to take them on a boring journey. In the emails you send before you open your cart, you can drop hints and tease what’s to come to get people excited. Then once you open your cart, you can refer back to the themes and messages you hinted at in your earlier emails.

Now that we’ve established a few ground rules for your promo sequence, let’s dive into the six rules for promo sequences.

Rule 1: Serve All Buyer Types

When it comes to writing emails, you’ve gotta remember that not all buyers think like you.

That means you need to create emails for those in your audience who are spontaneous buyers, for those who need all the details, for those who are moved by pleasure, and those motivated by pain. Some of your emails need to speak to those who make decisions based on emotions and others need to speak to those who make decisions based on logic.

To clarify, you don’t want to speak to all the different kinds of buyers in a single email. That would be overwhelming. Instead, you’ll need to have at least one email that is directed to each buyer persona.

Rule 2: When In Doubt, Send Another Email

In case you missed it, if you actually follow through on Rule 1, you’ll be sending a lot of emails during a promotional period. But here’s the thing, no matter how many freaking emails you send, people will miss them, so don’t ever feel bad about sending another email.

You might often find that those last-minute emails that you create on the fly generate more sales than all your well-crafted emails.

Rule 3: Add An Opt-Out Link

If this is only your first or second rodeo with writing a promo email sequence, chances are you’re gonna feel uneasy about how many emails you’re sending. That’s why it’s a good practice to give people the option not to receive all the promotional emails but still stay on your list.

By providing an opportunity for your subscribers to opt-out of promotional emails, you can fully embrace Rule 2.

Rule 4: Segment Your Leads

During your promotional period, you’ll want to segment your leads based on how engaged they are with your emails. Here are a few segments you can create:

• Freebie download — track who grabbed your launch freebie
• Event registration — track who signed up for your launch event
• Event attendance — track who showed up
• Sales page visits — track who clicked on the sales page

You can send different emails to people based on their segment. For those who are more engaged, you can even send extra emails explaining how your paid product provides the next step after your freebie.

Step 5: Give Extra Love To More Engaged People

The people who showed the most interest during your promotion are the people who are most likely to buy — so give them some extra attention.

As your launch winds down, your segments will show you who you should focus on. People who haven’t engaged are as likely to buy, so it’s a good idea to put extra energy into nurturing those who have engaged.

Rule 6: Resend To Non-Opens

This trick isn’t quite as useful since the iOS updates in fall 2021, but you can still multiply your emails by resending them to people who didn’t open them before.

When you resend an email to non-opens, be sure to change the subject line and update any language pertaining to dates (e.g., tomorrow, yesterday, etc.). This rule can also help you fill any gaps in your promo calendar.

Now that we’ve laid out the foundation for your email promo sequence it’s time to dig into the anatomy of a promotional sequence.

The Anatomy Of An Email Promo Sequence

Now that you know the rules of an email promo sequence, it’s time to talk about the different phases and email sequences you’ll need in your promotion.

There are a lot of moving parts to a promotion, and each phase has its own email sequence, but don’t let that intimidate you. 

And just in case you’re freaking out that you need multiple email sequences to sell a $47 or $97 product… you don’t. These sequences are for selling products in the $497-$1997 window.

The Four Sequences

Depending on the structure of your promotion, there are four main sequences you might use.

The Invite Sequence

The purpose of the invite sequence is to get people to register for your launch. You’re not actively selling yet. You’re just inviting them to an event, like a webinar, challenge, or video series.

The Show-Up Sequence

You already invited people to your launch. Now you just want to get them to attend live. That’s the only purpose of the show-up sequence. You’re simply convincing them of the benefits of showing up live and reminding them just before the event begins.

The Sales Sequence

Finally, the sales sequence… the purpose of this sequence is to get people to buy your product.

In this phase, your focus is on coaching people to buy, not providing more training or teaching.

The Sales Booster

The one purpose of your sales booster sequence is to get people who didn’t register for your launch to buy.

Not everyone will be interested in signing up for a webinar, challenge, or video series, but chances are, if they’re on your list, they’re at least somewhat interested in what you’re selling.

The sales booster sequence is a great way to increase your sales by sharing your promotion with everyone on your list.

If you decided to send your sales sequence to your full list, you won’t need this sequence.

Next Steps

As you sit down to map out your promo sequences, remember that your sales emails will be different from all the other types of sequences you’ve already created. Those emails were all about connection, but these emails are about making sales.

If you’re looking for more guidance on your promo sequence, you can get FREE access to my full email marketing course inside my program BADA$$ Online Marketing University.