The Six Types of Welcome Emails

A welcome series is one of those email best practices that everyone — every publisher, every indie newsletter operator, every non-profit, and every business — should set up. When I begin working with a new client, it’s almost always the very first thing we start with.

A welcome series can do so much for your newsletter. It’s one of the best ways to introduce yourself to new readers and start building a relationship with them. It’s a great way to get them to take the next step: To read something, to share something, or to do something. And if you’re selling something, like a subscription or a product, it’s an effective way to drive sales.

Plus, welcome series are crucial when it comes to keeping your newsletters out of the spam folder.

Everyone should have a welcome series. So let’s talk through the basics of a welcome series, discuss different types of emails you can send, and figure out what you should include in yours.

What is a welcome series? Why run one?

As you could probably guess from the name, a welcome series, also known as an onboarding series, is a series of emails a reader receives to welcome them after they sign up for your newsletter. It might be as short as a single email or might stretch up to a dozen emails (or more!) over the first 100 days after a reader signs up.

The data is pretty clear on welcome series effectiveness. Klaviyo data from 2022 found that the average open rate for a welcome series was 55.6% — even though, for many industries, the average open rate of the typical email was below 40%. I’ve seen similar results from the clients I work with. An open rate of anywhere from 45% to 60% is typical among newsrooms, non-profits, or independent operators. Some writers I work with see open rates of up to about 70% on their welcome emails.

This data matches up with historical trends, too. Return Path data from 2015 showed that readers were 42% more likely to read a welcome email than a regular newsletter.

Clicks are also much higher, per Klaviyo’s reporting: 6.5% for a welcome email, compared to 1.5% for a typical newsletter. Conversions — anytime a reader paid for something after being sent an email — were much higher, too: 2.4% vs. 0.1%.

A welcome series matters for someone sending daily emails, but it’s especially helpful for anyone who sends a newsletter just a few times per week or month. When I first started my newsletter, I sent it out only once a month. So if a reader signed up the day after I sent that month’s email, they’d go an entire month without hearing from me. When my next email showed up in the inbox, would that reader even remember my name? The fix: Building a welcome series, with several emails sent in the first month to help build the relationship.

There’s an additional benefit to a welcome email: It’s a key step in staying out of the spam folder. The engagement that welcome series engender, like opens, clicks, or replies, helps improve inbox placement and keep emails out of the spam folder — so early engagement sends a strong signal from Day 1 that your emails are valuable and should stay in the inbox.

What if I’m worried about sending too many emails?

Clients, particularly newsrooms that send a daily newsletter, often ask, “Don’t we risk annoying readers with too many emails in those first 30 days?” In response, I usually point out four things:

1.) The ratio of welcome emails to other newsletters is still reasonable. If you’re sending four or five welcome emails in the first month, compared to 30 daily newsletters, that’s not a huge volume of additional emails for a reader to receive.

2.) Welcome emails have a very different feel from your daily newsletter. They’re more personal than the typical newsletter and often include a small ask, like encouraging readers to reply or read a story from your archives.

3.) But when you send an email with a call to action, or CTA, to pay to subscribe, become a member, or donate, it really matters. Data from a 2022 Piano report showed that a significant percentage of your revenue is earned in the first 30 days after someone hands you their email address. If you’re not reaching out to readers and encouraging them to support your work, you may miss your chance to win them over. 

4.) Multiple emails lead to higher conversion rates. According to Mailchimp data, sending multiple welcome emails drives 51% more revenue than just sending a single welcome email.

Yes, you will see some readers unsubscribe after reading a welcome email, but that’s completely normal user behavior. As long as your unsubscribe numbers are below industry averages — about 0.25% per send, per Mailchimp — you’re in good shape.

Who should I send the welcome series to?

In general, you probably want to send the welcome series to everyone who signs up for your newsletter. But there are two exceptions to that rule:

1. If someone pays for a subscription or membership, makes a donation, or buys a product, and if that triggers a post-purchase automated series, you may want to exclude those readers from simultaneously receiving a welcome series.
2. If someone is signing up for a Course — an automated series of emails designed to teach someone a new skill, lesson, or habit — you may not want to send them the welcome series until after they’ve completed the Course.

