Transcript of How to Build a Post-Purchase Email Sequence That Kills Refunds and Builds Loyalty

And see, this is the thing where people, the quote unquote experts, will tell you, oh, you have to send this one, this one, and this one, and it's this and this and this and this. And that's all bullshit. Okay? It's you need to envision a single person who is your avatar. And we're going to go back to— remember we talked about in the sales letter, avatar, offer, the hot buttons, you. What do you think are the kinds of things you're going to put in the subject line? You think those subject lines and that prehead might be tied to the hot buttons for your offer and/or the hot buttons for your avatar? Do you think that in this blurb where we're talking about what we're talking about, we're going to be talking about the payoffs that they want, the questions that they want answered, the objections, and how this is going to fix or change or do all that stuff? That's all we're doing here. Is we're just tying in their stuff.

So, and we're back with the king himself again, Jim Edwards. We just finished up doing the sales letters and now we're going to be talking about email sequences.

100%.

Before we dive into the email sequences, I want to ask the question, Jim, There are so many different types of email sequence before the sale, pre-sale, after sale, abandoned cart, abandoned carts. I mean, the list goes on. If we were to try to bucket, you know, these into the most important email lists or email sequences, how would you bucket them?

So there's a bunch of them. We got time to talk about the two most important ones. Okay. So the first one is a promo sequence. And then the second one is a post-purchase follow-up sequence. Okay. And really, if you wanted to say, okay, promo sequence and then a follow-up sequence, and then with follow-up, it's for an opt-in or after somebody has bought. And maybe we can talk about all three real quick. So first thing I want to do is establish, okay, what makes a great email message? Because now once we understand that, when I start plugging in types of emails, you'll understand each one of these always comes back to a great email message. Okay, so a sequence is made up just of individual messages. What makes a good email? Well, similar to a sales letter. What's our first challenge with an email? What is the first thing we want somebody to do with our email?

Open it up.

Open it. That's right. Look at you. Okay, so it's got a great subject line. And now since everybody's using Gmail or something, I don't know, everybody uses Gmail. You got your subject line. And then depending on how wide your monitor is, you know, if you like me, you got a 4-foot-wide monitor, then and all of a sudden you can start seeing the beginning of the email, right? Or you can have what we'll call the prehead, which basically people read that like a secondary headline, a secondary subject line. And so that shows the first words in the actual email itself. So depending on your email, how you're sending your emails, sometimes it's like in GoHighLevel or something like that. I mean, you literally fill in subject line and then the prehead. Otherwise, you just make sure if there's something else you wanted to say, those are the first words in your email that's going out. So next you're going to have the salutation. Salutation is preferably you've got their name, you know, hey Jim, hey Kay, hey Tim, hey Ben, hey whatever. Okay. Someone's, oh, I don't ask for— I don't ask for name because it cuts down on the opt-in rate.

Well, you're an idiot. Okay. Yeah, get their name if you can, because everybody's— I mean, at least if you've got their name, they're going to be like, well, where the hell do I know this guy from? All right, and that also comes before the subject line is the from tag. You want to make sure that when it shows who it's coming from, that it— they recognize who the hell it's from. Okay, so like all mine say, you know, from Jim Edwards. It's, it's if they don't know who— if they hate Jim Edwards, it makes it easy for them to hit delete. Okay, but if they like Jim Edwards, oh, something from Jim Edwards, and what's it about? So that's important as well. Consistent from subject line, designed to get them to open the dang email, pre-frame them for what's coming next. Hey Jim, hey Ben, hey whatever. Now you've got some kind of a blurb in here. Blurb is fancy for what the hell is it about. Now, I'm old enough to remember when we had these things called memos. You would send out a memo, and in the memo there was a blurb. What's it about?

What's the purpose of the email? What's the self-serving reason for them why you're sending it? Then there's some sort of a call to action. Then there's the close. And then there's a PS, which reinforces the big idea. Okay, so call to action, close, PS reinforces the big idea, and then hits them with the call to action again. What is the number one call to action for any email you're ever going to send?

I do not know.

Click here.

Click here.

