Using Your Email Welcome Sequence to Build a Strong Foundation for Clients
In this engaging conversation, Samantha Mabe speaks with Holly Larson, a registered dietitian and copywriting expert, about the power of a well-crafted email welcome sequence for enhancing client experience and building trust. Holly explains how email sequences can set up new clients for success, highlighting the value of nurturing potential clients with simple, authentic messaging. She also shares detailed strategies for creating effective emails, from crafting compelling subject lines to using storytelling and clear calls to action. The discussion underscores how health and wellness practitioners can streamline client engagement and build credibility, all while staying true to their voice.
Key Takeaways
Build trust with a strong email welcome sequence: Engage clients by delivering value with a clear, welcoming tone.
Craft compelling subject lines and preview text: Drive open rates by previewing email content effectively.
Write as if speaking to a friend: Keep email tone warm and conversational to avoid sounding impersonal.
Encourage small interactions: Use soft calls to action, like replying to an email, to deepen engagement.
Guide clients through your process: Break down steps into individual emails, including an introduction to your services.
Emphasize benefits over features: Focus on how your service directly impacts the client’s life.
Track performance: Monitor open, click, and unsubscribe rates to refine email sequence success.
Meet the Speaker: Holly Larson
Holly Larson is a Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Copywriter. She founded her business, Holly Larson Writes, to craft effective and engaging copy to amplify the voices of her fellow registered dietitian entrepreneurs and wellness companies. She is also a copywriting mentor and teaches fellow nutrition professionals how to write their own content in order to further their practice or company.
As a mom to a toddler, her free time is limited, but when she has it, she loves to read, bake and hike with her family and Bernedoodle.
Transcript
Timestamps
[00:00:37] Introduction to Holly Larson
[00:01:26] Holly's journey into copywriting
[00:05:05] Importance of email welcome sequences
[00:10:30] Anatomy of an effective email
[00:16:19] Outlining a welcome sequence
[00:18:25] Guiding clients toward a main call to action
[00:23:22] Engaging through storytelling
[00:31:25] What happens after the welcome sequence ends
[00:33:02] Using copywriting to attract ideal clients
[00:38:22] Tracking and improving email performance
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: You are listening to the next session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit. Make sure to listen along and then go to the Elevate Your practice.co website to follow up with the speakers and get access to the amazing resources they have shared. And don't forget, you can save 30% on your first three months of practice, better@practicebetter.io, and use the discount code LATS 30. I hope you enjoy this session.
Introduction to Holly Larson
[00:00:37] Samantha Mabe: In this session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit, I am talking with Holly Larson about using your email sequence to build a strong foundation for your clients. Holly is a registered dietitian and nutrition copywriter. She founded her business, Holly Larson Writes, to craft effective and engaging copy to amplify the voices of her fellow registered dietitian entrepreneurs and wellness companies.
[00:00:58] She is also a copywriting mentor and teaches fellow nutrition professionals how to write their own content in order to further their practice or company. As a mom to a toddler, her free time is limited, but when she has it, she loves to read, bake, and hike. You can find more information about Holly and her services at hollylarsenwrites. com or on Instagram at hollylarsenwrites.
[00:01:20] Hi, Holly. Thanks so much for joining me.
[00:01:22] Holly Larson: Hi, Samantha. Thanks so much for having me.
Holly's Journey to Copywriting
[00:01:26] Samantha Mabe: Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do and how your business has progressed to where you are now?
[00:01:35] Holly Larson: Absolutely. It has been a little bit of a winding road. So I am a registered dietitian. Dietitians often work in a hospital setting or long term care, what you might call a nursing home, or in a food service kitchen.
[00:01:51] Those are some of the most popular places that dietitians work. And none of that really resonated with me. So my career has been a lot of trying stuff to just see what felt like the most important work or the most rewarding work to do. And I discovered writing by accident. 10 years ago, I started a really small private practice. I did some blogging. It was terrible. I didn't know anything about SEO or those kinds of things at all. But it just planted that little seed of I like doing this.
[00:02:28] And so then years later, when I was working for a job that was sucking at my soul I needed something to be different. And this copywriting course came up on Instagram. It was lovely. And so I learned all of these skills that we don't learn as a healthcare professional. We all learn to understand really scientific literature. And we're all science nerds, so we can talk about it to each other without having to think about explaining it in a more simple way.