In these cases, readers will be getting some sort of automated series from you already, so you may want to suppress those readers from getting multiple automated emails at the same time.

One more best practice: If a reader previously signed up for other newsletters from you, you probably do not want to send them the full welcome series again.

What emails should I send as part of the welcome series?

There are six categories of emails I commonly see as part of a welcome series, each with a few variations. Let’s talk through all of them and look at a few examples for each.

The Hallmark email

The Hallmark email is the initial welcome email, usually sent as soon as a reader signs up for your newsletter. The subject line is reminiscent of something you might see in a Hallmark card — it usually involves words like “hello,” “congrats,” “welcome,” or “thanks.” For instance, “Thanks for signing up for our newsletter!” or “Welcome! Here’s what you can expect from us in your inbox” would be a good subject line for one of these emails.

Inside, the big goal is to greet your new subscriber, confirm that they’re subscribed to your newsletter, and set expectations. Tell them what they’ll get and when they’ll get it from you. And use this email to establish the tone and voice of your newsletter.

At The New Yorker, we sent the Hallmark email below — nothing fancy, but it allowed us to set expectations, get readers to open a newsletter from us right away, and then drive them back to our website.

If you’re selling a product, you can include a call to action to buy — but try making an introduction first and then including the CTA to purchase lower down in the email, as menswear brand Todd Snyder does in this welcome email.

If you have a reader revenue strategy — readers can pay to subscribe, become members, or donate — try a similar tactic. First set expectations for readers, and then include the CTA to support your work at the bottom of the email. I like how an organization like The Oaklandside does this — there is a CTA to become a member, but it’s a single sentence towards the bottom of the email. (The big push around membership can come later in the series.)

These welcome emails can also help with deliverability. As Yanna-Torry Asparki explained in an Ask a Deliverability Expert column, there are four deliverability tricks that actually work:

1.) Asking subscribers to move your emails to their priority inbox.

2.) Adding the sender’s email to an address book.

3.) Asking subscribers to star or save an email for future reference.

4.) Asking subscribers to reply.

You can try any or all of these in a welcome email. Here’s how The Peak, a Canadian business newsletter, does that while establishing the tone of their newsletter with their Hallmark email.

If you do ask readers to reply in a Hallmark email, make the ask as specific as possible. In the welcome email for my newsletter, I take all of the steps you’ve seen above: I introduce myself, explain what readers will get, and link back to my website. But in my question to readers, I get really specific, asking: Do you have a newsletter, and what’s the biggest challenge that you’re facing with it? 

One out of every five readers writes back to this email — an unusually high rate of reply, thanks to the specificity of my question. A more general ask — “If you have any questions, feel free to reply!” — would drive far fewer replies.

The Talking Head email

The Talking Head email is a personal note, sometimes from the operator behind a newsletter or from someone fairly senior on the team at a larger organization. As I tell my clients: This email is your chance to tell your story. This is your opportunity to tell a reader, “This is why I do the work that I do.”

Aim to send this email a day or two after the initial Hallmark message, building off what you’ve established in that first email. The goal here is to continue to build the relationship between the reader and the person (or people) behind the newsletter and to begin to showcase your unique voice. You’ve got long-term goals for these readers — maybe it’s to get them to pay to support your work, to take some sort of action, or just to read your newsletter on a weekly basis. But before you can get them to do that, you’ve got to get them to buy into your personal story.

Remember: The inbox is like a digital living room. It’s a space that the reader controls — they decide who they let in and who they kick out. So the sooner you establish yourself as a friend or trusted expert, the more likely they are to keep letting you into that space. 

When I’m writing a Talking Head email, I aim to write a few sentences touching on each of these bullet points:

• How did I, the writer, get here in my career or journey?
• Why do I do this work? Why does it matter to me?
• What am I working on right now that you, the reader, should know about?
• Is there anything I want you to do next?

Most of the emails in your welcome series will be about the reader and their needs, but this is one where it’s worth establishing who you are and why you’re worth listening to. 

For a news organization, that might mean establishing your credibility as a reporter or editor. I love this example from David Hulen of the Anchorage Daily News, where David dives into his background as a reporter, including his work covering the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He uses this email to make his background clear to readers, and that helps establish trust with the audience. And at the end of the email, he includes a brief request to support the ADN. It’s not the primary focus of the email, but it’s a clear next step that a reader can take.

