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The Parallel Welcome Sequence, with Daniel Throssell
Episode 13, Season 1 – Daniel Throssell
Welcome to the thirteenth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.
Our guest for today is Daniel Throssell, also known as Australia’s best copywriter who’s famous for creating persuasivepage.com.
Have you heard about Daniel’s Parallel Welcome Sequence? Listen to this episode and learn how it can help you with maintain people’s attention.
- Daniel narrated why he used parallel welcome sequence in his emails
- Daniel has two different sets of welcome messages. Find out more in the podcast
- The main goal for the welcome message sequence is to keep people’s attention
- It is possible to sell in a fun way. Daniel shared how
- The Customer Relationship Management tools Daniel used for email automation is on the first part of the interview (and it’s actually a cheap option)
- Why does a company need to send daily emails?
- Do you have problems capturing the voice of the client in writing emails? Solutions are in the second part of this episode
- How does allowing people to read emails at their own pace can solve a lot of problems
- If you want to learn about the parallel welcome sequence, check it here
- “So if you want to be one of the things that people can’t live without every day, I think you have to be new as well.” – Daniel Throssell
Learn something today? Tell your friends about it too!
Transcript:
Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode
Open Transcript
Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He constantly changes nos to yeses with an email Ziv Raviv.
Ziv:
Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I am Ziv Raviv and today I have the pleasure to interview Daniel Throssell all the way from Australia. Daniel is the creator of the persuasive page.com persuasive page.com and Daniel has some insights about copywriting that are just mind blowing. I love your work. Hello, Daniel.
Daniel:
Hi, how you going?
Ziv:
Good. Good. It’s good to have you here with us at tell me Daniel. Just I’m curious. How did you come up with the idea of the parallel welcome sequence?
Daniel:
Yeah, I mean, are we assuming that everyone who’s listening to this knows what that is?
Ziv:
They have no idea. They have no idea than us.
Danielle:
Well, okay. So it’s basically the idea of you can click a link in your welcome sequence to get the next email. Immediately. Every time you click you land on a separate webpage, which tells a different story, sort of a parallel story. So you’ve got two separate storylines going there. You’ve got your daily emails and your inbox, which you can skip. And you’ve got these web pages, which tell their own story. But I came up with that idea. I wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea of clicking to skip and get a new email immediately. I got that from someone else. I honestly can’t remember where from, but I love the idea because so many welcome sequences in my view are cooling down new leads. And by that, I mean, when you sign up and get someone’s email, you read that first email and they say, look in 24 hours, I’m going to send you this email on X, check your email for it.
At that moment, the person who signed up to your list is most likely to want to read it right then and there probably. And you’re saying, you’re not going to have it for 24 hours and there’s nothing you can do to get it. That’s a terrible thing to do in my opinion. And there’ve been lists I sign up to and I’m like, they tease the next email. I was like, I want to read that right now. I’m here right now, show it to me. And I can’t. And by the time they send that email out, I was bored. I didn’t care anymore. I was gone. Attention is the most important thing that we have in 2021 to work with. And so the whole point was about how can I keep someone’s attention for as long as possible when they’ve just signed up? So I want them, if they want to go through 10, 15 emails at once, they can, if I can get two hours of bedtime after they sign up, I want that I’ll have two hours of that time.
And so they can click through and read all my emails. And of course, they’ve got these little stories in between every time they click a link. And so I’m using that to branch out and do Wilder, crazier things. And just, it’s that idea of cultivating your superfans, really that showing you a weirdness because there’s so many people out there sending them emails. So you can really dive into what makes you unique and special. And that’s certainly what I do is just crazy stuff going on. It really cultivates super fan. So the combination of two things, it’s like embracing that weird side of yourself and also holding onto someone’s attention. And so two hours after someone joins my list, if they want, they’ve gone through my entire welcome sequence and they email me, they say, I’m, it’s 2:00 AM right now. I can’t sleep. I’ve just been going through your emails, I’m hooked, right? Versus for someone else, they got bored two hours ago. They forgotten about me already. They’re watching Netflix. So that’s the real big difference. I think in the way I’m approaching the welcome sequence.
