I’m going to show you how to get more YESes – AKA more sales, subscribers, signups, subscriptions, customers, and clients – from the sales sequences you’re already sending by:
optimizing your reminder emails.
Reminder emails are an easy optimization opportunity. Here’s why:
In case you didn’t already know, reminder emails play an important role in a sales sequence. Marketing data shows us that a bulk of purchases during a limited-time promo happen on the final day of that promo.
This is why:
We, marketers, send a few emails on the last day to let subscribers know that open enrolment is closing, a sale is ending, or a special offer is expiring. Because we know some people need that nudge to make a decision.
You’ve probably seen emails like this cross your inbox a time or 2 – or 20 – with subject lines containing phrases like:
Final day.
Closing soon.
Last chance.
Start today.
Less than 4 hours left.
And so on.
If you’re already using reminders in your sales sequences, that’s great.
(But stay tuned because, next, I’m sharing a conversion copywriting strategy for taking the persuasive-ness of those emails up a notch.)
And if you’re not using reminder emails. go ahead and make a note to add 1-3 reminders to your next promo email plan. Perfect!
How to craft reminder emails that have more sales-pulling power:
A missed opportunity I see all too often with reminders is:
sending an email that is purely functional.
As in, it serves no other purpose than to say:
Hey, this sale is ending. Or hey, this program is closing. Or hey, this special offer is expiring.
As an example. take a look at this reminder email that slid into my inbox not too long ago ( 01:33). You can see that the email copy says nothing more than: “I know you might be busy this weekend, so I just wanted to send you a reminder.”
That’s it.
No other compelling reason to take action is offered to the reader.
The thing is, when you do your why-people-buy research (or what we conversion copywriters call voice-of-customer research) through methods like discovery surveys and switching interviews, you’ll often learn:
Subscribers aren’t waiting for the final day of your promo just because. What’s driving inaction…
are lingering doubts, fears, questions, and concerns.
These hesitations, when unaddressed, keep your reader on the fence of indecision. Subscribers open your emails but never actually click that big beautiful buy button.
Sure, we know. an email that reminds will pull a few more people in on the final day. Yet, an email that not only reminds BUT ALSO answers, soothes, or shifts any remaining barriers to purchase helps even more ideal fit customers and clients make that YES decision.
I’ll show you 2 examples.
Example 1: The Fear-Focused Reminder Email
This first reminder email I wrote for a client’s recent launch – a launch that saw a whopping 165% boost in immediate revenue during the 7-day promo period. Through my research, I learned one of the big barriers to joining the program on offer was: FEAR – specifically:
- their fear of failure
- the belief they needed special talent (and the fear that they didn’t have it) and
- their fear of what others would think of them if they joined the program and pursued this path
So, one of the final reminder emails was written to soothe those specific fears. (View this email at 03:16.) The email copy then went on to show the reader how the program would equip them with the tools they needed to master these fears and others.
Example 2: The “What’s the Catch?” Reminder Email
The second reminder email I’m going to show you was written for an evergreen sales sequence for an always-open membership program. Naturally, we wanted to create a special limited-time offer to give subscribers a compelling reason to take action sooner rather than later.
Because this 15-email sequence had already addressed all of the known objections and concerns uncovered in the research phase, I hypothesized that – at this point on the final day of the promo period – on-the-fence, potentially skeptical subscribers might be thinking:
“This trial seems so great. There has to be a catch.”
So, I wrote a final reminder email addressing that specific hesitation. (View the email at 03:56.)
To sum up, In a promo sequence, reminder emails help activate on-the-fence subscribers with the urgency of a deadline.
Here’s your opportunity:
Boost the sales-pulling power of your reminder emails by incorporating persuasive messages that answer, soothe, or shift any lingering hesitations. So you can get even more subscribers to leap off the fence of indecision and eagerly power scroll to that big beautiful buy button.
