Designing a Welcome Email Journey: What You Need to Know

Contacting new leads for the first time can be nerve-racking—we all know the negative impact a poor first impression can create. As customers' perception of your brand hinges on this initial interaction, your first customer conversation is essential. As such, you have to optimize your touchpoints at the top of the marketing funnel.

One of these initial touchpoints is a welcome email journey. A welcome email journey can help you introduce your brand, emphasize your value proposition, and garner customer data all at the same time. As such, honing your welcome email series is a surefire way to create fruitful interactions with customers.

Not sure how to get started with your welcome email journey? You’ve come to the right place! This article will explain the ins and outs of a welcome email series, describe its benefits, and cover five best practices to guide your welcome emails to success. 

What Is an Email Welcome Journey? 

A welcome email journey is a series of emails delivered to new email subscribers. It helps you acknowledge your new customers while offering them bite-sized information about your business. Their marketing role is to establish customers’ expectations while facilitating profitable relationships based on trust and familiarity.

Why You Need to Send Welcome Emails 

When customers offer you their personal information, they permit you to communicate with them—and they want you to do so promptly. New email subscribers look forward to hearing from your company; 74% of them expect a welcome email, with welcome emails having 86% higher open rates compared to other promotional emails. 

Additionally, welcome emails can positively affect your conversions and profits: they increase customer engagement by 33% and generate 320% more profit than standard emails. Therefore, going without a welcome journey can be detrimental to your business's success, potentially redirecting interested customers to your competitors. 

How Many Emails Should Your Welcome Email Series Contain?

While there’s no consensus on the optimal number of welcome emails, your welcome email series should definitely include more than one email. Sending a single welcome email means you’d have to overcrowd it with tons of information to ensure customers understand your brand. This can result in clunky and hard-to-read emails. Moreover, sending just one welcome email can make you forgettable, as customer relationships are built on a sense of familiarity.

For best results, send multiple welcome emails (usually 3-6) over one or two weeks. Multiple emails ensure a steady, digestible flow of information that nurtures customers over a period of time. 

When mulling over the number of emails your welcome journey should include, you must consider multiple factors. These include your industry, target audience, email engagement rates, and products or services. If your product or service is pricey and requires a lot of consideration on customers’ behalf, you would benefit from an extended welcome journey. If not, a shorter email series may be just as powerful.

An Example of a Four-Step Welcome Journey 

To give you an idea of how you can structure your welcome email journey, we’re giving you an example of one welcome email series below.

Email #1: Welcome & Thank New Subscribers 

The first welcome email can embrace new subscribers and show them gratitude. You can do so using a simple “thank you” or by delivering on earlier promises (if you’ve offered subscribers an incentive for joining your email list). You can also use your first welcome email to introduce yourself, convey your “why”, and emphasize your unique selling points.

Essentially, the first welcome email should reassure customers that they’ve made the right choice by subscribing to your emails. Moreover, you can use them to provide customers with an exciting sneak peek into what they can look forward to. 

Email #2: Convey Your Value Proposition

In the second welcome email, you can dig deeper into the benefits you offer. This email can accentuate your product or service’s features, the problems these solve, and what value customers can derive from them. You can also drive your point home by attaching snippets of case studies and positive customer reviews. These highlights and testaments can encourage customers to progress down the sales funnel.

Email #3: Learn More About Your Customers 

You should be just as eager to get to know your customers as you are to talk about your brand. As such, your third welcome email can focus on what your customers want and need. Gaining this customer data can help you segment your email subscriber list and deliver more targeted emails. 

To gather more data on your customers, you can include surveys, links to your blog posts, or your social media handles in your email. These can reveal what customers want to know, which channels they prefer, and how they choose to interact with you. This data is essential to gaining a deep understanding of your customers, allowing you to communicate in a way that resonates with them.

Email #4: Drive Sales Using Personalized Offers & CTAs 

Once you segment your email subscribers, you’re able to deliver a compelling final email. The fourth email in your welcome series can leverage customers’ data to suggest relevant products or services using a clear call to action. To further drive your point home, consider using psychological tactics such as a sense of urgency or loss aversion. That is, emphasizing limited-time offers or discounts and describing why customers miss out by not purchasing your product.

Our Top 5 Tips for Killer Welcome Emails 

1.  Send Your Welcome Email Right Away

You should send customers the first welcome email as soon as they show interest in your company. If you don’t kickstart the welcome journey when you’re fresh on their mind, you risk losing their attention. Therefore, sending them a welcome email at the right time can ensure they remain interested in your brand over an extended period.

2.  Personalize Your Welcome Emails 

Customers want personalization, particularly when it comes to marketing emails. As using customers’ names in emails is now standard practice, your emails have to be hyper-personalized to remain appealing. For engaging emails, send dynamic email content that changes according to your target segment. You may also want to customize your email subject lines, as emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened!

3.  Automate Your Welcome Email Series 

Email automation can make sending welcome emails a breeze. Rather than manually delivering these emails, you can reduce the time spent preparing, personalizing, and sending these messages using automation. Moreover, email automation makes human errors less likely, ensuring your customers receive a streamlined and relevant shopper experience. 

With iwinBACK’s email automation features, you can deliver time-sensitive and personalized welcome emails to new customers. Read more about iwinBACK’s customer journey automation here!  

4.  Stick To Your Brand Voice, Tone, & Style 

With specific, branded content, you can stand out from the competition and create ongoing customer relationships. Throughout your welcome email journey, you should use your brand’s colours, fonts, imagery, and unique stylistic elements. This way, customers can form a solid idea of your brand’s personality. Moreover, consistent brand communications across your emails make it easier for customers to recognize you, improving brand recall and trust while fostering close-knit relationships. 

5.  A/B Test Your Emails 

Trying new things with your welcome emails is a great way to discover what your customers want. Whether that means testing your subject line, delivery time, copy, visuals, or CTAs, monitoring how customers respond to your emails allows you to optimize your emails continuously. Given rapidly changing customer preferences, integrating A/B testing your welcome emails is essential for profitable email operations.

In a Nutshell 

Welcome emails foster brand-building and further your customer relationships. Optimized correctly, they can effortlessly move customers towards other touchpoints, conversions, and purchases. By following the tips mentioned in this article—and ensuring your welcome journey is structured appropriately—your welcome emails can become a powerhouse for customer loyalty and hefty profits. Book a demo with one of our marketing proffesionals to learn how iwinBACK can help with your email marketing strategy!