Ziv:
So basically you have two different sets of welcome messages. If you will. One of them is in the email sequence itself. And the other one is in those set of like micro pages. And what’s your opinion on those pages, the welcome messages. Do you think it’s important to try and sell on them? Or is that not one of your goals
Daniel:
I am trying to sell? And that’s, that’s a separate philosophy of mine is that, you know, you always want to set that expectation that you’re selling stuff, because if you don’t, then people get angry when it comes out of nowhere. So I am selling, but my primary goal is to get attention. That’s what I want more than anything I’ve before I want their money, I want their attention. And I want them to think I like this guy, because if I can get them to think, I want to read these emails, then I have five years to sell them. If I go for the sale immediately, I might make some more money, but there’s been plenty of people who buy stuff straight up and then they end up dropping off later on. So it’s kind of backwards from the old model, which was, you know, try and monetize upfront.
That’s how advertising works. 20, 30 years ago. You had to do that. You have to regroup your costs because it was so ferociously competitive, but now you can reach people for free almost with the internet. So the game’s changed. And now the scarce thing is not recurred being that money back, it’s getting the attention. So I am selling on those pages for sure, but I’m selling in a very lighthearted and fun way. And I don’t care if they buy or not in that welcome series. I am going to get them at some point down the line. All I want is to make sure that they keep reading.
Ziv:
Yeah. It’s almost like accidentally you offer them to buy something like in a PS with a very small link, never with like this big table of here’s the product with the price and everything. Almost like as a side joke, by the way, you can pay money, you can be, you know, buy this, but what it. And I can testify for that personally, is that you get to the point where you know exactly what to expect from a Danielle Throssell email, which is that it will be engaging. It will be interesting. It will be funny. It will teach you something rather than like to open up. I don’t know, a general email from one of the goo and one of the companies where, you know, they will try to provide value, but they might not be as specific as something that you can trust that will be relevant for you. As you said, like you can, it’s super fans. And I have a question if you don’t mind sharing, if it’s not a secret on the technical level, what CRM are you using to automate all of that? And if you don’t mind sharing.
Daniel:
It’s really like I’m using a Weber right now. I’m just about to move to the Zercher mail. Uh, with new email platform, I’m using bazooka mail already for my broad tasks. I’m a beta tester on that platform, but they haven’t got their campaign builder ready yet. So I will move over to that. The good thing is incredibly simple, technically because a Weber has a fairly simple campaign buildup. All I do is put every email within its own campaign. And every campaign is triggered by either a click or a delay. So if you click you move to the next campaign, or if you hit the delay, you move to the next campaign. I think it’s something that you can set up in any CRM, any broadcast platform, to be honest,
Ziv:
Simpler than I thought I thought there was some sort of like, yeah, let’s just wait for the awesome Ben said,
Daniel:
Yes, yes, yes.
Ziv:
We had on the show mentioned that like, yeah, how wonderful, uh, like let’s catch up after this and chat about the Beatles. So obviously you’re an advocate of setting more emails of sending daily emails. Why should a ccompany sent so many emails like daily?
Daniel:
Well, there are like, there’s so many arguments that people make for this. And I agree with them all. Cause I do it. You know, if people are getting so many emails that if I email once a week, I’m one in like 2000 emails that person’s getting, for example, and people read plenty of stuff every day. Like everyone says, I can’t email every day, they’ll get sick of me. And I’m like, well, they read plenty of things. Every day they read the news every day, they check their Facebook every day, but Instagram every day. So there’s nothing wrong with a daily checking, something. It just has to be new and interesting enough. That is the problem. Most people can’t be interesting enough. So that’s the challenge. And one thing I do say to most copywriters, a lot of copywriters are out there pushing this daily thing on their clients and I’m like, not every client is ready for that.
I think this ties into what we were just talking about before, which is you guys are offering is a much, a really cool idea. You’re trying to offer that lower price point for people to get it because a big barrier to most businesses is I can’t afford a copywriter every day. Like they just tend to charge me too much. So that is usually where I say to copywriters, not every business needs a daily email, but having spoken to you just before, I think that’s kind of cool that you are actually filling that gap in the market. So I think that’s, that’s cool.
