Best Practices for Your Email Welcome Series

1. Set expectations with your automated welcome email

After someone subscribes to your list, you can say, ‘I’m going to email you again in three days with a message about x.’ And then, your email onboarding system automatically sends that message. The fulfilment of expectation builds trust. Be clear about the kind of content they can expect to receive and what you will be asking them to do.

2. End every automated welcome email with a single CTA

Every email in your onboarding series should have a call-to-action at the end. It’s best to have just one because if you provide too many choices your user will take none of them.

Emails are free, send another one.

If an email in your onboarding series has multiple calls-to-action (Read this article! And that one! And buy this thing, too!) you can split that up into different emails, and send them on different days.

3. Invite connections across platforms

Email is only one of the channels we use to communicate online. If you are active on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or Medium, invite your new subscribers to follow those accounts, too.

Talk about what you like about your favourite platforms, why you prefer this one over others, and link to one of your best-ever posts. This provides an extra autoresponder email that helps people know, like, and trust you.

4. Tell stories of other satisfied customers

Show empathy with the problems that your subscribers face, and describe the results that your clients have achieved. These stories and case studies can help your new subscribers self-identify as someone who could be one of your customers, too.

5. Provide value at least as often as you sell

If you don’t alternate value with sales, your unsubscribe rate will be high. Not many brands can send sales messages every day, and if you are gaining new subscribers with a Lead Magnet strategy, then your list is made up of people who want to learn how to solve a specific type of problem. Continue providing solutions to them at least as often as your sales messages.

6. Offer clear instructions on how to do business with you

Your email onboarding sequence helps subscribers know what you offer by automatically sending information about your best-selling (or highest-profile) offers. They will only know about them if you are willing to share specific and clear instructions on the next steps.