Co-authored by: Andrew Preshong, Email Marketing Manager at Simplicity Lone Beacon, and Marcus Roth, Senior Director of Email Marketing, Automation, and Content at Simplicity Lone Beacon.
Over the past two years, we’ve been on a mission to explore all our emersion welcome sequences to find out what really works for advisors and their audiences.
“Immersion Sequences” is a series of emails over 60 days targeted to the newest prospects that have most recently joined an email list. The extended welcome sequence is designed to ensure all new prospects receive the same key information about a brand. Each customized email is designed to allow the advisor to break through the clutter with unique information customized to their brand. Most prospects will not read every email that gets sent to them and that is okay! We just need the email volume to be high enough, so the advisor gets a chance to leave a good impression.
Our newest study is filled with valuable insights, helping us understand what’s effective and why. We carefully gathered data from every email in all our emersion sequences among our clients.
The outcomes have revealed 5 key takeaways along with a lot of tactical optimizations in copy writing of subject lines we can use to make smart decisions going forward.
We will first define the types of emails used in an emersion campaign and then address our key findings from this study.
What Types of Emails Are in Immersion Campaigns?
In this section we define the various types of emails we have in Emersion sequences and why they are important. Although all of the emersion sequences we create have customized content based on the brand, there are some strategic through lines present in each campaign we publish because we know those types of emails get results and display the type of content, we want all new prospects to consume about the advisor.
- Welcome Emails
- This is the first email in the sequence. It introduces the prospect with basic information about the brand and showcases the advisor’s process and values.
- Disguised Emails
- Usually we present emails using a branded and professional looking template, but “disguised emails” look just like a normal email sent from a phone, individual to individual. These emails are made to look like an email authored by an individual at the company. We use their exact email signature and attempt to use their actual email address or a similar one to send to a prospect.
- Downloadable Guide Emails
- This email contains an advertisement for the prospect to download a PDF guide on a specific topic of retirement finance. It shows that the advisor is an expert/authority on the topic.
- Content /Thought Leadership Emails
- These are email vary heavily from brand to brand, but we attempt to show something unique about the advisor; example are: they are a family business, religiously affiliated, make video or podcast content, rang the stock market bell and much more.
- Pitch To Complimentary Meeting Emails
- This is a direct pitch for the reader to schedule an appointment with the advisory.
- Blog Emails
- Simillar to guide emails these showcase content the advisory published. Quick but useful content covering a wide range of topics help readers learn the advisor can answer a lot of questions.
- Charitable Initiatives/ Community Showcase Emails
- These emails showcase the human/relatable elements of the business. Some advisors do a lot of charitable giving or run charities, while others volunteer at shelters for holidays or sponsor high school sports teams all year round.
Our 5 Key Findings:
With this data gathered, we’re ready to fine-tune our emersion sequences and connect better with advisors. As we move forward, the key findings from this study will steer us towards even greater success!
We took each email from every client’s emersion sequence and sorted them out based on subject line, email type, Open Rate, Click-Through Rate (CTR), and emails sends.
- “Welcome” emails and “disguised” emails have proven to be the most effective in getting people engaged. Welcome emails work well because they’re the first emails people see, and they come when people are most excited and eager to hear from us. Disguised emails, on the other hand, catch people’s attention because they look like regular emails that someone might send, making them curious to see what’s inside. This is like when you get a mysterious letter in the mail – you want to open it to find out more.
- “Blog” open rates were surprisingly low… This could be because blogs often talk about specific topics that only certain people might be interested in, like social security or taxes. These topics might not apply to everyone, which could lead to lower engagement.
- As for “charitable initiatives”, while they might not have the highest engagement numbers, they still may play a valuable role. They show that our clients care about important causes, humanizes the brand, and it shows the advisor is involved in the prospect’s community. Even if people don’t interact with these emails as much, just seeing the subject line related to charitable giving in their inbox can help build trust between the advisor and their prospect. We may conclude that advisors with genuine community programs are good to share, but we should not force an email of this kind if the advisor doesn’t have a really great example/cause.
