Are you making the most of your welcome messages?
Welcome messages arrive in subscribers' in-boxes at the very moment they are most engaged with your email program.
Done right, they're a great chance to cement your relationship with new names, encourage image downloading and improve inbox delivery. So are yours working as hard as they could?
Welcome messages offer email marketers huge opportunities. They give you a great chance to do all of these things:
- get your address added to your subscribers address books, thereby bypassing the spam filter
- get your images enabled in future mailings
- promote cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
- request additional subscriber data / preferences (see Issue 4)
- generate list-building activity by encouraging subscribers to forward the email to a friend
If you're using double opt-in, they also enable you to confirm your subscriber's address.
HTML or text?
There's a popular belief that all welcome messages should be text only, but we're not so sure.
True, text has a higher chance of getting delivered, but using text also means you miss out on most of the opportunities highlighted above. If you use text only, you can't check open rates, which is a big disadvantage when you consider that subscription is the time that people are most engaged with you.
We'd suggest at least testing delivery rates for HTML with a small sample from your list. You might very well be surprised by the results.
Think long term
A welcome or confirmation shouldn't just be a single communication that goes out and gets forgotten about. Think about the welcome process as an email program consisting of a series of targeted messages sent out over time.
Typically your welcome program might include:
- a welcome message when someone signs up, reminding subscribers of the benefits of subscribing
- a targeted special offer sent a week later (with a short valid period)
- a timely reminder to use the offer before it expires
Things to remember
Maximise the effectiveness of your welcome messages by following these quick tips:
- Be sure to set your welcome message program up as a triggered message so that the initial welcome or confirmation message is deployed moments after someone registers.
- Test the use of HTML rather than text only
- Send your welcome message from the same address as future messages will come from – especially if you ask users to add you to their address book, or download images
