A complete sales promotion which directs readers straight to an order device for purchase.

May be part of a series of D2C sales emails— but each should stand on its own as a sales promotion, since you’re directly asking for a purchase— and therefore, the sales argument must be stated right there in the email’s body copy.

D2C email promotions bare the closest resemblance to their “bigger brother”, the long-form sales page. You may think of them as a kind of “mini sales letter”.They’re the most direct form of sales email— all other kinds of email promotion are at least a step or two removed from the point of sale (eg: email —> sales letter —> checkout page).

Similar to the D2C email, but with a key difference: its primary “job” is to drive prospects to a full sales page or sales video— which, in turn, convinces prospects to buy something.

The traffic driver sales email, therefore, serves a dual purpose: 1) to give readers a compelling reason to click through to the sales page, and 2) to pick out the readers who are likely to want whatever the sales page is offering.

These emails still have a “selling” function, but it’s more of a ‘support role’ in the sales process— the sales page or sales video does the “heavy hitting”.

These emails have the benefit of being oftentimes more targeted than the sales page or video they link towards. A sales page will generally cover a wider subset of your target audience. A traffic driver email may pick out just one narrow “slice” of that market.

In “perfect” circumstances, you’d have different sales letters, VSLs, and order devices for every possible permutation of your target avatar. But for many smaller info-marketers, this just isn’t practical on their current budget and website architecture.

So traffic driver emails can give the impression of a sales message being tailored to different market segments— simply by switching up the emails that lead into that same, identical sales page.

A message directed to non-responsive leads who haven’t engaged with your emails, sales pages, or website in a while.

In essence, the message says “act now or lose out forever!”– threatening to purge them from your email list… if they don’t take action… or else ‘engage’ in some way with your brand/ products/ community.

But it doesn’t have to be all “fire and brimstone”.

The “mirror” version of the Warning email is the Reinvigoration Email (below)…

A message directed to non-responsive leads who haven’t engaged with your emails, sales pages, or website in a while.

But unlike the warning email, the reinvigoration email gives positive incentive to re-engage:  a limited time offer, an “ethical bribe” like a free ebook, or a “Big Idea” that grabs attention at the reader’s most front-of-mind problem… in such a way as to “shake them out of complacence”.

Don’t underestimate the value of the “dead leads” gathering dust in your email list— if brought back from the afterlife, they can become loyal, high-value customers.

(p.s. You should run an email audit from time to time to make sure your emails aren’t hitting people’s ‘spam’ folders– even the ‘promotions’ tab on email hosts like Gmail is a kiss of death for email marketing. You can’t reinvigorate a lead who never sees your emails hit their inbox in the first place.)

So you just sold something. Great! Now it’s time to sell something else! Preferably more expensive.

A series of Upsell Emails can deepen a new customer’s commitment levels… by in essence asking them to “double down” on their investment.

Often deployed alongside— or immediately following— an “Aftercare” sequence.

(In some cases, the two terms may be used interchangeably— different types of sales emails often “blend together” and borrow elements from one another.)

A downsell email is the opposite of an upsell email— in that you’re offering something for sale… that costs LESS than the customer’s most recent purchase.

Similar to Traffic Driving Sales Email— except it’s trying to get readers to click-through to a piece of online web content, rather than a sales page/ sales video.

Uses less “salesy” language, and instead focuses on “teasing” the useful content— cementing the product expert’s “authority” within a given subject area.

The web content itself can, of course, drive traffic to a sales page or sales video— as may be the case with an advertorial, or explainer video.

(Also known as a ‘2-step sales letter’, since the first “step”– the web content— leads to the second step— the sales letter. This may be preferable for prospects who are ‘burnt out’ on direct sales promotions in their inbox.)

A series of emails designed to affirm a recent customer purchase— sometimes used in tandem with an upsell offer, but not always.

If you collected mailing addresses at the point of sale, this would be a great time to also send a physical welcome letter in the post— with the aftercare emails playing more of a ‘support’ role.

Aftercare emails can reduce refunds.

They can increase engagement with products/ coaching services/ attendance of live events.

And they can increase the likelihood that recent buyers will ingratiate themselves within your online community/ “tribe”.

Remember, a customer who sticks around after their first purchase… will most likely stick around after EVERY purchase.

Most subscribers are “lost” after the first purchase— mainly because there’s no aftercare process to offset the “post-purchase blues”.

An Aftercare email sequence can re-instill in new buyers the excitement that drove them to the initial point of purchase.

Similar to Aftercare Email, except it’s linked only to a recent email opt-in, and not an actual product purchase.

Tells new subscribers they’ve “come to the right place”, affirms their interest in the subject matter that attracted them, “pre-sells” them on future possible purchases.

May be used in conjunction with traffic driving CTAs, or may simply spend some time building rapport and sharing tips, etc.

If they gave their email in exchange for a free lead magnet, then the New Subscriber email will also provide access to the promised resource— perhaps with a short-form “re-selling” of the lead magnet’s value to the new subscriber.

This one is on the “less salesy” end of the spectrum.

Usually there’s no call to action. There’s nothing to sell. You may think it has no business under the umbrella of “sales email”.

But it still affects the sales process in a positive way.

See, a rapport building series of emails can get more readers to “know, like, and trust” the product expert and/or executive coach.

It reveals more of who they are as a person, what they stand for as a coach, their “mission”, and their personality quirks and life story— perhaps even their sense of humour and communication style.

So when readers finally get funnelled to a core sales message, the coach/ product expert is already a known quantity— they’re not just a “coach”, they’re a person, perhaps even a friend.

And we like to buy from people we know, like, and trust.

So although rapport builders don’t “sell” in the traditional sense, they can indirectly increase the ‘selling power’ of future sales messages.

For this reason, you should treat these rapport builders with the same seriousness as any of the “Direct-response” sales emails.