Welcome emails offer an excellent opportunity to connect with your new subscribers and make a lasting, positive impression. As welcome emails typically receive 86 percent higher open rates than other types of emails, crafting a good welcome email is worth significantly more than the time and effort it takes to do so. So, what actually is a welcome email?
A welcome email is an email sent to a new subscriber once they have signed up to your email list. Not to be confused with a confirmation email, which simply lets the new subscriber know that they have been added to your list, a welcome email sets the tone for all future email interaction between your business and the subscriber.
The first email a new subscriber receives from your business has the potential to strengthen and secure the B2C relationship, as long as that email is well written and features all of the important welcome email components. These include:
- Accurate representation of your brand
- An understanding of the subscriber
- Clearly set expectations for future emails (frequency, type of content)
If you can deliver a well-crafted welcome email, or a series of them, to your new subscribers, you may gain a competitive advantage over similar businesses. Emails that demonstrate a clear understanding of the subscriber and offer realistic and appropriate expectations regarding the future can make the subscriber feel confident that subscribing to your email list was a good choice. They also help to filter out weaker leads. At first, filtering out weaker leads and losing subscribers may seem like a bad thing, but the truth is that this keeps the quality of your subscriber list high. Quality matters as much as quantity when it comes to converting leads into customers.
Welcome emails should be well crafted to make a good impression on the reader. How this email is perceived will reflect the potential success of all future emails and efforts to reach out to that subscriber. To craft a great welcome email, consider the following.
Thank your New Subscriber
Everyone likes to feel appreciated. In your welcome email, take the chance to thank your new subscriber for signing up. It may seem small, but a simple ‘thank you’ can make a big difference. One of the goals of your welcome email is to make a positive impression on the subscriber. Even basic manners can go a long way in achieving this goal.
Introduce Yourself
Your current customers have likely developed an awareness of your brand and its values over time, but your latest subscribers may not be as informed. Your marketing efforts have worked well thus far, considering that you have persuaded a person to subscribe, but now you must let them get to know a little bit more about your business.
This doesn’t have to be an essay about your brand history or your business goals and values. It can be a short, concise, summary of your business and an outline of how you can help your new subscriber with their personal or business-related wants and needs. The person likely already has some idea about your business given that they subscribed, so draw them in a little further and increase the likelihood of conversion by filling in those information gaps.
Let Your Subscribers Know What to Expect
Just because a person has subscribed to your email list does not mean they will open and read every email you send. Lifestyles will vary among your subscribers, as will email preferences. One subscriber may not be bothered about three to four emails a week, while another may find it to be overkill and may even unsubscribe.
In your welcome email, outline how often your subscribers can expect to receive emails from your business, and the type of content they can expect to see in those emails. By setting clear and honest expectations, you prevent frustration and disappointment in the subscriber and cultivate trust and respect.
Include Contact Information and Social Links
In your welcome email, make sure to provide all of your important contact information, such as the phone numbers or email addresses of different departments and their staff (if appropriate). This makes it easier for subscribers to get the information they need as efficiently as possible.
Remember to also include links to your social media channels, such as your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. It is possible that your subscriber engaged in a call-to-action on your website and was not previously aware of your social media presence. By linking your socials, you can encourage your new subscribers to follow you, which increases your popularity on social media and makes a strong impression on new followers. While your follower count is not always the most important metric (quality matters!), having a high follower count does help to strengthen your reputation. A strong reputation can go a long way in helping you gain even more subscribers.
In Conclusion
The above guidelines should help you craft a warm welcome email for your new subscribers, so that they may get a good impression of your business and look forward to future emails. Even if your welcome email and the introduction and expectations you have outlined within it deters a subscriber, then they were not a high-quality lead in the first place. The welcome email then also acts as a quality filter for our subscriber list. Get started with your welcome email today by following the above guidelines!
