Don’t underestimate the place of the welcome email in your web marketing strategy! It’s the first contact that you’ll have directly with your new customer or subscriber.
If this email doesn’t live up to the expectations of your recipient, then it may turn out to be a big fail…
Many companies neglect to send welcome emails when their new customers place their first order or after they sign up for a newsletter, for example. A serious mistake! The risk of losing points in the eyes of the reader is greater...
So, why and how do you set up a welcome email on your website? We tell you everything!
Welcome email: definition and characteristics
What is an effective welcome email?
The welcome email works as the first contact your new customer or newsletter subscriber is going to have with your brand or company.
The recipient has interacted with a website—that’s why they’ll automatically receive a welcome email. In most online solutions and content management systems (CMSs), this sending template is automatically programmed.
For example, the welcome email will be sent after a user logs in to their new account on a website for the first time, after an online registration, etc.
For it to be effective and help you achieve your email marketing objectives, it must be clear and precise, and it should invite the reader to return to the website or to the company. Whether you’re in charge of a showcase site or an ecommerce site, you should understand the welcome email as an effective conversion lever, or at least as a subtle loyalty lever that is appreciated by internet users.
What are the objectives of the welcome email?
The main objective of the welcome email is to confirm the action that has been performed on a website by an internet user. For the first time, the person has interacted with the particular website, and the email will therefore attest to this contact by recapitulating the connection data previously recorded by the visitor.
This email marketing strategy is also an opportunity to thank the internet user for having acted for the first time on the site: they now become a customer or a subscriber and prove their interest in the monthly newsletter, the eBook, the white paper, the ecommerce site, the special offer, etc.
The welcome email is also a way to help you get to know the new customer: it’s the first point of contact and the first exchange. And the first impression is always a big issue!
This email is the first step in building brand loyalty.
It’s been proven: this marketing lever is one of the most read and appreciated campaigns by internet users. That’s why these emails are so important in any marketing campaign on the web!
How do you set up a welcome email campaign in ecommerce?
This style of marketing campaign is very common: that’s why most CMSs offer a welcome email programming tool.
With WiziShop, your ecommerce solution will integrate the welcome email programming directly into your administration area in order to automatically send it to your site’s new subscribers or new customers.
In a few clicks, you configure your email with the information you want, your company name, your accounts, and even a personal touch that’ll be well appreciated by prospects.
Let’s take a look at the next steps to set up the best welcome message and include the key information that’ll help you start to boost your open rate.
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How do you create a welcome email? The 9 key steps
1. Thank the recipient for their interest and explain the reasons for your message
The first thing to include in the welcome email message is obviously to thank the recipient for their action.
This means that the internet user is interested in your offer or simply in the content of your website: thanking them for their gesture is the first step in a series of actions to help build customer loyalty.
But above all, once the thank-you message is written, you can remind your recipient of the great reasons why they signed up for your newsletter or subscribed to your site, for example.
By reminding them of the frequency of sending messages, the type of content offered on your site, past events in the history of your brand, highlight the assets of your site that’ll attract your new prospect to make them think that they were right to take action with your website.
It’s the good impression that you’ll leave your future customers in their inbox: be precise in your message and get straight to the point!
2. Choose the right template, images, and style of email
Your welcome message allows your contacts to get in touch with your service, your products, your platform, etc.
This type of email must be recognized and appreciated on the one hand for its message but also for its design: it’s your brand image that’s at stake here.
In addition, remember that this type of email is special and must get straight to the point with the recipient: people will simply appreciate a clear message, a precise call to action (CTA), relevant icons and links, but also a little surprise gift to help them remember you and encourage them to come back to your site!
As with any of your marketing efforts involving emails, a short and clear message is going to be much better than long speeches and heavy or difficult to load animated images: be simple and efficient!
3. Promote your company, your ecommerce store, your blog, etc.
Your website is unique: why?
By highlighting your company, your ecommerce store, your blog, or any other offer linked to the welcome email sent, it’ll be the opportunity for you to prove that your project, your activity, has no equal.
Maybe it’s through a piece of news, a particular know-how, etc. In short, a value proposition that will allow you to highlight your company, your brand, to this new user.
If you can, add links to informative articles, to your profiles, or even to user-generated videos in which we can see positive opinions about your brand and good comments.
Thanks to this, you’ll be able to build a relationship on a good base: your user is going to feel like they know you and become closer with your company. You’ll share the same interests, and, between the lines, you can say “Welcome to the club!”
4. Propose a specific action to boost your conversion rate
If your contact has signed up for your website or has proven their commitment to your company, it’s because they expect specific content from you.
To guide them to the products or services that appealed to him in their approach, you can encourage the reader to take action with well-defined CTA buttons.
Go to a blog, read a specific article, discover an offer, subscribe to a newsletter, request information, etc.
These steps in your welcome email must bring value to finish convincing your visitor to have made the right choice by trusting you.
Whether it’s to fill in user data or to discover your offers and services, the CTA will stimulate the user’s attention and therefore easily boost your conversion rate.
