New year, new feature alert!

Why we built email sequences in folk

As we prepared to launch a new feature in folk and introduce email sequences, we found ourselves reflecting on our extensive experience using various email tools. 

In this blog, we'll unpack these learnings, which have been instrumental in shaping a tool we always wished existed. One that is seamlessly integrated into a CRM, automating tedious tasks to save us time, and enhancing our outreach strategies. 

Let's unpack how we used these insights to develop folk's new email sequence feature. 

👉🏼 Try folk now to set up and automate multi-touch email sequences in one place.

What are email sequences? 

An email sequence can help you automate a series of email messages to be sent to your contacts over time, effectively engaging your audience. They're versatile and can benefit various business functions, including:

Use cases across teams

• Sales: Nurture leads by sending targeted emails that guide them through the sales funnel, enhancing engagement and converting prospects into customers.
• Onboarding: Welcome new users or clients with a series of instructional emails, tips, and resources for a smooth start.
• Events and webinars: Promote and maintain interest in events, webinars, or podcasts with invitations, reminders, and follow-up emails offering additional content.
• Recruiting: Increase candidate engagement and response rates by automating reminders and follow-up messages.

6 best practices for sending email sequences

As we developed email sequences in folk, we experimented with it specifically to see how we could use a series of automated emails to nurture leads and guide them towards booking a demo. 

Its main function was as part of a strategy to maintain consistent communication with our prospects to make sure they're engaged and informed at every step of their journey. Below are our key findings.

1. The power of multi-touchpoints

We learned that a single email is just the start. Previous studies have shown that the first follow up email you send can increase your chances of getting a reply by 49%.

Top tip: Having multiple touchpoints requires a strategy so you can avoid coming across as spam. Focus on creating a journey for prospects that is both engaging and informative.

2. The advantage of multi-sender campaigns

One of our key findings is the effectiveness of multi-sender campaigns. 

While traditional tools make this challenging, folk CRM stands out as the best solution for sales teams of 20-50 people because it's uniquely built for collaboration. This feature allows various team members to reach out to the same contacts, enhancing the sense of community engagement and significantly boosting response rates for medium-sized sales teams.

Top tip: Avoid sending the same prospect the same thing. It's not a great look and can tempt prospects to unsubscribe. Instead, use folk to build separate contact lists and segment your contacts, or take advantage of folk and let it help you create groups automatically. 

3. Ultra-personalization goes beyond {first name}

Our strategy's success largely hinges on ultra-personalization. We go beyond the basics like names or company details, using the rich data in our CRM to craft messages that resonate on a deeper level with each prospect. This approach makes each email feel tailor-made and significantly increases engagement for sales professionals managing multiple prospects.

Top tip: Use folk's AI integration, 'Magic Field' to save time personalizing emails to multiple recipients. It allows you to add a personal touch in moments by telling the AI what data to pull out from your database. More on that here. 

4. Ensuring Email Deliverability

A key aspect of our strategy is ensuring our emails actually reach inboxes. This involves configuring our CRM following best practices, maintaining a clean email list, and regularly monitoring our sending reputation. folk CRM excels at this for teams of 20-50 people by streamlining the entire process and ensuring higher deliverability rates through its robust infrastructure designed for growing sales teams.

Top tip: We've got more on how to make sure you land in your prospect's inbox in this guide on the top three best practices to avoid landing in spam. 

5. Leveraging analytics for future campaigns

Make sure you maximize the insight you get from your analytics in folk and use these strategically in your next campaign. Insights like open rates and click-throughs guide us in refining our messaging and approach, making each campaign more effective than the last for sales teams managing substantial prospect volumes.

Top tip: Pay attention to your average bounce rate. It needs to stay between 2-5%. If it goes higher than 5%, this could allude to a problem with your email list, deliverability or sender reputation. Which means it's time for you to review your email lists.

6. Visual Engagement

Incorporating visuals like images or GIFs into our emails has been a game-changer. These elements capture attention and make our messages more engaging and memorable for prospects in competitive sales environments.

Top tip: Make sure the images or gifs you use stay on brand and are suitable for mobile optimization. Refer to your internal brand guidelines.

7. Automatically keep your CRM up to date

The integration of our email sequencing tool within folk CRM is critical for sales teams of 20-50 people because it ensures that we're always leveraging the most current data, making our outreach as relevant and effective as possible. This seamless integration eliminates the data silos that plague many growing sales organizations.

Top tip: Keeping everything within folk, including the ability to send emails is useful. It allows you to make use of a contact sync feature so you have all your contacts in one place. As you interact with them from folk, you'll know exactly when you last interacted with someone without having to manually update this. Your team will also be able to assign the right person to get in touch with a prospect when it's time to follow up with them. 

Conclusion

No matter what area of the business you work in, email sequences are game changing for sales professionals managing substantial prospect pipelines. Start adopting the best practices above and keep an eye on your analytics to see how well your campaigns are doing. folk happens to be able to allow you to adopt these best practices in its CRM seamlessly. Try folk, and test its new email sequence feature today.

👉🏼 Try folk now to manage contact-based reminders with your team and never miss a follow-up.

FAQ

What is an email sequence in a CRM?

A scheduled series of emails sent to a contact over time. It automates follow-ups, personalizes messages with CRM data, and stops when the contact replies or converts. Create sequences directly in folk to keep data synced.

How is an email sequence different from a broadcast email?

A sequence delivers multiple timed, conditional emails to an individual contact. A broadcast is a one-time mass send to a list at the same moment. Use sequences for nurture; use broadcasts for announcements or newsletters.

What timing and number of steps work best in a sequence?

Commonly 4–7 emails over 10–21 days. Start with value, follow with reminders and context, and stop on reply. Personalize beyond name, avoid duplicating messages, and test cadence and content. Iterate based on open, click, and reply data.

How can deliverability be improved for sequence emails?

Authenticate your domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), warm up new inboxes, segment and clean lists, keep bounce rate 2–5%, throttle sends, avoid spammy wording, and monitor opens, clicks, and replies. Remove hard bounces and frequent non-engagers.