A week ago, I joined a blog about photography called Light Stalking. My interest popped up right after I read a story about pictures in dark shades. While I was reading it a popup just appeared on the right side of the screen. It was an invitation to receive a post about photography in motion. But for this, I should register my email on a subscribe form. In other words, basically, it was a request to enroll me to the site’s newsletter.

Curiosity led me to accept the invitation and I confess that I was quite happy, not just for the material I’ve received via email but also because it was a great opportunity for me to share some real stuff with you. Through this example you’ll see how to apply everything we write here on the blog for real.

How they came up to me and my email

You know the phrase: "in blacksmith’s house, wooden spit"? I follow it like a mantra. I don’t provide my email so easily. This was an exception, because the content was interesting and the approach came at the right time leaving me with no option but to sign up.

This is not the first time I come across a plugin for blogs like this. The staff from SumoMe developed an application that allows you to set when, how and where the popup should appear. In addition, you can also show other content, different from what the user is currently reading in your site, to encourage registration. If you have time, I recommend a trial.

And what happens after the approach

When I signed up to receive the newsletter, an email confirmation arrived in my inbox. A classic email marketing message in plain text and following the best practices, applying the double opt-in, asking me to confirm my interest in receiving the newsletter with the photography content from that moment on. For this, only two steps:

So far so good. These are two good examples on how to apply the email marketing to expand your contact list with the user’s consent and interest. If you liked what you read till here be even more careful with what comes next.

By confirming my email shortly after I received a welcome message with a photography guide and some sort of timeline telling me about a couple of emails that would follow next, including the subject of each one. Everything was in plain text once again.

When they sent a welcome email immediately after my confirmation, the chances for me to see it and open it are high. At that time I was with my inbox opened just waiting for the next email entry. I was wondering what I would receive after subscribing to the newsletter.

When sharing the schedule uploads I already knew what to expect. Note the insight to create the right flow of email marketing campaigns to take the interest and attention at the most propitious time for this.

The next email arrived on schedule. When I was waiting for the next one, I opened the newcomer. Again, it was an email in plain text with a link to download the guide. The difference is that the content came more complete and just below, at the end of the email, a reminder of what would come after.

The third email, also in plain text, was completely dedicated to the content and this time without the reminder.

What you can learn from all of this

As I received many emails over the past three days I couldn’t see the interaction of the last message sent. Then Outlook itself determined that they didn’t deserve more space in my inbox. How did I come to realize that? Well, I noticed that after finishing the initial stuff I have not received other emails as promised. So I decided to look for them and I found them there. The first step was to transfer the emails to the inbox. So even with few interactions the messages started to fell right into my inbox again.

The email marketing strategy adopted by Light Stalking blog sparked my interest to subscribe to the newsletter and to receive the content, and when I didn’t see more messages in my inbox my interest was piqued again to retrieve them.

I don’t believe this is the perfect strategy, but it’s a good way to follow. My tip for you is to match this sequel of emails with more attractive elements, a dash of HTML design and some images. Leave the plain text a little bit behind in some emails, you know? At least try it to switch one message and another to avoid interactions from falling over time. This worth even more for this example since this is a blog about photography.

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