Click here to blank. Okay. Click here to register for the event. Click here to download your report. Click here to jump on the call with us. Click here to show up for today's meeting. Click here to— I mean, it's, it's 99 times out of 100, the purpose of any email, especially in a promo sequence, is to get them to click over somewhere to take action. You're never going to close somebody in an email, right? I mean, never is a long time. You know what the hell I'm saying, okay? Normally the call to action is to either keep your eyes open for something coming or click here for something to go do something. So all of your emails want to follow this format, okay? That's a great email message. So now we're going to talk about a promo email sequence. And if you think about it, every promo email sequence, except if it's an abandoned cart— I got to be careful with my every and all this other stuff.

Yeah, we call those universals.

Yeah, but you know what? Making a blanket statement keeps you warm in the winter. I had an argument with my brother-in-law, who's a real brother-in-law, and he's like, you keep making blanket statements. I said, well, I usually do those with dumb people. And he was like, you're a dick. Anyway, um, more family stories. So now, talking about a promo launch or any kind of launch, here's the thing you need to understand. Were you ever into theater or anything like that?

Myself?

Yeah.

Uh, no.

Okay. How many acts are there in a play? Do you know?

Oh, I think there's 4.

Is it 4? 3. 3 acts. There are 3 acts in a play, and when you're thinking about any kind of a promo, it follows a 3-act sequence. Okay, first is heads up, or here it comes. Okay, 2, here it is, and 3 There it goes. What do I mean by that? Well, you think about any product launch. How does a product launch work?

Okay, I got this thing. It's coming out this week. Keep your eyes open for the email. It's going to be amazing. If you really want to be able to create amazing sales letters, this is going to change everything like it did for me and so many of my people. Keep your eye on your inbox for tomorrow.

Okay, see you. Bye. Some kind of an email is going to come like that, right? You're also going to see it on social media, right? Okay, so then the day that they release it, or the day that the thing starts, here it is. Hey, go watch this video. Hey, go watch this webinar. Hey, go read this, this report. Hey, go download this thing. It's what— whatever it is, okay? And then any good kind of product launch is going to have what? It's called— it's, it's, it's line that starts with dead. There's going to be a deadline. There's something you have. There's a reason for you to go buy and buy now. So this is where you get into typically what we call the cart close, where there's the countdown. It's like, hey, this is— and what you'll find is the very last email you sent that you send that says, hey, basically this is the end. That's where 40 to 50% of all your sales are going to come from, that very last email. But if you haven't sent it, well, why don't you just send that last email? Well, because, chucklehead, if you don't send these other ones, you haven't set up the last one.

So right here, right now, just understanding that, you can write an amazing sequence because you understand how each one of these things needs to be made, how it needs to be structured. Okay. And then you understand the purpose. Now you can expand and contract this. Maybe you have two heads-up emails. Hey, something amazing going to be coming out next week. Keep your eye out. And then if you're going to launch on Monday, then Sunday, you're like, hey, it drops tomorrow. It's going to be amazing. It's going to change the world. I'm so excited. I see this. I'm so excited. I can barely talk. You know, those kind of emails, those are videos and stuff, and it can be driving to a video. It can be done right there in the email. Here it is. This is where you could have, you know, that sequence of testimonial videos, demo videos, all that other stuff. And then you open up the cart, or you could just have the cart open. And then here it goes. Okay, coming into the final 72 hours, man, and this bonus is disappearing and all this other stuff. And again, when you understand How to structure the email, assembling the emails with the sequence is pretty easy, right?

Well, yes.

So I haven't taught you how to write an email yet, have I?

No.

Well, you did. What did I do? Well, you are—

sorry, I should say you've given us the, the structure. Yes.

Okay. So what else do you want to know?

I mean, well, we have the structure. I mean, there's a lot to know here, but yes, there's— we have the structure of how every email is supposed to be written.

Okay.

And then we have the cart, you know, the heads up, here it is. And then the deadline. And what I was going to ask you to answer that is in between those, the number of different emails is really up to you in terms of there's no set number, is there?

