In this episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast, I talk about why having an onboarding sequence is key to turning new subscribers into paying customers. I walk you through a simple 4-email sequence: delivering the lead magnet, introducing yourself, offering more value, and finally, introducing your product or service. I also share my personal swipe files and examples, focusing on keeping things simple and building a personal connection. Plus, I cover the tech side of automating these emails and managing subscriber tags. This episode is great for business owners and marketers who want to improve their email onboarding process and grow their customer base.
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- A Simple 4-Step Email Sequence: To convert new subscribers into customers, focus on a clear, easy-to-follow email sequence—delivering the lead magnet, introducing yourself, providing extra value, and then introducing your product or service.
- Personal Connection is Key: Keep your emails personal and relatable to build trust and make your subscribers feel more connected to you and your brand.
- Automate for Efficiency: Set up automated emails and manage subscriber tags to streamline your onboarding process, saving time while nurturing relationships with new subscribers.
If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Teresa on Website, (Grow, Launch, Sell), Sign up to Teresa’s email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter
Transcript
Ever wondered how to turn someone who just downloaded your lead magnet into a customer? Well, in today’s episode of the podcast, I am sharing why having an onboarding sequence is so important and also the essential four emails that you need to warm up your new subscriber, help them further, and then introduce your offer.
I even give you examples of what to write in these emails. If you are struggling with your onboarding, this is the episode for you.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream. business podcast. How are you doing today? Okay. We are 394 episodes in. We are just seven episodes away from 400 episodes of this podcast, which is.
wild. And if you have listened for a while or even to many more than just one or two episodes, I want to give you a humongous thank you. I love doing the podcast. I find it so awesome when someone says, I listened to your episode or I listened to your podcast and I look at my stats and see all these numbers of people [00:02:00“>00:02:00">00:02:00] who download it and listen to it.
And it just seems crazy to me that there are all these people out there listening to my voice. So I appreciate you so very much. And I want to ask a favor. Now I should be planning something for my 400th episode. And if you’ve got any ideas, please come and DM me. I would love to hear them. However, what I would really love.
is to get some more reviews on the podcast. So if you have never reviewed my podcast, I would appreciate it so hugely if you could go to wherever you’re listening to this, Apple or Spotify or whatever you might be, and go and give me a five star review and tell me what you liked about it. Was there a particular episode that you enjoyed?
Do you like my very relaxed, slightly unprofessional style? What is it that you’re getting from it? Why should someone else go and listen to this podcast? Like I said, I would massively appreciate it if you would do that for me. And I know not only it helps me as a podcaster, but also [00:03:00“>00:03:00">00:03:00] hopefully helps other people because the reason I do the podcast is it’s a free resource.
It takes a lot of work. It costs money. It’s probably the, the most consistent and hardest thing I have to do in my business. And it involves the team and it’s like a whole big effort and therefore the more people that listen, the bigger impact we have. So I really, really appreciate you doing that.
Okay. So today we’re going to talk quite specifically, you know, Sometimes after 400 episodes, I think, what on earth can I talk about? But the truth is, there is still so much I can share. And not only that, but after 400 episodes or nearly 400 episodes, I, my thoughts and things have changed and the industry has changed and what’s working now has changed.
So actually for me. probably stuff I talked about many, many, many years ago might have changed or might not be the same advice as I would give today. I know my, I know I have definitely changed [00:04:00“>00:04:00">00:04:00] beyond recognition and like I said, some of the things I said back in the day, I maybe wouldn’t stand by now, which is why I guess it’s good that the podcast keeps going.
So one of the things I want to talk about today is quite specific, but it’s on I’m The whole bringing your audience on, because as we know, there are three main areas to having an online business. It’s growing your audience, launching your online thing and selling it. Okay. That is the thing that’s going to bring you in the money, those three activities.
And that’s why my course grow, launch, sell focuses around those three things. I say course, it is more of a program. You, you get to work with me for six months and it’s a very small numbers. I keep it tight because I’m one of those people who likes to know who I’m talking to and literally has conversations with every single person in the program.
So The program is focused around those three areas. And as part of that area, the very first one is the grow. And if I could say one thing for you to do in your business, it’s [00:05:00“>00:05:00">00:05:00] growing your audience, that would make the biggest difference. You can sell something not massively effectively, but if you have an audience, you could still sell some.