A non-profit might try a similar tactic — pick a senior member of the team and have them share their story, closing with a small CTA to donate. The independent operator might use this email to share their bio, covering why you decided to launch this newsletter and what makes you the best person to write it — with an ask at the end to pay for more or to follow you on a social platform.

Make sure you think about the sent-from name for this email — the name a reader will see before opening the email. Since the Talking Head is coming from a person, you may want to match that in the sent-from slot. For the Anchorage Daily News example above, for instance, any of these options could be worth trying — or A/B testing — as a sent-from name:

• David Hulen
• David Hulen, Anchorage Daily News
• David at Anchorage Daily News

The Talking Head email can absolutely include multiple CTAs, if you’d like. Here’s one from Jay Clouse of Creator Science, which includes a video intro, links to his podcast, a question to reply to, and links to his paid offerings.

There’s also no reason why you have to stop at just one Talking Head email! Larger orgs may want to send multiple Talking Head emails in their welcome series, spaced out over the first few weeks, each coming from different people and highlighting different stories. Or you may want to introduce multiple staffers in a single email using a variation I like to call the Meet the Team approach — picking a handful of staff members and including short bios within the email, like Jax Today does in this example.

If you try this type of email, consider sharing details that a reader might not get from on-site bios. I’ve seen teams use these Meet the Team emails to share brief stories or fun personal details — the kind of thing that otherwise might only show up in a game of “Two Truths and a Lie.” That’s fine by me — the sooner readers feel a personal connection to the people behind your newsletter, the sooner they’ll look forward to seeing it in their inbox.

Talking Head emails especially matter for anyone who grows their list via paid ads. Those readers don’t know a lot about you — they signed up via a piece of marketing, not because they’re longtime fans of you and your work — so the Talking Head email is your chance to accelerate the getting-to-know-you process.

The +1 email

This is an email designed to get a reader to take one additional step. Unlike the Talking Head email, where there’s often a longer story attached, this email is usually fairly direct. It says: We’re asking you to take this step, and here’s the link to click to take it.

Maybe, like AARP, you might have a specific thing in mind with this +1 email: A call-to-action to sign up for one more newsletter.

Maybe, like The Trace, you’ll want to offer readers a handful of potential next steps. These might include signing up for more newsletters, following you on social media, attending a future event, or downloading your podcast.

Either approach is OK. But the key thing here is that the more readers engage with you and your brand, the better. Readers who communicate with you on multiple platforms or who spend more time with your content are usually also the readers who choose to pay to subscribe, donate, or buy. Don’t be afraid to ask them to do one more thing to connect more deeply with you.

The timing for this sort of email may vary based on how many other emails you have in the welcome series. I’ve seen newsletters that send this email in the first three to five days after sign-up, and some that hold off until the second or third week. It all depends on which voices you want to introduce and which CTAs you want to prioritize in your series.

The Evergreen email

As a newsletter operator yourself, you know that not every newsletter you send will be your best newsletter. Some emails are great — you’re sending A+ content. But some fall a little short, and that’s OK. The email you send tomorrow or the week after will probably be better.

But put yourself in the shoes of the reader who just signed up based on a recommendation from a friend or after seeing an ad for your newsletter. They might be thinking: This newsletter wasn’t very good — is this what all their newsletters will be like?

That’s where the Evergreen email comes in. It’s your chance to showcase your absolute best work, so no matter when a reader signs up, they’ll always see some of your most popular or most insightful stories right away since they’re part of this welcome series.

It helps to think of the Evergreen email as a roadmap to your finest work. You’re telling a reader: Are you new around here? Get started with these stories.

I love this example from Vidar Bergum, a Norwegian food writer who explores Middle Eastern cuisine. He’s published so many recipes that it’d be tough to know which ones to try first, so he curated a handful of greatest hits in this Evergreen email.

Or here’s one from the Sightline Institute, a non-profit focused on progressive causes in the Pacific Northwest. Their Evergreen email is more of a letter, coming from their founder, that dives into stories readers have loved recently on a variety of topics that matter to Sightline.

