The first impression is important not only in personal interaction but also in communication by email. It depends on the welcome letter, which may contain a unique deal, a subscription form, or just a warm greeting that begins a relationship with a new buyer. A thoughtful first message assists the company in establishing contacts with prospective partners and buyers.
Once you write a welcome message to a new blog visitor, news subscriber, or possible buyer, you are making the first perception about your organization.
A good welcome email may be super effective. According to Invesp, welcome letters are opened 4 times more often and clicked 5 times more often than regular mailings, their average Open Rate is 50%. At the same time, only 57.7% of companies send welcome letters. We tell you what you have to know about welcome letters and what to consider to create a good one.
What is it
A welcome letter is the first letter that a user receives after a subscription to the newsletters or registering for the service. It is a warm greeting that introduces you to new consumers and encourages them to begin actively using your product. It should be informative, clear, and action-inspiring.
The main tasks of the welcome letter:
- Verify that the registration went smoothly.
- Make a strong initial impression and demonstrate which user problems the product successfully solves.
- Encourage the customer to proceed with the next step by promoting it along the sales funnel.
Welcome email components
What does a successful welcome email consist of? Although there is no universal answer to this question, there are some critical elements that will distinguish your message and help you establish contact with the target audience.
Contacts
Provide the readers with your phone number for business use and give them the possibility to send feedback.
Compelling headline
To leave a positive first impression, first, you have to get your message opened. The title is extremely critical: the recipient should understand who you are, what you have sent, and why it is essential.
Recommended content
Of course, the main task of a welcome email is to make your brand known to the recipient. But it should also indicate the further steps for prospective buyers. A good way to do this is to provide hyperlinks to the content of your site, where the buyer finds out who you are and what you do.
Personal offers
Personalization allows you to distinguish yourself from the throng. Customized offers can be based on info that the buyer has already provided to you or information from public platforms such as social networks.
Ability to unsubscribe
It is important to provide a convenient opportunity to unsubscribe from the mailing list if the user is not interested in it. Each welcome email should contain an “Unsubscribe” button so that the users can decide whether they want to keep in touch with you.
Nothing spoils a new relationship like endless intrusive emails.
One letter or a series?
It is better to use a chain of welcome letters.
Advantages of the welcome email series:
- a series of letters will allow you to show all the characteristics of the product, and gradually introduce the customer to the company;
- you will not overload the user with information;
- you will be able to find out more about what is interesting to your subscribers by analyzing statistics on all emails in the chain and feedback.
In addition, multi-letter welcome campaigns are statistically more effective than single welcome letters.
Key points to succeed
Besides, the proper content of your welcome email here is some more key points you should take into consideration to succeed.
Create a strategy
You must specify a goal, a topic, and a concise call to action for each letter in the welcome chain. In this manner, you can direct the user down the desired path. Note that onboarding is required not only to draw the user back to the site but also to illustrate the value of the product.
Choose a tone
The tone with which you engage with users is critical in all marketing communications, but it is especially critical in the welcome email series. There is one easy rule to follow here: the tone of all conversations should be consistent. It must be kept up to date on the internet, in correspondence, on a blog, in public speeches, and so on.
Take experiments and change
Keep your welcome chain fresh by not using the same email template for too long. It is not only about the type of structure you employ or how efficient specific templates are; it is also about how the design evolves. Strive to keep up with the latest trends.
Examples of welcome letters
Let’s look at examples of how you can arrange a letter so that it sells. We tried to choose a variety of options: obvious and not-so-obvious.
Some letters are aimed solely at increasing brand loyalty, some offer promo codes for a discount. There are informational letters, and there are entertaining ones.
1. Survey
Invite subscribers to participate in the survey: for example, a software development company may offer newly registered users to tell about their business to optimize the operation of the software. Well, to pass the survey, you need, of course, to go to the website.
2. The button on the personal account
Many people indicate the login and password of the new user in the welcome letter. But so that the recipient does not lose it for sure, place a direct link in the letter to go to your account.
