Before You Start Your Email Automation, Don't Forget These 3 Tasks
If you're aiming to really step up your sales, don't forget how much of a difference email automation can make. It's hands-down one of the best tools you can have in your toolkit. But wait, before you jump headfirst into setting up your automated email sequences, let's hit pause.
There are three key steps you definitely don't want to skip over. First and foremost, you need to intimately know your audience. Understanding precisely who you're sending emails to and what specific actions you want them to take is the foundation for effective email automation.
Equally important is tapping into the emotional drivers and pain points of your subscribers, as this will allow you to craft irresistibly compelling automated content.
Wrapping things up, remember that playing on the fear of missing out can work wonders in your email automation campaigns. So, the real magic happens when you grasp how this all connects with what your audience is actually interested in. Overlook any of these three essential tasks, and your email automation efforts may end up falling flat.
Know Who You're Sending To
The first task is to know who you’re sending your email to, and what you want them to do. Use my Buyers’ Circles of Trust framework. I developed this model on the basis that trust is the foundation of EVERY relationship. Business is all about relationships therefore business is all about trust.
The Buyers’ Circles of Trust defines seven different levels of trust shown as circles inside each other. The role of email marketing is to move your prospects and customers from one level of trust to the next inner level. Email automation does it all behind the scenes so that you can focus on special promotions and communications.
The call to action in your email automation sequences depends upon which audience you’re sending your emails to. The call to action in an email that you’re sending to an audience that’s only interested in you is not the same call to action in an email that you’re sending to someone who’s bought from you before.
Benefits! Not Features!
The second task is to know the emotions that are driving your audience, and the role your product or service plays in them. The two fundamental forces in the universe are attraction and repulsion. All of life is a delicate balance between these two forces. It’s that way in the physical realm, it’s that way in our lives.
The decisions we make are from the emotional balance between the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. We use our intellect only to justify our decisions after we’ve made them. Therefore, the key to powerful email copywriting is to get your readers to feel, not to think. That’s why your emails are all about benefits, and not features. And it’s not just any benefits. Focus your emails on their emotional desires. Position your product as the gateway to your audience’s fulfillment of emotional desires towards pleasure and away from pain.
It’s always a good idea to regularly go through the exercise of understanding what motivates your Ideal Customer Profile. Define your ICPs less on who they are, and more on what they’re feeling.
The better you know which emotions motivate your ICP towards pleasure and away from pain, the better your emails. I assume that you’ve already used artificial intelligence to write your email copy. They’re pretty good at infusing the right emotional tone according to your prompts.
The Power of FOMO
Unfortunately, between the emotional forces towards pleasure and away from pain, it’s the latter that typically dominates. That’s why we tend to be lax about proactively caring for our health. But the moment we feel any pain, we reach for the pills or go see a doctor.
If you’ve ever stood in line in the freezing cold outside of a Big Box retailer at 2AM the day after Thanksgiving (in the United States), then you know the power of the Fear of Missing Out. We’re attracted to the pleasure of enjoying our favorite movies and sporting events in the comfort of our homes. But what’s really at play is avoiding the pain of missing the golden opportunity of experiencing that pleasure.
And that’s where email automation comes into play. I always recommend that you should send at least 3 emails in every email automation sequence. I’ve seen some sequences with 20 emails and even more. The first emails should always be cultivating the attractive power towards the pleasure that your product is the gateway for. Keep building that emotional bond. Then, towards the end of your sequence is when you gradually shift towards a FOMO tone.
LOOKING TO BREAK FREE WITH YOUR OWN PART-TIME BUSINESS?
Email List Managers are in HIGH DEMAND!
Find out more by taking the
Sell With Email
1097 Hanover Court S.
Salem, Oregon, United States of America, 97302
© 2025 Sell With Email