What is a welcome email?#
The first message that goes to somebody who has joined your list, bought something, or been handed to you by a form. Its job is to confirm three things in the reader's head: they are on the right list, they know what happens next, and the person who runs it is a human.
That is why it works and why nothing else in the year works as well. The reader raised their hand minutes ago. Every later email has to re-earn the attention this one is handed.
When should a welcome email be sent?#
Within minutes, on the day, and without you thinking about it. A welcome that arrives the next morning still reads as an answer; one that arrives on Tuesday for a signup on Friday reads as a broadcast that happened to include them.
The exception is a double-confirmed list, where the first email is a one-click confirm and the welcome comes after the click. Then the confirm is the thing that must be instant, because it is the one holding the whole relationship together. How double opt-in works and when to use it is on its own page.
What do you put in a welcome email?#
- Their name in the first line, since they gave it.
- What they are now on the list for, in the words your own sign-up form used.
- How often it comes and roughly when, so the second email is not a surprise.
- The thing you promised, if you promised one: the download, the code, the first issue, the link.
- One small thing to do now. A reply, a link to the oldest post, a poll, a preferences page.
- Who is writing, with a name and a line about them.
- How to leave or change what arrives, where a reader would look for it.
That is the whole list, and a welcome email that covers all seven in under two hundred words is a good one. Most of the bad ones are trying to be a website: a banner, four product tiles, three social icons, and no sentence addressed to the person.
Should the welcome email deliver the free thing?#
Yes, in the same email, and as a plain link rather than a button that needs a download to become visible. A promise collected two emails later is a promise a third of people never see, because the second email is a separate roll of the dice.
If the thing is a discount code, print the code in text as well as the link. A reader who cannot click in a meeting can type eight characters, and a code that only exists inside an image is a code that does not exist on a blocked-Image phone.
How many emails in a welcome sequence?#
Three, over about two weeks, is what a small sender can write and what a reader can tolerate.
| When | What it does | What must not be in it | |
|---|---|---|---|
| One: the welcome | Minutes after joining | Confirm, deliver the promise, name the frequency, one small ask | A sale, and a history of your company |
| Two: the best of you | Day 3 to 5 | Your three best things so far, so a new reader knows the standard | A second download, or a list of everything |
| Three: the offer | Day 10 to 14 | The one thing a reader who is still here might buy or book | Four products and a countdown timer |
The gap between two and three is where a sequence usually goes wrong. It happens because email two is written to fill a slot, so it recaps email one, and the reader gets told twice and buys nothing. Write three first, then two, and keep whichever survives.
What is the difference between a welcome email, a confirmation and an autoresponder?#
| The three things people mix up | Who triggers it | What it must contain |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmation email | The list owner, before anything else | One click that proves the address is real and the request was theirs |
| Welcome email | The new reader, by joining | Belonging: what this is, how often, who writes it, the promised thing |
| Autoresponder | A rule, or an inbox that is not watched | A date and an alternative route, and nothing that reads as a brush-off |
The first is a security step, the second is a relationship, and the third is an apology. Sending them as one email is why some welcome messages read like a help desk.
Do welcome emails get opened more?#
Every vendor in this category publishes a large multiplier for welcome emails, and those figures are their own data about their own customers, measured with their own counting rules. Nobody has published an independent number that covers a two-hundred-name list run by one person.
What is safe to say is the mechanism, and the mechanism is the reason to send one. The reader asked minutes ago, so attention costs you nothing; and an email with no offer in it and their name at the top is the least likely thing on the list to be reported, which protects every send that follows.
Should I sell in the welcome email?#
Not in the first one. The first send is the only one where a reader cannot decide whether you are useful yet, and a sale is the loudest possible answer to a question they have not asked.
A reasonable pattern: the welcome is pure delivery, and the offer waits until they have seen something of value twice. If the promise was itself a discount, then the code is the offer and the email is about how to use it, which is a different thing from selling.
What is a good welcome email for an online shop?#
Short, and about the first order rather than the brand. A sentence confirming what is coming, the shipping reality stated honestly, the code with its expiry in plain words, and one line about what to do if the size is wrong. A shop welcome with a photograph of a model and a button that says SHOP NOW is a second advert in a place where the reader expected a receipt.
The reply question earns its place here: ask which of two things they came for. The answers decide your next three sends, and a reply from a new customer is the strongest signal a mailbox can see that your mail is wanted.
What about a welcome email for a new employee?#
Different job, and a marketing list tool is the wrong place for it. A new starter needs the practical facts on one page: when to arrive, who to ask for, what to bring, the wifi, the lunch, the paperwork, and who their first-week contact is. Nobody needs an unsubscribe link in the onboarding email, and a bulk sending platform that holds staff addresses without consent is a data problem you have created for yourself.
Send it from their manager's own address, a week before the start date, and again the evening before. That is the whole craft, and it costs nothing.
What about a welcome email for a client or a service business?#
The version that works after a first booking or an enquiry: what happens next and when, what you need from them and by what date, how to reach a human, and what your working hours are. A client welcome email is mostly about removing the questions they were about to ring you about, and the one that does that gets read twice.
Can I use a welcome email template?#
A template decides the look, not the content, and a welcome email fails on content more often than on design. Take a single-column layout, replace all the placeholder photography, and read the result on a phone with images switched off. If the message still makes sense, the template survived contact with your copy.
HTML welcome templates are free to obtain and rarely survive an editor intact. Why generated template code collapses has the measurement we took on our own set: forty-eight tables became twenty-five after one keystroke.
How do I send a welcome email automatically?#
An automation: a rule that fires on the join rather than on you pressing send. In Campaign Kicker the welcome journey is one of the automations, it starts when an address joins, and each step goes out on a delay you set in hours, so the first one lands within minutes and the rest follow.
Two things to check before you trust it to a list. First, join your own list with a fresh address and confirm the sequence fires, because a journey that never ran is invisible. Second, write every step before turning it on, so a half-written sequence does not mail your best subject line to a reader who has only recently arrived.
What makes a welcome email look like spam?#
- A subject line that shouts, or one that says Welcome!!! with the punctuation left in.
- A name field nobody filled in, so the first word the reader sees is Hi there, or worse, Hi {{FirstName}}.
- Four calls to action, none of them the promised thing.
- A stock photograph of strangers in an office as the first impression of a person.
- No way to leave, or a leave link that asks for a login.
- A reply address nothing reads.
Campaign Kicker runs the welcome journey for you: an address joins through your form or your import, the first email goes out on a delay you set, and the next steps follow in order. The free plan mails 5,000 emails a month and holds as many addresses as you have, and the twelve variables behind the picker fill real names rather than placeholders. Turn it on, then join your own list with a spare address and watch it fire.
Set up a welcome email