The Order of an Email Series — What Settles It Is What Accumulates on the Reader’s Side

What settles the order of a sequenced email series is not the distance to the sale but what accumulates in the reader’s hands. Swap that basis and the placement of both count and interval changes with it.

What gets presented as the way to write is usually a count of instalments and an allocation of content. Thanks in the first, the overall picture in the second, the solution in the third, the offer at the end. The allocation can be settled, and because it can be settled, the design looks finished the moment it is.

Behind that allocation, though, one basis for the order sits hidden. The distance to the sale. There is something to be sold at the end, and the instalments are arranged in order of closing that distance. It does not appear on the surface, but this is the scale that finally decides the sequence.

Arrange by distance and every instalment along the way exists for the sake of the last one. And nothing remains in the hands of anyone who steps off partway. Each was an instalment for closing distance, so on its own it does not serve.

People who step off partway are not necessarily a minority. Those who read a sequence to the end can be the smaller group. Which means this design hands nothing to those who step off. Having handed nothing, it also creates no occasion to meet them again.

Change the basis for the order from distance to accumulation, and the sequence changes. Set what increases in the reader’s hands as the basis, and something remains even for those who step off. And for those it remains with, the opening to hand over something next stays open.

This question is not only for people about to build one. Where a sequence has been running for years and both opens and responses have flattened, the same single point applies. A flat number indicates that the content is old and that the order is wrong in exactly the same way. Whether what needs rewriting is the copy or the sequence does not come out of the figures.

Where the sequence is wrong, fixing the copy makes the effect of the fix unmeasurable, because the figures do not distinguish which of the two was touched. Confirm the sequence first, then go to the copy. That order, at least, can be settled from outside.

Writing technique itself is not treated here. How to write inside a single instalment can only be settled after what that instalment hands over has been settled. What is treated here is that allocation.

The sequence below sets out accurately the manner of writing presented under the name of the sequenced series, then draws out the basis settling the order. On that basis it treats the effect the interval itself carries and what that effect works upon. It closes with ways to confirm that the order has been designed.

What Is Presented Under the Name of the Sequenced Series

A sequenced email series is machinery by which several emails prepared in advance are sent automatically in order at settled intervals, triggered by an action of the other party such as registration or purchase. Unlike a broadcast, delivery is reckoned from each person’s own starting date.

At the centre of the design, as presented, sits the scenario. Draw the path from starting point to point of arrival and assemble the span, the count of instalments, and the direction of each instalment’s content. The merit of this scenario settles the result — so runs the account.

Concrete examples of composition are shown too. Thanks and delivery of the benefit in the first, the whole picture and what is to be gained in the second, solutions to the problem in the third and fourth, a case in the fifth, user testimonials in the sixth, thanks and the offer in the seventh. Broadly this shape.

Rules of thumb for count and interval are appended. Figures such as five to seven instalments, and intervals of one to three days.

Watching indicators and iterating is what gets presented as the method of improvement. Look at the proportion opened, the proportion in which links were pressed, and the instalment at which departure occurred, and swap out the content. Raise the proportion converting by repeating this — so runs the account.

As techniques of writing, the subject line, the opening sentence, one subject per instalment, and a trailer for the next are raised. On the trailer it is frequently added that building a state of wanting the rest leads to opening.

As an account of practice, there is nothing wrong with any of it. Delivering reckoned from each person’s starting date is genuinely effective, and the rules of thumb for count and interval function in many settings. The practice of watching indicators and swapping out is likewise as described.

Beneath this whole set lies one common premise. At the terminus of the scenario, a sale is placed. The point of arrival is the sale, and each instalment is positioned as a process heading towards it. It is organised as a problem of the path.

Placing a sale at the terminus is not itself mistaken. Being a business, it is natural that a proposal generating consideration enter somewhere.

The difficulty is that fixing the terminus at the sale makes each instalment’s value measured by its contribution to the terminus. Content not contributing is cut as a wasted instalment.

What gets cut is generally content of the sort that remains in the reader’s hands. An instalment guiding one piece of work to its end runs long and contributes to the terminus in ways hard to measure. Instalments are cut in order of difficulty of measurement, so what remains is the lead-ins.