Ziv:
I totally agree that not everyone needs a daily email. And I actually recommend to our clients, even though they can get a daily mail form us for the same fee from us, it doesn’t mean that that’s what they should do. And you should measure and look at the stats and like of even come up with enough material first and plan and see that it’s aligned with your business needs and to measure the click through rates and so on. There’s so much more to it than just like this new platform. Let’s also do Instagram or let’s also do daily emails. Now you need to look at the data and like, try it out first.
Daniel:
Yeah. I will say that I have people who, last week I had an email go out late. I messed up the scheduling and I had people, several people email me saying, where’s my email. Like I need base literally said, I’m not exaggerating. I need my daily fix. Where’s my email. Right. So if you do it right, you actually have people hooked on that domain, drip of what are they going to send me today? So I think daily emails absolutely can be done if you do them. Right. And people will love them.
Ziv:
Yeah. And really like sending a little amount of emails like once a week, even, you know, just a drop in the water. I can see where you’re coming from. Totally. So let’s talk a little bit about capturing the voice for a client because especially for people like us that believe in daily emails and believing in good copywriting services for helping businesses grow with us and nurture the relationship over email marketing, but how do you or your students as a copywriter that also teaches actually capture the voice of the client so that the client will feel like those, those emails that actually are being sent by him,
Daniel:
There are several solutions to this. I don’t think this is a one size fits all problem. And it really depends on the business and the level of integration that you have with that client, how closely they want to work with you, how long you are working there and how much you’re getting paid as a copywriter, you know, how much money is this project worth for both parties? I think that all makes a big difference. So I’ve worked with clients where I was long-term effectively, in-house at the company. And so I got very, very good at the client’s voice and so on. Okay. And that just comes with a long time of exposure. If you are not in that position and you have to come in and you can’t get that much information. I usually say that the, the emails should shift focus from being so much about the business to more about the market.
And when you do that, you can sort of take some of the focus off the voice per se, because it’s not so much telling about your story, what you did that day. This afternoon. I took my kids to the parks on the, in my own business. I write a ton of personal stories and I think that is the best. And if you can have, if the copywriter and business can be really integrated so that even the copywriter might submit, you know, this is just one potential model, but the copywriter is submitting ideas. The client will go over that and maybe sprinkle some voice through it. I think that’s the ideal. And that’s how I worked for a long time. But obviously that’s a very intensive thing that needs a lot of, um, cooperation between client and copywriter and so on. So in other cases, I recommend that the emails tend to take a more market focused.
So if you’re selling to the weight loss market, one day, you’re talking about how embarrassing it is to not fit clothes. And then the next day it’s like the shame of I don’t have my pre-child body anymore. So, and it’s all market focused and that takes a lot of pressure off having to sound exactly like the client, because there’s not so much about you. It’s more about the, the client. That’s kind of my approach to, I know there are people who get really technical of measuring voice and so on, but I think I approached that in a slightly different way.
Ziv:
I love it. I guess it’s a combination of, can you afford researching the customer’s voice for this specific project and even having, staying there for long enough to be flexible and to adjust over time to the voice.
Daniel:
Exactly. And I actually have a course on market research and that is one of the cornerstones of what I teach that the copyright, I mean, this is from a copywriter’s perspective obviously, but the copywriter should not be going to the same level of detail for every job. It’s really dependent on the circumstances on the budget, on the client, copyright of integration. So that’s why I say it’s not a one size fits all thing, and you’re going to have different solutions for different projects.
Ziv:
And I, I just do, I can get the sense of it for us. When we do research for a new client, we take at least seven days of going through the stuff before we’re willing to write one email, one piece of copy. So it can really take time a long time to go through, even go through an online course of a client just to get, what are they talking about in the level of details that you want to be excited when you leave the cocoa? So I have a question for you, and this might be a little bit more philosophical or more technical. You might have a very clear idea for your business, but I’m also interested for your opinion as an advisor of clients this time, what is your opinion about the difference of having a welcome sequence that is automatic, right? And every time I have this new email, this new story to share, I’ll just add that to the automatic welcome sequence and make it longer. So everyone goes through the same experience rather than in comparison to send those daily messages when they are alive, when the light just fresh from the oven. But then I don’t have in my head, the idea of what is every single subscriber in my list is going through. What do you think about the differences? When should you use one? When should you use the other?