Correct. And see, this is the thing where people, the quote unquote experts will tell you, you have to send this one, this one and this one, and it's this and this and this and this. And that's all bullshit. Okay, it's, you need to envision a single person who is your avatar. And we're gonna go back to, remember, we talked about in the sales letter, avatar, offer, the hot buttons, you. What do you think are the kinds of things you're gonna put in the subject line? You think those subject lines and that pre-head might be tied to the hot buttons for your offer and, or the hot buttons for your avatar? Do you think that in this blurb where we're talking about what we're talking about, we're gonna be talking about the payoffs that they want, the questions that they want answered, the objections and how this is gonna fix or change or do all that stuff. That's all we're doing here is we're just tying in their stuff. So, you know, hey, want 2 extra listings next week? Well, I mean, you know, if you remember the example, use the real estate agent, so they want 2 extra listings next week, don't spend a dime on ads to do it.

Holy shit, that's going to get opened. Okay. Hey, K, Jim Edwards here. Something super exciting is dropping next week, and I just wanted to give you a heads up. I'm releasing my brand new masterclass on how to get 2 extra listing appointments every single week for the rest of your career. And if you're willing to do a little bit more or just do what I say one extra time, what would happen if you got 3 listing appointments a week? Think about the referrals, think about the income, think about the freedom that would bring and the change to your business professionally and personally. Well, the great news is you don't even have, you don't have to dream because it all drops next week. So, keep an eye out. Jim Edwards here, talk to you soon. Holy crap, that dude's, yeah, P.S., this is the same system that I've been using for the last 2 years and have only talked to my closest inner circle circle of my Platinum Realtors, but now I'm releasing it to the world. Thanks for the reminder on the PS there.

Yeah, yeah, yes, right?

Yeah, but that— I mean, that's pretty good email, right?

I would say it's a fantastic email, yes.

Okay, so again, when you know them, it practically writes itself, and when you've got cool tools, it really writes itself. Okay, so what was the other one? Okay, that's a promo. And you're like, well, everything's not a launch. What if I'm just going to be promoting my, you know, I'm just, I'm just promoting my webinar. Okay, cool. Then you skip the heads up thing. Or maybe it's a heads up, hey, heads up, next week I'm doing a webinar. It's going to teach you my proven system for how to do that. Go ahead and register now. And then a couple of days, now here's reality. This has been proven. By statistics, and nobody lies with statistics, but you have to have a closed—

you have to have a close date.

Okay, well, and that's a great thing about— especially if you're trying to develop leads, using live events is the best way to develop leads because they have to sign up, because you got to sign up in order to go to the event. Point though is that you don't need to send 50 emails to get somebody to sign up to an event. You really only need about 3. You got a heads-up email, then you got the announcement email, hey, we're doing this, you know, tomorrow or day after tomorrow, and you really wanna sign up because it's gonna be this benefit, this benefit, this benefit, and seats are going fast. And then the last email goes the morning of and/or an hour before, because over 50% of the people that sign up for your webinar are going to sign up the day of the webinar. And so that doing it an hour before— so doing one in the morning and then doing one an hour before is kind of a reminder thing too. And you got to send some reminder emails and stuff in there too. But again, the construction of the email is the same, and And that really follows the same thing of heads up, here it is, there it goes, there goes your opportunity.

Now think about at the end of the— after the event, after the webinar, the post. Yeah, that begins a whole nother sequence for both the people that bought and the people that didn't buy. So if you're— let's, let's kind of divide that up. Okay. Did not buy and did buy. What's the purpose of your follow-up sequence for the people who did not buy?

I would say get them back to the other long-form sales letter or get them back to the webinar, get them back to the order page. One of those two. No, build trust.

The purpose, the purpose of the follow-up sequence for the people who did not buy is to get them to buy.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, that's what I'm talking about.

No, I mean, I'm not— I'm not splitting hairs. If you think about it, the whole purpose is to get them to buy. Okay, so what do we do? Number one, do most people that go to a webinar or that, you know, say they're going to watch a video or come to an event, do most of them go to it or not? No, no, hardly. Like 20, 25% now. I think it's down that low. So the number one thing we want to do is let them know that the replay is available and where they can get it. Then we want to do the replay, plus we want to reiterate the offer. Okay, then what we want to do is we want to talk about FAQ and overcome objections. Okay, and then drive them to the offer. Then depending on where we are, how long your sales cycle is and all that good stuff, Um, you pretty much are going to start closing the cart. Okay. So cart closes tomorrow. So cart warning, and then number 5 and number 6 are going to be closes at midnight. And then you got 1 hour, it's closing. Okay. So can you throw in other stuff too?

