The Elements of a Powerful and Effective Welcome Email
You must treat those who sign up for your emails as priorities from the moment you receive their details. A good welcome email goes a long way towards showing prospects you care.
A welcome email is exactly what it says. You send an email to somebody who signs up for something from your business that welcomes the person into the fold. You can send welcome emails to people who sign up for newsletters, download your lead magnets, and people who purchase one of your services.
But why do it?
Why put time into creating an email to welcome new people?
On the human level, welcome emails show new people that you care about them. They’re an opportunity for you to show appreciation to this person for taking the time to sign up for whatever you’re offering.
Welcome emails are also some of the most effective marketing tools you have.
They achieve five times more clicks and get opened four times more often than standard marketing emails. What’s more, 74% of people expect to receive a welcome email if they subscribe to your list. If they don’t get the email, you subvert their expectations and start the relationship off on the wrong foot.
Simply put, welcome emails are vital to your email strategy.
They set the tone for your relationship with a customer or prospect. By increasing engagement, welcome emails represent a vital step on the customer journey.
Ultimately, they help you build the connections that lead to people buying your product or service.
The Elements of an Effective Welcome Email
So, you need to have welcome emails.
But before you can have them, you must know the elements to incorporate into the email. Several elements combine to create an effective welcome email that people open and click on.
Element No. 1 – An Engaging Subject Line
You need a good subject line to convince people to open an email.
That’s email marketing 101.
But when it comes to welcome emails, many standard tactics go out of the window. You’re not looking to tease a new product or slice of value that you’re offering. The clickbait techniques that may work for other emails don’t work with welcome emails.
You’re looking for straightforward transparency with your welcome email subject line.
Why?
The customer expects this email to land in their inbox. They’re looking for something that welcomes them into the fold, which means they will get turned off if they see a subject line that confuses the matter.
So, keep it simple and engaging with your subject line.
Something as simple as “Welcome to <company name>” is more effective than a clickbait subject line that doesn’t tell the reader what they’re getting. Keep it short, to the point, and straightforward.
Element No. 2 – Rapid Sending Once the User Signs Up
Speed is of the essence when dealing with welcome emails.
People who sign up for your services expect immediate acknowledgement that they’ve signed up. This isn’t a customer ego issue. It’s actually a practical one. The customer wants to know that everything’s worked as it’s supposed to and they’re signed up for your offer. Furthermore, they’ve used a device to sign up, meaning they’re already in the perfect position to receive your email.
Aim for an immediate response when somebody signs up.
The stats bear this out too.
According to Inbox Army, 50% of people interact with a welcome email if they receive it immediately after signing up. This drops to 44% if they receive it in a minute. Staggeringly, it falls to just 2% if your welcome email takes two minutes to arrive.
Think about it like this.
A customer signing up for your service is the same as that customer saying hello to you. If you take a couple of minutes to say hello back, you tell the customer that they don’t matter to you. So, they will be wary of engaging with you any further.
Automation Agency can help you here. Our Concierge Service can create automated email schedules, ensuring that your welcome emails go out as soon as somebody signs up.
Element No. 3 – Simple Information Designed to Get a Customer Started
Overwhelming a new email subscriber right off the bat is a sure-fire way to turn them off. And yet, it’s something that so many companies do.
The logic is understandable.
You have this new person showing an interest in your service. So, you want to give them as much information as possible to show how excellent the service is. Unfortunately, that deluge of information leads to a bloated welcome email that is difficult for the reader to sift through.
Remember that this email serves a purpose.
It welcomes the new person into your community.
Keep it simple and focus primarily on introducing your brand and briefly covering how you can help them with whatever problem they have. Offer a couple of links to valuable resources that move the reader towards the next step they need to take. But don’t give them so many options that they don’t know what to do next.
Element No. 4 – Personalised Content
Again, personalising emails is email marketing 101. Everybody knows that you should lead with the new subscriber’s name and use whatever information you have to ensure the email doesn’t read generically.