[00:03:00] And a lot of dietitians, I think, have some coaching training in their program, which is important because it doesn't just matter what you say, it matters how you say it. So we have some of this training for when we're working with clients in person, but we don't tend to have any kind of entrepreneurial skilled training or communicating and writing at all.
[00:03:22] And so that's how I got to my business is I discovered I like writing pretty good at it. And my fellow dietitian entrepreneur need someone to be able to delegate this work to, because the slowest way to grow your business is to try and do it all yourself. We're not good at everything. And so when we can find the things that we are less good at or That just feel really tricky or it's not your favorite work to do, when we find ways to delegate that work that can make you working in your business the rest of that time more fun, more joyful, more profitable, because you're collaborating with people who are bringing skills to the table that your business needs.
[00:04:08] Samantha Mabe: I talk with so many of my clients when I'm doing their websites, they want me to look at their copy and that is not a skill that I am super good at, but I can tell when somebody has tried to write it themselves because there's a lot of jargon. There's a lot of over explaining and I try to remind them that While you know what this means, and fellow clinicians know what this means, the person on the Internet who is searching for your help does not, and they want things in the simplest terms that are answering the questions that they have.
[00:04:48] You need to know all of the technical stuff and all the medical stuff on the backend, but that is not what your clients need. That's not what's going to get them to hire you. And that's also not what's going to get you to show up on Google or give them a good experience.
[00:05:04] Holly Larson: A hundred percent.
The Importance of Email Welcome Sequences
[00:05:05] Samantha Mabe: So today we are talking about email welcome sequences, but we're going to approach it a little bit differently because this summit is all about client experience and when I was brainstorming topics, I was thinking about all of the stuff that we do that leads to client experience that is also really important in that. So thinking about welcome sequences specifically and how build a foundation for the client experience that somebody is going to have.
[00:05:41] So let's just start with the basics. If somebody is not familiar with the term welcome sequence, what is it and who needs one? Where does it fall in our business?
[00:05:53] Holly Larson: Great question. I love starting at the beginning. So a welcome email sequence is a series of emails That someone who has subscribed to join your corner of the internet, your community usually in exchange for something. Having that little newsletter opt in, there's still a place for on the website, but that's probably not where you're going to get most people to join because a lot of us feel like our inbox is oversaturated and we're not just looking for another thing just because. So I like to assume that most people are joining your list because you've offered something for free, right? So some people use the term a freebie and some people use the term an opt in, but either way it's some kind of digital good, a handout, a mini course, something that your new reader is getting for free as a way to test the waters with you, your vibe, who you help, how you help.
[00:06:52] And I encourage people when they're thinking about what an opt in should be or could be for their business, I like it to be something that helps to explain how you help people, like what is your approach to the problem that you're solving, and for them, the new subscriber, the person who has just received this freebie, to get a quick win, because that helps to build trust with you and trust with your process and your methods. And it makes them more primed to become a paying client.
[00:07:25] So a welcome sequence is the series of emails that you can schedule into your email service provider. So that's a term that describes software like MailChimp or ConvertKit that just got rebranded to kit. So you don't have to stay up in the middle of the night to send these emails. Your email service provider is taking care of that for you. And the emails are doing something to help grow your business. And if we are purposeful, they can do actually a lot of heavy lifting to provide a really good experience for this potential customer and hopefully for them to then become a paying customer.
[00:08:06] Samantha Mabe: I think that's a really good summary and these opt-ins, these freebies are things I think most of us are familiar with. Sometimes they look like a coupon that pops up on an email if they're selling actual products, or it's a PDF download. And the piece we forget about is not only do you have to get them to sign up, but then you have to deliver it and you want to continue to follow up, which is where most of my clients struggle. They have the form that might open up in a new window with the PDF they're going to download, but then it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't do anything. So they have an email list of people that isn't actually serving them.
