Email Sequence Tips That Actually Work

If your email sequences looks good on paper but isn’t bringing in buyers…

…this episode is your roadmap to what’s off—and how to fix it fast.

We’re walking through what’s changed in buyer psychology and how to make your evergreen emails convert for today’s more discerning buyer.

I’m breaking down the real reasons your sequence isn’t working (even if CTRs are solid) and bring in more sales on the regular for you—without rewriting the whole thing. 

Tune in for practical ways to:

• Spot outdated language that’s killing conversions
• Rework emails to match 2025 buyer behavior for better results
• Align content with the actual funnel stage (not just your calendar)

Plus, I’m sharing three sequences most people skip (that could quietly boost your revenue), and what’s really keeping your emails from converting—because it’s not always the copy.

If you’re ready to refresh your email sequences, listen now and grab your spot in the Why Isn’t It Converting? Free 5-Day Challenge.

➡️ SHOW NOTES: Grab all the links and resources mentioned in this episode on the blog here!

https://www.megankachigan.com/effective-email-sequences/

Have a question about digital marketing, messaging, or copywriting? Get YOUR questions answered on the show! Submit here → https://forms.gle/9rPT7dtAKQCErzUg6

FREE RESOURCE: Copy not converting? Increase your conversion rate in 30-mins or less with my free Messaging & Positioning Audit.

