Launch and announcement emails

What a launch email sequence is

A launch or announcement sequence is a set of emails, usually three to six, sent across a fixed window to carry one piece of news from the first mention to the last chance to act. Each email has its own job and its own audience, and the whole set is planned before a word of it is written.

It is not a single announcement blast. One email goes out at one hour on one day and reaches the people who happened to be at a desk; everyone else sees it three days later under forty other messages, if at all. A sequence exists so the news can repeat without irritating anyone, because every send says something the one before it did not.

It is also not a drip campaign, which is automated, triggered by something a person does, and runs for as long as you leave it on. A launch sequence has a start date, an end date and a thing being launched.

Who this is for

A business with something genuinely new to tell a list about: a product, a second location, a service, a price change, a date. The usual picture is an owner who has spent four months on the thing itself and two hours on how anybody will hear about it.

The second case is a business that has launched before and watched the same pattern twice: a decent open, a handful of orders in the first day, and silence afterwards. The orders that did not happen were mostly from people who read the email on a Tuesday, meant to come back to it, and never did.

You do not need this if the news is small. A minor update, a new article, a change to opening hours belongs in the next issue of your newsletter, not in a sequence of its own. Sending five emails about something that warranted a paragraph is the quickest way to teach a list to stop opening.

What goes in it

The shape changes with what is being launched, but most sequences use four moves, and a short launch drops one of them.

• The tease. Sent a week or so ahead. It says something is coming, says roughly what kind of thing it is, and gives a date. Its only job is to make the launch email expected instead of surprising.
• The launch. The announcement itself, on the day. What it is, who it is for, what it costs, and one link. Short, because the people who were waiting do not need persuading.
• The detail. Two or three days later, to everyone who read the launch and did not act. Here the questions get answered: how it works, what is included, who it is not for, what happens after they buy.
• The last call. Near the end of the window, and only where there is a real deadline: a closing date, a limited number, a price that rises. Invented urgency is noticed and costs more than it earns.

Alongside the emails I write the subject lines and preview text for each send, two or three candidates apiece, and a note on who receives it. Nobody gets all of them. People who have already bought come out after the launch email, which is most of the difference between a sequence and a nuisance.

What you get

The sequence. Every email in full, in one document: subject line candidates, preview text, body copy, the link in place, and a note on any image. Delivered together, so you read the whole arc in one sitting and can satisfy yourself that no email repeats another.

The send plan. One page saying which email goes on which day at which hour, who receives it and who is held back, with the segments named in the language of your own sending platform.

A check on the page behind it. I read the page the emails point at and say plainly whether it makes the same promise they do. Where it does not, you get the lines to change, or a quote for a page built for the launch.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Nova Scotia furniture maker with a list of about nine hundred addresses is releasing a run of forty dining chairs, on sale for six weeks or until they are gone. The plan the owner arrived with was one email on the Monday.

Instead, five emails go out across four weeks. The tease, eight days ahead, is a photograph of the unfinished frames and two sentences on the timber and why there are only forty. The launch email on the Monday runs to under two hundred words and one button. The detail email on the Thursday answers the three questions the workshop is always asked: the wood, the wait, and whether the finish can be changed. Two weeks in, a short email goes only to people who opened something and ordered nothing, and it is about the making rather than the selling. The last call goes out with eleven chairs left and says so, because that is true. Everyone who orders leaves the sequence the same day. Five emails, one page of plan, one number tracked.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What is launching, the dates, the size and history of the list, and what the page behind it looks like now. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of emails, the send window, the segments and the revision rounds, agreed before anything is written.
3. Inputs. Read access to your sending platform, the product detail, any photographs, and the page the emails will point at. Two or three working days.
4. The writing. Five to eight working days for a full sequence, delivered as one document so you read the arc rather than the emails one at a time.
5. Delivery. One revision round, then the final sequence and the send plan, in your hands at least a week before the tease goes out. I can schedule them in your platform if you would rather not.

What it costs

A launch sequence is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because a three-email announcement to one list and a six-email launch across four segments are not the same job. The price depends on the number of emails, the number of segments, and whether the scheduling is mine or yours. The pricing page shows the four ways of working and how quoting runs where there is no published band. The number is agreed in writing before anything starts, and it does not move.

What happens next

When a launch is over, the people who opened everything and bought nothing are the most useful list you own, and they are usually worth a patient follow-up series rather than another offer. Businesses that launch more than twice a year normally want an email calendar next, so launches stop landing on top of the regular sends. And if the news deserved more than email, the same material becomes posts, which starts with deciding which platforms are worth it. This sequence is complete work on its own, and nothing further is assumed.