What’s the No. 1 Mistake Bloggers Make with Their ‘Welcome’ Email?

Sharp-eyed subscriber Galit asks:

Hi Josh, I have a question for you—I am watching your “Behind the Scenes of a Six-Figure Email Course” video and I noticed your callout of the coveted Welcome email. But I’m looking back at my emails from you and this is the first one that I received after I opted in. It was (clearly) effective! But I’m curious if you’re using this instead of a Welcome email now or if this was a glitch.

Does the intro to the email course email “trump” the traditional welcome to my list email? It seems that yes? I love the story-telling aspect of this version and I was just curious about your thoughts on this!

Galit had signed up for my free series, “How to Make More Sales with Email Courses.”

And she’s right, the first email in that sequence is NOT your typical “welcome” email.

That’s because I steer clear of the #1 pothole that most welcome emails hit.

(Well, technically, the #1 welcome email mistake is “not having one.” But that’s a copout—cuz you already have a welcome email, right?)

The typical welcome email is a lot like a 30-second meet-and-greet at a business networking event:

“Hi, my name is Josh, I’m a copywriter. Here’s that PDF you wanted. Follow me on Twitter and YouTube pretty please?!?”

That’s infinitely better than NO welcome email. I have used that approach myself in the past.

But it’s still pretty lame.

And it doesn’t do much to help your new baby subscriber “imprint” on you—and look forward to hearing from you again.

Worse, sometimes this welcome email gets stretched out into multi-day “indoctrination” sequence, where you tell your new subscriber all about yourself and your “core values” and how they can get still MORE great content from you…

YAWN!!! Who cares about you? How are you going to help me solve MY problem?

Here’s the thing—

Your subscriber just told you exactly what they are interested in by optin in to your email list.

So the best, most compelling way to build a relationship with them is to honor the handshake agreement you just made and just get right down to business solving their problem.

Skip the hem-hawing around and sheepish introductions and dive right into your email series.

Let them gradually get to know your personality and your values as they soak in your emails.

Allowing them to “discover” you for themselves like this is far more powerful than trying to ram your “brand” down their throats.

P.S. I’ve decided to make the recording for “Behind the Scenes of a Six-Figure Email Course” available for a reasonable price.

In this training (a 2+ hour end-to-end walk-through of a live email course), I dissect a “welcome” email that literally flooded my business partner’s inbox with replies the first time we sent it out.

I’m also throwing in a couple of bonus classes and interviews.

Right now this isn’t up on my site for purchase—it’s is only available to subscribers.

However, if you are interested, you can drop me a message here : http://joshuaearl.com/contact/

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