Welcome email series are an important part of any email marketing strategy. At first glance, they may seem redundant – why do you have to email someone just to thank them for subscribing? It’s most likely you did it already on the landing page after they finished subscribing. However, welcome emails can make a difference in your email automations, improving your conversion rate and making recipients more likely to engage with your brand. But how do you achieve optimal performance from a welcome email? That’s what we are going to explain in this article. How Effective Are Welcome Email Series? Welcome emails boast an opening rate averaging 90% (the percentage of readers that opened the email), and a click-through rate (the percentage of users that clicked on a link in the email) around 27%. These numbers should not be disregarded. If welcome emails can give you these results, they need to be well thought out so you can benefit from this tactic. 🎲 Plus, welcome emails are 86% more effective than newsletters when it comes to conversions. You are sitting on a gold mine! So, every time someone new joins your mailing list, reach out to them with a well-crafted email. This email should come immediately after subscribing, while it’s still clear in your reader’s memory why they signed up, and why your offer puts them in an advantageous position. Think of it as the first impression your recipients will have of you. First impressions are everything, so you need to make the most of it. How To Create The Best Welcome Email Series Introduce Yourself Your recipients might know the name of your brand, but to make a great first impression, you should introduce yourself as well. People don’t always care about brands or products. They also care about people and their stories. A short message from your CEO can be effective if it’s relatable. Saying “Thank You” is nice too. 📝 Acknowledge your new recipients and tell them what it’s going to be like using your product or service. How can you help your customers? What issue does your product solve for them? You need to be personable, and bring something new to the table. Your product or service can be the best in the market, but if you don’t explain why, you’re not going to sell. Show and tell. Benefits over features. Managing Expectations How often will you email your list? What are you going to talk about in your messages? What kind of emails are you going to send – purely transactional, product news, current offers, coupon codes? It’s essential for your recipients to know what they can expect from your mailing list. You don't want to be just another sender clogging up their inbox. Even if you shared these details with your new subscribers in the opt-in they filled, it’s still a good idea to reiterate it in your welcome email. An email message allows you to manage expectations more precisely than an opt-in, without causing information overload. ✉️ In an email, the focus is on the message. By telling your readers what to expect, you’re setting yourself up for a better relationship with customers and improved engagement. Offer A Discount This advice is two-fold: you can offer a discount code on your welcome email, but we also recommend offering the discount on the opt-in first. This makes the discount an incentive for users to sign up, as they get an immediate reward in the welcome email. Of course, discounts should not be the only motivation for readers to buy from you. Make sure that the value of what you are offering is clear, and that you have replies to common objections on the tip of your tongue. 😎 Adding a discount in your welcome email is a great tactic to get the ball rolling all the way from the first purchase to positive word of mouth. Help Your Subscribers Does your product have a steep learning curve? Do your new users benefit from onboarding? If that is the case, then you should aim to start the learning process from the welcome email. You can use gifs, send your readers a link to schedule a call with your sales or support team… you can be creative as long as you make it useful. But helping your subscribers doesn’t always have to be related to complicated products. Let’s say you sell pasta. Your welcome email could have a few recipes that inspire your readers to try them out as soon as possible. ⌛ Being helpful will start your relationship with customers on a positive note. You want them to remember your brand as nice and supportive. And this can be done starting from your welcome email. Creating welcome email series is easy with Platformly. Using the Email Builder, you can create emails that are visually appealing to your audience. To access the Email Builder, click on the Messages tab, then on Emails, and Save New Email. Then, click the “Launch Email Builder” button at the bottom right of the content box. If you want to use one of our free templates, click the “Templates” tab at the top right. From here, you can select any of the templates and adapt it as much as you want so it fits your message and business. We recommend using templates to make it easier to send your first message. Want to give Platformly a try? Click on the button below to sign up now. You can try our tools free of charge for 15 days. TRY PLATFORMLY NOW 15-day free trial, 30-day money back guaranteeAnother way in which Platformly can help you is by developing marketing automations. This is ideal when you want to create a welcome series. Then, as your list grows, use segments and tags to create tailored messages to each user group. Keep It Short & To The Point To make your email stand out from the rest, it’s important to have a practical approach to your content. Users just want to know what’s in it for them in your welcome email: so, give them a quick answer. Being short will help you be memorable. Avoid large images and graphics – write as if you were talking to a friend. The less HTML (a formatting code) you include, the easier it will be for readers to read your content. Making your message short and to the point is one of the most important aspects of writing a welcome email, or any kind of email for that matter. 📥 Don’t be afraid to get rid of part of your content. Most of the time, it is for the better. We recommend creating content that is actionable. Use active expressions like “subscribe now”, “buy today” and similar – make it obvious what the reader should do. Avoid “Read In Browser” We’re not saying you should not offer readers the option to read your email in your browser. What we mean is that it should not be necessary for users to have to go through that extra step. When users have to use this feature, it means you have either added too many images, too much formatting code, or content that is not responsive (set to fit every device). Using plain text and emojis makes it easy for your email to be read on any screen size. It also makes it more likely for your email to land in the inbox. Add Unsubscribe Text The previous tips can be optional, but the one thing you cannot skip is the unsubscribe text. Laws like CAN-SPAM, in the USA, and GDPR, in Europe, make it mandatory to offer your readers a way to opt-out of further communications. You should add this text with a link to your opt-out landing page. Please do not make the unsubscribe link difficult to click, or request users to log in somewhere so they can unsubscribe. These practices are annoying to users. They’ll probably mark your emails as spam if they cannot unsubscribe. And you don’t ever want to land in spam. Share Social Media Links Your welcome email can be a great opportunity to share your social media pages or accounts with new readers. It is great to leverage social media as a customer support channel too, as well as create engagement. Social media publishing is also important to create a reputation for your brand. By showing expertise, it’s a lot easier to get sales. People want to buy from someone who knows what they’re doing. By being that someone, you increase not only sales but also each customer’s lifetime value. 💰 Wrapping Up As you can see, there’s more to welcome emails than meets the eye. You need to make sure your message is clear and reader expectations are reasonable. If done right, welcome emails create the ideal starting point for the relationship between your brand and your subscribers. Make sure to include welcome email in your automations. To use marketing automation and email marketing in your strategy, check out Platformly… TRY PLATFORMLY NOW 15-day free trial, 30-day money back guaranteeDo you have any questions regarding welcome emails? Is there anything you would like to add? Use the comment section or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.