[00:08:52] Holly Larson: Yeah, it's a common problem. And I have to give entrepreneurs a lot of credit. It can be scary and overwhelming, and there's a lot of things to figure out. So if you haven't done a freebie, or if you haven't connected it to a welcome sequence yet, that's okay. We always get to keep growing and refining and building our business. But the idea is we want to be able to show up for our clients as our best selves. And how we can support our own mental health and peace in our business is by having thoughtful automations in there, too. Having some thoughtful automations as a part of it helps to save your time and energy. Because a lot of your clients are going to have the same questions. They want to get to know you. They want to know how it is that you work and all that.
[00:09:41] And we can program a lot of that into a welcome sequence, which of course not everyone's going to read every word. Not everyone's going to open it, but it's a way to invest our time and energy into something thoughtful that can help to support our business and help us to build that know and trust with a potential client.
[00:10:01] Samantha Mabe: Let's think the important elements that go into a good welcome sequence that is actually going to support our business, that's going to give people a taste of that experience. It's going to let them understand it, as opposed to putting just something together for the sake of having something.
[00:10:20] Holly Larson: And those are very different vibe in terms of approaching what it is that you're going to offer as a freebie and then how you're going to connect it to a welcome sequence.
Anatomy of an Effective Email
[00:10:30] Holly Larson: If it's okay with you, I might start with my approach to anatomy of an email to begin with. So an email has a couple important pieces. And if we Learn this strategy, then we can apply that to our sequence as well.
[00:10:45] And the first is we program a subject. So that's what someone sees in their inbox before they've opened the email. And this, I would say, is the most important sentence that you write, because that's the make or break between if someone's going to open that email or not, if it speaks to them, if it's clear what is the benefit of opening that email. They need to be short, something like 40 to 60 characters. There's a range because people can open up an email on your computer and have more space, or open up an email on your phone and have less space, but short and sweet.
[00:11:21] In general, a welcome sequence tends to be the most open, like people really want to hear from you if they've shared their prized email address with you and trusted you with their email address. So you want to show up for them.
[00:11:34] The next thing, and this is something that a lot of people miss, is preview text. And if you're not familiar with that term, preview text is what comes up after the subject while that email is still closed. So if you haven't programmed in preview text in your email service provider, whether it's MailChimp or Kit or whichever one they're using. The thing that will show up after the subject is just do your so and so or however you started your email. But if you program in preview text, it's just one more way to help encourage having good open rates.
[00:12:09] From there, we have the body of the email, what we probably think of as the meat and bones of the actual email. And we want to make sure that Even though we're making this sequence to send to hopefully a lot of people as they join your audience, I like to encourage healthcare professionals to speak as though they're just chatting with someone across the table at a coffee shop, because that really helps to have a warm and kind and understanding tone versus, hey, everybody, and having it sound like you're shouting into a megaphone. That's not going to feel personal.
[00:12:45] I like there to be a call to action. What do you want them to do next? Do you want them to reply to this email and answer a question? You want them to click on a blog post to read something? Not everyone's going to do it. That's normal. But people are looking to us for direction and we build trust by giving clear, calm directions of what we want people to do.
[00:13:11] And the last thing is another thing that people often miss as well, which is a PS statement. For some reason, if you have a PS at the end of your email, people always tend to read it. Although you might think of a PS as more of an afterthought you can put some pretty important information, whether it's the main call to action or a quick summary of the email as a whole. Sometimes people read an email, they'll quickly skim the whole thing and get to the bottom to see if it's worth actually slowing down and reading the whole thing. And some people will just skim it and see the PS and be done. So I do encourage you to include PS statements in your emails. People see them.
[00:13:51] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. Yeah, and I think we try to make this more complicated sometimes than it needs to be. But a reminder to just put that main call to action in the PS line so that People can skim down and see it and I always like to think of what is my behavior when I'm reading an email? What are subject lines that I would actually open? How long of an email am I actually going to read when I'm doing some of this? Because There is like an expectation that people have of okay, this is a way too long of an email. This should have been a blog post. I don't have time for this. And then they're not going to revisit it later.
[00:14:32] Holly Larson: I think our own appeal to certain headlines is a really great way to. Approach what headlines make sense to me because you are the right fit for your ideal clients. So things that feel natural and good and authentic to you are also going to feel real authentic and natural to your ideal clients. They want you.
