We were fixing deliverability issues and staying out of the inbox for the past weeks. Today I want to share another very important element for your email marketing. The Welcome email – it’s the single most important message in your content and email strategy. And still – a lot of people don’t have one or struggle when writing it.
We want share 4 tips for writing an engaging welcome email that increases the engagement levels and keeps your deliverability rates high. You can check out Digital Marketer’s great welcome email template and step-by-step walkthrough. I’ve simplified those steps for you below.
Why is the Welcome email important?
Most people consider the welcome email only as the one that they use to deliver the free content someone opted in for. Almost nothing more, and nothing less. This is where they make a mistake and lose valuable branding and engagement opportunities.
The welcome email open rates are the highest in the market for most industries
This email is important as it is your chance to prove to that brand new lead that you are worth it and they should stay on your list. Most people would open that message to get their freebie – just grab their attention for a minute more?
There are 4 main elements to add to your welcome email to get the best results.
1. Introduce yourself properly
This is your chance for a proper introduction. Your freebie offer was your elevator pitch and they bought it. Now you need to get them interested enough to stay subscribed.
Tell them about yourself
Who you are, what you do, how you could help them? Introduce yourself properly and tell them what kind of problems are you solving and who is your perfect audience.
“I’m [your name] and I help [your perfect audience] [do this] in order to [get what they really want and need]”
The goal of this simple exercise is to get your brand new subscriber identify themselves as your audience. We want them to say to themselves – “Ooooh, that’s what I need help with really!”
2. Tell them what to expect
After getting them excited about what you can do for them, let them know how often they can expect to hear from you. Setting the right expectations is important – the contact immediately knows you won’t be wasting their time, you have a clear structure and schedule and you’re here to deliver.
“I usually send out a [weekly] email with the [best/most relevant/latest] content from [my site/the industry/etc].
3. Ask for a reply
Do you know what makes the difference between a personal email message and a promotional one? You will almost always reply or follow up with a personal email! Therefore this is the best opportunity you’ll have. Because if they reply back to that welcome email, the inbox filters will mark your emails as “probably personal or important”. You’ll get better engagement and deliverability if people start responding to you.
The best way to get a reply on your welcome email message is to ask for it. A client of ours asked his new leads why are they taking his free course, what do they expect from it and what are their personal goals related to the course topics. He was overwhelmed with responses because people felt that he cared and wanted to know.
In addition, he tried to answer as many of those emails as possible, which lead to great engagement levels – the open rates on that free course sequence are constantly hitting 50+% .
I’d love to ask you for a small favor – send me a reply telling me [what is your biggest struggle/main goal/personal experience with X]? I’ll try to send you [personalized resources related to that], if you’re interested.
4. Get whitelisted/Added to primary tab
FInally, if people want to read your content, they want it the most at this very moment. Use that interest in your advantage and instruct them how to whitelist your email.
Whitelisting is performed in a different way for each email service. While Gmail has the Primary tab and filtering, in other services you lead has to add your email address to his contact list.
You can use this great free tool by Email Delivery Jedi that helps you create your own personal whitelisting page. It’s fairly easy to use but you will need some html knowledge in order to publish it on your website.
Make sure you whitelist our emails – that will guarantee that you don’t miss any of the following resources I’m planning to share with you.
Summary
I hope you’ll review your welcome email right this moment. It can do so much for your campaigns and ROI.
If you already have a great welcome message, feel free to share your tips and your response rates!
Maybe you’d like to get a visual representation of why the welcome messages are important, check out this infographic by Kissmetrics
If you’ve been following all the tips from our blog series Emails that convert, you should have started seeing better results from your email campaigns.
