A Guide To Sending Amazing e-Commerce Welcome Emails

Welcome emails allow you to greet new subscribers who want to stay in the loop about your e-commerce business. But they do a lot more, too.

With a well designed welcome email campaign, you begin to build the foundation of a long-term relationship with subscribers, who over time, become your customers, brand ambassadors, evangelists, and loyal supporters.

But in order to accomplish this, you need to put a laser focus on creating a welcome campaign that goes beyond the status quo.

In this post, we’ll look at the importance of welcome emails for your e-commerce business, walk you through the process of getting one set up, and put a spotlight on some amazing campaigns that you can learn from.

Why welcome emails matter for e-commerce

You might be surprised to learn that welcome emails have a much higher open rate than the average email campaign. It’s true: Research shows that welcome emails have an average read rate of 34%, which is 42% higher than the average.

And knowing you’re working with a more captive audience, you can accomplish a few key objectives in your e-commerce welcome emails, such as:

Make a dazzling first impression

A beautifully designed welcome email that reinforces your branding, image and offerings can help remind customers why they signed up in the first place.

Continue the conversation with subscribers

Welcome emails also allow you to stay top-of-mind with subscribers by opening up opportunities for engagement and discovery.

Drive customers back to your store

With a strong CTA and an offer that encourages subscribers to re-visit and shop at your e-commerce store, they keep traffic flowing back to your website.

With this understanding of what welcome emails can do for your business, let’s look at the five-step process for creating a welcome email campaign, as well as some examples that follow the best practices.

Step 1: Choose your objective

First things first: Decide what you want your welcome email to accomplish. Your welcome email should be centered around a single call to action to minimize distractions for your readers.

Pick one key objective, such as:

• Driving website visits via a coupon code for new subscribers
• Introducing VIP access to information or product lines
• Sharing your brand mission and values
• Inviting subscribers to connect with you on social media

Once you’ve determined your objective, you can begin to build and design your campaign around that goal.

Step 2: Choose your send time

Data from Return Path indicates that 75% of marketers send their welcome emails the same day a subscriber signs up so that messages are timely and relevant. This is a best practice for you to keep in mind, too.

But maybe you’re thinking, “How in the world am I going to stay on top of sending each new subscriber a welcome message?”

Not to worry. Automating a welcome email makes executing a same-day send is simple. Using Campaign Monitor, in a few quick steps, you can set up an automatic welcome email by creating a workflow for when someone joins your list.

Next, you’ll think about how the message will look and sound.

Step 3: Write an engaging subject line

The subject line is the first thing your new subscribers encounter in their email inboxes, so you’ll want to come up with a compelling reason for them to open up your message.

There are many different subject line formulas you can pull from to drive up open rates, but sometimes a welcome email that leverages the word ‘Welcome’ is a great way to keep things simple and clear.

Along with your ‘Welcome’ greeting, adding personalization is an easy way to make your email subject line feel more customized for the individual–and it’s proven to drive up open rates by as much as 26%. From there, you can continue to personalize even further by adding the subscriber’s name within the email body copy, as seen in the example below.

Again, there’s a simple feature for adding personalization to campaigns within Campaign Monitor.

Step 4: Choose an email template that meets your needs

When you’re ready to design the look and feel of your welcome email, you’ll want to select an email template that complements the objective you chose, and that fits well with your company branding.

For example, if you decided your welcome email objective would be to introduce new subscribers to your social media presence and to encourage engagement through those channels, you might design a campaign like this one from Fruit of the Loom.

Notice how the colors of the template complement the company branding, and that everything within the message is geared at driving social engagement.

Step 5: Test your welcome emails

Once your welcome email is all set up, you can begin to conduct different A/B tests to find what your audience most appreciates. You can run A/B tests on different subject lines, ‘from’ names, and email content.

As you conduct your split testing, make note of which elements drive the most click-throughs–and use the most effective tactics as you move forward in designing and sending other email campaigns.

Strong examples of effective welcome emails

In case you need a bit more inspiration, we’ve collected a few highly effective examples of welcome emails you can learn from. Let’s take a look.

Seafolly, a beach and swimwear company, created a welcome email that leverages a bold hero image and simple welcome message for new subscribers. Within the email’s top navigation, subscribers see and explore specific website sections (and can ultimately make a purchase.)

Beauty subscription service Birchbox uses a series of welcome emails to share beauty tricks, makeup tips, and special offers. All of these messages work together to increase value for new customers.

Sephora puts welcome emails to work. By including a compelling offer like a discount or promotion, these emails drive sales and remind subscribers of the value they get by staying on this list.

Wrap up

Following the process we’ve outlined here and learning from the examples we’ve showcased, you can create amazing welcome emails that kick off an on-going conversation with your new subscribers.

Over time, the dialogue you’ve started through these initial messages will transform into strong customer relationships–and they’ll help drive sales at the same time.

We challenge you to create (or optimize) your welcome email campaigns based on what you’ve learned here and find out what positive results you can produce for your e-commerce business.

Read more:

• Tips for Crafting a Strong Welcome Message & Email
• Best Email Marketing Software – Best Email Marketing Services for your Business