[00:14:54] Samantha Mabe: And another piece that you mentioned is making it feel like you're sitting across the table with somebody. I think that's so key because We want to show up authentically as who we are in every platform, social media, on our website, in our emails, so that when somebody gets on a call with us, or they're sitting across the desk from us, they are getting the same person and the same interaction that they were expecting.
[00:15:23] Holly Larson: And copywriting is surprisingly vulnerable at times. It's hard to put yourself out there and the Internet is a wild place. And so no one wants to get nasty comments or harsh feedback. Unfortunately, that's just part of it of being out in public in any way. And we can also add levels of formality that might not necessarily be authentic to who you are, but because we feel like we should. So imposter syndrome can make us sound more formal in our writing. And then when people meet with us, you're like, Oh, like you're way calmer or kinder or warmer than you appeared on your website.
[00:16:05] If you hear yourself saying should about something, that's always a little red flag that I pay attention to. Can I should be more formal or I should write in the third person. Is that actually true? It might not actually be true.
The Elements to Include in an Effective Welcome Sequence
[00:16:19] Samantha Mabe: So now that we know the pieces of an email, what does a welcome sequence look like? How does that layout as an outline for what we should expect to include?
[00:16:32] Holly Larson: Great question. We're diving in. You ask three different copywriters how to do a welcome sequence, you might get three different answers, and that's fine. There's no set number of emails that should be part of a welcome sequence.
[00:16:44] What I like to think about is, based on what your freebie is, how many logical steps are built into using that freebie or working through that freebie, and consider each of those steps a separate email and weaving in a few other emails in between those to help explain who you are and how you help, to help answer some common questions, to help explain anything that's unique or different about your practice and how you help. And I'll go through these kind of individually, but as a high level, those are the steps that I would each have as a separate email in a welcome sequence.
[00:17:27] And then once you have your handle on how many emails that is, then look at how many days total do you want to send those emails out to make it a logical experience for your person to have opted in, been able to work through this freebie. And then your call to action at the end might be to get on the phone for a discovery call or here's how to book my program, whatever it is that you do in your business that's the next logical step, we want to have that as the thing that we're aiming towards and working through step by step so that when we get there, it's not a surprise. People know who you are and have built trust that when you say, okay, this is the next step. It's time to get out your wallet, they're actually ready to do that and they're excited to do that because they trust you and they are confident that you might be the person who's able to help them with the problem that you solve.
[00:18:25] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, you've answered the questions. You've gotten them ready so that when you say, For example let's schedule a consultation and talk about what's going on with you. They know what that looks like. They know what you do. They know what you help with. And going back to the freebie, they have seen some kind of progress or quick win from what you've already given them.
[00:18:50] Holly Larson: Exactly. For the first email, I like that to be to deliver the freebie, whatever that is, and just say, here it is. Thank you for joining. Give them a pat on the back for taking action. We all love a gold star. And you do not want to over clutter that email. You want to be really simple of here it is, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Any directions that are important for accessing it. If it's not just a simple click the button to download the file. And then let them know what to expect. So maybe it's tomorrow I'll be in your inbox to... So whatever it is so that people know exactly what's going to happen. And then when you do that exactly, because it's automatic, you built it into your email service provider. That really builds trust because you said what you're going to do and then you actually did it. So email one, give them the freebie and not much else.
[00:19:51] From there, I would encourage you to have them do that first step of whatever is in your process. So for me, I'm a copywriter. My freebie has to do with learning writing skills. Email about that is just saying here we are, we're jumping in. Here's that first step for you to learn how to be a more confident writer. If you were like a dietitian working with gluten free folks newly diagnosed with a need for gluten free, maybe to go into your cupboard and find things that you like that are already gluten free, just depends on what your freebie is. But just as a way to get people engaged and thinking about what problem it is that you're going to help them solve.
[00:20:31] From there I think an email or two about using the freebie is great. Again, it just depends on your number of steps.
[00:20:39] Then you could have an email about meeting you. And writing about yourself is hard. Writing your own web copy is the worst. I would rather write a thousand clients web copy than my own. It's hard to write about yourself. And so the good news of what I recommend in terms of talking about yourself is it's really more about what about your story, your training, your approach. What's your why for doing it? And it's really in service of the clients who you help. So you do want to share a bit about yourself. This is after they've already gotten a bit of a win from you. Otherwise they don't care. I'm sorry. That's human nature. What's in it for me? People don't care about your training as much as we think people should. They just want someone who can help them.
