It’s easy to dismiss email automation as simply a customer service tool – purchase confirmations, renewal reminders, sign-up confirmations etc. However automated email journeys can also be used to automatically push out sequential content over a prescribed period of time, helping you earn a passive income for content you’ve written for an e-course for instance.
Long term Feelingpeaky client Carole Ann Rice has done just this for two e-courses – the Comfortable Confidence Course and the 30 Day Challenge.
The Comfortable Confidence Course consists of 21 coaching emails (one a day) and three videos over the course of three weeks. Carole Ann wrote the content once, Feelingpeaky set up the 21 automated journeys once, and so far the course in its entirety has been sent out to 157 subscribers. Generating over £7k of income for Carole Ann Rice.
The 30 Day Challenge consists of 30 coaching emails (again one a day) and three videos over the course of 30 days. Again, one concerted effort by Carole Ann to produce the content, one period of automated journey set-up by Feelingpeaky, and only a week after launch it already has 15 subscribers and a total of 86 emails of coaching content have been sent out. During this time the client was on holiday and commented on how lovely it was to be receiving income ‘whilst she was sat on a beach’!
Sounds great doesn’t it! So what do you need to consider?
Step 1 – Define the goal
Before you start setting up emails and writing copy, it’s important you understand and define what the goal of the automated email series is.
Step 2 – Ensure you have the right data
There are two main ways you can do this – via a subscribe form or by integrating with an existing CRM tool that holds the necessary data, eg Salesforce or WooCommerce
Step 3 – Define triggers and rules
What starts the automated journey? Does someone sign up to a list? Or is a renewal date approaching. What are the rules for sending subsequent emails? For instance wait 24 hours in-between each email send.
Step 4 – Define the content and offers
This is dependent on the goal you set up in Step 1. Your content needs to have clear calls-to-action that lead people towards the end goal.
Step 5 – Set up your automated journeys
Most reputable email marketing software client such as Campaign Monitor and MailChimp have automated journey functionality as standard.