How To Write A Great Welcome Email: Steal Mine

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I used to get 5 replies a week to my welcome email (if lucky).

Now I get 5 a day.

All it took was making 5 little changes to my welcome email.

In this post, you'll learn what these changes are and why they work. But if you are in a rush, here's the full welcome email so you can steal it right now 👇

Why does your welcome email matter?

Building an audience on social media is like building on rented grounds. It’s fine until the landlord (aka Elon or Zuck) decides to kick you out.

No one can kick you out of email.

A Welcome email is a must-have if you are building an email list. There are a few reasons why you want to have a good Welcome email:

It’s the one email that 90%+ of your audience will read

It’s the first impression that people get from you

It allows you to build a 1:1 connection with your audience

If you get replies, it’s a good signal for email providers that your emails are legit

Before writing this post, I didn’t know that. I had a welcome email, but I was making two HUGE mistakes:

Too many asks (people felt overwhelmed)

Too many links (people had too many choices) Links to my products, past issues, too many questions about the reader… It was cluttered.

And in return, I was getting zero responses.

I set out to figure out what the top creators had in their welcome emails. Below you’ll find what I found out and the changes I made because of it 👇

#1 - Action-oriented subject line

This is important because it lets the receiver know there’s something to do with that email.

In my case, I use "Welcome! (response needed)":

“Response needed? Why? Let’s open and find out.”

This is what goes through your audience's mind.

The first part of my welcome email tells the audience what to expect from my future emails:

They get:

A reminder of what’s in it for them. The “benefit.”

How I’ll deliver that benefit (by writing actionable emails)

And how often they’ll get my emails

It's also written in a way that makes it all about the audience, not me.

#3 - Make it easy to read

My welcome email is formatted in a way that makes it easy to read:

It’s made of two big blocks made of bullet points which makes it easy to skim.

#4 - Reduce the friction to reply

The second half of the email focuses only on getting the audience's reply. Remember, we want that for two reasons:

So ESPs (email service providers) get signals that our emails are legit

To get more insights from our audience directly from their mouth

This is how I'm doing it:

With the first sentence, I try to handle their main objection (”I don’t have time for this”) saying that it only takes 30 seconds.

With the 3 prompts, I’m trying to make it even easier for them to reply. You don’t need to think too much about it, just reply to these 3 questions

#5 - Do things that don't scale

If they aren't sold by now on replying, they should be after this line 👇

I used to offer to help them directly with one concrete suggestion. It was a free, no strings attached, 1:1 access to me.

I’ve since changed it to send a link to one of my pieces of content instead of replying with a specific suggestion because I was spending too much time only on replies.

Other things you can do here as an incentive for a reply could be to offer a “gift” (lead magnet) or a discount for one of your products.

This is your space to surprise the reader and get them hooked. Be creative!

Why is it so important to get replies to your welcome email?

Besides the obvious things we mentioned like favoring ESPs and creating a personal connection, getting your audience to reply is not just because.

These replies are nuggets of gold. Inside each is a problem that someone in my target audience is facing.

That's idea, content, product, and service fuel.

What else could you ask as a creator?