The Solo Ad Follow Up Sequence: What to Send Your New Leads

Everybody wants to talk about the traffic. Almost nobody wants to talk about the emails that come after it. That is backwards, because your solo ad follow up emails are what turn a list of strangers into buyers. The clicks are the easy part. I handle those. What happens in the 30 days after the clicks land is entirely on you, and it is the difference between a campaign that pays and a campaign you complain about.

I have been selling solo ads for 12 years to more than 4,000 customers. The ones who reorder, and 85% of my customers do, are almost always the ones who had emails loaded before the traffic ran.

Why Solo Ad Leads Cool Off Fast

A person opted in because your squeeze page made a promise that was interesting for about four seconds. They were reading someone else's email, they clicked a link, they landed on your page, they typed an address. That is the entire relationship so far.

They do not know you. They did not seek you out. They will not remember your name tomorrow unless you give them a reason to.

So the clock starts the second they hit submit. Every day you stay quiet, the memory of your promise fades and your next email looks more like spam and less like the thing they asked for.

The Twice a Day Rule for the First 30 Days

Here is my rule, and I know it makes people flinch: mail new solo ad leads twice a day for the first 30 days.

Twice a day. Not twice a week.

The objection is always the same. Will they not get annoyed? Some will. That is the point. You want to find out fast who actually wants to hear from you, because those are the only people who will ever buy anything.

The people who stay through 60 emails in a month are a real audience. The people who leave were never going to spend a dollar with you, and they would have sat on your list costing you money and dragging your sending reputation down while you told yourself you had 3,000 subscribers.

Mail twice a day. Let the list sort itself.

What to Send: Stories, Useful Content, Offers

You cannot send 60 pitches. You will have nothing left to say by email nine and you will sound like a vending machine.

Rotate three kinds of email.

Stories. What you were doing before this, what went wrong, what you tried, what you noticed. Stories are the only thing in email marketing that people will read twice. They also teach the reader who you are, which is the entire job of the first week.

Useful content. One idea per email that they could use today without buying anything. Not a course. One idea. The point is to train them that opening your email is worth the four seconds.

Offers. Your offer, told a different way each time. Different angle, different objection, different story leading into the same link.

The mix does not need to be scientific. Morning email leans story or useful, evening email leans offer. Do that for 30 days and you have a real sequence.

Why Early Unsubscribes Are Good News

New buyers panic at unsubscribes. Do not.

An unsubscribe on day three costs you nothing. That person was not going to buy. What they were going to do is sit in your list, never open, and slowly teach every inbox provider that your mail is boring.

A smaller list of people who open is worth more than a big list of people who do not. Seth Johnson said the thing about my traffic that I care about most: the subscribers I sent him are actually openers. That only shows up if you are mailing enough for opens to mean something.

Seth's results are his own. Your results depend on your offer, your page, and your follow up.

Write the Sequence Before the Traffic Runs

This is the part people skip and then blame the traffic for.

Before you order, have at least the first week written and loaded. Two emails a day for seven days is 14 emails. That is a weekend of work, and it buys you a week of breathing room to write the rest while the campaign runs.

If your first email does not go out until you get around to it, the lead has already gone cold and you paid for the click anyway. Load it first. Then order.

While you are building, read what to know before you buy solo ads so the rest of the setup matches.

What Seth's Openers Tell You About Follow Up

Seth ran 100 clicks, then 200, then 500 at 100% Tier 1 to an aggressive squeeze page. That 500 click run brought in $965 in commissions over about a month. He called it probably his best solo run yet.

Notice the shape of that. The money did not land on click day. It came out of emails that were already written and already sending while he got on with his life.

That is what follow up buys you. Traffic is an event. Follow up is the machine that turns the event into income.

Your opt in rate tells you whether your page works, and what a good opt in rate looks like covers that side of it. Your follow up tells you whether your business works.

The Checklist

1. Write at least 14 emails before you order anything.
2. Load them in order, two a day, starting the same day they opt in.
3. First email delivers the thing you promised on the squeeze page. Nothing else.
4. Rotate stories, useful content, and offers.
5. Do not flinch at unsubscribes in week one.
6. Keep mailing twice a day for 30 days before you judge anything.
7. Order 500 clicks so the numbers coming back mean something.

Do that and the traffic has somewhere to go. Skip it and you are buying clicks into a void.

Order 500 clicks and have the first week written before they land.