You. You could sell the best way you could possibly sell, but if you don’t have an audience, you’re not going to sell anything. So that grow part is so, so crucial. And within that, there’s lots of different things as we know, cause I’ve talked about it for a while, but one of the key things is getting people on your email list, because we’re not just talking about growing
an Instagram following or a LinkedIn following, we want to get them onto our email list. Because as we know, if we’ve been in this game for a while, the algorithm changes, people’s viewing habits change, they change the platform, you now have to do reels or whatever it is. So getting them on your email list means that that data belongs to you.
You are not marketing on borrowed ground, which is what we’re doing when we’re marketing on social media. They don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing social media. It’s brilliant. I have lots of social media people in my world who work with me to grow their businesses. [00:06:00“>00:06:00">00:06:00] And it’s a great tool and believe me, like back in the day when I started marketing 20 plus years ago, I know terrifying, social media didn’t exist.
It wasn’t even a thing. People didn’t even need websites. So it is an amazing tool that basically has leveled the playing field more than anything else. In fact, I don’t think I ever talk about it on the podcast, but did you know, I did a TEDx and my TEDx was about how social media has changed the marketing landscape.
Now, this was a while back because I did that, oh gosh, I can’t even think how many years ago now, probably six, seven, maybe more, but I’m going to link to it in the show notes. So if you want to go and have a look at that TEDx, it’s on the TED stuff, it’s on YouTube under the TEDx thing. So yeah, search my name and TEDx and you’ll find it, but we will put a link to it in the show notes.
So yeah, social media really did change the marketing, you know, platform in terms of like the playing field, sorry. In terms of like what is available to small businesses compared to the marketing I did when I first started, which was if you had a [00:07:00“>00:07:00">00:07:00] big ass marketing budget, you could do marketing. So I’m not dismissing social media.
It’s brilliant, but we want people to come and join our email list. And when people join our email list, we have the job of loving them and bringing them into our world. And one of the areas I want to focus on today or the area I want to focus on today is that onboarding process. Is that what do we do when someone initially opts in to our emails to onboard them, to get them engaged and also warm them up to them potentially buying something from us?
Okay. So I am going to take you through the onboarding emails and the process that I use and I teach when you’re doing a lead magnet. Obviously, hopefully, you know, by now what lead magnet is, but just as a quick heads up, if you’re new, a lead magnet is something that you’re offering to people for free in order for them to give you their email [00:08:00“>00:08:00">00:08:00] address.
So for instance, I have a ton of them as you would imagine, but if you are looking at launching and you were to go to. tereseaethewaring. com forward slash launch, or you were looking at list building and you were to go to tereseaethewaring. com forward slash list building, you would find lead magnets that basically will help you with those two things.
And in return, I’m asking for your email address. But then once you sign up, how do I communicate to you and have a conversation with you that basically introduces who I am, what I do, kind of starts building that relationship and then potentially brings you to a product? It doesn’t always have to, by the way, but some cases it will.
So when I’m talking about an onboarding sequence, that’s what I’m talking about in very simple terms. It is a set of emails that you send that are automated, i. e. you set it up and then you don’t need to worry about it. It just gets sent every time someone opts in over a [00:09:00“>00:09:00">00:09:00] set period of time, which introduces them.
And then once they’ve gone through that onboarding, they will then be put into the main emails. And These are what I call broadcast emails, not just I call them, lots of people call them broadcast emails. And those broadcast emails are the ones that you send regularly. So for me, I send an email every Monday, every Thursday.
If I’m in a launch mode, if I’m promoting something, then I will email a lot more than that. I used to be very fearful of that. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to bother people. And now I’ve got over that. We can talk about that on another episode. Actually, can I interrupt this just as a side to say, if you have any ideas of what you want me to talk about on the podcast, episodes that you would find super helpful, then please come and DM me.
Come and DM me over on Instagram. That is my favorite. That is where I am the most. Just search Teresa Heath Warren. You’ll find me over there. And come and let me know if there’s a topic, a subject, there’s something you don’t [00:10:00“>00:10:00">00:10:00] understand, you want me to talk through. I will happily do that. Just let me know.
