An engaging welcome email is essential when executing a newsletter campaign. It creates the first impression by introducing subscribers to your newsletter. According to a study by Invest, over three in four subscribers expect to receive a welcome email after signing up for a newsletter. An engaging welcome email sets the table for what’s to come so that subscribers are more engaged with your emails.
Express Gratitude
In your welcome email, express gratitude by thanking subscribers for signing up. “Thank you” is a short but powerful phrase. When subscribers see it in your welcome email, they’ll feel appreciated and valued.
Many businesses and marketers use newsletters to spam their subscribers with advertisements. Therefore, it takes a leap of faith for a subscriber to sign up for your newsletter. You can let subscribers know that you appreciate them signing up by starting your welcome email with “Thank you.” Expressing gratitude will improve your subscriber retention rates so that your newsletter emails reach more users.
Personalize With First Name
A little personalization goes a long way toward creating an engaging welcome email. According to a survey conducted by Econsultancy, nearly three in four marketers say personalized emails drive stronger engagement among subscribers than generic and non-personalized emails. To personalize your welcome email, address subscribers by their first name.
Personalization is easy if you use an email marketing service. All of the leading email marketing services offer automated personalization. Using an email marketing service, you can configure your newsletter signup form with a name field. Subscribers who sign up for your newsletter must then provide you with their first name. In the email marketing service’s dashboard, you can add a tag for their first name when creating your welcome email.
Tell Subscribers What to Expect
You should tell subscribers what to expect from your newsletter. Subscribers typically sign up for newsletters to receive valuable content. By telling subscribers what type of content you’ll send them — relevant tips, product tutorials, guides, coupons, etc. — they’ll be more interested in receiving and interacting with your newsletter emails.
Along with the type of content used in your newsletter, tell subscribers the frequency at which you’ll send them emails. Maybe you’re planning to send them one email per week, or perhaps you’re planning a lower frequency of just one or two emails per month. Regardless, include this information in your welcome email.
Customize With Brand Imagery
Customizing your welcome email with brand imagery can lead to stronger engagement among your subscribers. Brand imagery allows subscribers to easily recognize your welcome email and associate it with your business’s brand.
The brand imagery of your welcome email should match that of your business’s website. After all, that’s probably where you’ll attract most of your newsletter’s subscribers. Users who visit your business’s website may complete the signup form to receive valuable emails. Designing your welcome email with the same brand imagery ensures that subscribers will recognize it.
Ask for Whitelisting
Consider asking subscribers for whitelisting in your welcome email. Whitelisting involves a subscriber adding your email address to his or her list of approved contacts. It’s used to ensure the delivery of emails.
Even if your welcome email reaches a subscriber’s inbox, the other emails you send him or her may not. Newsletter campaigns consist of a sequence of multiple emails. As you send these emails to a subscriber, his or her inbox provider may wrongfully identify them as spam. Spam emails are sent in bulk, with recipients often receiving dozens of spam emails from the same address.
Whitelisting prevents inbox providers from moving your emails to subscribers’ spam folders. When a subscriber whitelists your address, he or she elects to receive all your emails. Whether your newsletter consists of three emails or 30 emails, they’ll all land in the subscriber’s inbox and not his or her spam folder.
Send Immediately
Don’t wait to send your welcome email. Instead, send it to subscribers immediately after they sign up for your newsletter. Most subscribers expect to receive a welcome email. If you wait too long to send it, though, subscribers may forget that they signed up for your newsletter. When they check their inbox, they’ll see an unfamiliar welcome email, believing that they didn’t sign up for it. Some subscribers, in turn, may elect to unsubscribe to your newsletter.
A welcome email does more than just introduce subscribers to your newsletter; it confirms that subscribers successfully signed up for your newsletter. The longer you wait to send it, however, the greater the chance of subscribers forgetting that they signed up. If you use an email marketing service, you can set up your welcome email to send automatically to new subscribers.
Include Social Follow Buttons
At the bottom of your welcome email, add social follow buttons so that subscribers can easily connect with your business on social media. You can display buttons for your business’s Facebook Page, Instagram profile, Twitter profile and other social channels.
With social follow buttons, your welcome email will look credible and legitimate. Subscribers will see that your business is active on the social media networks conveyed by the buttons. Shady businesses generally don’t have social media profiles because they don’t want users to talk about their activities. Social follow buttons instill credibility and legitimacy so that subscribers are more engaged with your newsletter emails.
Don’t Forget the Unsubscribe Link
Always include an unsubscribe link in your welcome email. When clicked, this link should remove subscribers from your newsletter list. An unsubscribe link is important because it’s required by most email marketing services. If you remove it, the service provider will take notice, and it may terminate your account.
An unsubscribe link won’t stop subscribers from opting out of your newsletter in other ways. They can always mark your emails as spam. Of course, it’s worse when subscribers mark your emails as spam because it harms your email reputation. Your email account will receive a poor reputation that lowers the deliverability rate of your newsletter.
Your newsletter campaign won’t succeed unless it begins with an engaging welcome email. It can help you score higher open rates, click-through rates (CTRs) and subscriber retention rates. Just remember to follow it up with equally high-quality newsletter emails.