First impressions count for everything, right? The same goes for your brand when someone signs up to your email subscription list! Having a great Welcome Email Series is vital in getting that first bit of engagement with a new subscriber, it’s their introduction to your brand and what you do. Sending one automated welcome email is easy, but how about a whole series? If you’re not sure where to begin, here’s our recipe for the ideal Welcome Email Series.
The Workflow - Step by Step
1 - The Intro Email
The first in your series should be straightforward and to-the-point. It’s tempting to think you should include as much content and detail as possible in case they don’t open a second email, but this increases the chances that they won’t read the email at all. Keep it short - thank the new subscriber for signing up, link your social media accounts, and introduce your brand.
2 - Brand Overview
This is where you can add a bit more detail about your brand’s approach, story, ethos etc. Introduce the categories of products you sell, and add a bit of personality. Include a couple of high-quality photos to illustrate.
3 - Social Proof and User Generated Content
You’ve covered who you are and what you do. Now it’s time to show subscribers all those satisfied customers. Choose a couple of your best reviews to showcase, and include some user-generated content if you can to show real people with your products. You’ll say your products are great, but seeing others back that up is even better.
4 - Show off your Bestsellers
Pick one or two of your current bestsellers to really showcase. Pick some great photos, maybe a bit of social proof, and include details of the product. This is your first chance to be a bit more promotional in your language and content.
5 - Product Education
Is there an educational or care aspect to your products? Time to talk about those! Include links to resources along with a little synopsis of those resources.
6 - Promote and Incentivize
You’re six emails in now, if they haven’t purchased or interacted with your store now is a good time to get more promotional and incentivize a purchase. Consider including a promotional code along with some product recommendations. These could just be other bestsellers, new products, or even personal recommendations based on browsing (more on that shortly).
Ways to add some complexity
So you’ve got the workflow down, the content is ready, and you’re ready to make it live. Want to know a few ways you can amp it up a notch?
Conditional Workflows
Not everyone is going to open the first email, or even the fifth. In these cases, you might want to send a slightly different email at a different time. By setting up a conditional workflow, you can have subscribers who open emails regularly on one path, and send those who don’t on a different path. You can switch up the content, add some more in, change the language, etc. to test and see what’s engaging people and what isn’t.
Segment your audience
This can be based on whatever you think would be most valuable to your business from segmentation based on sign-up source, to segmentation based on product category purchases. Segmenting your audience means you can really tailor the content in a welcome series to the subscriber and increases their chances of engaging with your emails. For example the sort of information you want a new subscriber from social media to know might be different to the information you want a recent purchaser to know. Set up a workflow for each major segment, and consider the content that will be most relevant to them.
Use Shop Data to Personalize
Connecting your store will open up a whole world of options for you to personalize your email content to your subscribers. One of the best things you can do with this is to add personalized product recommendations based on their previous browsing history and interactions on your store.
Top Tips for Content
Keep content up to date
You keep your site and social media up to date, so make sure you do the same with your automated workflows. That might be including recent shipping deadlines if you’re close to a holiday, updating bestsellers, including new reviews etc.
Use good quality photography sparingly
It’s important that the photos you choose to use are of the highest quality available to you. This is a first impression, after all, so you want to show your brand and products in the best possible light. Don’t go wild though using photos, make sure you choose a couple of really great ones to include so that the reader focuses on the content and isn’t distracted.
Don’t get too promotional too fast
People don’t like it when you try and get too salesman-like too fast. You want people to buy into your brand, pique their interest, and then show them the products and why they’re so great. Immediately launching into the sales pitch for your brand and products will be off-putting.
Be concise and purposeful
Emails in a welcome series work best when the content is to-the-point. Think about the email’s goal and what you really want the reader to focus on, then avoid crowding that message with too much content.