3. Instructions and settings
In this case, you can also specify the account login details and a link to your personal account. But besides that, there is an address for a short instruction on how to use the program. And a bonus for those who do not want to do extra work: a technical support employee will set up the users’ account themselves, but not for free.
4. Subject of the letter
This is the first thing a user sees in their mailbox. It is important that it be catchy and endearing to yourself: for example, rejoice at the new subscriber of the mailing list and indicate in the subject “Hooray, you are with us!”.
5. Disclaimer
Many combine a welcome letter with a subscription confirmation. And you can use a clever move: even if the letter came to the users by accident, they are still offered to subscribe and informed that they will receive it.
6. Subscriber bonuses
Classic technique: the user receives bonuses when subscribing to the newsletter. Give links to useful materials in a welcome letter – a kind of demo version of the mailing list author’s services.
7. Gift
Everyone loves gifts – especially if you need to make just one click to receive them. For greater effect, use an engaging topic and an imperative mood, for example, “Confirm the newsletter and receive a gift.”
8. Gratitude for your interest in the company
Thanking for a subscription is banal, but thanking for interest looks more human. Standard mailing turns into the satisfaction of interest. It seems to be the same thing, but it is perceived differently.
9. Links to applications
In the welcome letter, to keep the user, you can add not only a digest of popular materials, discounts, or a demo version of your service, but also links to smartphone applications. Now the subscriber is not going anywhere.
10. Feeling of being chosen
In the case of stores, subscribing to a newsletter often means participating in a loyalty program. For example, invite users to become a member of the discount program after registering on the site – and in the first letter, welcome them “to the club where dreams come true”. The club assumes being chosen, but who does not like to feel special?
11. Invitation to dialogue
Even a fairly standard welcome letter can be diluted with a couple of features that distinguish it from the general mass. Provide the letter with an emoji to attract attention, and at the end ask for feedback – that is, the mailing list will already border on personal correspondence.
12. Promo code
A win-win option for the mailing list text to attract customers is to send a promo code for a discount in a welcome letter. Perfectly motivates you to buy.
13. Infographics
If we are talking about a greeting for an online store, then it is unlikely that anyone will read a welcome letter with a lot of text. But informative icons immediately attract attention and do not take up much space.
14. Promotion of an additional platform
Have users already subscribed to the email newsletter? Wonderful! And at the same time, invite them to subscribe to your Instagram. The principle is clear: the more points of contact you have with the client, the better.
15. Clarification of the mailing schedule
A good move is to warn when the newsletter usually arrives. If the users do not specifically wait for each new letter, they will most likely remember the information and check the mailbox more often. Moreover, most of them have disabled notifications for mailing lists, and they are going to a separate folder.
Typical mistakes to avoid
When composing welcome messages, various mistakes are often made, which significantly reduce or nullify the effectiveness of the mailing list.
Keep in mind that new potential buyers will not like:
- deliberately impersonal messages;
- lack of specifics and semantic load;
- too long texts and vague wording;
- irrelevant pictures, poor quality images;
- a short interval between the letters of the chain;
- the long silence of the company when the first message arrives later than a day after registration/subscription.
It is recommended to apply a uniform design style throughout the chain, add color-highlighted buttons with clear calls to action, and not forget about corporate symbols.
Why are welcome letters so important?
Welcome mailings are very important and are of great importance regardless of whether you are running a small blog or running a multimillion-dollar business.
Welcome letters set the tone of the conversation and help strengthen the connection with a new audience. Therefore, it is important, as in real life, to be sincere, real, friendly, and even funny, if it corresponds to the image of the company.
Users, including us, always expect to receive a welcome letter after subscribing to a newsletter or purchase, this behavior has already been brought to automatism. For this reason, such emails have the highest rate of openings and clickability among all other types of emails.
Briefly about the main
A welcome letter does not sell a product or service, but a relationship with a brand. Naturally, the warmest. Ideally, they are also long-term. You can use several ideas in one letter at once, depending on the specifics of your activity – the main thing is that everything develops organically and does not tire the reader.