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Transcript

Welcome to the values first Marketing podcast. I'm Megan Kachigan, and I help business owners like you stay in your zone of genius without making marketing feel like a full time job on top of serving your clients, I'm sharing what's working now with simple content systems copy that elevates your thought leadership and messaging that makes your audience feel seen, not sold to. I'm your trusted expert in turning your voice, values and vision into a sustainable marketing system that attracts aligned clients and grows your business in a way that's sustainable, unmistakable and irresistible, all without sacrificing your time, your voice or your piece. You're in the right place. Let's do this if you are an established business owner with email automations already in place, this is for you, because I know you already know how to set up an email sequence, what it should have in it. You already have those automations and funnels in place. What you need now is insight into why that once profitable email sequence is now underperforming and how to fix it. So if you are wondering, why aren't people buying, is my funnel outdated? Do I need to rewrite and overhaul everything. In this episode, I'm going to tell you what is off and give you examples of what a high converting email sequence looks like now. So first, let's dive into why your email sequence isn't converting, even if you have a great click through rate the most common email sequence issue among business owners is running evergreen email sequences that were written back in like 2021 or earlier, because evergreen does not mean set it and forget, forget it. So much has changed. Buyer behavior now in 2025 is more discerning and less impulsive. Market noise is higher than ever, and attention spans while they're shrinking. So I'm going to give you five things you can do to start seeing sales again from your email automations. Step one is to audit your email content to match your current buyer psychology. So ask yourself, what has changed about how my audience makes buying decisions in 2025 this likely means going deeper into exactly who your ideal client is, and spelling it out in even more detail, all of their desires, pains and frustrations, because today's buyers are more skeptical. They've seen every trick in the book. They're more selective with their time and their inbox space, and they're craving relevance, clarity and a real connection. So revisit the voice, the tone and the emotional resonance of each email. Does it meet your audience where they are now, and not just where they were when you wrote it? Because the climate, economic, political, everything has changed since back then, and we need to change and adapt with it. Next, I would say, is to rethink the role of each email. So it used to be just educate or sell, but now we need to shift our lens. Does this email build belief in the offer? Does it reflect the current pain points or priorities, and does it move the reader emotionally and logically both. So we need to shift from this broadcasting mode to conversation. People want the emails to feel more personal, like you're directly chatting with them, that it's not a mass broadcast to the entire list. Obviously, we know it is, but we still want to incorporate a little bit more personality and be more personal, personal and personable with our emails. Third is to scan for language that's no longer effective. And this can be easier said than done, because sometimes outdated language is hard to see. As the business owner who is just too close to it all you've read it so many times that you really stop seeing what's there. That's why an outside perspective can be especially helpful and more efficient. And my copy clarity club can be one way you can get eyeballs on that without having to hire a full on copywriter or marketer or retainer. So one example of outdated phrasing, just to get tangible here is like, if you say only $97 today that you know may have worked in 2020, but now we want to say something more like, get three hours of your week back starting now. That would be much more benefit driven and time based as well, because buyers aren't responding to urgency for urgency sake. They want meaning, and we really need to shift to this value based language outcome statements and clear next steps. We don't want to make them guess. Because people are scrolling. People are on their phones. They're on the go. People are busy. We're not sitting down at our desks to read this, necessarily. And so that leads me to tip number four, which is to tighten things up for this scroll and scan era that we are in. So modern buyer behavior is mobile first, and skim heavy. And depending on which demographic you're speaking to, mobile is like even a greater percentage, but I think for all demographics, mobile first is a priority, but especially millennials and younger. Mobile First is like very, extremely skewed towards their their reading, watching on mobile, and not necessarily their laptop or computer. So in response to that, we need to make our copy easy to read on the go, on your phone, that means short paragraphs like one to two lines Max. I know that is not what they taught you in school, but for copywriting, that is what we need, one to two lines per paragraph. Breaking it up makes it so much easier to read, seeing a big block of text, people just skim and scroll right by it. We need clear headers and bullet points so that it tells us exactly what they get, exactly what the benefit is for them, and they know it's for them without having to dig through and read through all of the finer points. That's more for more details, but they should still get what is going on in those headlines or through those bullet points, because those are the easiest and quickest to read. And then I would also say is keep one message per email. So one message and one CTA per email, too often, it's like, well, then there's this, and then that connects with this, and I want to connect with this, and here's an affiliate link that's relevant too. And then it just kind of gets jumbled, because there are so many things going on with one email. And again, people are not sitting down at their desk and reading this like they're studying it academically. They are on the go and just want to know quickly what it is and click if it's for them and not if it's not, and then move on with their day. So if you have multiple calls to action or multiple messages to send, break those into different emails. It's okay if the email is super short, as I'm going to get into later in this episode, short emails with nuance, there are actually better so before I roll into that, let me give you tip number five, which is to match the content to the funnel stage and buyer awareness. So if you are just writing emails, or if you are just using chat GPT, it is not necessarily thinking about this. So if your email sequence isn't working, it might not be broken, it could just be misaligned, like your content isn't fitting the different stages that we're talking about. So there is the awareness stage. Do they are they problem aware? Do they know that this is a problem? Or maybe they do know that this is a problem and they just don't know how to fix it, or maybe they do know how to fix it. They're solution aware, and now they're just deciding who is going to help them fix it. So all of those have different types of messaging that you would speak to, but in the awareness stage in general, you want to acknowledge that pain, to show that you get it, and then create belief shifting content that's going to help them see it in a different