A second side effect shows in the direction of improvement. The practice of watching indicators and iterating retains instalments of high contribution to the terminus and swaps out those of low contribution. The longer it runs, the more it converges on the high-contribution form.

And the point of convergence tends toward a similar shape. In any business, the manner of writing that contributes highly to the terminus is much alike. The more improvement is iterated, the more one resembles everybody else — the reversal occurs.

Settle the Order by Distance to the Sale and Every Instalment Becomes a Lead-In

Take distance as the standard and the value of each instalment gets measured by its nearness to the last one.

To arrange by distance is to correspond each instalment to a graduation on the scale how much further until they feel like buying. Awareness, interest, comparison, decision. Content answering to that order is allocated.

This design has the strength of internal coherence. The role of each instalment is clear, and omissions are easy to spot. Many scenarios genuinely function in this shape.

Only this design carries, as a premise, information the reader does not hold. The reader does not know where the terminus is.

What happens when it is read without knowing? The inference this person means to sell something in the end stands at an early stage. At the instant it stands, every subsequent instalment is read as its lead-in.

The inference is generally correct. So this manner of reading is rational from the reader’s standpoint.

And content read as a lead-in is not received as content. However useful the information written, the reader is looking rather at the position that information occupies.

Here lies a territory the writer cannot move. Raise the quality of the content and the position does not change.

The offer at the end need only be disclosed at the outset — it looks a lead-in because it is concealed. That remedy suggests itself.

Disclosure is effective. Write at the outset at the end I shall make an offer of this sort and the inference ceases to be an inference.

Only disclosure does not change the position. That the instalments along the way are a process towards the terminus is the same disclosed. What changes is only whether it is concealed.

Arrange by distance and effects show on the writer’s side too. In writing each instalment, one comes to think not what do I hand over in this instalment but how far do I close the distance in this instalment.

Change what is thought about and what can be written changes. Thinking about closing distance, sentences working on the other party’s state increase and the materials themselves decrease.

A design arranged by distance is not always inferior. Where the other party already holds the intention to buy and only conditions remain to be confirmed, the graduations of distance coincide with the other party’s interest as they stand.

They cease to coincide where the other party does not yet hold the outline of the problem. At that stage, the graduations of distance do not exist on the other party’s side. What is arranged along graduations that do not exist looks, to them, a series holding no order at all.

What Settles the Order Is What Accumulates on the Reader’s Side

What has increased in the reader’s hands after each instalment. Take this as the criterion and the order settles automatically, because nothing can be stacked except upon what has already increased.

Put concretely, it runs thus. In the first, where the problem in one’s present situation lies becomes apparent. In the second, why that problem arises becomes apparent. In the third, the result of actually attempting the first response is in hand.

The content of the third cannot be used without having read as far as the second. The constraint of unusability is settling the order. Dependency, not distance to the sale, is settling it.

Arrange by this criterion and no instalment becomes a lead-in. Something has increased in their hands after each instalment, so each instalment serves a purpose alone.

And the terminus settles automatically. When accumulating forward arrives at a place that cannot be passed without involvement from your side, that is the position of the proposal. The proposal issues not because the distance closed but at the place where the accumulating stops.

The wording of the proposal shows it too. Designed by distance, the proposal takes the form shall we not decide before long. Designed by accumulation, it takes the form from here on, for these reasons, it is hard to proceed alone.

There is content holding no dependency. Where it is a gathering of content that holds up read in any order, the grounds settling an order are weak.

In that case there is no need to settle one. Force an order onto what need not be ordered and a groundless order enters, and the criterion for later swapping is lost with it. Ascertaining first whether dependency exists is the first step in designing the order.

Design by accumulation and the count of instalments cannot be shortened. The number of stages of dependency settles the count, so it cannot be reduced at your convenience.

Nor, conversely, can it be increased. Insert an instalment where there is no stage and that instalment alone increases nothing in their hands. The count becomes not the input of the design but its output.

If the stages of dependency exceed ten, the sequence becomes too long to be read to the end. That problem arrives next.

Many stages means the point of arrival is distant. Distant, the point of arrival can be reset nearer.

Reset it and the stages decrease, and what lies beyond becomes a separate series. Dividing a series and cutting a series short are different. The former leaves each series complete; the latter breaks off midway. What is taken when the stages are many is dividing.

