In email marketing, first impressions matter.
Your first welcome (aka pre-purchase) email sets the tone for your whole email relationship and can impact whether your subscribers will open and click on future emails – so it’s important to get it right.
Discover our welcome series email examples and what we like about them to learn how to create your first welcome email or optimize your existing welcome series!
Welcome Emails: What Are the Rules?
Welcome emails are the perfect occasion to spread your brand by engaging with new subscribers.
They just joined your newsletter, they are at the pick of their interest, so they are more likely to open your email and appreciate your efforts to establish a connexion.
It is also the perfect opportunity to let them know you have some new products, promotions, or ask to respond to a survey or any other request.
But welcome emails will only be effective if you do it right and include all the basic elements:
- A catchy and welcoming subject line
- A “Thank you” note, because you are grateful
- Good content: a short description of your brand, your intentions, values, goals, etc.
- A call to action: suggest products, ask to fill a questionnaire, subscribe to your company’s social media, etc.
- A good email design: with images, graphs, colors of your brand, etc.
- A logo of your brand
- Social proof: reviews of previous clients or examples of successful work to convince the subscriber that he can trust you
- An unsubscribe link (this is a requirement under CAN-SPAM).
How Many Emails Should a Welcome Series Be Made of?
The amount of emails you need to send in the context of your welcome series really depends on:
- Your email marketing strategy
- Your brand/company
- Your targeted subscribers.
Some companies prefer to stop after only one welcome email containing all the elements we previously listed. Others will divide the information into multiple emails.
Experts advise creating a welcome series of 4-6 emails at least to maximize the benefits of the high click-through rates of welcome emails without spamming the newly subscribed person.
An example of a successful welcome series:
- First email: You welcome the new subscriber and thank him
- Second email: You explain who you are, how your company and team work. It makes the exchange more human and helps to connect and build trust
- Third email: You tell the subscriber what he can expect from your company. That means your services, your quality, your values, etc.
- Fourth email: You tell the subscriber what you need from him. For example his trust, his honest opinion, etc.
- Fifth email: You ask for a review on Google reviews or directly on your website
- Sixth email: You ask for feedback, as a way to improve your work.
This is of course only one type of welcome series email example. Some people skip the third and fourth email, but usually, the first, second, fifth, and sixth email types are quite popular.
Also, you can mix it up and include different pieces of information thoughtful your welcome series. It’s up to you!
You can also choose to include all (or almost all) these elements in one single email.
Welcome Series: Choose the Right Email Template
Now that you have an idea of the number of emails you would like to include in your welcome series, you should find your perfect welcome series email template.
The reason behind this is that you want a harmonious welcome series, with a similar style and design to show unicity and build a visual association to your brand.
To achieve this effect and make your welcome series campaign truly professional, you have two options:
- Download an online welcome series email template and fill your information in it
- Consult email marketing experts that will design your customized email template that you will be able to re-use every time you set up an automated welcome series.
Whatever you choose, you should keep in mind what a great welcome series email template is. Here are our selected examples to inspire you and help you to set up your own email marketing strategy.
Welcome Series: Email Examples
Welcome email example 1: Glossier
This is a great example of a successful welcome email. What we like about it:
- It’s really colorful, visually attractive, and pleasing to the eye
- There are a lot of faces, of women, which means the email is more human. We have a sense of community here, which also serves as social proof of the brand’s success and quality
- The images correlate with the textual content. The email talks about how the brand creates products inspired by people and simultaneously shows a variety of women enjoying the products
- There is an invitation to come to the physical showroom, but also to contact the team, which makes the email even more welcoming
- There are calls to action: link to Glossier’s Instagram account, “show me more”, “learn more”, “meet them”, etc.
- The email introduces popular products
- The email mentions free returns and exchanges: this builds trust and cancels future post-purchase anxiety
- The last call to action is very appealing: “Fun stuff. And it’s free! Take me there >”. Such a strategy is very likely to increase click-through rates.
Welcome email example 2: KonMari
What we like about it:
- The email design suits well the brand image and goals. It is very minimalistic and clean, which is perfect for a company that offers consulting services for people who want to learn the magic of tidying up
- The thank-you note is a personal message from the creator of the company, and it’s signed. It also presents the company’s concept and goals
- There is a picture of the company’s creator, which makes the email even more personal and welcoming
- There are three calls to action: “read our blog”, “watch our videos”, and an invitation to follow the Instagram account.
Welcome email example 3: Chipotle
What we like about it:
- The first sentence is very catchy and original: “Finally. Some one-on-one time”. Truly creative
- The design is simple but uses one of the logo’s colors: brown. This makes the template easy to associate with the brand
- There is only one image but it stands out. First, it takes a lot of space. Second, it’s very fun and straightforward: simply a burrito, in its aluminum packaging. No yummy looking menu, just a ready-to-go burrito, which suits well the straight-forward slogan
- The textual message says thank you to the subscriber and tells him what he can expect from the company
- There is one call to action: “sign up to our city’s list”
- Everything a customer may want to access is linked in the email footer : the menu, the address, where to order, social media.
