Welcome emails are among the most essential communications you’ll ever ship to your recipients. After all, your welcome email is probably going their first impression of your model of their inbox. So you’ve gotten to make it rely!
Your excellent welcome email ought to do 3 issues:
- Remind email subscribers why they joined (and thank them!)
- Invite engagement (by way of an unique supply or different name to motion)
- Set the tone for future email communications
In quick, your welcome email is your probability to win your subscribers’ loyalty—don’t waste your probability to make a great first impression. If you need them to go from a primary buy to a lifetime buyer, you want to get this proper.
Before we get into our favourite welcome email examples, let’s take a step again and get on the identical web page about what’s an email instance. Here’s what we’ll cowl on this article:
- What a welcome email is
- What among the finest welcome emails examples appear to be
- How to write welcome emails
- When to ship welcome emails
What is a welcome email?
A welcome email is an alternative to introduce your model, invite customers to interact with you additional, and share ideas and steering on how to achieve success utilizing your product. You need them to be armed with the know-how they want to get pleasure from your services and products.
You can add new customers to your email sequence with a sign-up type, product touchdown web page, or compelling lead magnet.
But don’t confuse this with a affirmation email. A affirmation email confirms subscription to your email and ensures (in your finish of issues) that you just ship emails to recipients who’ve opted in. Though each emails are essential, they serve completely different functions.
As Aristotle stated, there are 3 modes of persuasion that attraction to human logic, credibility, and emotion. When finished proper, welcome emails can attraction to your clients’ logos, pathos, and ethos:
- Logos (logic/reasoning): Ease any onboarding issues or friction and encourage customers to proceed utilizing your product/service.
- Tip: Link to a FAQ or an onboarding course of video.
- Pathos (credibility/belief): Introduce your product/service, reinforce your model, set up credibility, and let subscribers know their inbox is protected with you.
- Tip: Include a buyer quote, add well-known buyer logos, and use sturdy branding.
- Ethos (emotion): Thank your subscriber for signing up and remind them they’re valued—depart them with a heat, fuzzy feeling.
- Tip: Show gratitude (and persona!) and invite your subscribers to interact along with your neighborhood by linking to your social channels.
11 finest welcome email examples
Let’s check out some welcome emails and onboarding welcome emails that hit all the correct notes in encouraging subscribers and incomes their belief.
1. Headspace
Headspace, the meditation app, excels in any respect 3 of the “musts” for an ideal welcome email shared above. First, the tone of the email is congratulatory and welcoming, the design is heat and minimalist, and completely mimics its web site, and the content material is brief and candy.
Plus, this email clearly solutions new clients’ (or potential clients’) questions earlier than they ask them. Use your welcome messages to scale back sign-up nervousness and construct belief in your customers by following Headspace’s lead and giving your customers simple directions.
Finally, Headspace engages subscribers by using a welcome onboarding sequence. The day after I obtained their welcome email and engaged with their app, I obtained a triggered second email that adopted up on the motion I took the day earlier than. I felt instantly supported by the eye to my engagement, and it made me need to get proper again into the app.
If you’re excited about making a welcome email sequence, join entry to Twilio SendGrid’s email automation instrument for a easy, efficient tutorial to attain your new subscribers.
2. Nextdoor
Nextdoor takes a simple, instructive however efficient method to its welcome email that will get its recipients straight into the service by outlining 3 simple methods to get began in its app. Limited scroll works in its favor right here, so regardless that it has 3 calls to motion (CTAs), customers don’t really feel too overwhelmed by their decisions.
The neighborhood hub can also be sensible not to muddy its message with too many pictures. For instance, Nextdoor makes use of concise textual content and retains its tone welcoming.
Pro tip: Images aren’t all the time the reply. If you’ve gotten unbelievable copy, don’t distract from it with pointless pictures. An image could be price 1,000 phrases, however the correct phrases can take the place of an pointless image.
3. Asana
Asana, the project management tool, does 2 neat issues with its welcome email. The first is the eye-catching GIF that demonstrates finishing duties in its product. Incorporating GIFs in your emails is a good way to assist recipients visualize your merchandise.
The second is that the email seems like an extension of the instrument. With 3 fast descriptions of how you should use Asana and a single large purple Get began CTA, the email reassures new customers that the product is as simple to use because the email is to learn. It additionally gives useful sources for somebody model new to the product.