A key thing to ask yourself with your Evergreen email: How evergreen do these stories need to be? Some teams I work with update their Evergreen email once every few weeks with newer, fresher content. Some choose to update this only once or twice a year. But don’t just set the email up and forget about it — you might miss a chance to add a new reader favorite into the mix.

Here’s something else to consider: If you’re selling a subscription, pitching a membership, or asking for donations, you can absolutely include a CTA for that at the end of this email. Tell readers, as Puck does at the end of their Evergreen email, if you want to support amazing work like this, here’s how you can do so.

The Evergreen email usually goes out in the first 21 days after a reader signs up, but the sooner it can go out, the better. If possible, I’d try to send it before day 10 — that way, a reader gets the chance to dive into your best stories early on in the relationship.

The Hard Sell email

Many of the emails I’ve walked through already might include some sort of CTA to pay — to make a purchase, become a subscriber, or donate. But I mentioned at the top of this guide that an onboarding sequence is key for taking someone from a casual reader to a paying supporter, so here’s where we get to the emails that often convert the best: The Hard Sell, which is all about making the pitch for why a reader should pull out their credit card and pay.

And what might a reader want to pay for? 

• A subscription to get access to additional content.
• A membership to access content, community, or benefits.
• A donation to support a writer, business, or organization.
• A product, Course, merch, or book.

With a Hard Sell, I often see newsletter operators take one of two paths to convince a reader to pay:

1. You can talk about the price of your offering and the benefits they’ll receive when you pay.
2. You can talk about the value you or your organization bring to the table.

Let’s dive into each of these and look at a few examples:

If you go the “Price + Benefits” route, you’re going to talk about the cost of whatever it is you’re asking readers to pay for and what they’ll receive after they’ve paid. Here’s a straightforward example from Texas Monthly: They tell you the price of a subscription, walk through the benefits and then offer the CTA to subscribe.

You can experiment with the length of these, too. Sometimes, shorter is better — here’s one from a newsroom in Louisiana that takes that Texas Monthly format but condenses it to just 25 words.

Some emails that use the Price + Benefits model can feel a bit dry, so I’d encourage you to add some of your personal story to the email. Here’s a good example, below, from the London Free Press, that calls back to some of the stories readers learned about in earlier emails in the welcome sequence and adds a nice personal touch at the end (“Together, you can help us continue to cover the stories that matter most in our neighborhood”).

If you’re sending this sort of email, think about whether you want to offer a special deal to new newsletter subscribers. That could mean a discounted rate, a free trial, or another exclusive offer designed to encourage readers to pay now.

Some Hard Sell emails focus on the value that you or your organization bring to the table. With these, you’re focused on highlighting your story and showcasing the impact of your work. Many of these types of emails come from a specific person — often someone the reader met earlier in the welcome series — and connect the story back to the reason why supporting your work is so important.

Here’s a fantastic example of this from the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism, a South Africa-based newsroom that covers public health. During the pandemic, their coverage of COVID-19 was a vital resource for South Africans, so their editor-in-chief Mia Malan uses this email to talk about that work, plus the steps they’re taking to continue to cover important health stories. What I especially love is how the call-to-action button connects the dots for readers. It reads, “Make a small donation to help us tell our stories” — a reminder that your support helps the Bhekisisa team do more of the reporting you’ve just read about.

Something to note: The story you tell in these emails doesn’t have to come from someone on your team. Here’s one from The Dispatch that pairs a testimonial from a reader with a 30-day free trial. It’s not a long email, but there’s enough here to offer social proof that this work is worth making time for.

You may have noticed that almost all of these emails use colorful buttons to drive readers to take the next step. Some newsletters prefer to use straightforward CTAs in these buttons, like, “Buy now” or “Subscribe here.” Others spell out the CTA: “Yes, I’ll support this work!” It’s worth testing out lots of options to see what works best for you. 

But one tip I’ll absolutely endorse: Make sure there’s a CTA button at the very end of the email. These emails can sometimes stretch up to a few hundred words, and at the end of it, a reader will hopefully be eager and willing to support you. Make it easy for them to do so — without having to scroll back up through the email — by including a button that links directly to the payment page.

It’s OK to begin with a single Hard Sell email, but many onboarding sequences include multiple Hard Sells — sometimes as soon as the first week after a reader signs up. A reader may need to see a few different nudges to subscribe, donate, or buy before they actually do so.