Okay. So going back to the onboarding sequence. So the onboarding sequence is literally just a set of emails that are going out. I want to talk you through a very simple onboarding sequence that will get you started and will help you onboard these people so that they know who you are and what you do and potentially lead to a sale if you want it to, but you don’t have to, I’m going to talk you through what to put in each email and then hopefully you can use this to set up a very simple onboarding because normally what happens or what can happen is that people just say, here’s the thing that you asked for and then that’s the only email they send.
So I’m going to talk you through the emails in particular, and then I’ll just touch on briefly, kind of a bit of the automation. Obviously, this will depend on what system you’re using, but let’s talk about those emails first. The first thing I should say is there is a lot of differing opinion out there.
So take what I’m [00:11:00“>00:11:00">00:11:00] saying. And if it works and helps use it, there are lots of people who will do like, there are some people who do onboarding sequences of like 90 days or 50 emails. That is not what I’m teaching here. I am teaching you a really nice, simple onboarding thing that you can use today that will introduce you what you do and hopefully start to warm them up to become a potential client.
Okay, very first email that gets sent immediately. So when you are actually setting this up in whatever email system you’re using, you want to select immediate as the timeframe, not a day, not one day, not whatever. So the first email that goes out immediately is the actual email that delivers the lead magnet.
And the only objective of this email is to deliver the lead magnet. That’s it. Nothing else. One of my main aims with emails is to give you one thing to do, because when you [00:12:00“>00:12:00">00:12:00] give people choice, it gets confusing and then you don’t get them to do anything. So when someone comes to me and says, which of these three things should I do, or I want to include all these three things, I say to them, if you wanted and wanted that person to take one action, which of those actions would it be, that’s the thing to include.
So the aim of email one that goes immediately is just to deliver the thing. What I’m going to do is I’m going to briefly talk you through a little bit of the copy that I use as well, just to give you an idea of what you can include on this. Also, again, as a side, I offer all of these templates and all of these swipe files and so many swipe files in the Grow Launch Sell program.
There is a wait list for the Grow Launch Sell program. It’s not currently open. If you go to teresaheathwearing. com forward slash GLS, then you can get on the wait list there. Okay. So email one, like I said, the aim of this email is just to deliver the lead [00:13:00“>00:13:00">00:13:00] magnet. Don’t include anything else. So I would use a title like here is your whatever it is they’ve opted in for.
So for instance, if you were offering a lead magnet of a recipe guide, you would put here is your recipe guide. Then it would basically say something simple like welcome and thank you for requesting my whatever it was. I really hope you find it useful. Click here to download. I look forward to seeing what you think.
And then basically I tell them that I will be in touch in a few days time. So one of the other things that people get worried about is bombarding people, bothering people. I think as long as you manage people’s expectations. That’s fine. If you tell them I’m going to be in touch in a few days time, be in touch in a few days time, that becomes irritating when you a don’t do the thing or if you don’t tell them and then you start emailing them every other minute.
Email number one, just deliver the thing. The only link in there should be to download the thing that they’ve asked for. Don’t try and say come and see me on [00:14:00“>00:14:00">00:14:00] insta. Don’t try and do anything else. Just give them the thing because that is what they’ve asked for. That one thing. So super simple, email one is just delivering the thing.
Email two, which I tend to do on day two. So if you imagine day zero is when you’ve delivered and day two is the next email. So it’s two days later. So I’m going to keep saying the number of days as in when we start count at zero. On day two, the aim of this email is to show the reader that you understand them and also to introduce you and help them know what makes you different from someone else.
For me, I use this email to really kind of say to people, look, this is who I am. This is what, you know, why you want to listen to me and that sort of thing. So, like I said, understand the situation and also to introduce you. This is the kind of swipe that I include for the grow, launch, sell. So in this email that goes on day two, I use the title.
Let’s get to know each other a bit better. [00:15:00“>00:15:00">00:15:00] And then I say, sometimes emails feel so impersonal. Don’t you think first name, but as you’ll start to discover, I like to see them as a two way communication. Can’t even say the word with my amazing community. And I actively encourage you to email me back when you feel like it, but I understand that it might seem a bit odd as we don’t know much about each other yet.