Yeah, you could throw in, I mean, something that we've done in the past that works really well. If you want to follow up for a while. Is you can do a transcript. Hey, I got the transcript for you. Some people don't wanna watch it, but other people wanna skim it. So we got the transcript. Hey, you know, I just sent the FAQ yesterday, but we took the transcript and I got an executive summary for you. Were you one of those kids that made it through college on Cliff Notes? I was. So we basically summarize the entire thing down to 2 pages that you can skim in 3 minutes. Hey, one of the things that we've got here is I've got a checklist that we put together with all the action items and all the stuff to be— there's all kinds of shit that you can put in there. Okay.

The point is, I even seen people do, which I love, is if all you did was go on page 2 of the summary and read the one line where we say XYZ, this could change everything for you.

Change everything. I've also seen if you can only watch 2 minutes of the webinar, click here and it'll take you to the webinar and it fast forwards to that timestamp in the recording. There's all kinds of stuff you can do.

The biggest mistake you can do is say, here's the replay, here's the replay, here's the replay, here's the replay, here's the replay.

Okay, cart closed. Which is what most people do. A, because they don't have a strategy, and B, because they suck. So don't suck and have a strategy. Or if you have a strategy, you don't suck anymore. It's just Life, life is amazing when you make these small changes. Okay. So they buy, well, we're in the clear right now. We're just going to send them their receipt and they're good, right? No, no, not good.

No, no.

Once they bought, what's, what do we need to do? What, what is our, what is our main objective once they bought?

Reconfirm and resell them.

Reconfirm and resell. Nice work. And why do we want to resell? When you say resell, are we reselling them on the thing they just bought or are we trying to sell them something else?

We're not. I love that question. From my little understanding is we're actually reselling them on why they bought the product, not the product itself. On who they're going to become and what the product's going to— how it's going to solve their problems.

And why do we want to do that?

Because people get buyer's remorse. And remember, they buy emotionally and then they justify logically. And when they start justifying the opposite way logically, we get refunds. So we want to prevent refunds.

And so to summarize everything you just said, what we want to do is we want them to not refund.

Yeah, it's— yes.

And we want to— I'm just— we're having fun. And we want to build a relationship with them so that they'll buy more stuff. Okay, so how do we do that? There's actually a very specific sequence that we use. All right. The first thing is we'll call it the receipt email, but it's more than just the receipt. They get the email that says, hey, We got your order. Here's when it's going to come. Here's how to download it. Here's how to claim it. Here's so that they're not sitting there wondering, okay, I just gave money, what the hell? You know, it's how to register for your intake call and where to go to download your ebook, when to expect your box of brownies to show up, whatever it is. Okay. And we even pack it in coffee so the sniffer dogs from DEA don't— oh, different kind of brownies. So it's the receipt email, okay? Or you want to call— or they're getting the receipt maybe from the cart, so it's the acknowledgement, okay? That says acknowledgement right there. That— I know that doesn't look like it. My kindergarten teacher's rolling over in her grave, but that says acknowledgement.

Then, hey, have you ever had an email not go through? You ever had email not get delivered? You ever had an email get eaten up by a spam filter or something like that? That ever happen to you? Think it happens to your customers when you're sending them emails?

Yes.

Okay, so the next day, do you have good manners?

I would like to think I have great manners.

I think you have excellent manners. And what's the most important thing you can do when someone does something for you? Say give them—

say, say thank you.