Pro tip: Maintaining model requirements throughout your email expertise helps enhance loyalty and model affinity.
4. Anthropologie
Anthropologie’s buyer factors plan, Anthro Perks, cleverly lays out precisely what recipients ought to count on from this program, reminding them why they signed up. Free delivery, early entry, and birthday reductions? Yes, please!
While the primary CTAs are towards the underside, the entire email is clickable. For instance, in the event you’re excited about viewing new arrivals, you may click on that part of the email, which takes you to the Just in part of the web site. This prevents you from shedding recipients after they aren’t excited about studying your entire email.
Pro tip: Link the pictures in your email to make it simpler for recipients to click on by way of to your web site.
5. Wayfair
Wayfair’s email, just like the one for Anthropologie above, alternates the textual content and pictures from the left to proper columns. This creates visible curiosity as your eye scans the email, bouncing forwards and backwards.
Plus, the completely different pictures of the merchandise assist you to visualize all that’s potential by buying with Wayfair, reminding you of its choices and welcoming you to regularly interact with this welcome email.
Pro tip: Create visible curiosity in your emails with well-designed templates—take a look at these free templates.
6. Sephora
Sephora’s welcome email will get full marks for hitting all 3 welcome necessities.
The email opens with the greeting, “It’s nice to meet you,” and reminds you that you just signed up to obtain particular gives, data about new arrivals, and a lot extra. With the attractive CTA of a free birthday present, you interact additional with the email. And the following part highlights what these glamorous choices embrace and whenever you’ll obtain them.
7. REI
REI checks all of the packing containers of an ideal welcome email and goes a step additional by letting recipients customise their email preferences from the get-go. Take a web page from them and embrace a choice middle as a part of your email subscription to attain your recipients as typically as they need to hear from you.
Pro tip: You can create email choice facilities for email frequency, content material, or a mix of each. Learn concerning the various kinds of choice facilities and resolve what’s finest in your email program.
8. Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House jumps proper in by offering instant worth—within the type of superior ebook suggestions.
By giving recipients numerous books to select from, Penguin Random House learns what their pursuits are from their click on historical past. Not to point out, it has an intriguing topic line, “You’re gonna need a bigger bookshelf”—it’s encouraging and humorous.
9. Medium
Medium, an internet publishing platform, takes a hybrid method by itemizing the advantages of subscribing to its platform and offering articles on the backside of the welcome email for subscribers to begin exploring.
If there isn’t a lot concerned in organising an account or utilizing the app, then it might be a great transfer to begin offering your email content material in your welcome email. This offers recipients a style of the kind of materials they’ll obtain as a part of their subscription, and it’s a good way to gather information from new customers.
Pro tip: Don’t bury the lead of your welcome email with an excessive amount of exposition. Jump proper in and supply worth.
10. Havenly
Havenly’s method of together with a direct, private letter from the CEO as the primary content material of its message is high notch. There’s no higher approach to give perception into your model than by listening to straight from the one who created it.
Pro tip: Get your subscribers invested by sharing a little bit of your model’s historical past. If they know the place you come from, they’ll be extra probably to keep on the journey with you.
11. Knockaround
Knockaround, the sunglass model, gives an incentive for signing up for its welcome email—a 15% low cost.
This email additionally shares slightly backstory concerning the model, explaining the place the title Knockaround originated and extra. While you learn, the brightly coloured pictures get you into the sunny state of mind, setting the supposed temper for this email.
As the primary email to your recipients, the welcome email is a good place to set the stage in your model with design, tone, and slightly story about your organization.
How to write welcome emails
These are the email finest practices to take into account when sending welcome emails:
- Stay on model: Keep your welcome emails on model and a direct reflection of your web site.
- Show enthusiasm: Be inviting and inspiring along with your recipients by letting them know you’re blissful to be of their inbox—go forward and even throw in a smiling emoji (or 2).
- Keep it quick and candy: Limit your scroll and get to the purpose rapidly. So share worth quick and stick to a single CTA when potential.
- Share some historical past: Get your subscribers invested by sharing a little bit of your model’s story. When you construct a connection early, you retain them coming again and create model advocacy.