The Interval Itself Carries an Effect — But It Works upon Learning

Confirm the interval between deliveries.

The phenomenon that the same content settles better handed over at intervals than handed over all at once has long been reported in research on learning.

In 2006 Cepeda and colleagues analysed together the research treating this phenomenon. It was a large synthesis covering more than three hundred experiments contained in over a hundred and eighty papers (Cepeda et al., 2006, Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380).

Of the conclusions issuing from the analysis, one tells for design. The optimal interval is not settled in isolation; it shifts with when the thing needs to be recalled. The more distant the moment of recall, the longer the optimal interval.

Transcribed, the same runs thus. To the question daily, or every three days, there is on that alone no answer. Whether the reader uses that content immediately after reading or some months later changes the appropriate interval.

So what ought to be asked before settling the interval is when the content being handed over gets used. For something used in today’s work, the interval may be short. For something used at a moment of judgement some months off, spacing it out leaves more.

The range of this phenomenon requires care. What is observed bears upon remembering and upon recalling. It was not observed upon persuasion or upon the decision to purchase.

The range of transcription is settled there. Where what is handed over is materials, this finding lands. Where what is handed over is persuasion, it does not.

And this distinction turns the design of the interval the other way about. Handing over materials, the interval is placed for the sake of settling. Handing over persuasion, the interval is tightened so as not to be forgotten. The same work of designing the interval faces in opposite directions according to what is handed over.

Carrying research on learning into the design of email is a leap. This needs looking at carefully.

It is a leap in some cases. The experiments took as their subjects participants given tasks, under conditions differing from the scene of voluntarily reading email.

Carried across is the structure of condition-dependence. The form the optimal interval shifts with when it is used holds even where conditions differ. Carry across the specific number of days and it becomes a leap.

Space the interval and the span until the series ends lengthens. Seven instalments every three days is three weeks; weekly, a month and a half.

Over the lengthened span the other party’s circumstances change. The premises held at the moment of writing may cease to fit the changed circumstances. The gain of spacing the interval and the cost of circumstances changing hang on the same operation, on either side of it. Which is greater is settled by how readily the content handled changes.

What Is Placed in the First Instalment Settles Everything After

Of the instalments, take out the first alone.

The first instalment differs in role from the others. It is an instalment that hands over content and at the same time the instalment that defines what this series is.

Having read the first, the reader forms a prediction about all that follows. What sort of thing comes, at what frequency. And subsequent instalments are read against that prediction.

Where the prediction misses, departure occurs regardless of the quality of the content. Where materials were expected and an offer arrives, it is read as a betrayal. The reverse likewise: where an offer was expected and a long exposition arrives, it is read as a detour.

So what ought to be placed in the first is a single instance representative of all that follows. Neither the best nor the shortest. An average one.

Here lies a collision with a common design. The design of making the first instalment the one with most force put into it is widely adopted. The thinking of drawing them in at the outset.

Drawing in succeeds, and the prediction overshoots. An overshot prediction tends to be revised downward at the second instalment. At the instant the revision occurs, trust in the instalments that follow falls.

A second thing belongs in the first. The terminus of this series. How many instalments continue, and what stands at the end.

Disclosing the terminus does not change the position of each instalment. What it changes is the labour the reader spends on inference. Disclosed, inference is unnecessary, and that much can be turned towards the content.

Disclosing the terminus is possible only where the terminus has been settled. Write there will be an offer at the end at a stage where it is unsettled and you are bound by what you wrote.

If unsettled, write only that range. For now, subjects of this sort will be handled in order suffices. Write the unsettled as though settled and the prediction is betrayed later.

Place an average instance in the first and the initial response dulls. Against a showy first instalment, both openings and links fall.

What fell is exchanged for accuracy of prediction. It is a trade of the form that looks a loss over a short span and narrows over a long one.

If the first goes unread the rest may as well not exist, so force ought to go into the first. That case also stands up.

Putting force in and overshooting are different. An average instance can be written with care.

Overshoot occurs where kinds not produced in other instalments — a long case study, a special document, a large conclusion — are gathered into the first. Care does not betray a prediction; a difference in kind does. The adjudication is whether what was done in that instalment can be continued in the instalments that follow.

The Order Can Be Adjudicated by What Remains for Those Who Stepped Off

Place a method of adjudicating whether the order has been correctly designed.

