Internet Marketing Digital_marketing_for_dummies | Page 280

FIGURE 11-6: An example indoctrination email that welcomes a new subscriber.
Customers don’t sign up for your email lists on a whim. Instead, they probably were
introduced to your brand and then considered the value of your email list. Perhaps they
were given the opportunity to get value in advance with a gated offer. (Learn more about
gated offers in Chapter 3.) Or perhaps they were signed up as they made a purchase or
engaged with your website. In all cases, an indoctrination campaign reaffirms positive
action and shows your customers that they made the right choice.
The fact that customers made a positive choice to join your email list, however, doesn’t
mean that they’re fully engaged with your brand. They don’t know you well enough to be
anticipating your every word. They may not recognize your name in their inbox and are
still unsure about the value they can expect from you.
A carefully crafted indoctrination campaign can help move customers down the path of
their customer journeys. (See Chapter 1 for more on the customer journey.) In the
aggregate, when you add an indoctrination campaign, you see a positive effect on the open
and click-through rates of the email you send to these subscribers in the future because
they know, like, and trust you better.
Indoctrination campaigns generally run one to three emails and introduce customers to the
brand on a deeper level. These campaigns help you put your best foot forward with new
subscribers, introducing them to who you are and what you stand for.