A five-email welcome sequence, written out in full

What shape this is

Each email does one job, and the jobs are stacked so that each one earns the next. The delivery comes first because it is what the reader agreed to. The story comes before the argument, because an argument from a stranger is noise. The case comes after the argument, because proof of a claim nobody has heard proves nothing. The ask comes last, once, and four of the five ask for nothing at all.

Two things in it are unusual on purpose. The third email invites a reader who disagrees to leave, which costs a few addresses and keeps a list of people who want to be on it. The fourth prints the part of the case that did not work, because a case study with no failure in it is an advertisement and reads like one.

What each email does:

• The first hands over the thing they signed up for at the top, then lists what arrives on the next four mornings so nothing turns up unannounced. No homework.
• The second says why you work on this rather than the adjacent thing, concretely, including what it cost you. It ends in a question rather than a link.
• The third states the one thing you think most people get wrong, in a form a reasonable person could disagree with, and invites them to leave if they do.
• The fourth is one case in three parts, with a range and a period for every number, and the part that did not work named out loud.
• The fifth makes the ask, once, with the price and the honest exclusion that says who it is not for. Then the list drops to its normal rhythm.

Who it suits

Anybody whose sign-up form already works and whose new subscribers then hear nothing for a fortnight. It also suits selling a service rather than a method: these five emails argue a position and then say what you do about it, rather than teaching a reader to do it themselves.

It suits you badly when there is nothing to hand over on the first email, or no single case you are allowed to describe. A welcome sequence with no delivery at the front and no proof in the middle is five emails of assertion.

It needs four things from you:

• The thing they signed up for, already written and already hosted somewhere.
• A belief about your subject that a reasonable person could argue with.
• One case you have permission to describe, including what went wrong in it.
• One offer, with a price you are willing to print.

How this one is built

These five are not one object repeated, and that is the difference between a welcome sequence and a course. Each email has a different internal shape because each is doing a different job: a delivery, a story, an argument, a case, an offer. What holds them together is the promise in the first one, where the four still to come are listed by subject before any of them arrives.

The clearest way to read the design is to follow the links. The first email puts its link in the opening line, because the link is the thing that was signed up for. The second carries none at all and ends on a question. The third and fourth carry one each, and both point outward rather than back at the writer. The fifth carries two, the only pair in the sequence: the offer, and a free page for the reader the offer is not for.

Only one of the five names tomorrow outright. The first does something larger instead, listing all four of the emails still to come. The fifth does the other half, naming the rhythm the list settles into once the daily mail stops. Between them a reader is never surprised by what lands, which is what the opening email spends its only numbered list on.

None of the subject lines is numbered and none shares a prefix with another, which is this sequence saying out loud that it is not a course. Each names its own email instead: here is the thing, why I work on this, what most people get wrong, what happened in one case, and one thing before I leave you alone. Somebody who opens only the last of them can still tell what it is.

The preheaders do the work a numbered prefix would otherwise do. The first says what arrives tomorrow, the second promises brevity and a question, the third gives the answer away rather than teasing it, the fourth names both the numbers and the failure, and the fifth lists the contents of the email: what it is, what it costs, and what happens afterwards.

What is the same in all five, when almost nothing else is:

• One job each, and the job is announced in the subject line rather than discovered halfway down the body.
• A subject line that names its own email rather than its place in a series, because this sequence is not counting.
• A sign-off in the writer's own name, with nothing after it.
• No mention of the offer before the fifth, including no teasing of it, which is what lets the fifth be short.
• One request at most per email, and in the first there is none at all: the words saying so are set in bold.
• Nothing that tells a reader what day of the week it is, and no countdown of any kind.

How to read the brackets

Everything in square brackets is a hole. The method, the numbers, the names and the invitation are all left out, and the sign-up copy is bracketed in the same way, so a course published without being read announces itself on its own sign-up page rather than reading as bland and finished.

The links are placeholders too. Each one points at a reserved documentation domain rather than at a real page, so they are printed below as the words they label rather than as links to follow: a course sent with them untouched would take strangers to somebody else's site in your name.

No email names a weekday, and that is not an oversight. Each course starts on the morning its reader confirms, so day three is a Saturday for one reader and a Tuesday for the next. Days are named by their number, and a weekday appears only inside a bracket, where it is a fact about you rather than about the reader.

What it asks for, and how often

Four of these five ask for nothing that costs money and the fifth asks for all of it. The distribution is the design, and it reads more clearly as a list than as an argument: a download, a reply, a read, a read, and then the offer.

The reply in the second email is the only unpaid request in the sequence, and it is placed as far from the offer as it can be while still being in the same week. What comes back from it is the material for the next version of everything above it, which is why it is worth spending a whole email on.

The five, in order, with what each one costs a reader:

• Nothing at all, and the email says so in bold before the sign-off.
• One line by reply, about the reader rather than about the writer.
• A decision: leave if you disagree, or read the longer version of the argument.
• A read of the write-up, with whatever the case actually produced attached to it.
• The money, once, with the price and the exclusion on the same screen.

What is not here, and why

There is no sixth email. The guide this copy came from closes with advice about what to do after the fifth, and in this sequence that advice is not a separate message at all: it is the last paragraph of the fifth, where the cadence is named and the unsubscribe link is pointed at. A course on this site sends the days it has, and a note about cadence is not a day.

There is also no welcome in the welcome sequence. Nothing thanks a reader for subscribing, nothing congratulates them on the decision, and nobody is introduced before the thing they signed up for has been handed over. The introduction happens on the second morning, once the first has been paid for.

What a writer usually adds here, and what it costs:

• A second link in the first email. That email has one job, and a second link is a reader choosing between the thing they asked for and something else.
• Bare figures in the fourth. A number with no range and no period attached is the part of a case study nobody believes and nobody can check.
• A teaser for the offer in the second, third or fourth. It turns the earlier emails into a run-up, and a run-up is something a reader can feel.
• The exclusion moved below the price. It is what makes the price believable, so it belongs on the same screen or it does no work at all.