Linked Campaigns 101: What to Write in Your Linked Email Campaigns

By Kristen Dunleavy November 20, 2015

This is the third post in our series about the many ways you can use Campaigns, AWeber’s new email automation platform, to deliver AWesome content to your subscribers. Check out our previous posts about creating welcome campaigns.

Has a business ever made you feel really special? One time, my favorite weather app/cat tweeted at me and it made my day. Social media is a great place to start those relationships with your customers, but email marketing can take them to a whole new level.

Linked email campaigns can make each person in your audience feel like a million bucks and keep that spark alive for an extended period of time.

What’s a linked email campaign?

When you link email campaigns, you automatically send your subscribers who have completed one automated email series to another series. (Sometimes this is referred to as a “daisy chain.”) When you link email campaigns, you do a few things:

• You deliver a better, more personalized experience based on where people sign up, which emails they open, or which links they click on.
• You send the right content to the right people – people who are ready for your next email campaign.
• You keep your subscribers engaged over a longer period of time, increasing your chances of turning them into a loyal, long-term customer or advocate.

Linked campaigns provide an easy way to deliver a more personalized experience and create long-lasting relationships with your audience. If you’ve been following along with our series about creating content for your email campaigns, linked campaigns will help you tie your welcome series and email courses together.

There are more than a few ways to use linked campaigns, so I’ll give you some sample linked campaign strategies as well as the kinds of content to include in each.

Link your contextual welcome campaign to your educational campaign.

The term contextual emails is a fancy way of saying personalized, relevant emails. One way to create a contextual experience is to create a welcome series based on where people signed up for your list, and then link those people to an educational campaign teaching them more about you and your business.

So whether people signed up at your business location (like your store or restaurant) or on your website, you can send them a contextual welcome campaign, and then dive into a more detailed educational campaign when they’re ready for it.

Let’s say you’re the owner of a cat cafe, and you ask your in-store customers to sign up for your list using your mobile app. When someone signs up for your list, you can send them a welcome campaign thanking them for visiting, an FAQ about the cat cafe, and a survey asking them about their experience at the cat cafe.

But that’s just your welcome campaign. You probably want your subscribers to come back to the cafe and tell their friends about it, right? To do that, you could send everyone who finishes your welcome campaign a second, educational campaign that dives into more details about why your services are so valuable. Your linked campaigns might look like this:

Campaign #1: Welcome Campaign

Email #1: Welcome email thanking customers for stopping by and signing up, along with a coupon for their next in-store visit.
Email #2: FAQ about the cat cafe
Email #3: Survey about customers’ experience at the cat cafe

Campaign #2: Educational Campaign

Email #1: Get to know the cats in the cat cafe
Email #2: A list of the rescues and shelters the cat cafe works with
Email #3: A list of reasons why everyone should adopt a pet

The content in the welcome campaign was part of the getting-to-know-you phase of your relationship with your subscribers. The linked educational campaign dives into more details about the cat cafe and its mission.

By the time subscribers reach your second campaign, they’re ready for that next level of content and should be well on their way to becoming a loyal customer.

Link your email course to another educational campaign.

Do you use an email course as incentive for people to sign up for you list? (If not, you should – here’s how to create one.) Linking your course to another campaign will keep your subscribers engaged after they finish your course. As a bonus, you can use your second campaign as an opportunity to promote a product or service without sounding too pushy.

Here’s what your linked campaigns could look like if you were a personal trainer:

Campaign #1: (Email Course) 5 Days to a Stronger Core

Email #1: Lesson 1: The best ab workout ever
Email #2: Lesson 2: Stretches for strength
Email #3: Lesson 3: Quick cardio exercises
Email #4: Lesson 4: The most impactful pilates poses
Email #5: Lesson 5: Your recovery regimen

Campaign #2: Educational Campaign

Email #1: Why everyone needs a personal trainer (Use this as an opportunity to promote your training services.)
Email #2: How to fit your training into your schedule (Promote your flexible training schedule here)
Email #3: What’s your biggest fitness challenge? (Include a survey or ask people to reply directly to your email. You can use this as an opportunity to gather feedback and schedule free consultations.)

If you decide to link your email course to your next campaign, be sure to give your subscribers a heads up that they’ll continue receiving emails from you. Here’s the message that Jarrod from Tiny Designer includes in the first message of his second campaign.

Link your contest entry campaign to a related campaign.

This is basically another way to take advantage of contextual emails, except with contests. Let’s say you’re a travel blogger and you’re running a contest. The prize is an all-expense paid trip to New Jersey (exotic!). As part of their entry, you’re asking people to sign up for your email list.

You already know that they’re interested in traveling to New Jersey. You could send them a campaign all about traveling to New Jersey, then link them to another campaign with more travel tips.

So your linked campaigns might look like this:

Campaign #1: New Jersey

Email #1: Thanks for entering! Here are 10 reasons why I ♥ New Jersey too
Email #2: Top 5 beaches in New Jersey
Email #3: Affordable weekend getaways in New Jersey

Campaign #2: Travel Tips Campaign

Email #1: 5 easy ways to save money on your next trip (Link to a popular article on your blog.)
Email #2: 10 trips to take in 2016 (Link to another popular article.)
Email #3: What are your biggest travel challenges? (Survey your readers so you can create content that speaks to their biggest needs.)

When I entered a contest to win a sailing trip to the British Isles from Intrepid Travel, I received an automated email series with information about sailing trips and more details about the company.

The first message let me know that I didn’t win (sad face), but gave me a coupon code for booking my next trip. So if I really have my heart set on this trip, I still have an excuse to book it – and the company can successfully turn me into a paying customer. Everybody wins!

Learn more about what to write in your linked campaigns.

Looking for more autoresponder inspiration? Check out these posts for more ideas on what to write in your linked autoresponder campaigns.

• Welcome Campaigns 101
• Email Courses 101
• How to Write an Autoresponder Series
• 3 Autoresponder Ideas from Real Businesses

Get started with linked autoresponder campaigns.

The examples above are just a few of the ways you can use linked campaigns to deliver a personalized experience to your audience and keep them engaged longer. But you don’t have to stop at linking just two campaigns. With Campaigns, you can link as many autoresponder series together as you want. The possibilities are endless!

Log in to your AWeber account to get started with linked campaigns.

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