When someone signs up to receive your promotional emails, it marks the start of what is hopefully a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Start it off right by sending the most effective welcome email possible.

Here are nine best practices to follow:

1. Send welcomes immediately.

The days of batched welcome email sends are long, long gone. Today, welcome emails are like order confirmation emails in that consumers assume either they did something wrong or your systems don’t work if they don’t get one immediately after they sign up. Don’t disappoint or confuse them. Trigger yours immediately.

The only exception to this rule is when that signup is paired with a product activation period, account setup time, or some other process. If this delay is only minutes long, then waiting to send a welcome may make the most sense. That way, when they get the welcome they’re able to take action. However, if the delay is, say, 15 minutes or longer, then immediately sending a brief email confirming the signup and then following with a proper welcome when the process is complete may make more sense.

Related checklist: 110+ Automated Campaign Ideas

2. Use a marketing-appropriate sender name.

In some cases, welcome emails feel like they were sent by the legal department because they use sender names like “BrandName Inc.” or “BrandName Corp.” when their subsequent emails don’t use those stuffy, meaningless additions. Sender names like “BrandName Account,” “BrandName Account Services,” and “BrandName Account Member Services” also don’t add much and feel cold.

That’s not to say that there aren’t opportunities to extend your sender name with purpose. In the case of welcome emails, we recommend testing “BrandName Welcome,” “BrandName – Welcome,” or “BrandName | Welcome.” It’s descriptive and concise, but also friendly.

Related post: Email from Name Extension Strategies that Differentiate Your Messages

3. Use a high-value call-to-action.

Your welcome email is among the most anticipated emails you’ll ever send. Don’t waste this golden opportunity by simply confirming for the recipient they signed up successfully. You can and should do so much more than that.

Ask them to do something that will generate a lot of value. Not sure what that is? Examine the behaviors of your best, most loyal customers, then try to encourage those same behaviors or prerequisite steps toward those behaviors.

There are six principle messaging strategies for welcome email calls-to-action:

  1. Promotion. The welcome tries to drive a purchase through incentives or product promotions, since getting a purchase—especially the first purchase—is a major predictor of getting future purchases, especially for retail and ecommerce brands.
  2. Profiling. The welcome tries to gather more information about the new subscriber so that the company can serve them more relevant messaging going forward. While analytics are great for the long-term understanding of a customer, profiling efforts are superior in the short-term when you don’t have much, if any, customer behavior data to leverage.
  3. Education. The welcome tries to deepen brand affinity and loyalty by educating the new subscriber about your brand’s history, products, services, values, and social causes. Today’s consumers—especially Millennials and Generation Z—want to feel good about the companies they buy from, so this approach can pay dividends long-term.
  4. How to. The welcome explains how your service works or provides a quick start guide to encourage conversions.
  5. Expansion. The welcome tries to connect with the new subscriber through additional channels by promoting their mobile app, SMS messages, social channels, direct mail catalog, and other channels. The more channels that a customer uses to engage with your brand, the more valuable that customer tends to be. The welcome may also ask the subscriber to deepen their relationship via email, asking them to opt up into additional mailstreams.
  6. Evangelism. The welcome tries to get the new subscriber to refer their friends or colleagues. Often this is incentivized by offering a discount to the referrer for each referee that makes a purchase or takes some other desired action.

Those last two messaging strategies tend to do best when they’re part of the tailend of a welcome series (which we’ll talk about in a minute), rather than part of that initial welcome. This gives new subscribers time to experience your email program for a while before you’re asking them to opt into additional channels or spread the word to their friends and family members.

Related post: Optimizing Email Marketing Calls-to-Action: A 4-Point Plan

4. Keep your copy and design focused.

While some welcome emails don’t ask new subscribers to do anything, others ask too much. When welcomes are packed with CTA after CTA after CTA, the path forward gets muddied. The subscriber pays less attention and is less likely to engage, particularly with CTAs that are farther toward the bottom of your welcome.

If you suspect that you’re packing too much into your welcome email …

5. Use a welcome email series.

The perfect remedy for an overactive welcome email is turning it into a welcome series, which is a strategy that roughly half of B2C have adopted. By having each email focus on a theme, your messages have more focus and your subscribers have an easier time understanding it at a glance.

