Email Follow-Up Campaign Playbook

Understand the Purpose of Follow-Up Emails

What are Follow-Up Emails

Follow-up emails are exactly what they sound like—an email series that follows up with
people based off of a specific action they’ve taken (or not taken). These actions can be
anything from opening emails, clicking on links, opening but not clicking on anything,
and a ton of other actions.

You can think of follow-up emails as retargeting campaigns inside your customers inbox.

If somebody doesn’t respond well to your first offer, that doesn’t mean they don’t want
another product or service you offer. That’s why follow-up email series are so essential in
marketing; They ensure you don’t miss an opportunity to connect with and sell to a
customer.

In this Playbook, we will walk you through the basic process to set up a follow-up
campaign. You’ll see examples of a few different campaigns and learn all the things you
should take into consideration when setting up your own.

Since there is a wide variety of ESP’s, we won’t cover the set-up process inside your ESP
(your provider should have demo info on that). Instead, we will focus on all the thought
processes and consideration that goes on before you actually go in a set everything up.

Buckle up and let’s get started!

Set Up Your Follow-Up Series

Know The Trigger
Every email follow-up campaign starts with a trigger. The trigger is the action your customer
takes that triggers your follow-up series to start. Here are some examples of triggers:

 Opening an email
 Clicking through to a page
 Cart abandonment 
 Making a purchase, and more

You can usually set up tracking parameters that trigger different follow up series based on
actions you’ve dictated.

As you can see in this example taken from DigitalMarketers ESP, we set up a follow-up series
for anyone who was tagged as interested in the “Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing” Lead
Magnet. This is the trigger that leads to a series of pre-scheduled, automated emails.

You can set up triggers for a ton of different actions. Any trigger you set up should be based on
an action that could have an impact on your business goals. It can be something that affects your
churn rate, take rate for a product, helps your customers ascend, or just increase engagement with
products/content you create. 

*Action Item: Decide what triggers you want to set up for your follow-up campaign. *

Next, let’s look at what you want your follow-up sequence to accomplish. 

Determine Your Reason for Following Up

You picked a trigger because the action your customer took had some kind of effect on your
business, good or bad. 

If it had a positive impact, like purchasing a product, requesting info, or signing up for
something, you most likely want to:

 reward or encourage that action with a link to related (ideally un-gated) content
 provide an opportunity to upsell the logical next product/service 
 show appreciation with a freebie
 request feedback on the product 

In the case of a positive outcome, the key is to figure out how you can keep your customer happy
and engaged with your products, services, and content.

If the action had a negative impact, say they don’t engage with a few email campaigns, or have
decided not to purchase last minute, you will most likely want to:

 downsell to another product/service that is more in line with what they want
 get some more information to see if they should be moved to a different list
 remind them of the product/service they left in their cart
 offer up a freebie that you believe will re-engage them 

In this case, the key is to think about what your customers action was, what your desired
outcome would have been, and why it might have differed from the actual outcome. Something
missed the mark with that customer, and you need to try and figure out what it was. 

Understanding the why behind your follow up will help keep your sequencing and copy in line
with your desired outcome, and your customers wants/needs. 

*Action Item: Determine why and how you want to follow-up with your customer based off
the trigger you determined in the last module. *

Next, you need to set up your follow up sequence… 

Decide on Your Follow-Up Sequence

Generally, email follow up campaigns are usually 2-5 mails depending on the series. For
example, somebody who didn’t purchase may need 5 emails to showcase the value of the product
and the scarcity on the time to buy it. On the other hand, if you are following up with a happy
customer, you might just send one or two emails with a link to related content and a request for
feedback. 

How you time your follow up sequence is really up to you. We recommend you don’t hound
your email list with a never-ending stream of follow-ups, but make sure that you are delivering
value.

Here’s an example of a follow up sequence we use at DM. As you can see, we send a few emails
over the course of a couple days and then wait to see if they convert. 
Here’s another example of a series from wpbeginner that was triggered by signing up for access
to a Lead Magnet…

The first follow up was an intro email, offering up some info on the company, what to expect
from the emails, and a request to whitelist and prioritize their emails (to prevent them from going
to spam).
The next day, they sent out a follow up email with the Lead Magnet, and a few other helpful
links. 
Now it’s your turn.

*Action Item: Take some time to plan out and write down your follow-up sequence. *

Write your Email Copy

The tone and copy of your follow-up emails needs to be based off of your brand voice. You want
to create a sense of continuity across every stage of the Customer Value Journey so make sure
your transitions, offers, and sales copy are conversational and deliver value. 

If you’re looking for some copy inspiration, check out the Email Campaign Templates tool for
some different email templates. 
Make sure you double check any links inside your copy and set up link tracking before you set
the sequence live.  

*Action Item: Write your email copy. 

Set Up Your Series Inside Your ESP And Track The Results

Your final step is to transfer all your planning into your ESP and set up your follow-up
campaign. 

Each system is set up a bit differently, so refer to your SEP’s site for help completing this
section.

 *Action Item: Set up your series inside your ESP.*

Congrats! You have a follow-up Campaign!

Your want to make sure you have tracking in place so you can optimize your follow up series.  A
30% average open rate is a great benchmark to aim for, but having tracking set up helps enable
you to continuously improve. 

You can read more about tracking the metrics of your emails in our Email Marketing Metrics
Guide.

What's Next?
Keep Your Email List Clean
Once you’ve built a great email following, you want to start practicing List Hygiene. This is
when you remove inactive and non-engaging email addresses from your list so that you aren’t
harming your deliverability rate.

Learn more about List Hygiene and how to win back email subscribers with this resource: Office
Hours: How DigitalMarketer Won Back 58,337 (And Counting) Email Subscribers.