Generate more sales with this email and messaging sequence for Web3

Email marketing is still one of the highest ROI channels out there. Even for Web3 brands who have, largely, ignored it. 

But where does the ROI come from? 

I mean, if...

• Welcome email sequences introduce people to your brand
• Onboarding sequences get them to action the key feature that gives them the best value
• Newsletters help you educate them and stay top of mind

... where does the $$$ come from? 

Well, it's often thanks to well-structured sales email sequences. 

Sales email sequences are there to turn the people who are sitting on your subscriber list but haven't yet purchased anything from you into repeat paying customers. 

Here's all you need to know to knock it out of the park with your sales email sequences.  

What is an email sales sequence? 

It's a series of messages that are sent with the singular goal of selling something to your audience.  

I'm not talking about cold outreach emails intended to turn strangers into clients.  I'm talking about an automated email sequence that's sent to your existing subscribers and gets them excited about an upcoming product launch before hitting them with the "you can get it here". 

It is exactly what it sounds like. A series of emails that sell something. 

The mistake most brands make with sales email

It sounds so simple, right? 

And it really should be. Yet a lot of brands and projects out there really mess up their email marketing when it comes to sales.  

Generally speaking, I see two primary mistakes when looking at email marketing. 

Multiple goals

The first is when it comes to figuring out what you want your users to do.  

Each email sequence should have one overarching goal. In the case of a sales sequence, that goal is going to be "buy this product". 

And then, within every sequence, each email should also only have one goal.  

When each email has only one goal, you're able to build a compelling message around that goal. 

It's basically easier to optimize for that specific action.  

It's also why we separate different sequences. Welcome emails are meant to introduce your brand and explain how it helps the user. Onboarding messages help the user get your best features up and running.

Specificity is key for effective communications. If you're trying to get people to take action 1, 2, and 3, you're going to have to dilute your message. Which means you end up creating something really forgettable.  

Keep it simple and aim to accomplish one thing with each email, and the sequence as a whole.  

Asking for sales whilst offering nothing in return

The other main issue I see is that brands only reach out when they want to make a sale. 

People buy from brands they trust and know. 

If you go quiet for 6 months and then reach out with "we added this, so buy it here", the people who haven't forgotten who you are are just going to ignore you. 

Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your users and stay top of mind whilst building trust.  

But if you've got a new feature or project launch coming up and you're list has not heard from you, don't worry. We're going to build an email sales sequence that builds up to the ask so even those with "dead" lists of users can see some traction.   

What should you sell with a sales email sequence? 

This is the cool thing with the outline I'm giving you here.  

You could use this to sell pretty much anything. In fact, I recommend you take this process and adapt it for any important ask you have of your audience. 

For example, you could adapt this sequence to...

• Launch a new product, project, or collection to your audience
• Launch a new token associated with your project
• Get more attendees and registration for a Twitter space / Webinar

If you need people to buy in, either financially or with their time, this is a sequence that will help you hit more of your audience and compel them to sign up.  

Let's get into the meat of it.  

How to construct your sales email sequence

the short explanation of this is we're kind of replicating the famous stages of awareness from Eugene Schwartz.  

However, we know that the people who are on your email list are - at the very least - knowledgeable of your project.  

Which means we can strike off the first of the stages of awareness.  

What you want to do is build a sequence that gets the user invested in and excited about your up-and-coming offer. You're going to build that sequence in phases that align closely with the stages of awareness from Eugene Schwartz's stages of awareness.   

A quick overview of the phases is...

• Phase 1 - Segment (Identify the users most likely to buy)
• Phase 2 - Tease (Send emails about what you're working on. Include links that, if clicked, are almost a hand raise from that user to say "I'm interested in this").
• Phase 3 - Pre-sale (Take a few days to offer some in-depth information about the upcoming offer. Explain the benefits of what it is and build some hype around it).
• Phase 4 - Sale (Open the cart and tell users they have X days, hours etc before the sale ends or the cart closes).
• Phase 5 - Close (End the sale with a few notifications about the deal going away soon to get those on the fence to take some action). 

At first glance, these aren't directly related to the stages of awareness. As I explain more about the stages though, you'll see how they fit in a similar setting.  

How long should your sales email sequence be?

This really depends. 

At the very least, I would recommend at least 1 email per "phase". 

However, if you have a complex product or there's a high ticket cost associated, you'll want to draw things out. 

When there's a longer consideration cycle a single "buy me now" email won't really cut it. you've got to nurture that relationship and build up to the sale.  

Which brings me to the next quick point.  

Should I sell in every email? 

Yes.  

Or rather, you should ask your users to do something in every email. 

There's a huge industry of email marketers who send emails every single day. They're often short, but edutainment-focused emails.  

At the end of every email these people will be asking you to do something. 

Often to make a purchase, sometimes to express interest in something or check out a new asset. 

I could go into detail on how nurturing is great, but sales are better. And that you want to maximize the possibility someone buys from you. 

But we can sum it up by saying "closed mouths don't get fed". 

Each email should have a CTA which I'll outline in the phases below.  

Speaking of which, let's get onto the phases.  

Phase 1 - Segmentation

This is something you do before sending anything out there.  

If you have a large list of subscribers, then a new offer might not be the best fit for everyone.  

You could send your sales promotion to everyone on your list. Many do. but what often happens is you'll lose some subscribers because they think what you're offering isn't for them.  

For example, a brand like OpenSea will have the emails of NFT buyers and NFT creators. 

