Broadcasts vs. Sequences

If you want to create a solid email strategy for your brand, it’s important to know the difference between broadcasts and sequences. Utilizing both can help ensure that you maximize your conversion rate and achieve your company’s goals. Our digital marketing agency is here to provide email do’s and don’ts. 

What’s the difference? 

Both sequences and broadcasts are sent to consumers with specific goals, whether that’s generating revenue, fostering engagement, lead generation, or communicating important company updates. 

What are broadcasts?

A broadcast is a one-time marketing message used to showcase a product, send out a new blog post or newsletter, make an announcement, etc. Sometimes, broadcasts are referred to as list emails or campaigns. Broadcasts can be sent to all of your subscribers or a small segment of your target audience. Who you choose to send your broadcast to depends on your intended goal of this marketing campaign.

What are sequences?

A sequence is an email or series of emails that can be set to automatically send to a customer after a trigger has occurred. A trigger refers to an action that is completed, such as a purchase, a sign-up, etc. Sequences are also often referred to as automations, journeys, or flows. 

In a sequence, emails are set to send in a specific order with certain intervals. For example, you may have a sequence that is triggered upon a new subscriber signing up for your email list. The first email in the sequence could be sent immediately after sign-up, and the second email could be sent two days after. 

The strategy for broadcasts

Broadcasts help keep your brand top-of-mind for subscribers even when they haven’t been directly engaging with your products or services. If you’ve recently published a new blog post to your site or launched a new product, you could send a broadcast email announcing the update to your subscribers. You can also use broadcasts to announce sales or promote seasonal products or services.

Broadcasts can generate traffic to your site, nurture lead generation, or generate revenue by promoting upsell and cross-sell opportunities. 

The strategy for sequences

Use sequences when you want a new subscriber to receive a predetermined set of emails. The most important sequences to set up are welcome emails and abandoned cart emails. 

A welcome sequence is crucial, as it ensures that subscribers will hear from you when they’re most interested in hearing from you, as they’ve just signed up to receive promotional emails from you. It’s important to make a great first impression in this sequence. A great way to drive first purchases is to offer a time-sensitive discount in the welcome sequence, as a thank you for signing up. 

Abandoned cart emails can generate significant amounts of revenue, as these sequences are highly targeted to an individual subscriber. An abandoned cart sequence is triggered after a customer has put an item in their cart but exited from your site before completing their purchase. 

What’s the breakdown?

The revenue per recipient will generally be higher for sequences than for broadcasts. In many cases, sequences are sent to actively engaged customers, such as those who may have recently added an item to their cart, while broadcasts may be sent to an intended repeat customer who hasn’t engaged with your brand in a long time. This doesn’t mean that you should only focus on sending sequences and disregard broadcasts altogether. A well-rounded marketing strategy utilizes both sequences and broadcasts. 

Why should I run both?

If you want to maximize revenue, you need to have a mix of broadcasts and sequences in your email marketing strategy. These best practices will allow you to target the right target audience at the right time and ensure that you’re doing everything possible to keep your customers engaged. 

Using a combination of broadcasts and sequences in your marketing strategy gives you confidence that you’re targeting a wide range of audience segments and actively working to keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds. If you’re looking for a marketing platform that allows you to easily send both broadcasts and sequences, consider our preferred platform, Klaivyo for your future email marketing efforts.