I met my husband at poker night hosted by our mutual friends. I saw him across the table, through the haze of one or two (or more, let’s be honest) glasses of wine, and I thought, “You are mine.” I saw right through that p-p-p-poker face and knew that this dude with the stoic expressions and boisterous laugh was somebody I needed to get to know better.
But guess what? Just because it was basically love at first sight for me doesn’t mean I would have jumped at the chance to marry Mr. Whiskers had he popped the question that very night. In fact, we dated for over two years before he finally proposed (with a black lab puppy and too small of a ring).
While I do love to share my “love at first sight” story at any opportunity, there’s a business related point to this for you today.
Most of your prospects aren’t going to fall in love with you at first sight. And for those who do, you might turn them off if you come on too strong in the early phases of your relationship.
How does your business get to the cute-puppy-happily-ever-after stage with your customers? By capitalizing on the momentum created by a terrific first impression, and nurturing the relationship into something more meaningful.
A welcome series will help you do that.
Here are some important stats from the Email Essentials 101 module on Welcome Campaigns:
- 74% of subscriber expect to receive a welcome email immediately upon signup [1]
- Welcome emails enjoy a 50% open rate [2]
- Welcome emails have 4X the open rate and 5X the click through rate of other emails [3]
- Subscribers who receive a welcome email deliver a 33% higher engagement over their relationship with you [4]
If you want to learn even more about this FOUNDATIONAL email in your marketing mix, feel free to signup for my free course using the sidebar on the right →
Your welcome campaign is the first impression, the gaze across the poker table, so to speak. If you want to make an impact, be sure your welcome campaign:
- Is sent immediately upon signup
- Says “Thank you!”
- Sets and/or delivers on expectations
- Reinforces your brand position and value
- Gives the customer something to do next and/or look forward to.
Once you have a winning welcome campaign in place, you’re ahead of half of the retailers out there (according to eConsultancy’s 2018 Email Marketing Census). And I’m totally fine with you being fine with that. But if you want to go allllll next level (which I know you do), then when the time is right, bust out your strategy hat and add a welcome series to your marketing mix.
Internet Retailer 500 reports that retailers who send a series of welcome emails see 13% more revenue than those that send just one. An added bonus of creating a welcome series, rather than just one welcome message is that PEOPLE DON’T READ.
People typically spend less than a minute scanning the content of your email. If you break up your welcome campaign into a series of messages focusing on each piece of content, you can ensure that your subscribers get it all.
Best of all, a welcome series helps you nurture your customer before you make any major asks of them. If you send a welcome email, then drop your new subscriber right into regularly scheduled email programming, odds are the next thing they’re going to get is an offer from you. That’s kind of like asking for their hand in marriage on the 2nd date. Which works for some people, but maybe pump your brakes a touch?
Curious about how to convert your welcome email into a welcome series? Start with your customer experience. What is the next step for your new subscriber in their relationship with you? What is a logical way to get them there? Your welcome series should help them take the next step.
How to turn your welcome email into a series
Step One: Create a journey map for your welcome series
What are some of the things your subscriber is going to need to know or do in order to take the next step with your business?
Share helpful information, customer testimonials, statistics, beautiful images… but break it up. Keep each email in your series to one topic if possible. Armed with this list of customer connection points, you should have a pretty good idea of how many emails you’ll want to create for your series.
Next, ask yourself how long you’d like your welcome series to take. Ideally, you send all the emails within 1-2 weeks of the initial opt-in, or you’ll lose that top of mind awareness and momentum.
What are some additional triggers (besides time) that you want to capitalize on? You might consider different journeys based on engagement or click behavior.
For example, let’s say your series includes five total emails, but your subscriber doesn’t open email #3 (where you share customer testimonials about your awesome product/service/class). Rather than send email #4 per usual, you could resend email #3, but switch up the subject line to catch the customer’s attention by using personalization, asking a question, or adding a fun emoji.
