Welcome emails are an important part of an email marketing strategy. It’s a chance to show that you are personable and thoughtful and eager to share useful information with your new subscribers. As a result, the subscribers will look forward to receiving more messages from you.

You may be surprised that welcome emails have a 50% average open rate, which is more than various other types of emails. Plus, an amazing 76% of people are waiting for that welcome email after signing up for your email list. Given this expectation, you can’t afford to ignore welcome emails.

In this piece, we’ll take you through the importance of welcome emails and their role in your onboarding series. Let’s jump in.

What Makes Welcome Emails so Powerful?

Welcome emails are similar to online dating.

Attracted by your profile and photo (read: your website, blog, or landing page), people express interest by “poking” (read: subscribing) you and waiting for you to meet their expectations. Now it’s your turn to take a step: write and send a welcome email that will “wow” them with your brand personality so they will look forward to your next letter, open and click on it, and therefore turn into your friends (read: loyal customers).

Crafted by expert marketing writers, welcome emails meet users’ expectations, guide subscribers, and engage them in communication to see and heighten their interest in the brand as well as learn their preferences. All this allows your business to move through a sales funnel successfully.

What Are Onboarding Emails?

Onboarding emails are the unofficial welcome parties you give to new subscribers and leads who are trying out your product or service in the hope that they become paying customers or remain with your brand.

Cultivating loyalty has never been more important than it is in today’s competitive marketplace. Nowadays, consumers are quick to change their behavior if they are not entirely satisfied. For example, about 21% of users switch to new apps after only one session of use. Onboarding emails are one way to help your newest subscribers feel welcomed and valued and increase the chance that they will stick around.

Businesses send onboarding emails to new users immediately after a subscription to a product or service. The emails provide guidance and educate the leads on product use.

Onboarding emails seek to:

• Welcome new users to your brand and product offering
• Make leads fall in love with your product or service
• Convert leads to customers
• Improve customer retention and loyalty
• Motivate the target audience to become your loyal subscribers and, anytime soon, customers.

The Role Welcome Emails Play in an Onboarding Email Series

The first email new users get as part of their onboarding emails is the welcome email. The welcome email sets the tone for the rest of the emails in your onboarding series. It is your chance to engage the new user, make an impression and encourage them to commit to engaging with the rest of the emails in the series.

Welcome Email Criteria

To improve the effectiveness of your onboarding email series, the welcome email should:

• Be sent immediately after a new user signs up for your product or service.
• Welcome new users to your brand/service. You can also do this with the subject line of the welcome email.
• Be personalized to the new user.
• Introduce your brand and products, including who you are, what you do, and why you do what you do.
• Set clear expectations on what the email series is about, frequency of communication, and next steps.

What to Write in Welcome Emails

Starting your onboarding email series off right is critical, and it all comes down to what you choose to write in your welcome email. Here are some ideas:

• Confirm the subscription and thank a person for choosing your brand.
• Tell how they can manage their email notifications.
• Give them a present for the subscription.
• Set expectations: share the information on what types of content they will get from your newsletters and how often you are going to send them.
• Ask subscribers to whitelist you.
• Introduce your brand and website.
• Introduce the person who will be sending your email newsletters if you have one.
• Reveal your competitive advantage.
• Share some works and client feedback.
• Answer all possible objections they might have.
• Invite them to follow your brand on social media.

What are Welcome Series Emails, and What is Their Goal?

Like onboarding emails, welcome series emails are sent to new subscribers immediately after they sign-up to be a part of your company’s email list. While you send onboarding emails to new users of your products or services, you send welcome series emails to new subscribers to nurture them into buying customers.

As a result, welcome series emails are also called nurture email series or nurture sequences because of their primary goal of converting leads into loyal paying customers. While different brands will structure their series of welcome emails differently, each series usually contains the following:

• The welcome: The first email that welcomes the subscriber, thanks them for signing up, and tells subscribers what to expect from future emails
• An invitation to connect with the brand: This is usually the second email in the series. It typically includes other ways to connect with you and how that benefits your subscribers.
• Request to learn more about the subscriber: This seeks to collect information about subscribers. Be transparent about the information you want to collect and how you plan to use it.
• The benefit: This explains the benefits of your products and how they solve your audience’s problems. The goal is to get your new subscriber to become a paying customer (if they have not made a purchase yet). This typically happens in the third or fourth email in the sequence.
• An offer with a sense of urgency: This email pushes your audience to take action.

Examples of Good Welcome Emails

Below are examples of onboarding welcome emails that we love.

1. Elementor Pro

This onboarding email urges new users who have signed up for the free version of Elementor to upgrade to pro. The email provides clear benefits that solve significant problems website designers face when creating new websites.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly users get this email after installing Grammarly’s desktop app. The welcome email thanks users for downloading the app and provides tips for getting the best out of the AI-powered editing app. The email then lists other apps users can add to their workflows to edit documents on the go or to improve their workflow.

3. Pitch

In this onboarding series, Pitch announces a new product feature and includes a clear link CTA for users to download the guide on how to switch successfully from other presentation apps and services.

Welcome Email Tips

As you welcome new subscribers and users to your brand, your welcome emails must make your subscribers feel valued. Consider the following as you put your welcome emails together:

• Tell your subscribers what to expect from you in future communications.
• Use clear and engaging subject lines, and make this personalized to increase open rates.
• Keep it short and straight to the point.
• Have you promised to give them something in return for signing up? Keep it.
• Include a gift to thank new subscribers for signing up.
• Request them to add you to their contacts to ensure your message gets delivered to their inboxes.
• Include a link or button to unsubscribe
• Automate your welcome emails so they are delivered right when your subscribers are waiting to hear from you.
• Tell a story – It can be about your brand and the ‘why’ behind it or how your product helped a customer solve a significant problem.
• Include a clear and strong CTA.
• Segment your audience and send relevant welcome emails to different segments of your list.
• Avoid overwhelming your new subscribers with multiple emails. Space out the emails in your welcome email series.
• Revisit your email series regularly for updates. We revisited our onboarding series at Benchmark Email after the launch of the Smart Content feature and included it in the onboarding series for new users.

