No one loves long-form content more than I do.
I’m a major nerd for blogs, long-form videos, podcasts … all the way up to complex projects like books and courses.
Thoughtful, well-developed content is a great way to build authority, attract an engaged audience, develop trust and rapport, and stake your claim in search engines.
But like babies and puppies, two other things I love, long-form content is also a lot of responsibility.
Blogs, video channels, and podcasts take time and creative energy.
You’ve got to write or script terrific material that stands out from the general noise. Then you need to promote it intelligently and cultivate reader relationships.
And that’s in addition to everything else you do in your business, from creating your product to getting your taxes filed.
That’s why there’s another content marketing tool that I always recommend having in place — ideally before you write your first word of content in another format.
It’s the email sequence (sometimes called an autoresponder).
What is an email sequence and why do I want one?
Most email platforms now support sequences that can be sent to subscribers in the order and frequency you decide.
Set it up once and it can be delivered a hundred — or a million — times.
(The exception are some of the large newsletter platforms like Medium and Substack. There are workarounds, but it takes some fiddling to make them work. That’s one reason it’s a great idea to run a dedicated email list in addition to using those platforms.)
The most common type is still the welcome sequence, which lets you create a great experience for every new person who comes into your audience.
It never gets sick or tired. It never needs a long weekend for important holidays like Penguin Awareness Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day.
It never gets bored with your marketing message. It never gets snarky. It never gets sick of newbies.
It delivers your best content, in the best possible order and frequency, to every new reader who finds you.
Forever. (Or until you update it.)
That’s why I call sequences the lazy marketer’s best friend.
Whether you want a day off to head to the beach or a month off for a life-changing adventure, your autoresponder is back home taking care of business.
Marketers have been yapping about the value of strong welcome sequence for decades. (I first wrote about them around 2011, and I was far from the first person to do it.)
But a lot of us are still dumping new audience members into whatever we happen to be writing about this week.
(Or into the void, when we skip a week because we’re tired or unmotivated. Which, you know, happens.)
We aren’t leading with our best foot — we’re leading with whatever we manage to come up with.
Why welcome sequences are hard to write
First, they’re hard to write because we know they’re important.
We plan and procrastinate, trying to figure out what would make for the perfect welcome sequence — when an imperfect welcome could be doing great work for us.
It also falls into that wretched category of “important but not urgent.”
Also known as, “Good luck getting this done if your brain is wired in an inconvenient way.”
We know we should get it written. (Or improve the one we have, because it makes us cringe.)
But we could fix it this week, or next week, or next month … or maybe never.
What makes a good welcome sequence?
There’s a lot of advice about sending “pure” content to your list before you send any “dirty” content.
In other words, you “give and give and give,” and then you have the right to sell something.
You don’t actually have to do that … and it’s not serving your audience the way you think it is.
A good welcome sequence starts to build toward a sale from the start.
Not in a creepy or pushy way, but in the interest of giving people options and making it easy to make a good decision.
A good sequence will:
- Make the case for what you do and how you do it.
- Answer the questions people have before they’re ready to buy. (What needs to be in place before your offer makes sense? What do they need? What do they want?)
- Give your new subscriber interesting and useful things to click on.
- Let subscribers move forward on their terms, not yours.
That means that for some people, you probably need to give them an opportunity to buy a lot earlier than you do now.
(Think about how annoying it is go to a store and be completely unable to find someone to ring up the purchase you came in to buy.)
And if your prospect isn’t ready to buy right now — which is the majority of every list — great email content will keep them connected until they’re ready … whether that takes six months, a year, or ten years.
Pro tip: Build it first (or build it now)
There’s no such thing as free website traffic.
You either pay with money (advertising or affiliate commissions) — or you pay with your time and creative energy.
That’s why if you’re starting from zero in a new topic, I recommend you build a simple welcome sequence first — before you start publishing any other content.
That lets you create a connection with every person who wants to know more about what you’re up to.
And if you’re already publishing, the second best time to build your sequence (or improve the one you have) is today.
Which will mean you can capitalize on your favorite and most resonant work — so you’ve got that going for you.
How about you?
- Do you have a welcome sequence in place right now?
- If so, does it have the kind of content that’s going to turn your readers into raving fans?
- Are you happy with the number of messages in your sequence, or do you think you could extend it a little and deliver even more value?
If the answer to any of these is No, drop a comment and let us know if you have a plan to get it done!
If you’d like a hand getting it done
We’re going to be coming together to write your very own terrific welcome sequence very shortly.
If you want in, make sure you’re on the email list — the sign-up is in the goldenrod-colored box below the comment section. ⤵️
This will be a great fit for experienced content creators, but we can also help you get your very first sequence written.
I’d love to see you there!
Photo by serjan midili on Unsplash. A version of this post was originally written for Copyblogger.
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