- Another observation made was that across all emersions there was a steady engagement drop-off observed in the latter part of the sequences. It may make sense to better strategize the heavy hitting emails on the front half of the emersion to maximize engagement, and reduce in general, some of the less engaging stuff like charitable initiatives and blogs. We already reduced Emersion email sequences from 22 to 18 emails based on a previous study with similar findings.
- This study has established statistical benchmarking for future emails in welcome sequences and one-off emails that share a type with the emails studied here. Across all sequences we generated a 36.45% Average Open Rate and 2.26% CTR. So future emersion will seek to outdo these benchmarks.
Subject Line Testing and Optimizations
This section will be a more tactical analysis and analytics of the text we used within Emersion and any insights we have been able to gain on copy writing as a result of the analytics.
Top Performing Email Types
In this breakdown we looked at the best “email types” and ranked them in order based on open rates. We had 7 email types: Welcome emails, blog emails, disguised emails, content showcase/thought leadership emails, charitable initiatives, Downloadable Guide emails, and pitch to complimentary meetings emails.
Below are the metrics from every email in all the emersions per category and averaged them out and the results were as follows:
| Top Performing Email Types | Open Rate | CTR |
| 1. Welcome Emails: | 43.74% | 3.34% |
| 2. Disguised Emails | 41.02% | 1.03% |
| 3. Guide Emails | 37.05% | 3.20% |
| 4. Content /Thought Leadership | 36.91% | 2.17% |
| 5. Pitch To Complimentary Meeting | 35.93% | 0.41% |
| 6. Blog | 35.29% | 2.47% |
| 7. Charitable Initiatives/ community | 33.86% | 1.05% |
This was probably the most telling and helpful out of all of the data collected, we can clearly see that the welcome emails and disguised emails are the most intriguing to prospects in the sequence. And blogs and charitable initiatives are clearly not as effective…
Top Performing Subject Lines Across All Emails
Taking a closer look at subject lines across all email types, we found some interesting patterns:
| Subject Lines Across All Emails | Email Type | Open Rate |
| 1. Checking in | Disguised | 61.95% |
| 2. Something I wanted to share with you | Disguised | 57.76% |
| 3. Welcome To Gosline Retirement Planning | Welcome | 55.07% |
| 4. Checking In | Disguised | 51.85% |
| 5. An Introduction to Networth Advisors | Welcome | 51.74% |
| 6. Let’s talk | Disguised | 51.22% |
These top subject lines mostly fit into welcome and disguised email categories, which makes sense considering their popularity.
Top Performing Subject Lines by Email Type
Lastly, top subject lines for each email type are organized below. This data can be used as a template for future emersions. We’ve got some good options for subject lines that we can use as-is or adapt for upcoming campaigns.
This section of the study also revealed some crucial data about the effectiveness of certain subject lines. Two things that stuck out the most were in the Downloadable Guide Emails, and Blog Emails section.
Both of the top emails in these categories go against the grain of the other emails when it comes to their subject lines and makes the “offer” more enticing which is something we can absolutely pull inspiration from moving forward! One is using the word “gift” which is likely pulling a lot of weight here and the other sets up the brand with an air of exclusivity people want to be a part of.
About the Author: Marcus Roth is Simplicity Lone Beacon’s Senior Director of Data, Automation & Content. Marcus has a unique experience in B2B and B2C start-up companies ranging from enterprise-level market research of Artificial Intelligence to self-defense eCommerce products. His experience in AI market research brought him, and his research, to INTERPOL, The United Nations, and Harvard University.
About the Author: Andrew graduated from Framingham State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing. He has professional as well as freelance experience with Digital Marketing, Social Media Management, Content Creation, and Web Design. In Andrew’s free time, he enjoys hanging with friends and family, golfing, ping pong, playing sports, and yard sale flipping.
