Blog.
How To Create A Welcome Series That Converts
Email continues to be the most effective way to communicate with potential leads. Welcome series are an effective way to introduce your brand and build relationships with new subscribers. They can also help you build trust and credibility with your audience, increase engagement and drive conversions. When it comes to email marketing, your welcome campaign is an important piece of the puzzle that can make or break your subscriber engagement. Welcome campaigns are usually your first interaction with a new lead that you want to convert. Welcome series can be used as a standalone asset or as part of an email marketing campaign. For example, if you’re launching a new product or service, you could use the welcome series to share information about the product or service before sending a series of emails that promote it.
When someone becomes a new subscriber on your email list, you send them a few emails over the course of a week that welcomes and encourages them to get to know your brand and products, and by the end of the sequence, be ready to make their first purchase. A creative and effective welcome series can increase your conversion rate and your bottom line. But a lot of people struggle to make these communications truly compelling. The main goal of an effective email welcome series is to inform, educate, and motivate new leads into making an initial purchase. No matter what type of business you are in or whether you are new or experienced in sales, here’s how to do it effectively.
Get to know your audience
The moment you opt in to your favorite newsletter, the magic begins; a welcome email is sent out and you begin a nurturing relationship with that brand. A welcome email series is a series of initial emails in which your audience understands where they are and what they are about to learn from you. The purpose of these emails is to welcome your reader and transform them into your customer. If you want people to sign up for your list and stay subscribed then you have to know which audience you want to target before you set up your welcome series, or even your opt-in offer. One of the most important things you can do when building a list is to get to know your target audience. You should know what their pain points are, how best to help them, and their values and priorities. The better you know your audience, the more valuable content and offers you’ll be able to produce for them. Who do you want on your list? What kind of emails do you plan to send to this group? What offer and messaging will get this group excited to not only join your list, but open your email and actually click through to your landing pages? These are all questions you must answer in order to get the best results from your sequence and to build a healthy, engaging, profitable email list.
Define your goals
The most important thing you need to understand before writing your welcome email series is why you’re writing it. What are you trying to achieve? What do you want your subscriber to get out of the series? If you know what you want to get out of it AND what your subscriber will get out of it, then you’re in a much better place when it comes time to write the emails themselves. Do you want more traffic? follower? revenue? reviews? Even if your answer is “all of the above”, you’ll need to determine which is the most important, and which makes the most sense at where you are now as a growing brand. Then build your series based on that one objective. The best welcome emails are clear and concise, with one objective in mind: getting your subscriber to take action. Whether that means clicking a link, making a purchase or filling out a form depends on what you want out of the series — but if you don’t know what that is, it’s unlikely you’ll get it.
Decide on a basic structure for your welcome series
Your email sequence needs to be thoughtfully planned out, like any good marketing campaign. Remember, you’re selling your product or service, but you’re also building a relationship with your customers. Starting with introductory content at the beginning, organize your emails into a logical structure that follows up each email with progressively stronger commitments from your audience. Make a list of all the things you want your audience to learn or do at the start of their relationship with the brand, and then make each item on your list its own email with a single call to action in each email. Be careful not to push the sale to soon, give your sequence about 4 to 6 emails to give your audience a good cadence.
The first email should be an introduction of yourself as a brand and what you offer. The second email should focus on introducing some of the benefits of your products (and why they should care). The third email should be more focused on what they’ll get out of using your product. The fourth email should provide some real customer social proof where they can learn more about what using your product might look like from a real person’s perspective. Then your next email should give them an incentive to try your product for the first time. The last email should be a final offer to try at an introductory rate, and even to get the user following you on another channel, like Instagram or Tiktok or even moving into an SMS channel.
Here’s a basic sample of a welcome series structure:
1. Welcome, here is who we are
2. Meet our products and learn about how they are unique
3. Learn how this product benefits you or solves your problem
4. Get real customer insights on our products
5. Try our product with this great first time deal and use this coupon
6. Last call for the offer. Follow us on social media as well.
Craft engaging copy
Your copy is vital. There are three main elements to focus on with your emails. The subject line, the email body, and the call to action. To keep your audience opening and engaging with each email in your sequence you have to nail your copy. Starting with your subject line. That is your first shot at getting your subscribers excited to open your emails and see what more you have to say/offer. Your subject should be straightforward and inviting. If it’s too clever or cute it can confuse readers and they end up not opening them at all. Remember, your welcome series is your first chance at a first impression with potential customers, so your email subject lines should be short, clear, attention-grabbing and give your audience an idea of what the email is about.
When writing your email body, be sure to write as if you are speaking directly to your audience, you don’t have to be too professional, or too casual, but speak as if you are getting familiar with someone you’ve just met for the first time. You should be welcoming and friendly, but also direct about why you are here. Your email body copy should also be just long enough to convey the value of your brand, product, or offer. Don’t waste your subscribers time with fluff and unnecessary details. Just tell them who you are, what you offer, and how it benefits them. Your call to action should be clear and easy for your readers to understand. People should be easily able to follow through on what you offer. That includes where they land when clicking your links and URLs in the email.
Set up a basic email automation
Timing is everything when it comes to sending out your welcome sequence. However, your subscribers join your list all at different times, and you can’t manually handle sending email after email every day at all hours. Automation is the key to a successful welcome series flow. You can automate your welcome series by using a free tool like Drip, Active Campaign or HubSpot. What’s great about using one of these services is that they allow you to send out automated emails over time to your new subscribers. For example, you can set up a drip email campaign that sends out your welcome series over the course of 7 days or 20 days. This means that each day or week your list will get an email with your desired content. This also allows you to keep in touch with your subscribers without having to spend lots of time writing individual emails every day or week. Instead, all you need to do is write one article, schedule it for publication and then sit back and watch as the magic happens while your list grows.
Automations can also be set up for your weekly newsletter, new product releases, seasonal sales, abandoned carts, and more. You can even segment your lists by new customers, and repeat customers to target each list with relevant messaging and individual offers that you scale and grow your brand.
The most important thing to remember when writing welcome emails is that you want to show your subscribers that they made the right decision by signing up for your list. You can do this by giving them information they need, or by giving them something they want.
Here are some ideas on how to make your welcome email series stand out:
– Test, test, test. Before you make your series live send out a test to your personal account, this way you can fine tune any copy and sequencing that needs to happen for best results when actual customers join your list.
– Make it personal. Use their name and any other pertinent information you can collect at the time of them joining. This can include interests, nicknames, birthday, anniversary, etc.
– Offer value in exchange for their email address. Give away valuable information, like a product sample, e-book or cheat sheet, as long as it doesn’t require any action other than filling out a form or clicking a button. This allows you to build a health list consistently.
– Ask questions! People love talking about themselves (and Google loves content). Ask questions about how they heard about you or what problems they’re looking to solve — anything that will get them involved in the conversation!
An effective email welcome series can help you turn new leads into first-time buyers. IdealGrowth has a dedicated email marketing team that will take your brand from goal setting, and strategy, through to copy, design and help your campaigns go live. Give us a call to chat about your email marketing needs.