Here are some of the themes we’ve seen used in welcome campaigns (along with the messaging strategy it falls under):

  • Make your first purchase using this special discount (Promotion)
  • Learn about what makes our company, products, and services special (Education)
  • Learn about our in-store, concierge, private shopper, and other services (Education)
  • Learn about our most popular features (Education/How to)
  • Learn how to import your data, set up your account, etc. (How to)
  • Tell us more about your preferences, interests, etc. (Profiling)
  • Join our loyalty program (Profiling/Promotion)
  • Apply for our private label credit card (Profiling/Promotion)
  • Sign up for emails from additional departments or on other topics (Expansion)
  • Sign up for emails from our sister brands (Expansion)
  • Download our mobile app (Expansion)
  • Connect with us on social media (Expansion)
  • Refer a friend (Evangelism)

As you’re constructing your welcome series, consider how each topic builds on the last. If you’re unsure of what the most logical order is, test it. In addition to the number of emails to have in your welcome series, other issues to consider and test include: 

  • Whether to send your welcome emails sequentially, suppressing your broadcast and seasonal promotional emails until the full series has been sent, or whether to send them periodically over the course of weeks, with new subscribers receiving your promotional emails in between your welcomes
  • Whether to suppress or skip certain emails in your welcome series based on the actions that subscriber has taken (such as suppressing a first-time buyer incentive email to new subscribers who have already made a purchase), the acquisition source of the subscriber (more on that next), or other factors
  • Whether to add a final welcome series email that’s acts like a confirmed opt-in request that’s only sent to never-actives, which are those subscribers who haven’t responded to any of your emails since signing up

Whether you’re sending a series of welcomes or a solo welcome, you should also decide whether to…

6. Send different welcomes based on acquisition source.

Once you start thinking about different potential welcome themes, you may realize that not all of your new subscribers need to hear all of those themes. That’s likely true, because every new subscriber is bringing different experiences with your brand into the email relationship.

For example, a new subscriber who signed up during checkout via your mobile app doesn’t need a welcome message asking them to download your mobile app. However, someone signing up during an online or in-store checkout would likely benefit from that message.

Similarly, a customer who opts in during checkout should be messaged differently than a non-customer who opts in on your homepage. The latter needs a lot more education about your brand, and is also a much better candidate for a welcome incentive as well.

Related checklist: 18 Audience Acquisition Source Ideas

7.  Craft user-friendly welcomes.

Design-wise, your welcome emails should be as user-friendly as possible, because if they’re not, then new subscribers will assume your subsequent emails won’t be either. That means creating welcomes that are:

  • Responsive, so that they render well on both small phone screens and large desktop monitors
  • Dark mode-optimized, so they render well in both light mode and dark mode
  • Accessible and inclusive, so that people with a range of abilities can engage with your messaging

If you’ve recently invested in better usability for your promotional emails, make sure you’ve extended those same improvements to your automated campaigns, most especially your welcomes.

Related checklist: 30+ Accessibility & Inclusive Design Ideas

8. QA and optimize your welcomes often.

Along with other triggered emails, welcomes have an unfortunate reputation as being “set it and forget it” programs. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Unlike one-time sends, your triggered programs are living and breathing programs, which means that they need ongoing care and nurturing. Unfortunately, most brands don’t provide that.

In terms of quality assurance, triggered and transactional campaigns often go at least a few quarters before they’re re-tested to ensure they’re functioning and rendering as intended across email clients. That means a rendering issue caused by an update at an inbox provider or a broken link caused by a change on your website could affect your subscribers for months before it’s caught. That’s devastating for any triggered campaign, but particularly so for a welcome email when you’re trying to make a good first impression.

And in terms of optimization, brands are far less likely to A/B test welcomes and other automated campaigns than they are to A/B test their promotional campaigns. That’s a missed opportunity because automated campaigns generate much higher performance, so every bit of incremental improvement you achieve through testing generates a higher return than you’d get with the same improvement to a promotional email.

Related post: A/B Testing Pitfalls: How Marketers Can Avoid Costly Mistakes

One way to help ensure that you’re regularly QAing and A/B testing is to…

9. Seasonally update your welcomes.

Whether you’re a nonprofit trying to drive end-of-year donations during December, a travel company trying to drive warm-weather destinations in January, or a retailer trying to drive back-to-school shopping in July and August, adding or updating welcome content should be a part of any broader seasonal automated campaign strategy.

For your welcome, consider adding:

  • Seasonal imagery, such as hearts for Valentine’s Day if you’re a jewelry or gifts retailer
  • Seasonal navigation bar links, such as a “Gifts” or “Holiday” link to the nav bar during the holiday season
  • Seasonal messaging, such as promoting your annual user conference if you’re a B2B brand

Related post: Making Seasonal Adjustments to Automated Campaigns to Boost Results

Follow those nine best practices and you’ll find that your new subscribers are more engaged early in the subscriber lifecycle and doing more of the activities that will make them better customers long-term.

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Need help with your welcome campaigns? Oracle Digital Experience Agency has hundreds of marketing and communication experts ready to help Responsys, Eloqua, Unity, and other Oracle customers create stronger connections with their customers and employees—even if they’re not using an Oracle platform as the foundation of that experience. With an NPS of 66, our clients are thrilled with the award-winning work our creative, strategy, and other specialists do for them.

For help overcoming your challenges or seizing your opportunities, talk to your Oracle account manager, visit us online, or email us at OracleAgency_US@Oracle.com.

Now updated, this blog post was originally published on Nov. 17, 2020 by Chad S. White, with contributions from Amy McNeil, Clint Kaiser, Brooke Dahmer, Marisa Crawford, Chris Wilson, and Katie Baril.