[00:21:31] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and a lot of times they don't even know what all the letters after your name mean, or which person they need to pick, which one is the actual thing that I need. And what I think is really helpful when you're in the health and wellness space, you probably got into it because you experienced something or a family member experienced something. And so it's really easy to connect I was going through this struggle and that's why I learned about all this stuff. And now I want to help other people. You're not having to dive into like really personal details, but your story is going to connect with the people who are reading because you got into this in order to help them with an issue that you have seen and that you have experienced.
[00:22:17] Holly Larson: Exactly. And in these first couple emails, I do encourage you to have what you might call a soft call to action. And when we think of a call to action, we tend to think of buy my product, and that is an important call to action. We don't need to beat around the bush in terms of directly saying, okay, now it's time to enroll. That's okay. It can feel scary, but that's part of being an entrepreneur.
[00:22:43] But leading up to that, we can have smaller calls to action. Hey, could you please add my address to your address book so that these emails don't get accidentally marked as spam? Here's a really popular blog post. Could you reply to this email and let me know that you got it? Getting small or soft calls to action throughout these first emails makes the final call to action a lot less scary. And if they're already engaging with you a little bit, you seem more familiar, more trustworthy as you lead up to whatever that big or main call to action is.
Engaging Your Audience with Storytelling
[00:23:22] Samantha Mabe: So what comes after you've introduced yourself, you've done a couple of those like steps in the process, how do we get from there to that main call to action at the end?
[00:23:31] Holly Larson: Good question. I like to have one email being about your program. So what is it that you do? How exactly does it happen? Storytelling can be really powerful here too, if you're sharing a story about a specific client or kind of marrying a few different stories together. Storytelling helps a future client to see themselves in a past client who you've helped and think, ah, this person has helped people just like me and people have helped solve problems that I'm struggling with. And again, it helps them to be ready and excited to work with you.
[00:24:09] But we're not asking them to buy yet, we're just telling them about it. And you can foreshadow, say, tomorrow I'm going to answer some common questions, maybe share some testimonials that could be in the next email.
[00:24:23] Introduce your program in one, story tell, check in on progress with the freebie, like, how's it going? The next one, share resources, especially If your program uses a certain tool, or you work with certain supplements, or you do some holistic testing of some kind that they may not be familiar with because it's not the annual lab panel. Just start foreshadowing this is all part of the program.
[00:24:50] And if you have blog posts that cover any of that stuff that kind of makes your program or your approach more unique, You can share those blog posts, and here's where you can find out more about the specific saliva testing that I do, or this specific way that I measure body composition, which helps us to better assess your health than just a regular scale.
[00:25:11] So whatever it is that adds value to your program, or is a core component of your program, talk about it, share about it. Why is it important to you that we do this? How is it going to affect your time together? How is it going to help you help them more quickly, more efficiently, whatever it is.
[00:25:28] And then at the end of that provide value email, I might foreshadow and say, tomorrow, I'm going to ask you to dot hop on a discovery call, purchase the program. So the next day, when that email pops into their inbox, they're not surprised. They've had 24 hours to think about it, be calm and confident.
[00:25:51] And we want to focus on benefits here, not features. So here's how we can explain that a benefit might be something like I'm a dietitian and I offer nutrition counseling. I'm a dietitian and I offer meal planning. The thing is, those are not applicable to their life because they don't really know what that means to them. So the feature is nutrition counseling. A benefit could be we're going to get down to the root cause of why you've had terrible gas the past 20 years so that we can fix it so that you can go out to eat with friends without packing your own food in your purse because there's nothing safe for you to eat at the restaurant. If you have been struggling like that with digestive issues, you'd be like, sign me the heck up. I want to be able to just go to a happy hour with friends and not have to think about it.
[00:26:49] Or if we go back to a dietitian helping people who were newly diagnosed with celiac and now need to be gluten free, I am going to meal plan for you so that you know what to eat and have confidence on what's on the menu even when you come home from work. And we're going to take your grocery budget into account so you're not having to remortgage your house to afford gluten free bread. And we can do this.
