Set up the perfect welcome email

One of the biggest sins in Email Marketing is when you do not bid your new subscribers a warm welcome. Many people forget to do something about their new followers and think that it is good enough to wait with doing something before the first campaign is sent to the subscriber.

That is a completely wrong way of thinking. Studies have repeatedly shown that the commitment in a well-set up welcome flow is among the very highest. And why not welcome them? They want to follow you in the hope of getting something good – so hurry up and take advantage of it.

Here are the things you should do when setting a welcome email for your new subscribers:  

1. Send welcome flow immediately

Be sure to send an email as soon as someone has signed up for your list. It is about attracting them while they are still new, and there is much greater chance of engagement when they have your business fresh in memory. You should of course not manually send this email. Build a stable Marketing Automation flow that will automatically be activated when you get a new subscriber to your newsletter. In addition, read our article about Marketing Automation best pratices to get ideas on how to best set up a good welcome flow and effective Marketing Automation flows.

 

2. Make the email personal

Make the email personal so that the recipient does not feel that he or she is just a part of the crowd. Use the recipient’s name if you have collected this and start the email with “Welcome (name)!” Or “Hello (name)!”

In continuation of this: Send the email with personal twist as a type of sender name and for example complete the email by inserting pictures and signature of the director of the company (or the person who must be the ‘face’ of the newsletters being sent out) and with a small personal greeting from welcome to “I am glad you want to follow us ”.

 

3. Make the intelligent email

If you, for example, have a software company where you offer free trial of different tools, track from which tool the subscription to the newsletter came and make sure that your welcome email mentions the excellence your tool has with links directly back to the tool and finally sign up.

 

4. Do not waste the recipient’s time with trivial things

Give your subscribers some of your very best content so they will be hungry for more in the upcoming newsletters. You may already have a good idea of ​​what content your customers typically want to see and read, or use for example Google Analytics or Facebook Analytics to find out which articles are the most popular and the most engaging ones. You can for example:

  • Give an excerpt of your best content and email as an appetizer and let them read the rest of the content on your website so you get them over on your side with a possibility for converting.
  • Make a list of the 5 most read articles that can then be found on the website.
  • Or maybe you have made an e-book or a White paper that they can download.
 

5. Give a gift

Give the subscriber some kind of a gift. Give 10% on first order, give free shipping, or give a free product with next order. Make them feel special from the first email.

 

6. Promote your other channels

Now that the subscribers want to receive your newsletter, you must also try to get them to follow you on one or more of your social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube etc. In addition, make sure to highlight the benefits of following you there too – and give them a good reason to follow you in more places. That is, you must continue to give people identical content on Facebook and in the newsletter. Provide different content in both places and make special offers only for the followers of the newsletter, offers that only apply to followers on Facebook etc. Therefore, there is a reason to follow you on multiple media and channels and should one customer suddenly lose interest in opening your newsletters, or should you be so unlucky that your emails suddenly end up in the SPAM folder (read our article on “Why do my newsletters end up in the SPAM folder“), you still have them “caught “on Facebook.

 

7. Add unsubscribe link

Remember that your email should of course contain an opportunity to unsubscribe – even if people just signed up.

 

8. Test your welcome email

This should actually be at the very beginning of the article: Test your welcome emails! Make 2-3 different emails and test to which one of them the receiver responds best to. Is it the best with a simple email with only 1 Call-To-Action or are they especially here in the beginning more open for more information and several different Call-To-Actions?