But personalisation goes much further than that.
You personalise emails to connect to the person you’re speaking to.
That connection goes both ways, which means your personalisation goes both ways too.
Use your welcome email to personalise the people in your team as well as using little touches like using the recipient’s name. Peloton gives us a great example of this in their welcome emails. In addition to directly welcoming the recipient, they introduce them to the trainers that lead their workout sessions. Straight away, a new Peloton user gets to know a little more about some people they’ll see a lot of, allowing for a small connection to build from the beginning.
Element No. 5 – Effective Use of Your Story
Welcome emails allow you to share some of your story with new subscribers.
Let’s start with what that doesn’t mean.
Your welcome email is not the place to dig into your whole story. It certainly isn’t the place to write an epic tale about all of the adversity you’ve overcome. While that story has valuable uses, it’s far too long to fit into an effective welcome email.
Instead, use small parts of your story to relate to the new subscriber.
For example, let’s say the person has signed up after downloading a lead magnet that confronts a specific issue. If you dealt with that issue in your own life, share your short story about it.
But keep it brief.
Use the story to show what your business is all about and to help the reader see that you’re the person who can help them. Just don’t go so overboard that your story becomes the focus of an email that’s supposed to be all about helping the recipient take the next step.
Relevance is key.
If the story isn’t relevant, it doesn’t need to be in your welcome email.
Element No. 6 – Immediate Value
Value is critical in every piece of marketing material that you create.
And make no mistake, a welcome email is marketing material. While its main purpose is to invite somebody into your business, that doesn’t mean you can’t offer some form of value to the reader.
What can that value be?
We mentioned links to useful resources that help the reader take their next step. These links offer value because you’re giving the reader something useful without asking for anything in return.
Alternatively, you could offer a free gift with the email. This works well with people who’ve purchased your service. Give them a freebie to go along with all of the value they’re getting from the service and you give the new relationship a quick boost. Alternatively, offer them a discount on a product that relates to the service they’ve purchased. Or, provide a discount code for the service that you believe they’re most interested in.
Of course, offering these types of value requires time and investment from your end.
But it works.
According to conversion rate optimisation specialists Invesp, welcome emails containing offers increase revenue by up to 30% per email.
So, you make the recipient happy and benefit from increased revenue when you provide immediate value.
Element No. 7 – Setting Expectations
Who receives welcome emails?
New customers and subscribers.
What do these people need to know?
What it’s like to work with you!
Your welcome emails aren’t just places to offer value and introduce people to your business. They’re also places where you can set the customer’s expectations for what it’s like to work with you. Again, we can refer to the Peloton example for this. Their tactic of introducing trainers in welcome emails is great for personalisation. But it also shows the recipient who’s going to push them in their exercise programs. It helps them to see that Peloton takes an active interest in helping their customers get the most out of their service.
You may not go as far as Peloton does.
But you can use your welcome email to talk about what you’re going to send and when. For example, you may have an email schedule where you send a tip on Monday, an offer on Wednesday, and a question on Friday.
Let the recipient know what the schedule looks like.
This sets their expectations and can even create anticipation for the emails that are most relevant to them. Again, Automation Agency can help you to set up the email automation that ensures you stick to your schedule.
Roll Out the Welcome Mat
Connection is the key when it comes to welcome emails.
Use them to set expectations and help the recipient understand a little more about you and your business. But as importantly, keep things simple and transparent. Avoid overwhelming the recipient with a flood of information that likely isn’t relevant to them at this point.
Keep the email focused on the customer and their next step.
Personalise the email and leverage your story whenever it’s relevant. Make sure email lands in the new subscriber’s inbox as soon as they sign up. And always point them towards what comes next.
With speed being so important with welcome emails, you may need an automated email service to ensure new subscribers don’t slip through your new. Automation Agency can help you to set up automated emails, often by using your existing CRM. To find out if we’re a good fit for you, take our Right Fit Quiz today.
