How I Built The 3 Most Profitable Email Automations For My Brand ($1-$4 per recipient)

Email is vastly important, and I'm often surprised by the fact that every business needs it these days. Even if you're B2B, doing info products, or in-person services like HVAC, email can get you some business. (I'm not referring to outbound; it's mainly inbound for people who have signed up.)

I've done email & retention marketing (and overall growth hacking in ecommerce) for big brands like Warner Bros, NCAA, and Adult Swim, as well as smaller, newer brands.

There are a lot of ways to write emails and engage a list, but some of them are vastly more profitable and sustainable than others.

First off, here's a list of how your automated email flows will generally look in order of most profit:

1. Welcome series (after someone subscribes to your list but doesn't buy)

2. Post Purchase (if done right and you have more than 1 product)

3. Abandoned Checkout

The welcome series flow will be way ahead of the others in revenue (probably 4x the next runner up). This is typical because all it's doing is getting people who may have been going to buy but decided to opt for a subscription instead, to go over the line and make the purchase.

Let's go over how you can optimize your most important email flows. We'll tackle strategy, timing, and content. The post-purchase flow will be the one I recommend you to read most because I have a unique take on it.

1. Welcome Series

Your welcome series is your most important email flow. It takes people who may buy and turns them into customers. In this list, your job is to make people feel welcome, help them understand & remember why it's a good idea to buy from you, and maybe even make it easier to buy from you (with a discount). When done right, the welcome flow prevents cold feet. It makes new customers more self-assured.

The setup:

Anyone who joins your email list but doesn't buy. So, exclude those who purchase 1 time or more. (Buyers will "join" the email list but be excluded from the welcome email flow.) Include all those who join the list through any other method.

It should look like this.

The flow

Email #1: This is the email where you introduce someone to the brand by telling them about it, letting them know the things that inspired your products, and introduce the customer to each product you sell and the problems they solve. If you have many SKUs (more than 5), just group them. (No one wants to read through 100 products in one email. That's a one-way ticket to a lot of unsubscribes.)

When to send it: Immediately, after someone joins the welcome list.

Email #2: In this email, focus on differentiating yourself from others. The more someone is subscribed to your list, the more confident they should be that your product is either the best thing out there, or the best thing out there that happens to not be for them.

Alternatively, what often works quite well here is coming from a non-product approach. Introduce the founder (yourself). Talk about a story. A customer. Something different.

This email and all of the others should be 1-2 days apart from each other. Set up frequency capping in your ESP so that no one gets more than 4 or 5 emails in a week.
There's a point where respect for your recipients' inboxes becomes more important than a bit more profit.

Email #3 - #4:

In these two, communicate social proof, accomplishments, reviews, your products, what makes your products work, or the mission behind your products.

You can choose a combination of a few of those in each email. The goal here is to ensure people understand your part as ensuring your products are great, as well as the customer's side of this as seeing good experiences from your products.

Many brand emails, like this one, neglect to educate the customer on how the product works. It's a pretty weak expression of "our products work because we care and worked hard on them."

Not enough for most people to believe in.

Moving on to the next flow series:

2. Post Purchase

First off, let's go into what I hear most people say. They'll recommend a 2-part post purchase cross-sell flow where the first email goes out after your place an order, giving you a discount valid for 48 hrs. The second email reminds you of the expiring discount.

Or they recommend a 2-part post purchase flow where the first email goes out after the order was delivered/fulfilled. The first email in this case helps you get set up with the product, while the second email displays other products and tries to get you interested in them.

I think it's a mediocre approach at best, but it's good for the early days when you're getting off the ground.

My flow is much longer. I built it to seamlessly fit into customers' lives and add some value to the inbox without just being transactional.

Here's how it works:

It's composed of 12 emails, each one week apart. 3 months, total. (If you want, you can change that.)

Each email in this series will focus on either education, social proof, getting feedback from the customer about their experience, or a cross-sell. You cycle through these.

So, for example: Email 1 will be about educating the customer in some way about their product. Email 2 will focus on other customers' experiences, reviews, accolades, and other things like that. Email 3 will focus on the customer and their own experience—ask them about their favorite features, their progress with the product, their feedback, etc. Email 4 will be a cross-sell, where you highlight another product and how it connects/solves a problem your customer might care about.

This approach covers a few bases and essentially benefits the customer from all sides. No sales or discounts are required for this to be your second-best (or absolute best) email.

This sequence has been very profitable and has brought in between $4 and $8 for every email sent out. (10,000 recipients has resulted in up to $82,000 in my experience)

Now, for the third flow series:

3. Abandoned Checkout

The abandoned checkout flow should be your brand's 3rd most profitable flow (unless you're getting way more abandoned carts/checkouts than you should be getting).

Most people mess this one up by just being flat out creepy. First off, no one is going to be thrilled to read something like "We've been watching you and you almost made it! Go get your credit card and purchase!"

Many marketers think the person just got distracted and didn't buy. That's true sometimes, but instead, just make your case stronger. Hulu does a pretty good job here.

If you can avoid overtly sounding like you've been actually tracking the buyer (I facepalm every time I see this), avoid it. Instead, remind the buyer why they developed interest in the first place. Talk about the benefits, features, and, again, how/why your product works.

Now, for timing:

Send the first email 1 hour after the buyer started to check out (this works for ecommerce, info products, and some services/SAAS). Send the second one 3 hours later, then 8. I'd discourage sending out more than 5.

Of course, I'll be here to answer questions. This is a very long post, so I'll cut it here.

DISCLAIMER: This post was not written by me. All credit belongs to the author of the post.