WELCOME! To the 7 steps for a successful welcome series flow. For new customers that sign up to your mailing list, a welcome journey is a huge opportunity to build your brand reputation with them. By giving customers a mini background story into your brand ethos, as well as showcasing a variety of best-selling products, you have a chance to shine before they even make a purchase. The more thoughtful, the better.
Whether you have a single welcome email, or you’ve set up a welcome series with two or three emails, these touchpoints are crucial to help establish a quality relationship with your audience right from the beginning, and if executed correctly, can drive amazing results.
For e-commerce brands, industry benchmark stats see their welcome flows have a whopping 4x the click rate and 23x CVR compared to their regular email campaigns. Also, the average welcome series flow contributes an average of 6% of total monthly online revenue. However, the top performing 25% of brands earn 17% of their monthly online revenue from their welcome series — 2.8x the average. So yes, these automated emails DO make a difference. Thanks Klaviyo for these insightful numbers!
Here are 7 steps to incorporate into your welcome flows to make sure you build key relationships with your customers.
1. Think outside the box with your sign up form
The customer’s journey starts with your website sign up. The best sign up forms are clear, on-brand, visually appealing, and have an enticing offer. Experiment which style of sign up form works best for your audience, whether it’s a pop up, flyout, embedded, or any other styles your CRM offers. You can also use your sign up form as an opportunity to enrich your database with information you can use to personalise your current activity such as birthdays, shopping interests and more.
Make sure to be mindful of UX and to test your sign up on both desktop and mobile — nobody likes an obnoxious wonky looking sign up form. We’ve recently written a new blog on how we’ve A/B tested our own clients’ website sign up forms, which you can read here.
2. Create subject lines that draw attention
A creative subject line is what makes or breaks your email. You need to draw the interest of your customer with one impactful sentence, accompanied by a preview text. As always, it’s important to test different copy for subject lines and preview texts, but bear in mind that subject lines are a gateway to your email, so make them relevant, insightful and curious. Many brands see improved opens by including the word “welcome” in the subject line, so consider including that in at least one test to see if it resonates with your audience.
3. Create a more authentic connection
Your welcome email flow is your first chance to tell your new customers all about your brand and what your passion is. Focus on things like a company story, if you produce ethically, beautiful imagery, product quality, and the transparency of your materials and process. Give your audience the opportunity to learn more about your brand by giving them clear CTA buttons to click through to separate landing pages on your website to read more about your brand’s story.
4. Have a clear CTA to continue your customer's journey
With higher click and conversion rates in welcome emails than other promotional emails, it’s essential to have a standout CTA designed to drive sales. Have a clear and prominent incentive or discount offer and clear CTA “Shop Now” button. In our previous tip #3, if your brand story is authentic enough, then your customers that feel connected are more likely to click on your CTA.
5. The more personal, the better
Especially in 2022, shoppers are looking for a more personal connection when it comes to their online journey with a brand. You’ll be more likely to resonate with your audience with personalised email content. This is where having a more detailed sign up form (tip #1) is going to help you in the long run. You can use that information to tailor your emails to each of your audiences. Send tailored emails to your customers based on their product interest, location, purchase history, and more.
6. Send welcome flow ASAP
People are most engaged and excited to hear from you when they first opt in to your email list. Set your welcome flow to automatically be sent immediately after someone subscribes to your sign up form. Data from Experian shows that real-time welcomes see 1.7x more opens and 2.5x the clicks of welcome emails that are batched and sent later. What’s more, real-time welcomes convert 10x as many customers as bulk welcomes do.
7. Test, test, test!
You’ve heard us preach this one before. What works best for one brand won’t necessarily work for yours. Test every aspect of your welcome series to find out how to best engage and convert your subscribers. Be sure to A/B test your copy, images, CTAs, offers, segments, number of emails in the series, timing, and, of course — the signup form. Collect and analyse data to determine which factors are driving more sales, and double down on what’s most effective.
So, that’s the scoop on all things welcoming your customers to your online journey. Giving yourself a chance to test all of these aspects is super important if you want to see an increase in online revenue. If you would like to test any of these options we covered, we’re more than happy to help you, just give us a shout.