Write out what remains in the hands of a person who stepped off at the third instalment.

Designed by accumulation, it can be written. They know where the problem in their present situation lies. They hold one account of why. They have the result of actually having attempted the first response. All three remain even where the relationship with you is severed.

Designed by distance, it cannot be written. Nothing can be written but interest has risen and they feel the necessity. These vanish when the relationship with you is severed.

This adjudication can be performed at any cut in the count. Those who stepped off at the first, those at the fifth. Write each out and it becomes apparent in which interval the accumulating has stopped.

Where there is an interval that cannot be written, that instalment has become a lead-in. A lead-in instalment is either cut, or given something that remains in their hands.

That the option of cutting is available carries meaning. Designed by distance, cutting makes the distance jump, so it cannot be cut. Designed by accumulation, where that instalment stacks nothing, the ones that follow hold up without it.

Thinking about those who stepped off can look, as a business, like putting the cart before the horse — the aim ought to be a design nobody steps off.

No design exists that nobody steps off from. Whatever the content, a certain proportion steps off.

And what those who stepped off hold as they go returns to the business. A person who left holding nothing can say nothing about you. A person with something remaining in their hands holds material for telling somebody.

It does not present on short-term indicators, but this difference accumulates. The more who step off, the greater it grows.

Give each instalment something that remains and the volume per instalment increases, because handing over something that remains requires that much explanation.

Increase the volume and instalments emerge that go unread. There is a genuine trade here, and which to take shifts with the content handled. What serves as material for the adjudication is whether shortening that instalment makes what remains in their hands disappear. If it does not, it can be shortened.

What remains in their hands need not be a made object. A single distinguishable concept, a criterion of judgement, a procedure of confirmation — these too count as remaining if usable after the relationship with you is severed.

What does not count is emotion and estimation. I found that illuminating, I felt they could be trusted vanish if the next instalment does not come. Adjudicate whether it remains by whether it is usable the day after you stop sending.

When It Will Not Come, What Is Unsettled Is Not the Order but the Point of Arrival

The place practice tends to jam is the content from the second instalment on. Decompose that.

The state in which the first can be written and the second cannot arises often. The cause is not that the order has not been settled.

It is that the point of arrival has not been settled. Designing by accumulation, the order is settled by reasoning backwards from the point of arrival. Absent a point of arrival, the direction of stacking does not settle either.

The point of arrival is what a person who has read this series through has become able to do. Not they understand the necessity. Understanding is a state, not a thing one can do.

“They can identify for themselves where their own business is jammed” is a point of arrival. Whether they can identify it is something the person can ascertain.

Settle the point of arrival and the stages issue by reasoning back from it. To become able to identify, what must they know? To know that, what must they know first? Trace it back and you arrive at what ought to be placed in the first instalment.

This work is not the work of writing email. It is the work of settling what the business hands over.

So looking for specimen wording when it will not come does not resolve matters. A specimen carries stages reasoned back from that person’s point of arrival. Where the point of arrival differs, so do the stages.

The point of arrival need not be settled precisely from the outset. It may change in the writing.

What is needed is that a point of arrival be provisionally placed. Provisionally placed, one can reason backwards, and when it changes one can judge whether to reassemble the whole. Not placed, one cannot even notice that it changed.

Settle the point of arrival and content not reaching it becomes unwritable. However interesting a matter, it cannot be included unless it forms a stage towards the point of arrival.

Where content one wishes to include will not fit, there are two readings. Either the setting of the point of arrival is too narrow, or that content does not belong to this series. In the latter case it need only be put elsewhere. Holding a place outside the series lightens this judgement.

Confining the point of arrival to becoming able to do raises a concern: that what can be handled will skew towards practical procedure.

It does not skew, because being able to do includes being able to judge.

They can explain what their own price is settled on the basis of is not a procedure, and it is something one can do. Whether they can explain it is something the person can ascertain, and becoming able to requires an order. The skew towards procedure arises only where the point of arrival is confined to the completion of a task.

The Constraints Automatic Delivery Carries into the Writer’s Side

The form of automatic sending brings one constraint to the writer’s side. In a sequenced series, the moment of writing and the moment of reading are displaced. A sentence written half a year ago arrives at somebody registering today.

Two constraints issue from this displacement.

