DEEP DIVE

The most important email you send to subscribers is your welcome email.

It’s your first impression.

A great first impression = better engagement (open rate and CTR) and more sales.

The way subscribers engage with your welcome email will determine the rate at which they engage with your future emails.

• If you get subscribers to take key deliverability actions in your welcome email, your future emails will land in their primary inbox.

• If not, they will land in promotions, updates, or spam.

By making these changes to your welcome email you’ll boost the engagement and sales of all your future emails.

Here’s how:

Your welcome email has 4 jobs

1. Get opened.

2. Remind subscribers what to expect.

3. Get subscribers to take 3 key deliverability actions so your future emails are sent to the primary inbox.

4. Make subscribers aware of your product/service/content with a CTA (call to action).

Job #1 is most important.

If your welcome email doesn’t get opened it can’t do the other jobs.

This is a challenge to overcome because people are trained to ignore welcome emails.

That’s why you need a unique, non-generic subject line.

• Don’t use “welcome” or “thank you” (this gives subscribers no reason to open)

• Stand out, but still be clear and relevant.

Here are some welcome email subject line examples that stand out and give the reader a reason to open:

• Inverse Daily - ❗️wtf

• Jon Morrow – Quick favor?

• JK Molina — Is this thing on?

• Zillow - What Can You Afford?

• Scalable — Intro {first name} <> Ryan

• Koh Australia — Nice to meet you 👋 

• The Publish Press - Quick favor to ask

• TheFutureParty - Meet your new(s) plug

• Jay Clouse - Hey! Quick question for you…

• Growth Design - ✌️ quick intro {first name}

• The Hustle - Look what you did, you little jerk…

• Matt McGarry – Want to grow your newsletter?

• Leila Hormozi — Your new [Lead magnet name]

• Tim Bourquin - Who said you could join my newsletter?

• MorningBrew - ☕️ Caution: Morning Brew coming in hot

• Milk Road - bada bing bada boom. You're on my private web3 list.

• Justin Moore - 🧙‍♂️ Welcome + 5 Sponsorship Pricing Mistakes (Don't Do This)

After you’ve written a subject line, you need to create the body copy of your email.

Here’s my framework for this:

WE-PAC — The 5 elements of your welcome email copy

Welcome them to your newsletter

• Let subscribers know they just joined your newsletter.

• Give them a “welcome” and/or “thank you”.

• This only requires 1 or 2 sentences.

Expectations 

• Share what your newsletter covers, when you send it, and how it will help.

• Keep it short, 1-3 sentences.

Primary inbox

• Ask them to move your email to their primary inbox

• If your audience is tech-savvy include one sentence on how to do this.

• If your audience is not, you can include more instructions and a gif.

Ask for a reply

• Ask them to reply to your welcome email

There are 2 best ways to get replies:

(1) Ask for a simple 1-word reply that’s easy for the reader to do.

“Hit reply and send a simple “yes.” It tells Google (and other email providers) you actually want to get this.”

• Always explain the reason why readers should reply.

• Do not ask an open-ended ending question. You’ll get fewer replies this way.

Questions require readers to put in time and effort which will lower the reply rate.

(2) Give a “bribe” if readers reply to your welcome email.

Your bride could be a free report, course, cheat sheet, checklist, database, swipe file, tool, resource, template, etc.

Click a link

• Include a CTA for a link to your lead magnet, social profile, newsletter issues, blog, product, podcast, YouTube channel, or anything relevant.

• Clicks tell Gmail (and other email providers) that your email is valuable so future emails are less likely to land in the promotions or updates folders.

• Include at least one link in your welcome email.

To get the most link clicks:

• Pick the links or offers you think will get the highest CTR.

• Use a button, not just a hyperlink.

• Have a CTA in your “P.S” section.

To recap, here’s the framework: WE-PAC

• Welcome

• Expectations

• Primary inbox

• Ask for a reply

• Click a link

Welcome email example

• Subject line: Who said you could join?

• Preview Text: 150+ business ideas inside this email…

• Engagement: 66% open rate, 19% CTR

Note: It’s totally fine to use the “WE-PAC” framework in a different order. The important part is that you include all 5 elements in this email.

Welcome email engagement benchmarks

If you write a great subject line and implement the WE-PAC framework your welcome email engagement should be “good” or better.

(Assuming your subscribers are coming from high-quality traffic sources.)

Here’s what you should aim for:

Welcome email open rate:

• 30%+ open rate = Very bad

• 40%+ open rate = Bad

• 50%+ open rate = Okay

• 60%+ open rate = Good

• 70%+ open rate = Great

• 75%+ open rate = Excellent

• 80%+ open rate = World class

Welcome email CTR:

• 1%+ CTR = Very bad

• 5%+ CTR Bad

• 7%+ CTR = Okay

• 10%+ CTR = Good

• 12%+ CTR = Great

• 15%+ CTR = Excellent

• 20%+ CTR = World class

Last thing

I hope this helps!

If you improve your welcome email engagement, your overall email engagement with new subscribers will improve, too.

Follow my framework and watch your engagement and sales go up.