And yeah, so the next day you send a super short thank you email that says, hey, thanks for buying the unlimited listings pack. If for some reason our registration email didn't show up yesterday, here's where you can go to download it. And if you have any problems Here's our customer support desk. Thanks, Jim. So by sending something that's real short and it says thank you in the subject line, if someone didn't get this and they're too stupid to like have sought out or looked through their thing and they're sitting there getting a sour attitude when they get an email that says thank you, hey, thanks for buying yesterday. If for some reason something didn't come through or show up, Here's exactly how to get in touch with us. That's going to unsour the attitude of 9 out of 10. Mm-hmm. Okay. So now this is all— all the rest of this sequence is about building that relationship. And the most important thing you can do, you said re-firm, re-sell. And the only thing I would add to that is result. My objective is to get them a result as fast as possible. And so what I will do is send them emails like, hey, if you do nothing else, okay, I was going to say, yeah, the number one thing you can do to get results is X.

And usually what I tell people, like with our software, is go watch the quick start video. If you just watch the quick start video, it's going to show you this and this and this, and you'll be able to hit the ground running. Okay. And you keep them short, not— you ain't sending War and Peace here. Okay. So the number one thing you can do to be successful, you know, read this, look at this, watch this, and it should be under like 5 or 10 minutes max.

Have you seen people in that email also say the number one thing to get results is X, and here's what I want to do because you're so committed and I want to see you win. Here's an extra free gift or here's an extra thing just for being here with us. Have you seen that?

So you're talking about using unadvertised bonuses. I like to use those later in the process.

Okay.

Because I'm— why would I want to pile more crap on them when I'm trying to get them to use the crap they've already bought? What you want to do is you pile on the, the unadvertised bonuses a little later on in the process. Maybe only, you know, 2 days later, a day later, okay? But right now, here's the one thing I want them to do because it's kind of like a goal that brings a lot of other goals along with it. If I tell you to wake up at 4:45 in the morning and within half an hour of being up, you're out, you drink a glass of water and you go walk for 30 minutes, think of all the things that come with that, okay? Quiet time, you're up, you're moving, you're hydrated, you're, you're already exercising, getting your metabolism, all the things. Instead of giving them a big long-ass list, just do these, this one thing. Okay, so now I like to give them what I call speed and time hacks. Okay, what's the difference between a speed hack? A speed hack is let me tell you how you can get results even faster with this.

And then a time hack is, let me show you how you can save a ton of time and energy. Now, these are very related, but they're not the same thing. Okay, faster doesn't necessarily mean saving time, but it can. My point is, if I send, you know, hey, here's how you can— other people spend 2 weeks doing this, I'm going to help you get results in 10 minutes. Or, hey, how would you like to save 5 hours a week on your content marketing? Go watch this 10-minute video and I explain exactly how to do it, okay? And show you the tool to help you do it within our system. So now I want to build a relationship, right? So maybe I'm— I do an unadvertised bonus right here, or I do it on one of these. Hey, you know what, it's important for me to help you save a bunch of time, so I went ahead and created these 10 avatars that are already pre-done. You don't even have to mess with— you just click them, they load in your account, and you can use them immediately. Okay, so I got an unadvertised bonus. Hey, do you have any past podcast episodes that you really wish people would listen to?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. So hey, you know what, I curated my top 10 podcast episodes, or really it's just basically this is the past content email. Okay, here's some existing content we have from my podcast and from my blog in order that can help you get amazing results. Well, what is that going to do? Hey, it means they got a bunch of crap. This is trying to get them to engage. And then you, you mean to tell me you'd send them an email every day for 7 days? Hell yeah, I would. How many times have you ever bought something from somebody and never heard from them again? More often than not. Or when you did hear from them, all it was was pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. Okay. Now, at this point, at least for me, I'm going to send them an email that asks them, hey, oh, and somewhere in there, depending on how important it is for you, you probably have an email like, hey, how to connect with us on social media, or it's baked into all of these things. Hey, if you haven't already, go sign up for the Facebook group.

So I always want to ask them for feedback. Hey, what could we do to make your experience better? Let me know. Just reply back to this email and I will personally see it. Okay, so now what happens? Well, by this point they've been hearing from me for a week. I'm giving them nothing but value. They end up in my database, and I typically send every Wednesday I send my newsletter. So now after a week, they're in my flow of communication that is updating them. It's giving them opportunities to engage more and to learn all kinds of cool stuff. And that's how I keep it simple. I've seen people, you know, you need to use stacking follow-up funnels. So what happens is, And they start drawing this crap out on here and it's enough to make me want to throw up from vertigo.