An offer that explains something like "how to quickly list new NFT collections to sell more" appeals to the creators. 

It kind of appeals to serious collectors who might be listing lots of projects at once. 

But for small collectors who buy what they like the look of it has no value and will just fill up their inbox with clutter. They'll unsubscribe or mark you as spam.  

So before you do anything, know who you're talking to and segment that cohort of your audience for the messages 

If you are running a more generic offer that could appeal to anyone on your list, then the next section will help you avoid annoying people who aren't interested.  

Phase 2 - Tease

The tease phase is, in a way, a self-selection of who wants to be sold to. 

There's a good explanation fo this from The Wolf of Wall Street himself, Jordan Belfort, on the Logan Paul podcast. 

You can't sell your offer to people who aren't interested in it.  

You could send a million emails or messages to them, but if they believe the offer itself has no value to them and they simply do not want it, it's not going to work. 

This first tease stage, is to help you identify who is in the market for your offer.  

And there's one simple way to do this. 

You get them to click on a link to "learn more" about the thing you're about to start selling.  

Generally speaking, I send a few emails that are centered on the upcoming product. I tease that we have something coming out and that, if the user wants to know more, they can learn more at the following page.

The link to that follow-on page is simply a way for them to say to me "I'm interested". 

The emails that I send here are focused on...

• The pain the new offer removes
• The benefit it could bring them
• The transformation it will bring

These kind of things. 

You create one email with one specific tone and angle. And you say "if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, learn more by clicking here". 

To do this well, you have to know the pain points and emotional triggers that are bothering your audience.  

But if you do know them, then a good deal of people will click to learn more.  

Phase 3 - Pre-sale

After you've sent a tease-style email or short series of emails, you'll have a separate, smaller list of people that have self-identified as being in the market for your new offer.  

Now you can really start building the excitement for the product. 

Here, I like to get specific. 

You'll be building on the same themes of pain, benefit, and transformation but also talking about the specific features of the upcoming launch. 

The concept here is to build interest and excitement around the specific offer and the transformation it's going to provide to the user. 

A few specifics I like to add in here include...

• Absolving them of fault for past issues and failures
• Your expertise and why this is going to work
• Get them to picture the new life this transformation will provide
• Speak about the benefits in specific terms of how it will change their day-to-day

Of course these won't always be 100% relevant. You'll have to adapt based on your audience and the offer itself.  

I tend to send a couple of these emails. You could send just one and focus on the biggest pain/desire benefit. 

But you'll get the best results if you can send at least 3 emails here.  

Phase 4 - Sale

Once you've built that excitement, it's time to launch the actual product sale.  

What you'll find is that, if the prior steps are done well, the day your offer goes live you'll see a surge of new customers who come in and buy. 

Once that surge has passed, things will die off and stabilise at a lower level. 

The primary goal of the "sale" section is to remove hesitation and any resistance to the user buying. there will be a lot of people on the fence who might not yet have the trust to hand over their wallet details.  

You need to reassure them this will help.  

The pre-sale section is getting people excited, the sale section is reassuring them they're making the right choice.  

I generally send a couple of emails here.  

The first is a simple "if you've been waiting for X, you can get it here now" type of email. I'll build it out and send maybe 2 of those just to let people know the new offer is live. 

Beyond that, I'll send a couple of emails that address things like...

• Remind them of the transformation that can be achieved
• If possible, include trust-building elements like testimonials and past wins
• Reaffirm you know their position and this is just the next stage in their progression
• FAQs that might be stopping people from taking the leap
• Sometimes I'll build some fear by talking about what staying where they are might cost them in the long run

Phase 5 - Close

The close is another area where you'll see an increase in sales. 

There will be a lot of people who were sat on the fence not knowing whether or not to buy into your new offer. 

With the close, you build on the concept of FOMO which often gets a handful of those fence sitters to jump in.  

The goal here is not to sell your product, but to highlight why this is the best fit for the user. If it really is (and if you've done your research it should be) then you'll see a surge in sales. 

What I tend to focus on here includes...

• An explanation of who will benefit from this offer (detailed explanation of the ideal user)
• Information on what it takes to make a good return on the investment
• Reminders of the end of the offer's launch sale or that it's completely going away soon
• Reminder of the transformation with emphasis on how it makes their desired results faster, easier, cheaper to achieve
• Reiteration of the guarantees or safety elements that are in place for the user (super important for Web3 offers where people are very unsure of new offers)

The wonderful thing about this sequence is, if you periodically run sales or onboarding of new users, you can simply repurpose it by updating around 10% of the entire sequence.  

This is a tried and tested sequence that's worked across multiple industries. It will work just as well in Web3.  

A couple of sweeteners

If you want to really ensure that you get the highest level of engagement and sales, then you can also try t add some booster incentives into the mix.  

By this, I mean simple rewards for taking action and signing up or buying in.  

These could be as simple as a higher-level role in Discord with access to private channels. 

They could also be financial in nature such as more tokens or an extra NFT reward. 

What's a really good tactic here is to have maybe 3 or 4 different bonuses and to alternate which is offered with each email. 

By alternating the offers you simply cover more bases. 

Summing up

To sum this up, if you're using email to promote a new product or offer, or simply to get existing non-buyers into your paid tiers, then you can't just send a one-off email and say "buy this now". 

You have to nurture the relationship. 

This sales sequence both nurtures the user, builds excitement for the offer, and also helps you actively sell.  

Adapt it for your own needs, or if you want a little extra help in planning this out, let me know here. 

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