- Limit your graphics: Know that pictures aren’t all the time the reply. If your copy is robust, don’t distract from it with pointless pictures that harm the welcome email design.
- Get to the purpose: Don’t bury the lead of your welcome email with an excessive amount of exposition. Jump proper in and supply the worth proposition within the type of high-quality info or reductions.
- Use social proof: Don’t be afraid to showcase some testimonials early on—simply ensure you don’t go overboard with it.
- Provide a transparent CTA: Tell your customers precisely what to do and set expectations from the get-go—don’t preserve them guessing. By utilizing a transparent and apparent CTA button, you guarantee they don’t miss something.
- Automate your email advertising marketing campaign: Set up your welcome emails to ship robotically based mostly on segmentation standards. If you’re excited about studying how to ship automated welcome emails with Twilio SendGrid, head over to our email advertising automation deep-dive web page.
When to ship welcome emails (and what number of to ship)
We know that on the time of subscription, a consumer’s curiosity in your model is at one of many highest factors of their life cycle—we name this the “honeymoon” section.
During the honeymoon, it’s essential to nail your first impression. But what occurs when, for no matter motive, they don’t work together with that welcome message? After all, email addresses that don’t interact with a welcome message shouldn’t simply get added to the common pool of recipients. Instead, entrepreneurs ought to check and construct a staggered, structured welcome sequence technique.
Send your welcome email instantly after sign-up, or if it’s an email sequence, ship them over the following few days and weeks. On the opposite hand, in the event you’re sending a sequence of emails, we advocate digging into your information (engagement charges, open charges, unsubscribes, and so forth.). This will assist you to decide when customers start to churn or stay inactive so as to plan your sequence round these occasions.
Like most promotional email optimization, testing (particularly A/B testing) is paramount to a profitable welcome email sequence. It requires testing issues like:
- Different day intervals for subsequent messages
- Sending time of day
- Promotional gives and incentives
- Number of messages in a sequence
How many welcome emails to ship
In our expertise, any greater than 3 welcome emails might be overwhelming for a brand new subscriber and will trigger them to unsubscribe out of your email record or mark it as spam. That’s why we strongly recommend senders take away any addresses that bounce the primary welcome message again. Not being hypervigilant about these bounces dangers hitting various kinds of spam traps and deny lists and low common open charges. Not to point out, a excessive bounce charge will also be detrimental to your IP and area popularity.
To enhance the probability of customers partaking with the sequence, testing methodologies are instrumental. Some parts you possibly can check embrace:
- Different welcome email topic traces to discover what compels your new subscribers to open the email
- Varying content material advertising items that make them need to click on by way of to your website
Conversion charges are additionally probably to enhance throughout this honeymoon section. So to assist enhance click on charges and click-through charges, and encourage conversion with these messages, firms have a tendency to introduce a promotional supply on the second message that will increase barely for the third and closing email—to a lot success. This might be a coupon, low cost code, or different first-time incentives.
Provide the correct worth proposition
For nonretail or ecommerce senders, alternate options to gives might be articulating completely different worth propositions of the content material. Use this as a follow-up alternative to spotlight completely different options or info and the advantages you present customers. This waterfall strategy of reaching out to your clients not solely helps encourage the preliminary interplay along with your model but additionally helps you perceive their habits as a subscriber.
The level right here is that you could be even have just a few probabilities to make a great first impression with new subscribers:
- If you need to make your first message a great one, do it with a thanks for subscribing and a price proposition for what the consumer can count on as a recipient of your mail.
- If they don’t work together with that first message, you may up the ante by offering one other perspective of why they might need your mail transferring ahead—maybe with an introductory supply.
- If the consumer nonetheless doesn’t take motion, you may attempt one final time to compel engagement, whether or not which means offering an elevated supply or one final effort at speaking worth.
Launch your welcome email marketing campaign with Twilio SendGrid
Ready to get began? Sign up for a free Twilio SendGrid account and get your arms soiled with our automation instrument—it’ll offer you every part you want to arrange a brand new email sequence. We even have loads of free welcome email templates you should use.
Equally essential, have enjoyable along with your welcome emails! When you place your finest foot ahead and check new ideas, you’ll preserve your new subscribers engaged and .
If you’re excited about studying how to pull your welcome email into your bigger email advertising technique, take a look at our Email Marketing Best Practices Guide.