Email Marketing Solutions

Your first touchpoint with a new subscriber is your welcome email.

It’s your chance to stand out. Build a connection. Show-off your USP. 

But it’s also an opportunity to lose a sale. Or alienate a potential customer. 

Welcome emails shouldn’t be complicated. They shouldn’t confuse or overwhelm your new subscriber. They should be clean, simple, and informative. They should show off your brand’s personality and should start to build a connection with your ideal customers.

You can subscribe to dozens of brands and analyze their welcome email. Or you can grab 100’s of exemplars and “swipes” with a simple google search.

But I’ve done both. And after analyzing 100s of welcome emails, building dozens of my own, and learning from some of the top email marketers today… I’ve got 7 key components that make up a great welcome email:

The Subject Line

It all starts with the subject line. 

This is the first time you are showing up in someone’s inbox. You need a good first impression.

Keep it short. Keep it concise. Keep it clear.

You’re better off going with “Welcome to the [Brand] Family” than with something long, complicated and clever.

If you’re unsure what to go with, start simple and then test.

You could test:

• Personalization (Add in the first name to the subject line)
• Emojis
• Different preview text (or lack thereof)
• Length

Also keep in mind that the algorithms that email providers like Google and Outlook use to determine what’s SPAM start with the subject line.

So stay away from “spammy” language in your subject line. 

The Hero Image and Headline

This is going to be the first thing that someone sees when they open your email.

And you’ve got about 3 seconds to catch their attention before they close your email, possibly delete it, and forget you forever.

Here’s where you have a choice. 

Hero Image or no Hero Image…

This choice is all about you, your brand, and how you want to do email.

Personally, I’d rather get right into the body copy and put any images towards the bottom of the email.

If you go with a hero image, make sure to take these things into account

• Make sure you have a headline with your image
• Consider size – what’s showing up “above the fold” for desktop and mobile
• What purpose does the hero image serve?

I’ve seen brands use a hero image to great effect. Either to showcase the product in action or to show off the brand’s personality. But if you let the hero image dominate the email, it’s going to lose effectiveness.

Body Copy

This is the meat and potatoes of your welcome email. 

The length of your copy is going to be brand dependent. I’ve seen great welcome emails with 500-1000 words of copy. And other great emails with 150-300 words of copy.

If you’ve got a hero image, you’re probably going to be on the shorter end with copy. Whereas, if you don’t use a hero image, you’ll probably end up with a little longer copy.

Regardless of length, here are the things your going to want to include for maximum effectiveness:

• Welcome message
• Deliver the offer
• Brandstory/Productstory (this can be brief, to be expanded on in future emails)
• What to expect

The one area that most brands miss is “what to expect”

This is where you can prep your subscriber for how often they are going to hear from you, what kinds of emails you are going to send, and most importantly give them a reason to look forward to your next email.

The Offer

The number one thing you HAVE to do with your welcome email is to deliver on the lead generation offer.

Whether that’s a 10% off discount code, free gift, or other lead magnet, make sure that your welcome email is congruent with your website pop-up.

If I signed up for a 10% off coupon, but get a welcome email about a free gift… I’m likely to bounce.

If you are providing some discount or promotion, do you best to have it actually expire.

This is super easy to do with Klaviyo, where you can generate custom discount codes that activate when an email is sent and then expire after a set amount of time.

But if you cannot set up a discount code that will actually expire… do not lie about it.

If your welcome code is WELCOME10, don’t tell your subscriber that it expires in 3 days when it doesn’t.

Doing this will erode the effectiveness of any urgency or scarcity offer that you make in the future.

CTA

Now we are starting to wrap up our welcome email. And there’s one thing you need before closing up shop.

A compelling call to action or CTA.

A few rules of thumb:

• Clarity beats cleverness
• Have ONE CTA, not six
• Make sure your CTA stands out

Your subscriber should know exactly where they are heading when they click your CTA. Shop Now, Learn More, and Explore ______ all work just fine if you are looking for something simple to start with.

Just like your subject line, this is a place where simpler is better to start. And then you can test to see what is the most effective.

Next, ONE CTA doesn’t mean you’re limited to one button or one link.

It means your email has ONE goal. ONE place that you are trying to send a new subscriber. 

That might be a product page, sales page, or a page to book a call.

And you can present that link or cta in multiple ways. But what you don’t want to do is present the opportunity to view a product, read a blog, book a call, and check out your instagram page.

Too many options leads to the subscriber doing nothing.

Lastly, don’t hide your CTA. Make sure the button stands out or that the link is bold and easy to recognize.

Footer

This is where we close out our email. And this footer will probably be the same for many of your emails.

This is where we might include additional links (and break the ONE CTA rule). Here’s where it’s ok to add your social links, an FAQ link, a link to customer service, etc.

This is also an area where you can showcase a rotating testimonial, or a “featured in” section, or a set of unique features.

Lastly, this is where your unsubscribe link must be available. And just like your CTA, don’t try to hide the unsubscribe link. It’s bad practice and leads to more SPAM complaints.

Design/Layout

The last component you have to consider is your design.

Are you going with a “pretty” email or one that’s more “plain-text?”

While I’m a fan of the latter, there’s no right answer here. You can accomplish everything that I shared above with either format.

Your welcome email should be congruent with what’s to come. So if your other emails are going to be “pretty” then your welcome email should be as well.

Congruency is key.

Whichever way you go with design, you want to make sure that your welcome email isn’t cluttered. It’s easy to read and easy to skim.

Summary

Here are your 7 components for a highly successful welcome email:

1. Subject line
2. Hero Image/Headline
3. Body Copy
4. Offer 
5. CTA
6. Footer
7. Design

Nail each of these, and your welcome email will start turning new subscribers into customers and lifelong fans.

What Should YOU do Next?

1. Follow me on LinkedIn for daily email tips and what’s working now
2. Leave a like or a comment on this post to let me know what you thought. Did I miss anything that you think is a MUST in a welcome email?
3. Sign up for my email newsletter to get my weekly emails with additional tips and strategies to maximize your email marketing channel. (I will also be doing a breakdown of 30 different welcome emails in 30 days during the month of October that will ONLY be available to those on my email newsletter.)