May 11 | 6 minutes read

Successful ingredients for welcome newsletters

How to do email marketing effectively has been a long debated topic, every aspect of which has been discussed repeatedly at length. One area that seems to get a lot of attention, but little driven strategy, is newsletters.

A strong newsletter can be a really great way to drive engagement and develop effective lines of communication with customers. If you get it right, a newsletter can also help you to stay relevant and increase revenue.

So why wouldn’t you want to put more effort into this than ever before? Not having the right tools could be one detriment, but that’s not going to be a problem for long as APSIS One could be your go-to tool to create stunning and effective newsletters.

Not having the right information at your disposal could be another, but this blog post is going to fix all of that as well.

Welcome newsletters can be a tricky beast, but there are a few things you can do straight away that’ll increase your chances of success. Remember, this is the first impression a fresh customer has of your business or service and it’s a really valuable time to connect with them.

That first impression has to be great - and that’s something that’s your responsibility as an email marketer.

The basic welcome newsletter recipe

Before we get into it, it’s really important that you remember that each time someone subscribes to your welcome newsletter, they have taken some time out of their day to do so - so make it worthwhile! Or at least say thank you, it’s just good manners.

Right, now let’s get into it.

Make sure you include your company name within the subject line.
Be gracious, say thank you and take the time to welcome folks to your newsletter.
Remember to include links to your website so interested people can find out more.
If the person has signed up to your site and has a username and password, give them a reminder of that in the welcome email.
Include some contact information in your welcome newsletter. This should help to show how accessible and open you are!
Don’t just talk about yourself, that’s boring. Talk about your brand new subscriber instead, and show how you can improve their daily life.
Personalise that welcome email. Everyone wants to feel like they matter, so make your new subscriber feel like they matter.

Personalisation can be a really important tool to help boost revenue and increase customer loyalty, but to do so you need a winning marketing automation platform. Luckily, APSIS One can do that

Throw in a pinch of A/B testing

Email marketing needs to be tested and refined over a period of time to be really successful, and that’s where A/B testing comes into play. Working on instinct can be all well and good, but how are you supposed to know when instinct could lead to insolvency?

PS, if you’re struggling to see how this can be relevant to a welcome newsletter, that’s where welcome flows come into the picture and this is explored further down - so stick with us!

A split test will let you know what your recipients prefer, which will provide you with the ammunition you need to send the best welcome newsletters. That all sounds pretty simple, and it is, but there are a few things you’ll need to consider to get the most out of this exercise.

Pick your goals

You need to consider what you want your welcome newsletter to achieve. Do you want new subscribers to open your welcome newsletter, do you want them to click through to your website, or maybe use that first-time discount code? Perhaps you want to drive social media engagement. The list is endless, but it has to be narrowed down.

For a lot of users, increasing the open rate is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Decide the test

But wait, what are you going to test? Well, there’s a wide range of differences you could test - but make sure you only test one difference at a time so you’re sure about what works and what doesn’t.

You could change subject lines
Switch around designs or styles
Give new customers offers. Does 25% off work the same as 10%? You can find out!
Test a call to action and find out how that changes things

And please keep in mind, this feature will be available on APSIS One in the future!

Mix in a generous amount of good data

A lot of your success can be earned as you collect the right data and learn more about your customers and how they’ve historically treated welcome newsletters.

Users can integrate existing customer data with the platform, which will make sure that the right customers are communicated with at the right time. How awkward would it be to send the wrong person a welcome newsletter!? With the right data, you can make potentially game-changing informed decisions about the direction you want your newsletter to go in.

APSIS One’s email tool is specifically designed with the user in mind, and anyone using it will find it easier to design a successful welcome newsletter than finding an IKEA in Sweden.

Add a dash of marketing automation

Here’s another thing to consider: your welcome newsletter can be more than just a welcome newsletter. It can be a part of something bigger than just itself, which is kinda mind-blowing if you think too long about it.

We’re talking about using some marketing automation and a welcome flow, here. Welcome flows are based on a series of emails that are sent to new subscribers and is part of drip marketing. The goal is to introduce yourself to new subscribers and let them really know what you’re about - and if they spend a bit of money along the way, who are we to complain?

When done well, welcome flows help to manage subscribers’ expectations and move the dialogue forward. To do it well, here’s what you need to consider:

Plan for 30 days of welcome newsletters.
Keep them short, interesting and relevant. And don’t spam new subscribers! Five to seven is enough.
Check your performance. Remember those A/B tests? They can come in useful here.
Adjust your campaign depending on that performance.

Voila! The perfect email marketing dish

As we know, email marketing can be really tricky and so can welcome newsletters. But we’ve seen that with a little creativity and some smart working methods like A/B testing and data collection can combine to create a very successful welcome newsletter.