More advanced newsletter operators will use their ESP’s automation tool to send subsequent Hard Sells only to readers who, A) Haven’t already paid, and B) Have shown some early engagement and might be likely to pay.

A successful Hard Sell email also might mimic the format of one of the other onboarding emails I mentioned earlier in this guide. For instance, many newsrooms and non-profits will send a modified version of the Evergreen email, listing a handful of impactful stories or projects, and then include a CTA to subscribe or donate at the end. The catch: They usually don’t link out to those stories — the only link is to the payment page — since the goal is to convert readers, and the desired next step is for the reader to click and pay. Anything that directs readers away from the payment page is a distraction, at least for an email like this.

There’s one caveat to that rule, though: Perhaps you’re running an Expert newsletter, and your goal is to convert readers to new clients. For that, you might not want to drive people to a payment page — those prospective clients may want to meet you first. So instead of driving them to pay, send them to a booking page where they can set up a time with you and learn more about how you can help them. Once you’ve got them on the phone or on Zoom, it’s far easier to land that new client.

The Survey email

There’s one more email that often goes out as part of a welcome series: A Survey email.

Unlike the other emails in a welcome series, a survey doesn’t have to go out right away. In fact, it’s often better to wait — maybe until a reader’s been on your list for two or three months. Many of the orgs I consult with send these 90 days after a reader signs up, which gives the reader enough time to learn about the org before providing feedback. If you’re sending a daily newsletter, you can certainly schedule this email sooner in the sequence — perhaps as soon as 28 days after sign-up — since those readers will have seen a lot of content in that first month.

Newsletter operators use survey emails for a variety of reasons. You might use a survey like this to get answers to a few big questions:

• How can we improve our newsletter content or strategy?
• How can we better market your newsletter?
• How can we improve our paid offering?
• Who reads our newsletter? What makes them unique?

But you don’t have to ask all of these, and you definitely don’t want to ask too many questions with a survey like this. When I do a survey, I always try to ask:

• Something numeric (“On a scale of 1 to 10, how useful is my newsletter for you?”)
• Something about the value of the newsletter (“Why do you read this newsletter? How does it help you?”)
• Something open-ended (“Is there anything I could do to make this newsletter better for you?”)

And then I might add a few more questions on top of that. I usually recommend asking no more than 5-10 questions in a single survey.

When you’re sending the email out to readers, three other things I recommend:

1. Try a direct subject line — something like, “We’d love your feedback on our newsletter!” is boring, yes, but it also lets a reader know right away what they’re getting into.
2. Tell readers how long the survey will take. An example like the one below, from St. Louis Magazine, specifically says the survey will take two minutes — and a reader will be more likely to take the survey if they know how long of a time commitment they’re making.
3. Consider offering some sort of incentive (as orgs like the Financial Times do) to encourage readers to share feedback.

Like with other emails in the welcome series sequence, these emails don’t require a sophisticated design — or really any design at all. I love this all-text example from Backscoop. There’s no logo or CTA button, but it’s personal, simple, and drives readers to the survey page. That’s more than enough.

One more thing to note with surveys: Because survey responses tied to a welcome series will come in on a rolling basis, most teams don’t check the data every day. If you have a survey in your welcome series, check the data every few weeks — or at least once a quarter — to see if you can spot any trends or ideas to implement.

How many emails should I send as part of my series?

We’ve just walked through six types of emails:

1. The Hallmark
2. The Talking Head
3. The +1
4. The Evergreen
5. The Hard Sell
6. The Survey

You don’t need to send all of these emails as part of your series. Some newsletters will send as few as three emails in those first few weeks: a Hallmark; a Talking Head, +1, or Evergreen; and a Hard Sell. That’s absolutely fine.

But many orgs — particularly large newsrooms or non-profits — will send all six emails as part of their welcome series. Some will send multiple Talking Heads, +1s, or Hard Sells over the course of the first 90 days after a reader signs up, which leads to a sequence with up to 15 emails in total.

The ideal number for you likely depends on the story you’re trying to tell, the things you want readers to pay for, and the size of your team. The more of each, the more emails you’ll probably want to send.

What if my ESP only allows me to send one welcome email?