Daniel:
I think it’s a fascinating question. I’ve thought so much about this. The first thing I would say is that is exactly why my welcome sequence works the way it does because you know, one of the reasons, one of the problems I had was, well, I have all these great emails that I want everyone to see, but if I put them all there, they’re in that sequence for weeks and they’re not reading what’s going on in my real life, which may have changed. How do I get around that? The solution is the way I’ve done it. Someone could go and click through all of them in two days if they want or one day, right? And then, then not, they go through two weeks’ worth of emails in a day. So that’s one part of the answer is that if you allow people to go through their own pace, you can solve a lot of that problem.
I think it’s fantastic to have a sequence that does have some of your core beliefs and teachings in it, but you have to remember that. So few people are going to read everything. So you can’t really assume anyway, but just because it was in the welcome sequence, everyone saw it. And so you’re kind of going to have to repeat a lot of these fundamentals over time. Anyway, I do like having a welcome sequence. I do have one, but I feel like one of the biggest differences, just speaking within my industry and the copywriting industry, you know, I’m a copywriter who buys two copywriters. There are lots of other people like me. And I think one of the biggest differences about the way I do it is that I am, I write a fresh email every day. That’s actually, you know, I put effort into it.
Some people do a daily email, but it’s just like, they’re just thinking, writing a as they think, and it takes them 10 minutes and they’re really proud of that. But the email sounds like it took them 10 minutes. They just thinking on the fly, there’s no art to it. It’s just a brain dump of what was on their mind. I always try and craft a good story. It usually takes me an hour or to craft a good story, have a good lesson in there, but it’s always fresh. That’s the thing. And there are a lot of marketers who eventually get tired of it and they just start recycling stuff and you’re on their list for a year. And you’ll start to see every few months, you’ll see the same emails come up. And I think people really can tell when something’s been canned or reuse, even if they’ve never seen it before, if there’s nothing fresh about it, they can tell, I think we should give readers more credit than we tend to as marketers.
And so my approach is that fresh emails are the best way to go. Absolutely. If you can do it, it’s absolutely the best because people know if I say today, I did this yesterday, I did this. Or here’s what’s going on in the news right now. There’s a controversy right now in our industry about X, Y, Z. I saw this on this news website, but you are like real. Think about the things that people check every day, then use their Facebook, whatever none of it is pre-written, it’s all fresh and new, right? So if you want to be one of the things that people can’t live without every day, I think you have to be new as well. So my philosophy is that new is the best way to do it, like having a welcome sequence, but I want people to be able to go through it faster, skip through it. And I think that gives me the best of both worlds.
Ziv:
Wow. That’s a really good answer. I love it. Is there like, does this mean that basically once you’re out of your welcome sequence, they go into by just being nurtured daily. So before that they were saving an email a day with the option to be faster, but once they finish it, they go into your main list, I guess, and being nurtured once a day through your broadcast emails, correct?
Daniel:
That’s exactly the way I’m playing it right now, to be honest with you, there’s been so much stuff I’ve sent in the last 18 months that I am like, I wish everyone knew about that email. So I am thinking of going back and lengthening that welcome sequence, but I do like the idea of always letting people skip forward through it because in my view, the less time they spend in pre-canned emails, the better I want them to see it, but I don’t want them to spend months in there because then I’m going to sound stale and pre-programmed like, everyone else,
ZIv:
Do you teach Danielle your parallel welcome sequence somewhere?
Daniel:
I do. I have a blog post that lays out the whole thing. And we mentioned my Euro before persuasive page.com. If you go there as a link to that post right at the top.
Ziv:
So if anyone wants to learn more about your online courses and about your ideas, they can actually learn the parallel welcome sequence for free and also consider some of your programs that teach them how to make money on, on Upwork as copywriters and how to do the market research. And so on. Everything has been very clear from looking through your staff. Nothing is hidden and does not like some N to convince you to take a, make a decision really, really fast or anything like that. So it’s all very straightforward and fair and brilliant. So, Danielle, if anyone wants to go again, I would send them in our show notes as well, to persuasive page.com just so that they can see, make sure that they get it in case they’re blogging right now.
Thank you so much, Daniel. And for taking your time constantly, uh, our questions about daily emails and about automations and that your opinion matters to me. Thank you so much. And thank you guys for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.
This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro-niche business today.