Email marketing is still one of the marketing techniques providing higher return on investment (ROI) when compared to some other strategies. Therefore, its potential is enormous. What are the benefits of email marketing?
The key advantages of email marketing
- Less cost. One of the critical advantages of email marketing is its low cost.
- Easy to start. With the availability of autoresponders nowadays, it has become much easier to start an email campaign.
- Good revenue-driving. Email campaigns still drive very high revenues for businesses.
- Easy to measure. Again, with the availability of different autoresponders measuring revenue and effectiveness is now easier.
- Global reach. It can reach a massive number of people in any part of the world.
- Builds a strong relationship. An email campaign helps build a strong relationship with the subscribers with the help of personalized emails.
- Traffic to your website. Emails also bring people to your website, increasing the traffic. It increases the chances of sales.
What is a welcome email?
Welcome emails are delivered using autoresponders, i.e., email automation tools to send emails to the person filling a form on your site. The process of customer subscriptions and account creation also makes use of welcome emails to send a brief introduction to new subscribers.
There is a particular purpose of welcome emails, and that is why we are talking about its importance in an email marketing campaign. It gives the users a great first impression of you and sets the tone for the whole customer journey.
It is up to you how you make use of this opportunity. The start of your email marketing campaign is the most crucial part. The welcome emails have much higher open rates as compared to any other mails. So, you must make a mark on the user’s mind with this opportunity. It will set the user up for the whole marketing campaign.
Surprisingly, there is still a significant percentage of brands that do not send welcome emails to their subscribers. This unawareness of the brands costs them revenue. Welcome emails have been seeming to provide better ROI. Despite the vast potential, brands have been missing out on this opportunity. We hope that you have not been making this mistake.
Before going to the best practices of welcome emails, let’s take a look at email autoresponders that are available to set up your email campaign.
The best autoresponders tools are
All these tools have their advantages and disadvantages. You can choose the one which best suits your requirements.
Some features of a good autoresponder
Management of email list. An autoresponder must be very efficient in maintaining the list of email contacts that are collected from various sources. It must make sure there are no duplicate entries.
Segmentation. An autoresponder must be capable of separating market segmentation and customer segmentation. It depends on the clarity of the inputs so that the autoresponder can personalize the emails.
Monitoring. One of the most critical features is monitoring the capabilities of an automation tool. It is required to comprehensively provide the data so that analysis and business decisions can be made.
10 tips to help you maximize your welcome emails
Now, let us come to how we can make use of welcome emails to improve our business.
1. Thank your new subscriber
Firstly, say thank you to your new subscriber. This thank you must accompany a short message. The thank-you must give a personal feel to the subscriber. A generic message is going to give the feeling of an automated message. Therefore, it is always recommended to personalize the email. The autoresponders can easily pick the name of the subscriber from the data users enter.
The personalized version of the welcome email has proven to perform better. It provides an instant connection with your audience and catches attention. Subscribers are more likely to open the welcome email when they see their name in the subject line.
2. Fulfill your commitment immediately
Provide what you have promised for the subscription instantly. If not done so, it can backfire. The welcome email must contain the incentive, if any, promised on subscription. The more you delay, the more the subscriber gets frustrated and more chances of losing the customer. Don’t let them feel cheated at any point in time, as it might develop a trust deficit. You would never want this to happen throughout your email sales funnel.
3. Make sure your email subject “pops”
Select the target keywords and make them as prominent as possible to catch the reader’s attention immediately. Most people decide to open emails based upon the subject line. Your email subject line must be brief but well researched and thought off. Spend half of your time writing the subject line.
4. Tell your subscribers about your brand
Welcome emails must contain the information you would like your customers to know. Make it interesting. The vision and mission statements of your business must be provided in the welcome email.
Introduce your business and offerings to the reader. The most important part is what is in it for the reader. Readers gain interest when they have something for them in the email. Quickly come to the point of utmost importance for the reader. The lengthy the email is, the more likely the reader is to lose the interest. You don’t want someone to leave the email half-read. Therefore, keep this mind while composing the email.
5. Use infographics
The use of infographics makes the email engaging and catchy. Try giving facts and data to your users. Your email won’t sound monotonous to the reader. Infographics are a quick source of information and don’t require much reading. With the graphs and other elements, it is easier to engage people. Don’t try to convey everything through words. Do make use of infographics to tell your achievements to the reader and make a comparison with other competitors. It will make the reader understand why you are the right fit.
6. Get onto the whitelist
Getting on the whitelist will help you stay away from the spam folder of the subscriber. It helps in getting in the eyes of your subscribers every time you send a mail. Adding instructions on how to add their email to the whitelist and its benefits is a good practice of welcome email.
7. Tell your subscribers what to expect in future emails
Tell your subscribers about the emails they will be getting. Inform them about what is there for them in the upcoming emails. Also, tell when the emails will be coming. Will it be weekly, monthly, or daily?
What exclusive information they are going to get before anyone else? New updates on products, services, features, etc. will first reach the subscribers. This kind of strategy keeps the readers interested and always guessing. Tell your subscribers that they might win specific prizes or discount coupons to keep them interested and excited.
8. Display testimonials
Adding testimonials to your welcome email is one of the strategies you can adopt. It lets the reader understand your previous customer experiences. How have they benefited from their product and services?
When someone is interested in buying a product, he/she starts researching. For someone to understand the product experience, testimonials do help a lot in deciding whether to go for the product/services. For example, when we buy anything from e-commerce platforms, we always read reviews of the users to understand the quality of the products.
9. Provide your social media links
Giving links to your social media pages can increase user engagement. Social media is the newest trend in this digital world. Therefore, it is a great option to build a relationship with your subscribers. If your subscribers miss any email, they can still catch up with the information from your social media pages. Social media links on the welcome email are the new norm you must adapt.
10. Explain your website
You can explain your website to the subscriber. The navigation to various pages, the features people can make use of, etc. A welcome email can describe these things to the user to make their experience better. This is useful to people who are new and not very familiar with the digital space. You can use images from your website to make it more explanatory for the subscribers.
Conclusion
All in all, you have many ideas by making use of which you can nurture your leads. The use of welcome email is no exception. It is all about the creativity which you can make use of keeping the result in mind.
The various ideas talked about in this blog are some of them. You can come up with a lot of new ideas to nurture and convert the leads into sales. Using an autoresponder makes it a little easier for you to follow all the above process in preparing a welcome email. The email marketing technique provides higher ROI when compared to some other strategies. Therefore, its potential cannot be ignored.
This guest blog article was written by John Davier, a content marketing guru at MailMunch. He is passionate about writing content that resonates with people. His motto is “live simply, give generously, and stay happy.”