How to create an effective welcome email series
As we’ve officially welcomed summer, it might be time to take a closer look at your welcome emails to make sure they’re doing their job!
A welcome email series is a great way to set expectations with your customers and help them get onboarded with your brand quickly. These emails can be great ways to gain customers for life by being helpful, informative, and personable. They’re your chance to make a wonderful first impression.
So let’s make sure you make a great first impression!
If you want to send valuable welcome emails to engage customers or new subscribers, follow these tips!
4 steps to executing welcome emails subscribers will love
1. Develop a strategy
Are you planning on a generic welcome email to your brand or are you going to create tailored campaigns based on what your customer buys or subscribes to? You have to know why you’re sending this email series and what information you want to convey, and what actions the receiver should take.
Look at how those customers and subscribers navigate your website. What are they looking for before and after a purchase? Can you make it easier to point them in the right direction of content they’d like in a welcome email?
2. Craft the content
Give them what they want! If they gave you an email address in exchange for an ebook, free trial, or discount code – send that immediately! Otherwise, just share a welcome message that highlights the benefits of your product or service and share links to helpful resources.
Online retailers or hotels may want to include a discount code as an incentive to take further action – like sharing a discount with a friend.
Think about what customers need to know about your brand or where to find the right resources.
A product-focused welcome campaign may look like:
1. Benefits of the product and how it works
2. How others are using it successfully
3. Quick troubleshooting tips and customer support contact information
4. Where to connect and engage with the brand on social media
5. A discount or incentive offer as a thank you
Personalize the content with details you know about them, such as their name, location, or what they purchased.
3. Set the schedule
What’s the lifecycle of this campaign and how often are you popping into their inbox? Is it just a one-time welcome message or do you want to spread out your content in a four or six-email drip campaign? Will there be two days or two weeks between the emails?
Think about your sales cycle and map the welcome journey accordingly. Shorter sale cycles can get away with more frequent emails in the beginning, where longer sales cycles, typically in the B2B world, need emails spread out over weeks to stay top of mind.
Determine how often you want to be emailing your new subscriber or customer. It’s a fine line to walk where customers are happy to see your emails or hate seeing your name in their inbox.
4. Monitor the results
Seeing people unsubscribe after the second email? Yikes! Something’s not working right. Monitor the results of your welcome series to make sure people are going through the entire series, or try to figure out what emails or actions are causing them to drop out.
Keep an eye on:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Unsubscribes
- Spam
- Bounces
- Read rates
- Engagement over time
Track which emails perform well and see if you can adapt the rest of your series to be just as successful.
When’s the last time you updated your welcome email series? Tell me in the comments below or on Twitter!
