Optimising Your Welcome Email
Creating an automated welcome program is a great way introduce your brand to potential new customers. Often welcome emails are the first communication someone will have with a brand so it’s important to create a great first impression.
We tend to suggest running a three-part welcome program, this provides you enough opportunity to showcase your brand, product & services in easy to digest sections but isn’t too long before subscribers move into your regular marketing campaigns or other automated flows.
Welcome Email 1
Your first welcome email should be sent immediately after someone subscribes to your newsletter, especially if you’ve offered a sign-up promotion. If you’re using any of the major email platform solutions e.g. Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp etc. this should be straightforward.
At this stage it is important to thank your new subscriber for signing up and take the opportunity to set expectations, for example how frequently can a user expect to receive an email from you and what type of content are they likely to receive. Setting expectations is a great way to reduce unsubscribe rates or from being marked as spam.
A final opportunity on this email is to promote your social channels. At this point the subscriber is engaged with you and therefore getting them to follow you now will give you two opportunities to market to them moving forward.
Welcome Email 2
If you have the functionality to ask a subscriber for more information, this is a great time to do it. You can use this additional data to personalise or segment your database to enable more relevant content to be sent. If you are able to do this be transparent with the reason your collecting this information. For example, we’re collecting your date of birth so we can send you a birthday treat, or we’re collecting your postcode to send you local store events.
Use the rest of your email to talk about your brand. Introduce your business and the story behind your brand, the services you offer and any unique selling points e.g. reviews, loyalty, free delivery etc. All of this is about getting a subscriber to be part of your brand while installing confidence and trust.
Welcome Email 3
As the final part of your automation you can now afford to be more product/sales led. Talk about your range or products and what makes them unique. Why buy from you, instil trust at this stage and provide confidence for a customer to buy from you.
If you had an introductory offer in your first email it is also worth re-iterating this in the final one, especially if it is a time sensitive offer.
This welcome series would provide a simple but effective way of introducing your business to new potential customers, however you may need this to be slightly more complex if, for example you have loyalty schemes that a user would benefit from understanding more clearly.
If you need any help or advice with email marketing or setting up your own welcome series get in touch.