Yesterday I urged you to think about your email welcome series as an instrument of transformation — taking the first critical steps in transforming your drive-by audience into an actual audience, one that gives you permission to converse with it because it trusts you.
Trusts that your insights are novel, applicable and pertinent to them.
Trusts that your content answers the questions they have.
Trusts that your email, your video, your tweet will always be worth their time.
The funny thing is — when you think about your welcome series this way, probably the last thing you’d want to put into it is a series of links to your org’s recent research reports.
To kickstart a relationship toward trust, you’d introduce them to resources that can answer their questions and lead their thinking. Your thought leadership. Your data tools. Your educational courses. Your POVs, pillar arguments and values. What differentiates you, and what they should expect.
More than 50% of your new subscribers will open these emails. It’s a unique window of opportunity. Don’t be coy.
Here’s another way to think about it, from Seth Godin: “To say, ‘I’m going to engage with this customer in a way that changes them from frustrated to loyal,” as opposed to saying, ‘I’m going to move this paper from here to there.’”
They signed up because they’re curious, of course. But they’re also frustrated on some level, because they have questions no one has yet answered well. Here’s your chance to show them you will own their questions and repay their attention, again and again.