Need a way to welcome a new email subscriber to your brand? Does your brand have a “learning curve” the user will need to understand in order to interact with your products more effectively? Want to improve your customer relations and brand image? Perhaps it’s time to add an email welcome series into your communications stream and customer on-boarding process.
An email welcome series is a great way to initially engage users with a brand. It not only confirms that users have subscribed to your email list––it also thanks them for their interest and reiterates the benefits they’ll receive from being “in the club.” Content within this type of email should be short and concise, with a main call to action enabling subscribers to start “using” the brand, whether that is shopping, reading or interacting on the main website in some specific way.
For larger brands with a vast selection of products and services, a series of emails would be more appropriate. This series could last over the course of a couple of weeks and be set to deploy at a weekly cadence. Each email within the series can be held to one or two topics and be presented in more of a postcard format.
To manage users’ expectations, content and creative elements can be used that call out what the topic of the next email in the series will be. The email can also give the user the option of “going back in time” by allowing them to click back to see the previous email in the series. This feature can easily be done by linking to the hosted version of the email that resides out on the Internet, instead of the user’s inbox.
A great example of a successful email welcome series is the one from Carnival Cruise Lines. Once I schedule a cruise with the company, I receive an email thanking me for my purchase and welcoming me to the email program. Over the course of the next ten emails, I’m given information ranging from what to wear on the ship, to specific ports-of-call at which I’ll be stopping. There’s also an email after my trip concludes, providing a link to a survey that enables me to provide feedback about my trip. The creative reflects the brand, and it even has a checklist that allows me to see which emails and topics I’ve already received, as well as upcoming ones in the series.
It’s important to note that welcome series are delivered to the user’s inbox alongside emails from the regular marketing stream, so it’s important to keep their messages short and meaningful.
Historically, welcome emails have great performance metrics, which benchmark at upwards of 90% open and click rates. This makes them the highest-performing email format and incredibly useful in starting a digital dialogue with the user.
Contact lkaniper@danacommunications.com, and we’ll roll out the red carpet for you with more great tips for creating welcome emails.
