Send one email that nurtures AND sells, using conditional content

In the past decade of email sending, I've learned a trick or two. None are as impactful as the ability to send ONE email, and have personalized content inside for people who HAVE purchased/signed up for something, and content for people who haven't. The jargon term for this is "conditional content" and it's amazing. 😍

I'm going to show you below how to use conditional content in ConvertKit, and in ActiveCampaign. Mailchimp and MailerLite also have this feature, although they call it "dynamic content". If you're using a different tool, just google "conditional content with [name of your email tool]". 

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WHY USE CONDITIONAL CONTENT? Instead of having to send multiple emails, or have people feel like a faceless person in the crowd (i.e. like when you send an email about signing up for something to someone who has already signed up), you get to spend less time on your emails AND they'll perform better in terms of engagement and conversions.

It's also a great way to stack multiple paid offers and personalize the sales copy for each into ONE email, and show different offers/copy to people who haven't bought anything, people who have already purchased X offer but not Y, etc. 

There are a lot of other uses for true email marketing geeks, who are dabbling in deep segmentation, but for most people, dabbling in the above is MORE than enough to send smarter emails that convert. 

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HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL CONTENT IN CONVERTKIT:

Go to the @ and choose "Subscriber Tags Conditional". It'll pull in the below jargon, which will probably make your head go 🤯. But I promise it's simpler than it looks. Keep reading!

{% if subscriber.tags contains "Tag Name" %} The subscriber has the tag {% else %} The subscriber does not have the tag {% endif %}

Add the tag you want to use as your "show this message to people with this tag" and "show this message to people who don't have this tag", like in the below screenshot where I've added the tag for my A Year of Emails paid product - [client] A Year of Emails.

And then this is what it looks like in the broadcast editor once I added the personalized copy for people who have purchased, and for people who haven't.

I'm a big fan of ConvertKit for most business owners as they have a lot of flexibility, great customer service and I love their trajectory as a company. If you want to move to ConvertKit, use my affiliate code: https://membervault.co/convertkit --> and then email me at erin@emailsimsending.com for help with your very first welcome email.

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HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL CONTENT IN ACTIVECAMPAIGN:

This is even easier than ConvertKit's system. When you're editing an email, either campaigns or an email in an automation, you can hover over a content block (i.e. text or image) and click on the gear icon. Choose "Make conditional". See below.

Next, you choose your conditions and you can easily get way more dialed in than you can with ConvertKit. Now, you CAN do nested if/else code in ConvertKit (see more options here) but if you aren't a developer, I guarantee your brain is going to enjoy the ActiveCampaign format better. 

Keep in mind that ActiveCampaign's conditional content feature is no longer available on their Lite plan. As of writing this, you'll need to be on the Plus or higher plan. #boo

OK, so here's an example of a conditional block where I'm only showing it to people getting the email who HAVE purchased Year of Emails, but didn't purchase the order bump option.

Once you've made that block conditional, you'll be able to hover over it and see the conditions that you set. This is especially handy when you're writing an email with 5+ conditional blocks (I do this frequently!). 

I'm a big fan of ActiveCampaign for entrepreneurs that want to go deep on email marketing with advanced personalization, lead scoring and/or complex automations. If you want to move to ActiveCampaign, use my affiliate code: https://membervault.co/membervault --> and then email me at erin@emailsimsending.com for help with your very first welcome email.