I’ll start. So this is the bit where you include who you are, some fun facts, something interesting, and your USP, and then I encourage them to reply and tell me about them. Now personally, and again, this is me and my business, I reply to all of those emails, so they all come into my inbox. The team don’t touch them.
They know that those are ones I replied to. It might take me a couple of days, but I will get back to anyone that personally emails me into my inbox off one of my emails, because when I wrote this swipe copy, I genuinely believe that email is a two way conversation and it is part of a community. So like I said, email too, is to show them that you understand, [00:16:00“>00:16:00">00:16:00] because in your bio, you might talk about the fact of, I get it.
You know, I have been there. I’ve done that. I’ve done the other thing to give you an idea. This is what I’ve put in one of my onboarding emails. I started off as let’s get to know each other. We are now friends. Hi, first name, just in case you’re new around here. I thought it’d be nice to get to know each other a little better.
I’ll start. I put in a GIF of Grace and Anthony, I think they’re, um, so I’m one of those people who love what they do. I was going to write, I’m lucky to be one of those people, but honestly, I don’t think it’s luck. After 10 years in marketing, I decided that I would start my own business. It was a completely rash decision.
I was a single mom to a four year old and I had no savings and no one who could support me. I started life off as a freelance marketing manager, then with an agency, but I was unhappy. I had created a business I didn’t like, let alone love. After investing in myself, my mindset, I started to get clear on what I wanted from my business and life with a goal to aim for.
I put a plan in place to [00:17:00“>00:17:00">00:17:00] be, to use all my best strategies. I went from an agency with clients to a six figure online business owner with a membership courses and high touch one to one coaching. And I achieved things I could only ever dreamed of an international award winning speaker, best selling author, host of a podcast, your dream business.
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing guests like Amy Porterfield, Michael Hyatt, Denise W. Thomas, Jasmine Starr. Oh, and I’m a mom, step mom, a dog mom, and a lover of all things, Grey’s Anatomy. And I grow my own vegetables. There you go. Me in a nutshell. I’d love to hear more about you. Why not drop me an email back, introduce yourself or come and find me on social and we can connect over there.
My favorite is instagram So there is an example of one of the emails I actually sent. So this is the number two email where I introduce myself. I go, look, I’ve done what you’ve done. I’ve been where you have. I give them some credibility and I give them some fun stuff. Like I’m obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy and gardening.
And then I tell them to come and connect with me. And I give them a link to Instagram to come and [00:18:00“>00:18:00">00:18:00] follow me over there. So that’s your objective for number two is to get to know each other better and to have a link to maybe go to your social media. Okay. Email number three, which would go on day four. So two days later, email number three is about adding more value.
So how can you give them more value on top of what you’ve done from a lead magnet point of view? So if I go, sorry, I am, as I’m recording this, I’m literally going through like many different tabs on my computer to go and find the stuff. So. This is how we add more value. So day four, the title could be something like the main struggle when, and this is another pain point.
So if your, whatever your pain point was that your lead magnet gave the or help them with, we’re going to help them with another pain point. And then the preview text, I put this might help. You know what first name I have worked with so many. And then you would put what have your, what do your customers call themselves?
I’ve worked with so many moms. I’ve worked with so many business owners. I’ve worked [00:19:00“>00:19:00">00:19:00] with so many gluten free people, wherever it might be. And as well as finding it hard to what was their first pain point that you gave them. Many of them share with me that they also struggled with. What’s the second pain point then talk about that second pain point.
So go a bit deeper into it. What do they feel? How does it stop them doing whatever they want to do? And then I just put, I’m curious. Do you ever feel like that too? I have so many tips, tools, strategies that can help you with this, and I’ve put them in, so it might be a blog or a podcast episode or a download or another lead magnet.
So click here to help you with whatever it is. Okay, so that’s number three to help them with something else and provide them with some more value. One of the things that’s really good about this is if you wanted to get super smart on your emails, you could actually start to segment the people who had clicked.
against the people that hadn’t because [00:20:00“>00:20:00">00:20:00] basically with someone clicking, they are almost giving you the impression, not the impression, what’s the word, the indication, thank you, that’s what I’m thinking of, that they have that problem, that they’re going deeper, that they are really invested in this and therefore they would be seen as a more warmer lead than maybe the initial person who downloaded the lead magnet.
