How to Design an Email Sequence to Grow Your Business

Katy Cesarotti | Gallery Design Studio Editor + Copywriter

A majority of marketers say that email is their most effective channel for revenue generation. Email can drive conversion, build engagement and increase sales— if you can make it count. 

Your email sequences will be one of dozens that customers receive each day, in the mix with personal messages, work emails, and other promotions from companies trying to secure their business. What makes customers click on yours?

Email sequences create a controlled journey that moves your customers through the sales funnel, from awareness to purchase to even brand advocacy. A well-crafted, automated series of emails can grow and nurture your customer relationships without allowing prospects to slip through the cracks. Email sequences expand your bandwidth and allow you to reach more customers at once. They’re also more personal than email blasts to every address you’ve ever collected.

Email sequences can be used to:

Be in the right place at the right time

Give customers the information they’re looking for in the moment, or nudge them with gentle reminders to complete a purchase. 

Set up email sequences to go out over certain spans of time: right after signup, after thirty days, or once a quarter. Email sequences to customers can also be triggered in response to actions your customers take, like downloading a whitepaper or signing up for an event. For example, if a customer clicks on a landing page about one service you offer, the email sequence would focus on that subset of customers with specific details about benefits, instead of more generalized language that applies to all of your customers.

Nurture new leads

Email sequences can tell customers what they should expect from your brand. Educate potential clients on what your brand stands for with informational emails. Set the tone for how many emails you send, what your voice sounds like, and how you “look” on the page.

The average U.S. employee has 199 unread emails in their inbox. When you establish expectations early that your emails are professional, respectful of the reader’s time, and worthwhile, potential clients will be more likely to open your emails down the road. Clients will subconsciously judge your professionalism, and your ability to deliver results, based on the look of your emails. Ensure you make a favorable impression with polished designs and clean layouts.

Deepen engagement

Use email sequences to suggest relevant content that your readers might be interested in. If they previously downloaded one whitepaper, include a simple call-to-action with a link to another. If you’re putting out a lot of blogposts each month, an automated email can be a helpful roundup to promote your content.

Eighty percent of customers are only scanning your emails. Instead of creating more work for your customer — another email to delete, or a message that’s difficult to understand — well-designed email sequences can package key information in a way that’s actually interesting to consume. Graphics with personality will set you apart from the other robotic, corporate messages in someone’s inbox. Interactive components, like multimedia or multiple-choice quizzes, give your customers a surprising moment of delight, as well as something to engage with.

Drive conversions

Automated emails get 152% higher click rates than scattershot emails to your whole dataset. Use email sequences to drive clients to your website and move them further down the marketing funnel. 

Effective email sequences go beyond plain text and links to echo the look and feel of your website, creating a smooth end-to-end path for your prospects. Eye-popping design will stand out in an inbox full of look-alike spam, and encourage your readers to click on your call-to-action.

While templates can be a helpful starting point, they can sometimes be limiting in their layout options, confining you to certain colors or fonts. At GDS, our monthly plan can help you craft customized layouts that fully align with your vision. Use strategic design to direct the viewer’s eye to a call-to-action button and entice them to click. 

Onboard new customers

The average open rate for welcome emails is 50%, which makes them a great vehicle for important information. Welcoming new customers after they opt-in to receiving emails will show your gratitude and boost retention. 

In the month-long period right after you sign a new client, it’s especially important to make sure they feel confident in your service. Onboarding emails can make your company more accessible and iron out processes early on. Several brief emails can “chunk” key information into manageable bits and remove any obstacles from the process of getting started.

Successful onboarding emails can help you retain more customers, and encourage them to make more purchases down the road. You can use email sequences to drive more users to your website, with in-depth articles and explainer videos, or include direct infographics and videos that explain minor tasks. When customers can “check off” something and quickly master a skill, they get a feeling of accomplishment they’ll associate with your company.

Personalize connections

Create audience groups using the data you’ve gathered on your prospects — what kind of company they work for, what their role is, or what content they’ve previously engaged with — to create a customized experience that speaks to their needs. Include their name at the top of the email to make them feel more like an individual instead of an impersonal sales prospect.

Boost efficiency

As important as personalization and timeliness is, email automation should ultimately make your life easier. Instead of writing and rewriting emails with similar purposes, craft reusable email sequences that can be sent to new batches of prospects over a longer period of time. With evergreen, timeless content, you can set it and forget it to boost your conversion rates.

With the GDS monthly plan, you can kickstart new strategic email sequences to guide your clients through the customer’s journey. Our creative team can help you craft customized designs that enhance your strategy and go beyond the limitations of pre-set templates. With a dedicated team of professionals that “gets” your brand and your goals, you can launch email campaigns that deliver results.

About Gallery Design Studio

We're passionate about helping B2B businesses with their ongoing marketing communication design needs. We help our clients transmit complex information clearly, concisely and in a visually engaging way. Relentlessly curious, we're inspired by experimentation, and always looking for better ways to serve our clients.

We’ve collaborated with transformational businesses and government agencies such as The Even Financial, Questback and The New York Law Department. 

Our services:

• Communication and Marketing Design
• Video & Animation
• Web & App design (UX/UI)
• Digital Customer Experience Design (DCX)

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About the Writer

Katy Cesarotti is a copywriter at Gallery Design Studio. Katy believes that, with clear and concise copy, innovators can spark emotion and drive action in their readers. She’s written for magazines, blogs and cutting-edge startups.