How to Write Welcome Emails

Given that a great welcome email goes beyond the “thanks for being with us” stuff, your task here is to make subscribers feel excited about joining you. So, write a sincere, heartwarming, and personal email that will build a positive impression of your brand and tell people what’s in there for them. Here’s how to do that:

1. Craft a subject line

When crafting your welcome email subject line, answer two questions:

• What’s the goal of your welcome email?
• What action should subscribers take after reading it?

These two factors will help ensure your welcome email subject line is concise, intriguing, inviting, and actionable.

Tricks to use:

• Personalization; Add a recipient’s name to the subject line.
• “A question inside” trick. Add this phrase to the subject line if relevant.
• A surplus value. Mention what’s in there for subscribers: a gift, a discount, a bonus, etc.
• Add emojis if relevant to your brand voice and tone, but don’t overplay. Emojis make a subject line more personal and human.
• Avoid spam words, preventing your emails from landing in your user’s inboxes.

2. Keep Brevity In Mind

Your welcome email should be short and sweet. Consider 50-150 words, craft them into a catchy text with the most significant information at the beginning, and make sure it doesn’t sound pushy. It’s about welcoming, not selling. If you’re a Benchmark Email user and could use some help, make sure you tap into our Smart Content feature, which generates fresh content and does the heavy lifting for you.

3. Use Power Words

Each word of your email matters. It triggers emotions, inspires readers, and motivates them to follow you. Some words engage us, and others — drive us nuts! Use that linguistic power for your marketing benefit, and write the right words in emails.

Some rules of web writing to remember here:

• Stick to words everybody knows; avoid long words and sentences.
• Tell them what they get; don’t tell them about yourself. In other words, answer the “So what?” question.
• Read the text of your email aloud before sending it. Make sure it has a rhythm; edit accordingly.
• Use the most effective words to write in emails: you/your, now, because, new, thank you, guarantee, free, P.S., and limited.

4. Format it Like a Boss

Both plain text and HTML formats are okay as long as they work with your audience: the former looks more natural like it’s a friend sending the email, and the latter is more colorful and creative.

Thanks to the many email templates available, most marketers prefer crafting messages with colorful elements to make them visually appealing and help subscribers understand their brands better. Images and colors trigger emotions, help to process and remember information faster, and build a brand impression.

Did you ever wonder why so many brands had blue in their logos and email design?

It’s basic color psychology: blue is about trust, efficiency, and integrity; isn’t that what we want to communicate with a welcome email?

5. Add a Stellar CTA

Your welcome email won’t work if it’s a mere “thank you.” It stands to reason you need to add a CTA, but how can you be sure you’re using the right one?

First and foremost, follow the rule: one email = one CTA. Make it obvious what you want subscribers to do.

Second, make it concise and easy to find.

And third, make it a button rather than a link, even if using a plain text style for your welcome email. Or, at least make that link of a different color. The idea is that your CTA should draw the eye.

5 Secrets to Welcome Emails Optimization

To get the most out of welcome emails, work on their optimization. First and foremost, send them as soon as possible to confirm subscription and let people know you are with them. When giving you their email address, new subscribers are waiting for the feedback to take further action, so grab the moment.

Tip: Send the first welcome email within five minutes after subscription. People hate waiting too long. If you have a welcome email series, send the second email in a day and the third one two to three days later.

Also, use your brand identity in a welcome email. Choosing an email template design, consider colors and shifts that would help a user to visually identify your message with a website where he or she left an email address a few minutes ago.

Monitor your subscribers’ actions and respond accordingly. Consider segmentation to understand who opens your welcome emails and re-send them to those who don’t but with a different subject line. Also, it’s worth trying to send a follow-up to such subscribers. Chances are, your welcome email went to spam or failed to display right in a user’s inbox.

Optimize the subject line of your welcome email. It stands to reason that it’s aimed at thanking and welcoming a new subscriber to your community, but some options are still available to encourage clicking:

• Welcome to Benchmark! What’s next?
• Thanks for joining us! Here’s your 10% discount.
• Welcome to the Benchmark family! Donuts inside.

To avoid mug hunters using fake email addresses to subscribe and get discounts, consider a welcome email series where the first letter asks a person to confirm his email, and the second one comes with a promo for confirmed emails only.

Welcome Email Checklist

Long story short, here’s your checklist for writing stellar welcome emails that will engage subscribers, build their loyalty to your brand, and turn them into leads:

• A familiar sender. It may be a particular person or a brand name, but a user needs to understand from whom the email comes.
• Appealing but relevant subject line and preheader. Yes, avoiding a preheader is among the most common email marketing mistakes!
• Well-timed content: greetings, thanks for registration, introducing a brand, etc.
• Clearly mentioned benefits for subscribers, so you’re shaping the right expectations.
• Promo codes, bonuses, and discounts for subscribers.
• Call to action.
• Social media subscription buttons.
• A link or a button allowing users to unsubscribe from your newsletters.
• If sending a welcome email series, make sure it’s consistent and meaningful.

Welcome emails set the tone for future communications and how subscribers interact with your brand. Take advantage of the window of opportunity that welcome emails provide to sway new users and subscribers to your side! With a strong welcome email series, you can make new subscribers into loyal customers faster.