Template
Nurture email sequence
For the lead who is interested but not ready. The sequence teaches, the conditions route, and nothing in it asks for a meeting until something has been read.
Your Product <[email protected]>
Why your weekly numbers disagree with finance
It is almost always one of three things.
Your Product
Why your numbers disagree with finance
You downloaded the metrics guide last week, so here is the question it gets asked about most: why the number in the dashboard is never the number in the finance report.
It is almost always one of three things, and none of them is a bug.
- Different cut-off times, usually a timezone
- One side counts refunds, the other counts charges
- One side is deduplicated by customer, the other by transaction
The fix is to agree which of the three definitions you are using before anybody builds a report on it. We wrote the whole thing up, including how to check which one your current numbers use.
Read the write-up
Alex, Your Product
Your Product Inc, 1 Example Street
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The blueprint
Rebuild it anywhere
Subject lines (5 options)
- Why your weekly numbers disagree with financeshown above
- Three reasons two reports never match
- The definition argument nobody has out loud
- Following up on the metrics guide
- One reason your dashboard is wrong
When it fires
- Trigger
- Fires when a lead does something that shows interest without commitment: downloads a guide, attends a webinar, or reads three pages in a session.
- Timing
- Four to seven days apart, over four to six weeks. Longer than a drip on purpose: a nurture sequence is competing with the reader's actual job, not with their attention for one week.
- Conditions
- Route on what they clicked rather than on elapsed time. A lead who clicked the technical piece gets the technical branch; a lead who clicked pricing gets the shorter, more direct one, because they have told you which question they are actually asking.
- If a lead has clicked nothing by the third email, change the branch rather than repeating: one short email asking what they were looking for, and then stop.
- Exit the sequence the moment they start a trial or book a call. Continuing to nurture somebody who has converted is the fastest way to look automated.
The body, block by block
The reference back
One clause naming what they downloaded or read. A nurture email that does not say why it arrived reads as a list purchase, and the reader is already suspicious because they have not bought anything.
A real question, answered
The email teaches something usable without the product. This is the whole trade: the reader gives you attention over several weeks, and each email has to be worth it on its own terms.
Structure the answer can be skimmed in
Three bullets, or three short paragraphs. A nurture email is read at a desk between two other things, so an answer that requires sustained reading is an answer that does not land.
The resolution
Say what to do about it, in a sentence, before offering the longer version. The reader who stops here still got something.
One link, to content
In the early emails the link goes to more reading, not to a signup. What somebody clicks is the routing signal for everything after it, and a link to a pricing page tells you nothing except that you asked too early.
The same sender, every time
One name across the sequence. A nurture sequence is a relationship with a person or it is a newsletter, and the sender line is where that is decided.
The rest of the sequence
Day 0
Deliver the thing they asked for, plus one sentence on the question it does not answer.
Subject Your metrics guide, and the bit it leaves out
Day 5
The email above. The most common real question, answered without the product.
Subject Why your weekly numbers disagree with finance
Day 12, branched on what was clicked
The technical branch goes deeper into method. The commercial branch shows what the work looks like when it is done for you.
Subject What this looks like when it is not manual
Day 21
The first ask, and the only one. A single low-cost action: a trial, or thirty minutes. Not both.
Subject Worth a look at your own numbers?
When to use it
For leads who are interested and not ready, which is most of them. Somebody who downloads a guide has told you the problem is real and has told you nothing about their timing, and the sequence exists to be useful while that timing arrives.
The difference from a drip is the routing. A drip sends the same four emails to everybody who triggered it. A nurture sequence changes what comes next based on what the reader engaged with, because the difference between a lead who read the technical piece and one who read the pricing page is the difference between two conversations. Everything before the ask is teaching, and the ask comes once, late, and only once something has actually been read. A sequence that asks for a meeting in email two is a cold outreach campaign wearing a nurture sequence's schedule.
What kills this email
Asking for the meeting in email two
The lead downloaded a guide. That is an interest signal, not a buying signal, and treating it as one converts the few who were ready anyway while burning the rest. Move the ask to the end and make it the only one.
Running it without conditions
If every lead gets the same four emails, this is a drip and it will perform like one. The routing is the reason a nurture sequence is worth the extra work, and it needs the click data from the earlier emails to do anything.
Nurturing with company news
A funding announcement, a new hire and a conference booth teach a lead nothing about their own problem. If an email would be uninteresting to somebody who has never heard of you, it does not belong in a sequence aimed at people who barely have.
Rolling it into a permanent newsletter
A nurture sequence has an end. Moving unconverted leads onto a general list without asking is how a company builds a large list that opens nothing, and it is the point at which the complaints start.
When not to send it
Do not nurture an address that has not asked for anything. A sequence sent to a list you bought or scraped is cold outreach, and running it through the same domain as your product mail puts your transactional email behind the reputation it earns.
Do not keep nurturing after conversion. The moment a lead starts a trial they belong in onboarding, and receiving both makes it obvious that neither is aware of the other.
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Private beta
Nurture email sequence, drafted from your website
SendHeron reads your website and drafts a suite like this one, in your product's own words, ready to edit. Private beta, and we onboard a few teams at a time.