way. Then they move into the consideration stage, where we need lots of social proof and education, and then the decision stage, where we need to give them a clear offer appropriate urgency that is not fake, and a natural next step to follow. So if clicks are solid for your email sequence, but sales are flat and you're like, What the heck is going on here? The issue is likely in either the messaging. There's probably misalignment there or offer clarity, not necessarily in your email itself. So in copy clarity club, we dive into this kind of diagnostic work every week with every submission. So I'm not just looking at the copywriting as in words on the page. I'm looking at it from a bigger marketing perspective and messaging strategy type of perspective, and not just simply words on the page. We're looking at it bigger. I also have two case studies linked in the show notes of how I have done this for my done for you clients. One was a one hour power session that turned into $6,000 from effective email campaigns that we worked together on. And another case study is how we just finally started being consistent in her nurture emails, and that 5x this company's email revenue. So click in the show notes to check those out.
But if I can tell you a bottom line for some of those, is what's working in 2025 is shorter emails, but longer sequences. So if you're asking, should I write longer emails or send more of them? Here's what we're seeing now. So like I said, shorter emails are actually performing better, but only when they're clear, strategic and emotionally resonant. So you're not being too brief, but you're kind of making it more concise and honing it in so that each word is really carrying its weight and is powerful. You do not need. Do not want your reader to dig through all the copy to figure out what you're trying to say. That creates mental fatigue, which then is going to lead to decision fatigue, when they have to decide, are they going to click or not? Are they going to whip out their wallet for you and buy your thing or not? So I would use short, punchy emails for grabbing their attention and getting them curious about what it is that you have to offer. But then I really like longer email sequences for buyer, led timing and reinforce trust, especially when timed to match the decision making window. So these longer sequences nurture and build belief, and you can vary your CTA type and frequency based on the readiness, so it creates a rhythm that reflects how your buyer makes a decision, not just what worked in the funnel. So if you think about it, if you're not annoying people with too many emails, if it is not for them, they will unsubscribe, and that is a good thing. That is doing you a favor, because if they're not going to buy, we don't want them sitting on your list. If they do buy, okay, well, you're not bothering them with the rest of the email sequence. They got what they needed out of it, because then they're pulled out of that sequence and because they purchased. So these emails are really just going to the people who need to be nurtured, who want to know more information. For me, personally, I am the buyer type, where I like to know all of the details before I make a purchase. And even recently, I think can think of two, three events that happened recently, and I'm looking back on people's recaps of the event, the photos, the videos, all of the things, and thinking, Oh, had I known it was that maybe I would have gone, I would have purchased a ticket. And because they thought that sending too many emails was salesy or weird or too much, or it was annoying people, they lost out on my ticket purchase, and I lost out on that experience. So you are not annoying people with too many emails. I really don't think that there can be too many like unless you're trying to be annoying with too many. But if you're not like, if you really do have good things to say and information to share, then share it. Okay? So we need emails that reflect buyer behavior. So I would say those need to be three things. One is timely and relevant. Two is emotionally strategic. Each email needs to be build belief and be driven by your values and not just deliver information. Information is not the thing anymore. And then three, it needs to be integrated with the offer so many emails. It's like, well, it's a great email, but is it leading towards your CTA being a natural next step? Right? We need to reverse engineer a little bit the email sequence so that it's going to naturally lead to the program or the offer that you want to sell it shouldn't be a jarring shift and no now by the way by this thing, right, we need to make sure it's a very natural flow very natural next step so that it doesn't even feel like selling it just feels like so natural to be like. Uh, like, oh, yeah, if I do want to go deeper in this, this just totally makes sense. So email SQL, email sequences fail, not always because of the copywriting. It can be the context is off, so even great copy might not convert. If you don't have a couple things in place, so before you just like, throw the baby out with the bath water, you don't necessarily have to rewrite your whole sequence. I would evaluate a couple things. Deliverability has been an issue that I've experienced lately with clients, and even as a recipient for things that I am interested in finding out, oh it was in my spam or oh it was in my promo folder. I was looking forward to doing this, and then, oh, here it is. It was hiding. So we need to make sure your emails are hitting inboxes and not the spam folder, and we need to consider subscriber quality. Are these still your ideal clients? So one of my clients recently had a shift of she had a certain number of people on her email list, but then she knew that at least half to maybe two thirds, not quite two thirds, but more than half of her list were just people who were freebie seekers, who came in from a very old lead magnet that was not aligned for her offers anymore, and so she was faithfully like sending emails every week, but not making any sales from that, even doing the right, you know, balance of value and selling, doing everything right with her email marketing, but it just wasn't the right people on her list. So then we started working on list, building an audience growth in a way that's bringing people who are, one ready to buy and two, actually people who are interested in where she's at now, not where she was, you know, a couple years ago, when these people got onto her list. So list cleaning is always a great practice. I recommend every quarter. Then there's offer clarity. Do readers instantly understand the next step? So many times there is confusion here because you the business owner. Of course, you get it because it's your offer, and you know all the things about it, because you are the expert. But if you have someone who is not the expert in their field, read it, does it still make sense? Again, this is why having a copywriter or marketer in your pocket is so helpful, because you want someone who doesn't necessarily have all of the context that you do and Does it still make sense to them? So that is another thing that I look for a copy clarity club as well when people make submissions. And then another thing, when it's not necessarily the copywriting, it's the landing page doesn't match, or the landing page just isn't strong enough. Like their their emails are getting opened and they're getting clicks to the landing page, but then the landing page isn't converting, so we need to make sure there's congruence from email to the opt in page. And this is stuff that we're going to go over in more detail