[00:27:15] Benefits are applying that feature to their real life, what is the problem, and it connects with emotions. We make decisions based on emotions, not facts.
[00:27:28] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I love those examples, and I see this all the time in website copy of this is my program, we're going to do this lab, and this lab, we're going to do this panel, we're going to, and I'm like, nobody cares. You need to know, you need to know which labs they're going to do and you might have the odd person that's okay, I want to know exactly what this looks like and you can give them that information. But what they want to know is we're going to do some labs that are going to tell us exactly which supplements you need exactly which food to avoid. And we're going to take that and we're going to make a meal plan so that you can feel better and not have to take a nap three times a day in order to function.
[00:28:13] Holly Larson: That's such a 180 from I'm going to talk to you about such and such lab.
Add a Call to Action to Your Welcome Sequence
[00:28:20] So in that email, we're asking them to take action. One thing, don't confuse them. Do not say, I have a menu of 37 services you can pick. So even if you have 37 services, that's a lot, but make the call to action to get on the phone so that we can pick the right service that's a match for your needs.
[00:28:42] Samantha Mabe: That's another one that I love that you pointed out. And I think it's a really easy call to action to say, let's get on a call. And then you are able to get them into the right program. They don't have to make that decision for themselves. They don't have to feel overwhelmed. All they have to do is find a time that fits on their schedule. And please give them an online scheduler so they can find a time and you don't have to go back and forth on email.
[00:29:08] Holly Larson: That is a waste of everyone's time and energy. There are a lot of free tools to do that. And that helps you to be come across as more professional, even if you're a one person show.
[00:29:18] Samantha Mabe: Once your email or your welcome sequence ends, what do we do with those email subscribers and how do we continue to nurture them if they didn't get on that call or if they did get on the call, but they're not quite ready to become a client?
[00:29:35] Holly Larson: I have two suggested emails to include to help answer that question for an email sequence. We just discussed the main call to action. What is that one main thing that we're working towards? I recommend sending a follow up email saying, Hey, you can still take this action, whatever it is short and sweet, not pushy. Some people will really appreciate that. Be like, Oh, I didn't mean to do that. And I just genuinely forgot. We are busy human beings. That's human nature. Having another check in or two, more if your call to action is a paid thing, a lot of people need way more than one reminder to actually make a purchase. Getting on a call is probably an easier lift to ask people to do.
[00:30:20] And then after that, however many emails you've sent asking them to take that action, not everyone's going to do it. That's normal. I then like to, maybe a week later, To send people who have not taken that email. So this has to do with tagging and the setting up of your email sequence. I like to ask for feedback. So just I noticed you didn't take this action. That's okay. I want to make sure that everything I'm offering is of value. Real quick. Do you have any feedback for me? And I like to present it two ways. One, you can just reply to this email. Or two, you can click on this anonymous survey with two questions. I like to ask. What's up? What is there? Do you want to tell me anything about why you didn't? And then a second box of, is there anything else you'd like me to know? I get the most interesting answers in that question that are really helpful. And you're not going to get that many, not most people are not going to do it, but sometimes people will. And from there, I would call that the conclusion of the welcome sequence.
Sending Regular Emails After Your Welcome Sequence
[00:31:25] Samantha Mabe: Okay.
[00:31:25] Holly Larson: And then from there, I would move them to just the regular in your inbox. So whether you send a monthly newsletter or weekly newsletter, whatever your business kind of flow is. Whether you accomplish this through tagging, like at the end of this sequence, then people will get The general tag or however you organize your emails, then they're just kind of part of the flow.
[00:31:51] And for weekly emails or monthly emails, I like to alternate it with providing value showing up and being top of mind and occasionally asking your list at large. To take the same action. I have 5 appointments this week, here's the calendar to grab one if it's the right time for you. Because sometimes people do genuinely want to work with you, but just for some reason that's not anything against you, it's just not the right time. But if you continue to show up, provide value, stay on top of mind, And occasionally ask people to take action, they will.
[00:32:27] Samantha Mabe: We've been through what's involved in an email sequence, and I think we've hit a couple of these points, but I want to pull out specific places and ways that we're using these emails to educate potential clients and prepare them to work with us so that as we're going through and we're reviewing what we wrote, that we can make sure we're hitting those points and that they are getting all of that so that the client experience from first opt in on that website until they book that call and they come into the office feels really streamlined and consistent.
