New subscribers are, generally speaking, among your most engaged subscribers. They just signed up, your brand is fresh in their mind, and their inbox habits around your emails haven’t been set yet. That makes the first few emails they receive from you disproportionately important, yet many companies send only a single generic welcome email. That’s a missed opportunity.
A welcome series gives you multiple chances to make a strong first impression, set expectations, and start building a relationship while that initial enthusiasm remains. Here are three tips for building a welcome series that sets your future email program up for success with new recipients.
1. Set Audience Expectations Right Away
Your first email should do more than just say thanks for signing up. Tell new subscribers what they can expect going forward: how often you’ll be emailing, what kind of content they’ll receive, and what the relationship looks like from here. Subscribers who know what they signed up for are less likely to be surprised, and less likely to unsubscribe, when your regular campaigns start arriving.
This is also a good opportunity to reinforce the value proposition that got them to subscribe in the first place. If they signed up for a discount, deliver it clearly and immediately. If they signed up for content or updates, give them an easy way to find your best material right away.
2. Spread The Introduction Across Multiple Emails
Trying to tell a new subscriber everything about your brand, product line, and content library in a single email is a lot. A welcome series lets you break that introduction into smaller, more digestible pieces sent over several days or weeks.
A typical structure might introduce your brand and set expectations in the first email, highlight your most popular products or content in the second, and invite further engagement in the third: maybe a review, a referral, or a social follow. The exact sequence will depend on your business, but the idea is the same: let the relationship build gradually instead of front-loading everything into one message.
3. Treat It As An Ongoing Program, Not A Set-And-Forget Automation
It’s easy to build a welcome series once and let it run untouched for years. But your products, offers, and content change over time, and a welcome series that references outdated promotions or discontinued content will undercut the first impression it’s meant to create.
Review your welcome series on a regular basis, the same way you’d review any other recurring campaign. Look at open and click rates for each email in the sequence to see where engagement drops off, and test changes to subject lines, content, or timing just as you would with any other campaign. A welcome series that is actively maintained will keep doing its job long after it was first built.
The first few emails a new subscriber receives set the tone for everything that follows. A well-maintained welcome series is one of the highest-leverage pieces of content in your entire email program, precisely because it reaches people at the moment they’re most receptive to hearing from you.
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