First, statements tied to the moment cannot be used. Write at the recent announcement and it will not carry to a reader half a year on.

Second, changes in your own circumstances are not reflected. Though what is provided changes, though the handling changes, sentences written in the past go on being sent as they stand.

Both are appearances of the general rule that only what has been finished being decided can be automated. Automate what may change and at the moment it changes the content diverges from the reality.

So what may be put into automatically sent instalments is the parts that do not change. Accounts of structure, orders of thinking, principles of procedure. These do not change though your circumstances do.

The parts that change — price, the form of provision, whether applications are presently open — are safer left out of the automatic instalments. Written at all, gathering them in one place means one place to fix when they change.

Reviewing periodically settles the matter, one might answer.

Review is necessary. Only, that the work of reviewing arises pares the gain of automation.

And omissions in review cannot be detected. Sending continues automatically, so statements gone stale go on being sent with no error raised. It is noticed when a recipient points it out.

Compose solely of parts that do not change and the content tends towards the general. It touches nothing presently occurring, so the prose carries no sense of freshness.

This side effect resolves by dividing delivery into two lines. Put the unchanging parts in the automatic instalments and the changing parts in a delivery written and sent as occasion arises. Attempt to mix the two and one of them is sacrificed. The manner of writing occasional delivery is handled in writing an email newsletter.

Divide into two lines and the same person receives two kinds of delivery. The frequencies sum, so the burden on the receiving side increases.

To hold the burden down, a design can be taken of halting occasional delivery until the automatic series ends. Some delivery machinery holds this control. Whether it does is one of the materials for judgement at the moment of choosing the machinery.

The constraint carries one advantage as well. Being fixed at the time of writing also means no judgement is required each time. A one-off dispatch settles afresh what to write on every occasion, whereas an automatic sequence simply executes the order already settled. Where the order has been designed correctly, no judgement is left on the execution side.

Where It Can Be Confirmed Whether the Order Has Been Designed

The first confirmation is to write out, as nouns, what has increased in the reader’s hands after each instalment.

Where there is an instalment that cannot be written, that instalment has stacked nothing. “Understanding deepens” does not count as having written it. Whether it can be written as a noun is the adjudication.

The confirmation can be carried out before sending. At the point an unwritable instalment is found, cutting or adding can be settled.

The second confirmation is to swap the order and see whether it ceases to hold.

If it holds swapped, no dependency exists between those two instalments. No dependency means no grounds settling the order. Instalments arranged without grounds hold no criterion for later swapping either.

The third confirmation is to set the proportion stepping off at each instalment against the dependencies in the content.

That the proportion rises at an instalment where the stage of dependency changes is normal motion. The premise of accumulation changes there, so those it does not suit depart. Where it rises sharply at an instalment where the stage does not change, the content of that instalment may be betraying the prediction.

Neither count nor interval is what any of the three looks at. What settles the order is dependency, so what is to be confirmed is the side of the dependency.

The three run into the same limit. The third cannot be used unless delivery has begun and a certain number of people have passed through. At a stage of few people, variation in proportion cannot be distinguished from chance.

At that stage the first and the second suffice. Both can be carried out by reading what has been written.

Where the second confirmation reveals many instalments to be swappable, what to do next becomes the question.

Either build dependency, or stop asserting an order. Building means rewriting later instalments so as to use the content of earlier ones. Stopping means abandoning the form of arriving in sequence and making them hold up read at any time.

Both are correct solutions. What is mistaken is designing as though an order existed where no dependency does, and placing content on the grounds of that order.

No figures can be placed here. How many instalments, how many days between, where to place the proposal — these change in meaning with the number of stages of dependency in the content handed over and with when that content gets used. Placing one would mean settling the arrangement in somebody’s place, without seeing those conditions at all.

In their place sits the observation that arranging by distance turns every instalment into a lead-in, the structure by which arranging by accumulation makes the count an output, and the confirmation that the optimal interval depends on when the thing is used. Hold those three and what your own series is presently stacking becomes readable on your own.

How what is handed over in the first instalment gets designed is handled in designing a lead magnet, and the choosing of the machinery that sends it in choosing a mailing platform. Once your own series becomes readable on your own, what is needed next is a place to check it against. Where to look to see whether a system is working is handled in systemising as a whole.