[00:33:02] Holly Larson: Part of copywriting technique in general is to be speaking to exactly the person that you're most excited to help in your business. At least for dietitians, we're largely a female dominated field, and speaking as a whole, we tend to lean more towards people pleasing. And it can be scary to try and trim down who it is that you're trying to serve in your business because it feels say no to income. But the truth is, if you focus your messaging and focus your work on a specific group of people or a specific problem that you're trying to help solve, it allows you to do your work better, with less frustration and less continuing education to stay on top of that literature. And it helps to guide your writing because you are speaking exactly to how they think, what they're worried about, the questions that they have, and so on.
[00:34:02] So I would say part of the fact that your email sequence Is speaking to your ideal client, it should actually be a bit of a repellent to people who are not your ideal client. So if you are someone who works from an intuitive eating perspective and you're helping people to connect with their body and their hunger and stop depending on the scale and apps to manage how much they eat and when, someone whose primary goal is weight loss. Is not actually your ideal client.
[00:34:37] And so if they were to hop on your list and to get your freebie, maybe they might become interested in intuitive eating, or they might say this really isn't the right person for me. And we want them to get help, of course, but if you're not the right clinician, the sooner that they discover that, the better, so they can find someone who is the right fit. And that saves people from getting on your calendar, booking calls, if they're just really are not going to be the right fit for you and your business.
[00:35:09] Samantha Mabe: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Holly Larson: And then some more ways are things like, I recommend every website to have an FAQ section. What do you think of that, samantha?
[00:35:18] Samantha Mabe: Always.
[00:35:20] Holly Larson: Great. I would definitely link to your FAQ section in 1 of your emails. Because, in fact, we'll answer some FAQs that your clients have so that when the right people then get on your calendar to have that discovery call or to join your program, they already know some of the stuff.
[00:35:38] And then as you describe your programs, I recommend being transparent with pricing. I know that's a controversial thing. I know sometimes coaches, they're not saying this verbatim, but it feels like the vibe is you can talk them into it if you're the right person. That's not a good fit for me. So I'd rather just be transparent and people who are the right fit will join your program.
[00:36:01] So again, if your program is 10 times above someone's budget, realistically, they're not in the right space to be your client. And again, we don't want them to clutter up your calendar and meet with you if the time is not right for them to be a client.
[00:36:16] Samantha Mabe: I love those points. And a lot of it. Is about being consistent, whether that's linking to the FAQ section so you're not having to update your website and your emails every time something changes. And a lot of it is about being transparent in the personality that you bring to the emails, in what's included in your program and the types of people that you help. I know for a lot of people, some of the questions are always around pricing and insurance and how often do we meet? And just making it really easy for people to find those answers helps them and it helps us because we're not having to answer them and we're not having to get the wrong people on calls or even into a program and then realize they're not going to get the experience out of this that they want because we didn't set them up for success at the beginning.
[00:37:11] Holly Larson: I know we mentioned this earlier, but just to reiterate, blogs can be a great format to explain some of those things about your program or the specific aspects or the why. And then to link to those blog posts from the email sequence is a great way for them to engage with you, your approach, your materials, to get to know you, your vibe. If you have a sarcastic sense of humor or you're talking about your dog or whatever it is in Your blogs and emails, they get to know you.
[00:37:42] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. I love that point as well. And I know there are so many people in the health and wellness field that do not want to blog, but it is still your best option when it comes to SEO and it helps to educate people. And then you have a resource to send them that's already written that it's doing so many things to just put in that one piece of content. Like you mentioned, you don't have to rewrite that as an email. You just, give a little introduction. You can say, if you want to learn more about this specific thing, here's a post, go check it out on my website. You're giving them that resource without having to figure out how to fit all of that into an email.
[00:38:21] Holly Larson: Absolutely.
Tracking and Improving Email Performance
[00:38:22] Samantha Mabe: If you have a couple quick things people can look at as far as Stats and analytics that are actually important and where we need to pay attention to things.
