If you’re like me who signs up to newsletters from many brands and organizations looking for the best value out of them, nothing feels better than being personally welcomed from a human being and being offered a welcome discount for my first purchase.

Establishing the customer relationship

Welcome emails are a great way to establish your relationship with your customer and set the tone for future exchanges. It’s about nailing that first impression to customers cementing what your brand is all about and the value that you can give to your customers.

If done poorly, you can lose out on some of the future transactions your customers might have done. It’s a lot harder to sell a product or service to someone who hasn’t engaged with your brand than it is with someone who has.

Companies that send welcome emails receive 86% higher open rates than other promotional emails. That says a lot about that first impression.

Email subscription confirmation

Sending a subscription confirmation lets your customers’ be reminded about what they were signing up for. Not only will these emails be a great first impression, on your end, it will serve as an opt-in confirmation letting them know that they signed themselves up to be on your email list. This is just good user experience.

From an email marketer’s perspective, you get better delivery numbers after users opt-in and receive an subscription confirmation welcome email. If you don’t have an opt-in system, the welcome email will serve that purpose. When you send that initial welcome email, you will reduce the number of bounces you will get when you send future promotional emails.

Stronger engagement

In this day in age, first-time email subscribers will be expecting some form of initial communication from you or your company. Welcome emails are an opportunity to let your subscribers know that they are now a part of your company. Sharing the number of subscribers you get every month with your customers dispels any doubts about the integrity of your brand. It shows that others see value in your company and trust in your company to meet expectations.

Data gathering

When done correctly, you can collect more data about your users from that first welcome email by prompting subscribers to complete a survey. By gathering more data, you can better personalize the emails you send. If you choose to do this, you absolutely have to give your subscribers an incentive. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing the survey? If you’re in the business of retail or B2B, you can offer a coupon code that gives subscribers a one-time discount for their first purchase or first month of your service.

Emails generate more revenue than other emails

You may be thinking, wouldn’t email marketing be expensive for a small business owner like me? Not necessarily. As you see in the graphic by Oberlo above, you can expect an average return of $32 per $1 spent on email marketing. I’m not saying that you should go all out with your budget spend on email marketing campaigns and tools. You should budget according to your business needs and objectives.

Simple welcome email anatomy

According to a Marketer email tracking report in 2018 by the DMA, marketers say the best content to use in an email is discounts (38%) and content from the brand (36%) – such as articles, magazines or video – with a potential opportunity for marketers to better utilize loyalty schemes more, as 30% of consumers are interested in receiving this content, but only half this number of marketers (15%) are currently using it.

But, if you do offer a discount in your first email, your customers will be in the mindset of saving money with your brand, positioning your company as a budget-option.

So based on that statistic above, the welcome email should have the following attributes to lead to increased engagement in the users:

1. A catchy subject line (fewer than 50 characters)
2. An impressive welcome note
3. Offers and discounts for signing-up (use when necessary)
4. Personalization (based on the data your subscribers give you, you can tailor your welcome emails using the personalization tag syntax of your Email Service Provider of choice)
5. Simple yet engaging design
6. Clear CTA (complete your account, download now, buy now, learn more, read more, shop new arrivals, see what’s popular, book now, etc.
7. Email footer

Look at this example of a compelling welcome email from nDash.co outlining how customers should continue their account creation journey:

At the top, they include a personalized introduction, a clear value proposition which serves as a reminder of why you joined them in the first place and a link to their website.

In the body of the email, they use user-friendly design that is easy to interpret. Headings are bolded, icons are clean and simple, and the paragraph text is short, concise and straight to the point.

They also entice the subscriber to try their premium offering for 30-days using a coupon code. The coupon code can be used by marketers to track its effectiveness (redemption rate, develop inferences of the type of users that use it, etc.). They end their email with a clear CTA and an option to reach customer service if they are having any issues with the process.

Hopefully you’ve got the tools to successfully develop an email strategy then design your first welcome email like the nDash example above. I recommend that you take a look at ReallyGoodEmails and their comprehensive database of Really. Good. Emails.