So, you’ve just spent several hours writing out a fabulous new email welcome sequence (or you’re about to!) How do you get people to opt in to receive your amazing messages?

Great Question!

You can (and should) continue building your list the same way you have in the past, by asking people to sign up at speaking events, putting links in all the right place (like in your ebook or in your social bios), and by any other traditional means. You will also want to start adding opt in forms on your home page, your blog, landing pages, and any other page where it makes sense to put one!

Your forms can be customized to fit the needs of your business. Both ConvertKit and MailChimp offer forms that can stand alone or integrate into your blog or another service. We use ConvertKit in combination with Thrive Lead Pages to collect opt ins. MailChimp is a great tool to use if you’re not ready for a paid program quite yet. For each free download offered, collect first name and email and you’re off to the races!

Create and Schedule Your Email Campaign

A welcome sequence can be pretty straightforward. Especially for your first sequence, you don’t need a lot of automation rules or “if this, then that” scenarios. You simply need to decide how many days you would like between each email and whether you should send on a weekend or not.

ConvertKit and MailChimp each have a walk-through that takes you through this process step-by-step. All you have to do is follow their instructions. It’s not quite as simple as copy and paste, but very nearly so…

To get started you will need your email copy,click-worthy email headlines, preview text that gives your contacts a sneak peak that makes them want to see more, and any files that you will offer for direct download. That’s it.

While templates are available, we prefer to use ConvertKit’s plain text emails and we suggest you do, too. They not only give our marketing efforts a personal feel, they also help us avoid spam filters. We’ve been seeing significantly higher open rates since we made the switch. We’ve also had subscribers reply to individual email messages in our welcome series as though we sent the message only to them. Although they knew it was a campaign message, they said, “it was like you were speaking directly to me.” The combination of copy written directly to our ideal client avatar and a daily send for 6 days, not including weekends, is working very well for us!

Preview and Test Your Campaign

Before sending, it’s important to test your campaign to make sure that everything goes the way you’re expecting. Make sure to check all your links! You can easily check your formatting by using the preview mode, but the best way to make sure everything is on point is to send test messages and view them from both desktop and mobile.

Send Your Campaign

Once you’ve completed testing… it’s GO TIME! Once someone opts in your sequence will send at the times you set up. Typically, the first email will go out right away since most new subscribers will be on the lookout for it then (or at least signing up will be fresh in their mind.)

Analyze Your Data and Make Adjustments

After you start your campaign, you can monitor your email’s performance by checking your results. You can get detailed stats to help you track your list growth, subscriber engagement, and revenue and keep track of exactly how your marketing is affecting your bottom line.

You can see individual metrics like opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and social shares. Don’t obsess over your results, but absolutely use them to determine whether you met your goals or need to make changes for the next time. After you have enough data to make that determination, you can pause your sequence and make edits. If you meet or exceed your goals, consider cloning your sequence and using as a start to another sequence. Writing your second or third is a snap once you’ve got your first one completed.