So if they’ve downloaded the lead magnet and then they’ve gone on to click and look at this next thing, I would treat them as someone who’s warmer than if they hadn’t final emails, day six. So this is basically six days after the first lead magnet email, email number four. And this is like, so this is a very simple onboarding.
So there’s only four emails in it, but this is the email where you can introduce a product or a service. If you want to, if you don’t have a product or service to introduce, then don’t feel like you have to, but in this final email. This is where you can introduce it. [00:21:00“>00:21:00">00:21:00] Now it doesn’t have to be a hard sell.
It doesn’t have to be anything like that. And in honest truth, the amount of people who are going to buy off this email are very, very slim, but it still doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t introduce it and talk about it. Email number four, introduce the fact that you have an offer or service, and I’d include a strong call to action.
The example email that I have a swipe copy is the easy way to whatever the pain point is, let me show you. First name, I’m sure you know by now that, and then you relate to their larger pain point. You could then list out some of the pains that they have in a bullet form, and then that’s where I would introduce the fact of that this is why I have created whatever the thing is that you’ve created, whether it’s a membership, a course, a program.
And then I would talk about the outcomes that people get. This is the benefits versus features bit. Talk about the benefits first, i. e. what could you achieve? And then you would list the features. [00:22:00“>00:22:00">00:22:00] And then you would do the invite. You would introduce them to click to find more, to get on a call, to chat about it, whatever it might be.
Like I said, on this email, it’s going to feel like, well, it’s pointless. People aren’t signing up, but the fact is you’re introducing an offer, so they know it exists. The other thing I’d include on this email is some social proof, screenshots of what people have said, testimonials of different things, just so that they good and real and that sort of thing.
Again, what you could do is if someone clicks, you could follow up them within a different way than if someone didn’t click because they would be a warmer prospect to someone who didn’t click. Like I said, this is a very simple onboarding. You could do more than four emails. You could do less than four emails.
I probably wouldn’t do less than four. I would definitely do those first three for sure. If you didn’t want to introduce something, then. That’s fine. Some of the other [00:23:00“>00:23:00">00:23:00] things, the, the way I round these emails off is if you wanted to sell a bit deeper, another email I’ve done as email five is give them a taster of what’s included in the membership or the product or whatever it is.
So for instance, I might give them a free lesson, or I might give them a video that talks about something and give them a kind of a bit deeper in of what they might get. If they don’t buy anything, then I might just send an email saying, Hey, no worries. Now isn’t the time. That’s not a problem. You’ll now start getting my regular emails on a Monday and a Thursday and look out for the next time I promote this thing, or I don’t know, something like that.
So I would also introduce the fact that they’ll go into your normal emails as of now, you can include that as a PS on your final email, just to say, these are my regular emails that you’ll now receive. Okay. Like I said, that’s a very simple onboarding. [00:24:00“>00:24:00">00:24:00] Hopefully the way I’ve read through some of the swipe files has helped and some of the examples I’ve given.
As a member of the Grow Launch Sell program, you would get all those swipe files. We literally write all that for you and there is a wait list. You can get on the wait list now over at teresaheathwareing.com forward slash G L S. Let’s just talk briefly about. technology and the tech side of how this works.
When you set up your email, you’re going to set up a automation and that automation is going to say on day such and such, send this email day, such and such, send this email. You can keep it pretty simple. One of the things that we do is we give them a tag when they come into any onboarding and a tag is just like a label so the tag would say in process or I can’t even remember what it says one of the team did it and they when they have that tag they don’t get my broadcast emails.
So the [00:25:00“>00:25:00">00:25:00] broadcast emails, the ones that are the Mondays and Thursdays, they won’t get until that tag gets removed. And that tag gets removed at the end of the email sequence. This is to hopefully not confuse them too much and to give them just the onboarding experience. And then once they’re out of the onboarding, they then drop into my normal emails as normal.
I really hope this has helped. Like I said, it’s been a little bit tricky talking you through the swipe files when you can’t see them on the actual documents. Like the bits that you fill in are in a different color and therefore it’s much easier to make sense of. But I really hope I’ve given you some ideas.