Yeah.

Because it's like, you know, if they make it through here but they don't click on this, then they go over here. I had a friend of mine take 2 months designing a system like that with one of these things. And then he finally ran the ad and realized that nobody gave a shit and nobody signed up for his thing. And he wasted 2 months designing something for all the different possibilities of what someone could or couldn't do and all the emails that could be sent and nobody cared.

It's, it really, again, that's just to me is it goes to the whole thing where, well, analysis paralysis, but also build it, sell it before you build it, sell it before you build it. Yep. You can optimize later, but there's no reason to optimize if you can't even sell it, if you don't know it works.

100%. I do that all the time. I mean, I sell tickets to the, to stuff. I'm going to teach a class. Hey, I pick the date, sell the tickets.

I'll say this because I think it's important. You know, as we're talking about marketing and funnels the whole way, I've worked with companies that won't even build the landing page. They will literally only run the Facebook ad to a dead page, to nothing, to even just make sure they even got the hook proper. In the messaging proper. And then when they figure that out, they land a simple landing page to opt in. And then from there they figure it out and then they build the, you know, the sequences they go. Because as you even know, you know, basic even VSL funnel, you have an opt-in page, you have a sales letter page with a VSL, then you have your thank you. All of that takes time. And if you can't even get the message right on the front end, none of that matters because they never see it.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't have the balls to drive an ad to something that doesn't at least have—

I know a lot of people don't, but, you know, if you, if you do, it makes it— even if you just drive them to a newsletter, right? So, yeah. Or something to collect their information.

Yeah. So, I mean, and here's the thing. I mean, back to— yeah, this is about email. We're talking about follow-up sequences and stuff. But if you think about it, every single one, it's like even this thank you thing. Think about, okay, subject line. Hey, from Jim Edwards. Subject line, thank you. Prehead, in case you didn't see my email yesterday, dear Kay, thanks for buying the listing package yesterday. I just wanted to follow up and say thank you. And if you had any problems or you didn't get your receipt, contact us here. Okay, bye. I'll see you tomorrow. And then the next day, okay. Hey, number one thing to get more listings, do that. And then prehead, do this right now. Hey, okay, Jim Edwards here. I know you're probably knee-deep in, in stuff, but I know we get busy and you might be waiting for the weekend to go through it. But if you could stop what you're doing right now and do this one thing, it's going to get you closer to those two extra listing appointments every single week than anything else you could do. Just click this link. Watch this 3-minute and 32-second video and I'll see you soon.

Have a great day, Jim. P.S. Seriously, drop what you're doing and click the link and watch the video. And this is how we're going to get you 2 extra appointments a week, 100 appointments a year. Okay, got to go. Bye. I mean, dude, I can write these emails in my head because I know the pattern and I know what I want to do. Okay. And if you want a tool that will help you to write it, I've got all kinds of tools inside of CopyAndContent.ai that will write one-off emails for you. We got the Email Composer Genie. I have Email Sequence Genies that'll create a, a ma— I call it the Magic 5-Day Launch Sequence. I've got follow-up for when somebody buys. I got follow-up when somebody doesn't buy. I mean, you're going to have emails coming out the wazoo.

I love it. So as we end here, I want to make sure if you've been following along through these part, you know, this 4-part series, we've talked about copy, we've talked about sales letter, we've just talked about the world of email sequence. And next following this, we are going to be talking about the opt-in page. Jim, just for everybody where if people are like, I need Jim today, where can they find you?

You can go to either copyingcontent.ai or you can go to jimedwards.com.

Thank you for always being here. I appreciate you.

Thanks for having me.

Next time on The Vault Unlocked.

That is the, the biggest sin, the stupidest thing you can do.

Crack the code in all these 3 pillars. There is no reason why anybody in today's market can't have minimum. And I would love to know if you agree on this minimum. If those three things are cracked, a million-dollar-a-year business guaranteed.

You have to be better than the chuckleheads, and being better means you have to know the target audience. You have to really know psychologically what's going to make them react, and you need to be able to get them to take the action you want them to take before they can have the bright shiny object squirrel moment in the next 8 seconds.