What elements do you need to have in a welcome email?
You know the routine: you opt-in to someone’s mailing list, and soon you receive a confirmation email from them, welcoming you to the list, newsletter or whatever you just signed up for. The fact that we are expecting these emails is a major reason why they are usually opened. But how does the sender craft these emails for best results?
There are a number of best practices that not only will get you off on the right foot with your new subscribers, but will help them understand and better use your services and products.
Here are 7 ways you can optimize your welcome emails to set the stage for a long lasting, profitable relationship.
7 Ways to craft effective welcome emails
Send out immediately – Send these out immediately. Don’t wait to batch send your welcome emails. A study by Experian found that welcome emails sent out individually rather than by batch were opened 10X more! Show you care about them signing up.
Use a working email address – Using a no-reply email address will only do one thing for you: give you a no-response customer. People are going to want to email you. Don’t make it hard.
Test subject lines – Email autoresponder software makes it very easy to split-test subject lines. Do this for better open rates!
Encourage social media – Exhort your readers to follow you on social media, and make it easy for them by installing links and/or buttons on your email template.
Personalize – It’s always best if you’re trying to develop some sort of customer relationship with your subscribers that you personalize the emails if at all possible. This of course means you’ll need to collect names.
Consider offering an incentive – A lot of companies opt to send along a coupon or other incentive as a welcome gift. Not a bad idea, and can move relationship from a subscriber to a buyer swiftly.
Make sure to optimize for mobile – Since about half of all emails are now opened on a mobile device, it would be a good idea to make sure you are using a responsive design so that your emails can be opened anywhere.