While most email platforms allow you to send multiple welcome emails, some ESPs allow only a single one, sent immediately after a reader signs up. If that’s the case with your ESP, your goal should be to send an expanded version of a Hallmark email. Build more of your story into it, and add in any CTAs to pay to support you.

Unfortunately, with just a single email, you’re going to have to cut some elements — trying to include a Hard Sell and a Survey and a section with Evergreen stories is probably too much — but make do with what you can.

Here’s a good example from The E’ville Good, an independent newsroom covering northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.

This welcome email does a few things well:

• Amy, their founder, tells some of her story.
• She directs readers toward a survey.
• She uses bullets to include a few +1s and a small push for membership.
• She adds a P.S. to mention some directions designed to help with inbox placement.

But she’s prioritized here: Her story and the survey are the most important elements, and then other elements are condensed and dropped down lower in the email. If a reader gets to them, great, but if not, they’ve still learned about the publication and taken a survey.

Can you walk through an example of a series from start to finish?

Sure, let’s talk about a few options here.

Let’s say you’re an indie newsletter operator — it’s just you or a small team building out your newsletter strategy, and you’re not part of a larger organization or business. And let’s say you’re offering a paid subscription to readers — readers can pay to get access to exclusive content. If we were working together to build out your welcome series, we might want to prioritize your story, top-performing evergreen content, and the CTA for your subscription. Some emails, like a +1, might not make sense since you may not have a lot of other elements (besides your social feeds) to promote, and those could be easily included in another email.

That might lead to a sequence that looks like this:

• As soon as a reader signs up, send the Hallmark email.
• Two days later, send a Talking Head email to share your personal story.
• Two days later, send an Evergreen email.
• Three days after that, send a Hard Sell email.
• Seven days after that, send another Hard Sell email.
• 30 to 60 days after that, send the Survey email.

Or let’s say you’re a large newsroom or non-profit. If we were working together, I’d tell you that I’d want to see all six of the welcome email examples in your series. We’d first figure out which people on your team should be writing a welcome email, talk about the narrative arc of the series, and identify the CTAs we want to prioritize. Then we’d start to build out the series. The finished product might look something like this:

• As soon as a reader signs up, send the Hallmark email.
• Two days later, send a Talking Head email from someone senior on the team.
• Two days later, send an Evergreen email.
• Three days after that, send a Hard Sell email.
• Five days after that, send a +1.
• Seven days after that, send another Hard Sell email.
• At the end of the first month, send a Survey.

A more sophisticated org might try something different. I work with one newsroom, for instance, that sends just four emails to all readers — a Hallmark, a Talking Head, a +1, and an Evergreen — in the first two weeks. But they send an additional five emails over the first 100 days — mostly Hard Sells and Surveys — based on a reader’s email and on-site engagement.

A smaller newsroom or non-profit might begin with a shorter series, perhaps just three or four emails. You can mix and match elements of each of these to fit your needs. For instance, maybe you condense elements of a +1 into the Talking Head, move parts of the Evergreen email into the Hallmark, and then prioritize the Hard Sell earlier in the series. 

Remember: There isn’t a single right way to do this. First, identify the people, stories, and CTAs for your series, and then build the welcome sequence around that.

Are there any other best practices I should know about as I plan my series?

Absolutely. There are a few things I like to talk through with clients when we build out a welcome series:

1.) Start as simple as you can — and make it more complex as you go.

Lots of the teams I work with get nervous about a longer welcome series — they’re worried about overloading their readers with too much content at the start of the relationship. So for them, we build out as few as three or four welcome emails. Then we turn them on and wait a few weeks. When we review the data a few months later, and the team realizes that engagement is strong and the emails are driving conversions, we start talking about how to add additional emails or complexity to the series.

2.) Keep the emails simple, too.

A great welcome email doesn’t need a lot of design elements. Some of the best-performing welcome emails I’ve seen are also the simplest. It doesn’t have to be text-only, but you don’t need to add in lots of images or art — the story and the CTAs matter most.

3.) Think about which emails you want to suppress from the welcome series.

When I worked at The New Yorker, I realized that there was a potential issue with our messaging. The New Yorker is part of Condé Nast, a larger publishing company, and a reader who signed up for a New Yorker newsletter would receive not just our newsletter and our welcome series but also lots of marketing messages — mostly Hard Sells from other Condé brands.