Discover Other Welcome Series Email Examples
If you want to learn more about the art of setting up a successful welcome email series, you can watch our YouTube video on the subject.
In this video, we walk you through four more welcome emails, share what brands did right, but also what they could improve, so you can use those examples as well to create your own perfect welcome email series.
- Would you like to have the perfect welcome sequence? Stay tuned. Hi, this is Andriy, the founder of Flowium Email Marketing Agency, as well as this YouTube channel. In today's video, I would like to show you the framework for perfect welcome sequence, welcome flow, welcome automations for your online store and show you few examples from different brands and how they do it. Also, I highly recommend to check out our podcast episode number seven, where Alissa and Vira, our podcast host, talk about pre-purchase, also known as a welcome flow and they go into depth. This video's short and with a visual example, but to support all my statements, I highly recommend to check out that podcast episode. Also, the two previous videos on our YouTube channel, like last Thursday and previous Thursday, we posted about the elements of the perfect email template, as well as the welcome email, the first welcome email. I highly recommend to check those videos as well. So, let's start. Here's a perfect sequence for welcome email. So it's basically, welcome email, then social proof about the product team, referral program, if you have any, and any other information you need to include to educate your subscriber, not your customers, your subscriber, first. Now, we will go into details and I'll show you and give you examples and explain you how each thing works. As I said before, I highly recommend to check the welcome email from the last video, I went into depth explaining a Challas welcome email and how they're doing great job, but here's another great example from Huckberry brand. It's perfectly email, there's few things that I would personally remove, like, Shop Now, I would remove. I like this statement, I like what they talking about, like their story. And if you scroll down, this is about the product. I would not include it here, but this is them. So, they know about their products, but I like thing a lot. I just want to point out this, about Our Mission, Our Story, as you can see, their compelling Call to Action, if you want to learn more about them. So, this is welcome email, the first email customer should receive when they subscribe. So basically, it has to be either a story of your company or your mission, or why you created the brand and so forth. I strongly suggest to check out last week's video and you will understand where I went into greater detail to explain the welcome email. Okay, so next, social proof. So, social proof, so here's Olive & June brand and they doing a great job with the social proof. Here's the idea, in the first email, you talks about yourself like, hey, I created this brand because X, Y, and Z, then you said, this is my purpose, this is my mission, this is such things about my company. However, the social proof now is what people are talking about you, your company or your product. So in this example, as you can see Olive & June, they sell nail polish. Basically they showing like, what's the progress, what's going on with their nails in seven days, as well as you can see, this is some kind of Instagram story' snapshot. So, this gives you understanding that like, real people are using this product. And like on the back of your mind, like, I can trust this brand. So, this is an example and we do recommend to put social proof as a second email. In third email, either you have many products or only one. We strongly recommend to dedicate that email to one product or few products, but special things about your products. For example, let's go back to Huckberry as they have it here. They talk about their product and what's so special about it. Another example is Away, a travel company, they sell luggage, travel luggage. And this is their welcome email. However, I like their part where they explain what's so special about their product and I would personally include that in the email number three and go into a greater details, explaining the benefits of their product and so forth. So, this is email number three. Also, either email number four, you can do about your team, if you have a team. Andie swims, I like what they did here. So, they combine their team, meet the Fit experts, with the products. This is perfect and this is genius, it's why they are successful. You can see a specializing in favorite Andie and so forth. So I like this email a lot, and I highly recommend and encourage you to do something similar. If you don't have a team, you can scrub this email, but at least do something about your product. What's so special about it, maybe you have a video of how it's created on a factory, or maybe there are small things which you might think it's not important, but it's very interesting. And those backstage videos, pictures are great and engaging, so I highly recommend to put it in the email number three. So email number four are, if you have referral program, if you have loyalty program, or if you have any other program or maybe you have a mobile app, or maybe you have a Facebook group. So the idea, like starting from email number four and five, you want to take your customer or potential customer, the subscriber by the hand and walk through your store and explain them like, hey, here we have one thing, here we have this kind of program, this is where we have something else special. So basically, just imagine in the physical store, you have somebody by your side and you explaining, and then walking through and explaining, in this aisle, we have this thing, in this aisle, we have that thing. So, same thing as the welcome series, welcome sequence, you just need to follow that logic. So, I gave you example of three emails. Welcome, social proof, as well about the product and the team. Other emails, you can Google it, there's a bunch of emails, especially really good emails, they have a lot of examples, but the concept, it's very simple. Again, just imagine having your customers next to you and you tell them step by step about your store and try to simplify your emails. Do not include a lot of information in one email. It's better to break it down into separate emails and send them more emails, but shorter, versus one email and longer. In case you have any additional questions, please leave them below. I check them on daily basis. And if you are new on this channel, please click Subscribe. Thank you, see you next week.
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