in my wise in it converting five day challenge, which is totally free, going to help you identify these invisible blockers and unlock the revenue without necessarily having to rewrite anything we're focusing on the five things that come up the most between my copy, clarity club members, my multi six and seven figure done for you clients, I thought about, what are the five things that I am always changing, always tweaking to get the biggest ROI from the smallest. You know, tweaks and amount of work, and then walking you through what those things are with before and after example. So it is very clear for you to then go make those changes in your own copy and throughout your own marketing. So you can click the show notes for to join us for the why isn't it converting challenge or find me on Instagram and click my link in bio, the link is there as well. Okay, now let's move into the three email sequences that you might be missing. I added this in because recently I had a client, and I was like, Oh my gosh, more people need to think about this. So most business many business owners, focus only on the welcome or sales sequences. That's what most email templates are created for. Those are kind of like the two basic ones that if you're listening to this, you probably already have them in there, and we just talked about how to fix them and make them convert. But the real conversion power lies often in between moments. So I want to share how we map this out for one of my clients. They are a clean bar snack brand. They have a healthy bar and they have really strong roots in their local community. So for context, I noticed that her strongest revenue spikes from Black Friday sales and back to school sales, never a full price purchase from her email marketing. In person is different, but from her email marketing is what I'm talking about. So we're focusing on stronger positioning, as well as implementing these three email sequences to support those in between moments and increase her email revenue. So first is a thank you and a retention sequence. So after purchasing, we are giving, you know, sending a thank you email, giving them more tips to get more more out of their purchase, snack pairings. So, you know, do you have this with your morning coffee? I listen to these podcasts as I'm, you know, doing it. I'm I bring
it on my hikes or my beach, going to the beach this summer, giving them examples of like, oh, when they do that thing, they think, Oh, give give me this bar. But kind of pairing them together to, again, increase sales and awareness. And then we also invite them to leave a review, which, again, is always great for credibility, and then to use back in your marketing as well. Second email sequence that most people are missing is a reorder reminder. So this might not necessarily work for every service based business, but there's ways that you can make it work for you, or like even if you have a membership and then people are in it, and then they cancel, you can maybe do like a reorder or reminder for them, assuming, you know, they didn't have a bad experience and they just like life happened or whatever. So I would make note of your buyer cycle. So for this thing. With this client, example, people tend to repurchase a bag of her bars every four to five weeks. You know, they last about a month, and then they're they're out and they need to purchase more. So every four to five weeks, we send a post purchase nudge to remind them to reorder. It's, again, very short, email, quick, easy. Here's the link. Not a lot of like, we don't need to explain things they already know, because they're already a buyer, and we invite them into the her subscription service as well, for even more convenience. So it's like two fold with the benefits there they're actually reordering, and then they're just putting it on autopilot as well. So they get those invitations. And then third email sequence that most people are missing is the abandoned cart series. And this is such a good one. It gives you the most roi i feel like of these three. So it's just gentle reminders with links back to the cart. So many people like they just get distracted, or maybe the there was just too much friction at checkout for them to actually complete the purchase. Um, I looked up stats for this, and the average cart abandonment rate is 70% and that increases to 85% when you're on mobile, which, as we just talked about, most people are. So that's a very high abandoned cart percentage. And that came from convert cart is my source there, and that's also linked in the show notes. If you want to check out more information on this, they have a ton of statistics. I just pulled out a few that were most relevant to our conversation today. But they also note that abandoned cart recovery emails, which is what I'm talking about here, have a 50% conversion rate on average, which is amazing. Like, if you know anything about conversion rates like, that's insane. That is unheard of. So if someone is clicking through and seeing your sales page and not buying, it is worth circling back to them and just sending a reminder, because oftentimes, maybe it wasn't your product, maybe it wasn't your service, maybe it wasn't your offer, life just happened, or maybe there was another reason why they didn't buy, and that would be great feedback so that you can fix it, because if it happened to one person, likely it might be happening to another as well. Okay, so we covered a lot here, and I want you to look at the show notes, look at the blog and like, go back and actually make these changes in your content. I want you to see, feel the ROI, see the difference that this stuff makes. And if you're like, Wow, this was really good. And things that I you know, you don't necessarily think about because, not because you don't know them, but just because you're serving your clients, you are running your business. You are having a life, you know, with in addition to all of this, it's not the thing that is on your radar, so I want to get it on your radar and invite you again to join my why isn't this converting challenge? It is totally free, and it is going to be just simple, actionable things that are really going to make a big difference, but are only going to take like, five to maximum, 15 minutes of your time, because I know you're busy, but I also know that all this marketing that you're doing, let's maximize it. Let's make it actually work for you. So you are going to get just similar frameworks to exactly what we use inside copy clarity club. It's designed for business owners who want ideal clients coming in predictably without, you know, duct taping a new funnel together every quarter. We can work with what you already have and make it work better for you. So again, click the link in the show notes to join the challenge, or you can go to Megan catch again.com/why, isn't this converting? Put dashes in between all those words, and let's make your next email sequence actually convert at the rate you deserve. Thank you for tuning in to the values. First Marketing podcast. If you've been enjoying these episodes, I'd love it if you left a review on Apple podcasts. It helps more purpose driven business owners like you, find this show and reminds me that this work is making a difference. And if you're ready to market your business in a way that feels aligned, sustainable and true to you, say hello on Instagram. At Megan catch again, then head over to my website. Megan catch again.com for free resources and next steps to simplify your marketing and copywriting without sacrificing your authentic voice or too much of your time. I'll see you in the next episode.