Another way to create a more personalized welcome series is to create different content or tracks based on demographic information or other information in your data dictionary.
For example, let’s say your welcome series goal is to turn visitors into repeat purchasers. If you capture zip code, you could send a shipping offer to use in your online store for people who live more than 50 miles away, and send a percentage off code to use on a future visit to your actual shop for the “locals.”
HOT TIP: Add urgency by making the repeat purchase code time-sensitive. This increases conversion AND drives more revenue SOONER.
With all of these factors taken into consideration, you can draw a welcome journey map that shows you what content you need to produce and gives you a really helpful visual for the customer experience you are trying to create. HOORAY!
You can use a whiteboard, like I do, because I’m old school…
or try programs like Google Draw which can be shared, revised as changes are made, and generally are better than whiteboards.
Next, you’ll write your content and gather your images.
I like to have my content written before I actually go into my ESP to build the emails themselves. Having a working content draft in Google Drive or in a Word document helps me catch and correct spelling and grammar issues, and is a much cleaner way of gathering feedback from other stakeholders/clients than sending email tests back and forth and having to make edits within a campaign draft.
ALSO, I will say that I’ve lost work before when the sole working copy of my work is within an email marketing system template (hello Murphy’s Law). *frown face*
I also find that creative content production uses a different part of my brain than actually building a functional email. It’s nice to take the time and curate image assets that help tell the story, play around with headline copy, etc. outside of the ESP environment.
Happy with your content? Build your emails, baby!
Something that significantly reduces campaign creation for me and my clients is having a saved, on-brand email template. We decide in advance on which fonts and colors we want to use, how headlines and buttons should look, standard elements like logos and any decorative flourishes, and even what kinds of images to use. This ensures that your email campaigns look “like you” and are consistent with the visuals you have established on your website, at your storefront, and in other customer touch points.
Building your emails is a snap with a pre-built on-brand template in place. You simply copy/paste your email content, drag + drop your images, and voila! No agonizing over which font to use, whether your button should be red or blue, etc.
Add the finished emails to your program using a workflow recipe or other tool within your ESP
Depending on the email service provider, the language might change but the basic functionality is pretty standard: at this stage, you want to essentially recreate your welcome journey map within your email service provider’s automation builder.
Test your emails and the workflow.
Click that headline and read the post on Quality Control, if you haven’t already. ‘Nuff said.
Activate the program
When you’re confident that your emails are functional, and that the workflow configuration is correct, you are ready to activate the series!
One word to the wise: If you are converting a previously live welcome email INTO a series, you might want to be sure and REMOVE any contacts from the program who already got a welcome campaign days/weeks/months ago if the content in the series might be confusing or out of date. If it makes sense for them to get the subsequent emails in your welcome series on more of a delay, proceed merrily!
Add it to your Automation Program Tracker.
Make sure that your welcome campaign gets updated to a series, and that your data dictionary and other elements are updated based on the information you’re using to populate or trigger the program.
Documentation might not be the sexiest thing on your to-do list, but I promise you crossing your t’s and dotting your… lower case j’s… makes a world of difference to your automation program success, and helps you avoid marketing automation gone wrong.
Summin’ it up
A welcome campaign is essential to your email marketing program success. If you want to woo your customers even further, create a welcome series to nurture and engage your new subscribers into a deeper relationship with your business/brand. Set a goal for your welcome series, and map out the important steps on your customers’ journey to that destination. Use your ESP automation-builder to configure the messages in your series based on triggers like time, email behavior, and demographic information, then make sure your emails pass a quality control check, and activate when you’re feeling confident. You’ll benefit from better customer connections (and a correlating increase in customer value) because you’ve bent email marketing technology to your will.
What questions do you still have about welcome series? Can you see some instances where a simple welcome campaign might be MORE effective than a series? What other marketing strategies are you using for automated nurture? I’d love your feedback in the comments below!
SOURCES: [1] Blue Hornet [2] Marketing Sherpa [3] Experian [4] chiefmarketer.com