How to write nurture emails that don’t suck

Also: How to never run out of content ideas again

Marketing Qualified
May 05, 2023

Happy May! Here is how we’re kicking off the first newsletter of the month…

How to write nurture emails that don’t suck. Let’s be honest, most companies are really bad at writing nurture emails. Don’t be one of them. Instead, follow these best practices.
How to never run out of content ideas again. Struggling to come up with new content topics? Try this.

💌 How to write nurture emails that don’t suck.

There are two types of people you can send marketing emails to:

People who don’t know you yet
People who already know you

If you’re sending to audience #1, you’re sending cold emails. If you’re sending to audience #2, you’re sending nurture emails.

There is a ton of content online about how to write cold emails. We’ve even written some of it!

But, it can be harder to find good information about nurture emails and best practices to follow when creating them.

That’s why today we want to do a deep dive into nurture emails and teach you how to write ones that move your contacts closer to buying.

Nurturing leads vs. customers.

There are two types of nurture emails. Ones that:

Nurture prospects
Nurture existing customers

The goal of nurturing prospects is to convince them to buy from you for the first time. The goal of nurturing existing customers is to get them to buy from you again and again.

Yes, these are different goals, but the frameworks and best practices for writing nurture emails pretty much stay the same for both. The only thing that changes is the specific content you include in the body of your emails.

Nurture email best practices.

Follow these best practices if you want to write nurture emails that your customers and prospects will love.

Have a clear purpose for sending.

Ask yourself, “Why am I sending this email?” If you don’t have a clear answer and a good one, don’t send it.

Yes, frequent touchpoints are important. But high-value touches are much more important.

Every nurture email you send should serve a specific purpose. For example, it could:

Address a pain point
Tell a story
Teach the reader something
Provide entertainment
Be inspirational

If you’re frequently hitting your audience with low-value emails, what do you think will happen next? You guessed it — they’ll stop reading them!

Identify why the reader should care.

These are some of the most common reasons companies send a nurture email:

to check in once a week or once a month
a new blog post was published
a webinar is coming up
a new feature was launched
a certain product is being pushed
a new campaign or promo was launched

These are all terrible reasons to send a nurture email.

Why? Because it’s all about the company, not their audience.

Your audience doesn’t care that you published a new blog. But, they might care about how something they’ll learn in that blog could help them increase revenue by 3% next quarter.

They don’t care that you launched a new feature. But they might care that because of that feature, their team will save 2 hours of manual work per month.

And your audience definitely doesn’t care that you have an arbitrary sending schedule that you’re trying to adhere to!

To write successful nurture emails, you have to get good at identifying the real reason the reader should care. Then write an email about that.

Use the subject line to grab attention.

This is always email marketing 101. It doesn’t matter what type of email you’re sending or who you’re sending to. If the subject line doesn’t entice someone to open and read the email, then everything else is irrelevant.

A common mistake is thinking because someone is a customer, they care about what you have to say. That may be the case, but you can’t bank on it. People are busy and have a lot of distractions. Don’t assume they’re sitting at their computer eager to read anything you send them. You need to give them a reason to care inside the subject line.

Keep the subject line short, but high impact. It’s a hook. Something to grab the reader's attention and convince them to open and read your email.

Keep it casual, not salesly. Pretend you’re writing a subject line for an email going to a coworker.

Here are some examples of what we’re talking about:

Thought you’d like this video
The plan for next week
Subject line tips
Quick question
Have you seen this yet?

These are just the tip of the iceberg. Try different subject line styles and then test them to find what drives the highest open rates for your brand.

One idea per email.

A super common email nurture mistake is trying to shove too much into one email.

We’ve all seen these types of emails. They’re the ones that link to 5 different blog posts and 2 videos and share info about the 3 upcoming webinars, etc., etc. It’s too much!

Don’t give your audience information overload. Instead, focus on one key idea per email you send.

It’s better to send a few short but easy-to-digest emails than one massive but overwhelming email.

Pick one CTA.

Once you’ve landed on your main idea, now you need to pick the ONE action you want the reader to take.

What is the outcome you desire?

For them to click through to your website? For them to schedule a meeting? Respond to your email? Something else?

Define this and then write a good CTA that encourages that action.

If you need more help writing good CTAs, check out the 3 ways to write better CTAs section of this newsletter issue.

Keep it casual.

Many companies send nurture emails from the company’s name and an alias email address.

And unfortunately, because of this many brands default to stuffy corporate speak. Resist this trap! Just because something is written from the company’s voice doesn’t mean it needs to be boring.

People like to work with other people, not brands. An email that sounds like it was written by a real person is much more engaging than one that sounds like it was written by a corporate drone.

Don’t be afraid to let some personality shine through. Readers like that.

Segment (if you can).

The more specific you can make your nurture emails, the better. Not every topic will appeal to everyone in your audience.

Find ways to segment your audience into subgroups and develop different nurture plans for each group. Identify the content that will be most valuable to each segment and then only send them that content.

This will make them feel like you truly understand their interests and needs.

📰 In the news this week.

👋 Bye-bye search engines – social media is taking over.

🛒 TikTok Shop launches in Beta.

🤩 Why GenZ is obsessed with counterfeits.

🧠 Investors explain why AI ethics can’t be an afterthought.

🧲 5 shortcuts to attracting customers & multiplying revenue.

✍️ How to never run out of content ideas again.

If you create any content, you know the constant struggle of coming up with interesting topics. You can’t just pick any old thing. It needs to be relevant to your audience, have existing search volume, and fit your niche.

Coming up with new ideas week after week is hard! Chances are you’ll eventually hit a wall. So if you ever find yourself sitting down at your computer to write and realize, “Man, I’ve got nothing!” Try this.

Go to Answer the Public. Type in a keyword that fits your niche. Hit search.

In a few seconds, you’ll get dozens of results.

Answer the Public shows questions people are already searching for around a certain topic. Then organized them into an easy-to-understand graph. Results are sorted by question type e.g. how, why, when, what, etc.

It also gives you basic search volume data for each question.

If we enter “cold email” these are the results.

Now we can browse this list, pull out the topics that we like and get to writing (or shooting video).

The tool also shows a couple of other helpful graphs: prepositions and comparisons.

You can use these to get even more topic ideas.

Use the tool’s suggestions as-is, or use this method as a brainstorming technique that gets your creative juices flowing. The results are great as a jumping-off point for your own original ideas or expanded on them to add your own twist.

😂 Marketing meme of the week.

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