One of the many email marketing best practices, is for a company to send some sort of welcome email that includes some of the latest news or an offer. However, lately I think companies have forgotten to set this up. Only thing is, it’s THE BEST opportunity a company has to immediately respond to a request for information from a consumer or prospect.
Whenever I sign up for something, I immediately go to my inbox to check to see what they sent me. I keep refreshing for about 5 minutes and then finally give up. The most that I seem to get is an email asking me to confirm that it is a valid email address and that I want to opt in. Glad the company confirmed that I want to receive info from them, but I’m looking for the immediate gratification. I want to see what kind of stuff they’re going to send me, and maybe a note of how often I can expect to receive email from the company. But typically, I get nothing. Then one day I think back to the company and wonder if I made it on their list or if they just don’t do any email marketing.
Suggestions of what to include in the welcome email:
- A quick note from your team thanking them for signing up.
- Ask the subscriber to include the email address in their whitelist. This is the number one way to make sure emails make it to the inbox.
- An offer or reward for signing up such as a coupon or a link to an exclusive whitepaper.
- The company contact info in case the subscriber wants to talk right now.
- Either include the latest email campaign that has been released or else a link to view the latest version online.
- If the company broadcasts on a regular schedule and/or has a calendar of upcoming issues, give the subscriber that information. It’s always helpful to know when you’ll be receiving something next. Giving the subscriber a list of themes/articles in upcoming issues will also help to get them to whitelist your email address if they find the info valuable.
- If the sign up form didn’t request much personal information, perhaps ask the subscriber to update their profile so that more tailored content can be delivered to them.
