Have you ever signed up for a newsletter or online service and received a really well-written welcome email? Welcome emails have the ability to enhance a reader’s experience and encourage them to look more favorably upon your company. Personally, receiving a thoughtful, personalized welcome email makes me feel like the particular brand values me as a customer. This in turn makes me far more likely to stick with them and become a loyal customer and brand advocate.
A successful welcome email helps encourage new subscribers to open and read the emails that you send — and isn’t that the point of an email marketing campaign?
Set the Stage
Welcome emails have the ability to turn leads into customers, so don’t neglect them! Research shows that welcome emails can generate as much as three times the revenue per email than regular promotional emails. This proves that welcome emails offer a great bang for your buck, and should not be forgotten about.
Welcome emails shouldn’t only provide some background on your brand, but they should also set the stage for future transactions. Why should they invest in your brand and services? What kind of value do you have to offer, and what problem does it solve? A welcome email shouldn’t sound like an advertisement, but it should still contain relevant information about your company. This will be what helps your readers to determine whether or not they’re going to become a paying customer.
Don’t Hoard the Content
Many marketers use promises of extra content to convince users to subscribe to their emails. This can be an effective strategy, particularly if you’re offering something informational and straightforward, like an eBook or a template. Many readers will judge the quality of your service based on the kind of content you offer, how useful that content is and how quickly they can gain access to it.
Don’t promise access to an eBook and then make users wait 12 hours before they receive the content. Use the welcome email to immediately grant the user access to the content they’re after while simultaneously offering a little more information about your brand and services. This helps build trust in the reader and serves to help establish you as an authority in their mind.
Individuals who see you as an authority are more likely to use your service and recommend your brand to others. Remember, a welcome email can comprise just 5% of your email volume while delivering 20% of your email marketing revenue. With those kinds of numbers, it’s clear that your welcome email is a chance to impress your users with your content and your services — take advantage of this!
Offer an Easy Path to Purchase
Since welcome emails have such a high open rate and can create great revenue for your campaign, it’s important to utilize them to their fullest. This doesn’t necessarily mean going on a long, drawn-out tangent, but rather that the available information is clear and easy to follow. This is especially important when talking about anything like a call to action (CTA) or a landing page that ushers the reader through the purchase process. You don’t want anything to frustrate the reader while they’re trying to spend their money for your services or products!
Offer a clear CTA in your welcome email, and ensure that the linked page is clear and concise. Give clear direction and any necessary information the reader will need to complete their purchase. This means linking them to a specific landing page rather than a blog or the front page of the website, assuming that you’re attempting to sell something and not launching a campaign to raise awareness.
Overall, welcome emails are probably the most important kind of email that you can send in an email marketing campaign. They help new users familiarize themselves with your brand and trust the quality of your services. Don’t opt out of sending an email that has the potential to generate almost a quarter of your overall email marketing campaign revenue!
Follow the tips above and craft an effective welcome email that will help turn your leads into paying customers.