5. Highlight your communities on social networks
The welcome email is also a good opportunity for your subscribers to get interested in your online communities and therefore to subscribe to you on social networks. Through your social content, your future customers or subscribers have the opportunity to create a much stronger bond with your brand.
With the help of social media platforms, it’ll be possible for you to show people another side of your company, to take people behind the scenes of your products and services, and to invite them to join you in your adventures.
Your subscriber will feel like they know you better and will therefore have a special relationship with your company, and this due to the content on your platforms in addition to your classic sales channels.
More human, your brand is going to form a closer bond with your subscribers, at the benefit of your engagement rate and your conversion rate.
Make your prospects want to follow you on the various platforms by explaining to them what kind of content you offer on the networks and what their added value is, essential to their daily life.
6. Add all the reassurance icons
The welcome email must convince your prospect that they’ve made the right choice by choosing to subscribe to your site, your newsletter, and your updates.
In your strategy for your ecommerce email marketing, you must consider the importance of reassurance and all the technical elements that’ll allow your target to trust your platform.
As soon as the welcome email is sent, don’t hesitate to add all the icons related to your brand and your services that will inspire your prospect, especially in ecommerce: data protection, secure payment services, recognized carriers, prices received by your company, customer reviews on your brand, etc.
All these icons and information will allow you to highlight your company’s assets in a subtle way, without having to write long arguments about your business.
7. Don’t forget to add your direct means of communication
Especially if you evolve in the world of ecommerce, you must make sure to highlight the most direct means of contacting you.
In the footer of the templates for your emails, keep a small place for a button dedicated to quick contact: whether you include a chat bubble or CTA or simply highlight your phone number or your email address, it’ll be up to you to decide.
The easiest way to group all the contact information and make this section clearer will be to reserve the links to your profiles but also to add all your data.
As far as the signature of your email is concerned, the best thing to do is to personalize it with a signature representing you or one of your company’s employees in automation. Accompany the first and last name of this person with direct links to all your contact information, as you would do for your personal emails.
8. Write your email subject last
If we haven’t talked about the email subject line in this article, it’s because we suggest that you think about it once you’ve written your email.
In any marketing lever, the creation of content must meet an objective. However, the content can change along the way: what you were originally going to write in your email can be slightly changed to fit your best news, still according to the same objective.
Your inspiration may also evolve: for example, whether it’s in the creation of a newsletter or in your welcome email, you decided to create a promo code instead of simply highlighting the latest product or product series in your collection.
It’s therefore very possible that what you might have used as your email subject at the start may change by the time that you finish your message. Save your energy by writing the subject of your email once your content is fully written.
This will help you to better prepare this element, which is the most important part of your email, because without it, your message will never be read. Focus and dare to break the rules to surprise your readers!
9. Analyze your data after sending and perform your A/B tests
Finally, once your campaign is configured and your first emails are sent to your new prospects, it’s time to analyze your emailing campaign: Did your campaign work? Is your click rate high? Is your open rate satisfactory?
By examining your statistics, you’ll be able to make decisions to modify your campaign. To make the best choices, why not schedule A/B tests, two versions of your email to well-defined segments of prospects?
This way, it’ll be easier for you to find the right equation in your mailing strategy and boost your results.
Welcome email: examples and inspiration
With the WiziShop ecommerce solution, you can find the Auto-Mail Booster tool directly in your back office to program your welcome email with ease.
To inspire you, here are some examples of emails to set up your sendings effectively as you continue to build your email list.
Follow these links to find other newsletter examples, confirmation email examples, and abandoned cart email examples to enrich your emailing campaign.
Example 1: How do you build loyalty among new customers in your welcome email?
For clothing company Rouje, when people subscribe to the brand’s newsletter, they receive, in addition to a promo code, a series of recent photos from Rouje’s Instagram account along with an invitation to check out the brand on the social media network.
A simple and effective email that allows you to establish a first link with your subscribers and to encourage them to browse the brand’s universe in just a few clicks.
Example 2: How do you welcome and invite readers to return to the site?
To start a great relationship with your new future customer, especially in ecommerce, don’t hesitate to offer a promo code or a free gift to thank them.
As with this Cult Beauty example, get straight to the point by highlighting the offer in your emails for new subscribers at the start.
Example 3: How to answer questions about your company in your email?
To attract the user and prove that they made the right choice, highlight your assets in the welcome email, like here with Vans, explaining the benefits subscribers will receive from signing up to the newsletter, encouraging subscribers to start to become part of the brand’s social media community, and enticing them to check out a great product that they may be interested in.
Example 4: How do you reassure your customers with your welcome email campaign?
To help reassure the people who discover your site, you can choose to highlight elements of reassurance in your welcome emails.
With Farmacy Beauty, this is done by inviting subscribers to learn more about the brand’s mission to cultivate conscious beauty and dedication to ingredient transparency in their product line.
As you can see, the welcome email is an important and often neglected issue in marketing. To create the most effective email in ecommerce, choose Auto-Mail Booster with WiziShop and create the best campaign, all offered in your subscription.
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