[00:38:32] Holly Larson: Yeah, so in general, of all emails in the healthcare space, I typically see the stats of a good open rate is 20 to 30%. Typically, and welcome email sequences higher than that, because people are the most engaged or the most excited to have joined your community. So you might even see 40 or 50%. If you're new to building your list, it's also pretty normal to have some pretty big fluctuations because your community is sorting things out. So there's going to be more volatility. That's normal. Because also at the same time, you're figuring out your voice and your vibe of how often you send emails.
[00:39:16] But one thing that you can pay attention to as you set up your email sequence in your email service provider is you can see the stats on the individual emails in a list. So maybe overall the first three emails are averaging like 40 percent open, right? And then the next one is just 10 percent like what happened? Maybe that fourth email just needs an update on the subject line to be a little more engaging. So that it's following the trend or the pattern of the emails before and after it. So that can be a way to just tweak to make sure that your email is, your sequence is performing as well as you'd like.
[00:39:58] And then you can also pay attention to click rates. Click rate is if you have a link or a button inside the email, how many people are clicking it and actually only 1 percent is a good click rate. Sometimes it's just helpful to have some of the benchmark data so that you're not expecting 50 percent of people to click on your link because it never going to happen.
[00:40:23] And then unsubscribes, I typically see the rate of 1% is normal, so don't be offended if people are not the right people for your community, if they're just not in the right spot, it's great that they're unsubscribing. You're not the right person to help them. So let's wish them well that they can find the right person for them.
[00:40:43] And then other things to track are just the metrics that are important to your business. If you're asking people to buy a digital good, what percentage of people are taking that action? If you're asking people to hop on a discovery call, how many people are doing that?
[00:40:58] And then from there, you just want to share the absolute heck out of your freebie so much that you're sick of hearing about it, but it takes a long time for people even to engage with a free thing. I think on some level, most people know that it's going to be linked to an ask for a sale. That's normal, but people know that. So that makes them a little hesitant unless they're like, I really think this person can help me. I want to know more about it. So you need to share it. So sharing on the different social media platforms that you're on LinkedIn, if that's applicable to your business.
[00:41:34] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and I think it's important, as you said, you're tracking things as they move forward. And there's always going to be drop off. Like click rates are going to be 1%. But how many of the people that click on that link actually sign up for a call? And finding where The disconnects might be once you know, okay, this is normal for the industry and this is normal for my list, then how do I either increase that a little bit or how do I make sure that actual next step is taken because you're going to lose people every time they have to take an action. We want to simplify that as much as possible.
[00:42:09] Holly Larson: Absolutely.
Connect with Holly
[00:42:10] Samantha Mabe: Where can people connect with you online? And I know that you have a resource that you wanted to share. So where can we find all of that?
[00:42:18] Holly Larson: My name is Holly Larson. My business is holly larson writes. com. That's Larson L A R S. So holly Larson writes. com. So on there, I have lots of blogs with guidance on how to be a better writer and tips to get started as an entrepreneur. My freebie is a seven day mini course of how to be a better copywriter because we have a lot of barriers to being a good copywriter, including imposter syndrome or the expectation to be super duper formal. We're all science nerds to some degree. We need to chill out on our explanations. But then that gives you a taste of me and how I teach, because I also offer a paid course to learn more about how to be a copywriter.
[00:43:03] And I have a mentoring program to help you stay on track with publishing one really good blog post a month and actually publishing it. Because when you're an entrepreneur and you're juggling a billion things. Your own content is the very first thing to end up on the back burner, but it's also a really important way to help your business grow. Blogs are a long term game. SEO is not like a sexy reel going viral. SEO is a slow and steady, it's a consistency thing. And so I support wellness professionals who are interested in learning how to write better, learning SEO a little bit at a time, and to stay committed to publishing one blog post a month, that's my blog club.
[00:43:49] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm going to link to that all in the show notes and on the summit website and I'm excited for people to connect with you.
[00:43:57] Holly Larson: Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.
[00:44:06] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for joining me for this session of the Elevate Your Practice Summit. If you enjoyed it, make sure to go to the elevateyourpractice. co website in order to connect with the speaker and get access to the free resources they mentioned in their session. You can also share the summit with any of your friends in the health and wellness space and send them to the website elevate your practice dot co. You can get 30 percent off your first three months of practice better at practice better. io and use the code L A T S 30.
