By: Jamie Cain
As an email marketer, one of the biggest initial struggles is convincing your new customers to stay loyal to your brand after signing up for your email program. Often, consumers subscribe to a brand for the sole purpose of getting a discount featured in the welcome email. The caveat to that is often they quickly unsubscribe after using the one time, new customer discount. The welcome email is your first opportunity to let your customers know who you are, what you have to offer and why they should remain loyal to your brand.
How do we as marketers engage our subscribers through this first communication to keep them on our list and engaged with our brand? I’ve itemized 5 helpful methods to turn prospective customers into loyal participants of your email program.
Timing is Everything
Once your customer signs up for your email program, whether it’s through your website or a POS (Point of Sale) system, it is essential to send out the initial welcome email as quickly as possible. This should be no more than 24 hours after sign up to ensure that your company/brand is fresh in your prospect’s mind. Waiting longer than this increases the chance of your message being ignored, marked as spam or unsubscribed from altogether.
Subject Line
Choosing the right subject line will make or break your chances of connecting with and winning a new subscriber. You need to use this opportunity to catch your reader’s attention, by welcoming them to your brand. If you asked for details at sign up, such as first name, use that in your welcome to personalize their email. You may have a sign-up offer that you are promoting in your email such as 10% off your first purchase, use that as well to entice your readers.
Set Expectations and Emphasize the Benefits
Within your initial welcome email, you have the opportunity to set expectations and let your customers know how often they can anticipate to receive communication from you. If you use your sign-up page as a way to showcase the benefits of signing up, you’ll want to be consistent with that in your welcome email. You can also use this time to explain what emails from you will entail and what the benefits are of being on your list. Don’t stop there! Use this chance to gather more information about your new subscribers. This can be done through your preference center, emphasizing that it’s where they can decide what they want to receive and how often. This also reiterates that you care about your subscribers’ experience with your brand.
Single Welcome Email vs. Multi-part Series
Depending on the size of your company and your specific needs, you might decide to send a multi-part welcome series as opposed to one single message. By creating a series, you are giving the customer multiple chances to interact with your brand. Three communications is just the right amount for you to make a decision. If they still haven’t opened any of these emails, it’s likely time to remove them from your list. You will want to spread the three emails out long enough to give your prospective customer an opportunity to act on your email. However, you don’t want to spread them out so much that they don’t remember signing up in the first place. You will also need to decide what action to take if a new subscriber does open your email. This could be as simple as moving them to your regular cadence if they open any of the emails in the series, or putting them at a reduced frequency until they take another action. Remember that if you do send a multi-part series, update the subject line and creative for each one of the communications to be slightly different. You may even want to get more aggressive with the offer you choose by the last email in the series.
[Related: In Marketing, Slow and Steady Wins the Race]
Avoid the Spam Folder
To avoid getting flagged as spam by ISP’s (Internet Service Providers), use your welcome email to encourage subscribers to whitelist your domain or add you to their trusted contacts. It’s safe to assume that many people won’t know how to do this. If you could tailor this to a particular ISP with instructions, it will not only help your subscriber complete this quickly, it also shows that you care about their experience. Another important piece to consider is using your welcome email to confirm that your message went to the right recipient and that they are still interested in hearing from you. This can be done in your initial welcome email.
Now that you have learned how to optimize your welcome email and/or series, be sure to add these tactics to your checklist when strategizing your emails. Importantly, after you begin testing, don’t forget to review your metrics such as open, click-through and response rates to see what type of improvement there was.
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Jamie Cain is an experienced digital marketer with both client-side and agency experience having spent over 8 years in the field; specializing in email, deliverability and CRM. Her email marketing and deliverability expertise has been featured by Return Path and The Huffington Post. Find more about Jamie on her Linkedin page.
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