So in coordination with the Condé team, we decided to suppress any non-New Yorker marketing messages in the 30 days after a reader signed up. That became our exclusive window to onboard readers to the New Yorker.

Lots of orgs — particularly newsrooms that send lots of marketing messages or non-profits that do fundraising campaigns — try a similar tactic with their welcome series. They may choose to suppress other marketing messages from going out while a reader is receiving the welcome series. That allows these orgs to be consistent with the story they’re telling in those first few weeks after sign-up and to make sure they don’t overwhelm a reader with too many emails. The reader might then start to receive more marketing emails after the first 30 days. 

4.) Utilize as many of your ESPs welcome series features as you can.

If your ESP offers the ability to run A/B tests within a welcome series, you may want to do that to test out different content, calls to action, subject lines, or sent-from names.

Your ESP may offer the ability to suppress a welcome email from going out on a specific day or time so they don’t go out simultaneously with your normal newsletters. (If a reader gets their normal newsletter and a welcome email at the exact same time, that might be confusing to a reader.)

Your ESP may also have a feature that allows you to add some logic to the welcome series — if a reader matches certain criteria, then send a specific email next in the sequence. A common use of this feature: If a reader has purchased a subscription or made a donation, you’ll want to remove them from the welcome series. But if they still haven’t paid, then you should send them the next Hard Sell in the sequence.

5.) Add personalization — where it makes sense.

For many newsletters, simply adding in a user’s first name using your ESP’s personalization tool might be enough.

Some newsletters will collect data about users within their welcome emails using a process known as progressive profiling. Some ESPs, like AWeber or ConvertKit, offer the ability to tag readers based on the links automatically clicked in an email, which is how a newsletter like Nerd Marketing, below, can collect additional data within their Hallmark email.

Advanced newsletters might create different branches of a welcome series, each with emails more targeted to a reader based on their interests. For instance, for my readers, I could potentially build multiple tracks of the same series — one targeted to independent operators, one to large news organizations, and one to non-profits. The storyline would be similar, but the content within each email would be targeted to a specific type of reader, and readers would automatically move into one of those three sequences based on the data I’d already collected about them.

6.) Think about how many different welcome series you need.

If you have lots of different newsletters, you may want one for each newsletter. I’ve worked with newsrooms that have dozens of newsletters, each with its own welcome series — which means a reader who signs up for multiple newsletters at once might get several welcome emails all at the same time.

This is typically a mistake, at least at first. My recommendation: Begin with just a single welcome series for your email program, and then you can always add additional emails or branches to the welcome series as you launch new newsletter products.

7.) Identify ways to measure success with the welcome series.

As you launch your welcome series, think about what you’re hoping to achieve here.

Open rates and click rates within the emails might be a decent proxy for success. Those metrics can be flawed — they tend to point in the direction of what’s happening, but they’re not 100% accurate — but higher opens and clicks would suggest that you’re on the right track.

You could look at paid conversions or sales from your welcome series. Make sure you use UTMs to track the referral source or unique landing pages so you can tie a purchase, sale, or donation back to a specific email.

You could look at replies to a welcome email as a metric for success or responses to a survey to understand how you’re doing.

I’d recommend looking at a handful of these to get a clearer sense of what’s working and what changes you might want to make to the series moving forward.

8.) Always make sure these emails are in your voice.

One of the most common mistakes I see in a welcome series is that the emails don’t have a clear voice — they’re full of boilerplate text around deliverability, or they feature a generic marketing message that seems cut-and-pasted from another newsletter.

Readers signed up to hear from you in your newsletter, and the same is true for your welcome emails. Before you publish the series, read your emails out loud. If it sounds less like a personal story and more like you’re reading the terms & conditions that Apple makes you sign with every software release, you might want to give the email another try.

9.) There’s no one right way to build a welcome series.

I’ll say this again: Everyone should have a welcome series, but there isn’t a single way to do this. Take the concepts from this guide and try to match them up with the people, stories, and CTAs for your newsletter. Your welcome series might have just a few emails, or it might have dozens, each personalized based on a reader’s interests or purchase habits. It’s up to you to figure out what makes the most sense for your newsletter.