Your welcome email is your most important piece of customer marketing

Acquiring a customer is only the first step along what you want to be a very long journey together. The most successful companies know they cannot take customers for granted. They also know that customers never stop developing their opinion of a company, be it good or bad, and first post-purchase impressions are vital.

If you ask for customers to sign-up to an account as part of their purchase, this is where your welcome email comes in.

 

Your welcome email must be much than just a simple hello or confirmation of the order. This is your customer’s first window in to your business and the product they have bought, so it has to be a good one.

From how it looks, to what it says and what it asks them to do, it all needs a lot of thought and attention to ensure your customers get off on the right foot and instantly develop a positive opinion of your business.

Personalise

Use the information you captured at the sign-up stage to personalise their welcome email. Personalised emails have been proven to be more effective than generic emails.

Even something as simple as inserting their name is an effective tool for increasing click through rates.

Consistent branding

Your welcome email must be consistent with your brand. The colour scheme, tone of voice and depth of copy must reflect the brand they bought from perfectly.

This may seem obvious, but I have seen countless welcome emails that use out of date branding or do not fit in with the pre-sales brand their website uses.

What should they do next?

The biggest question a welcome email should answer is “What do I do next?” Is it log-in, activate something, phone you…?

Put this information prominently at the top of your welcome email like a call to action button on your website, and don’t bury it in paragraphs worth of text.

Educate them on how to use the product

The more your customer uses your product, the more likely they are to stay with you and buy more.

Obviously you’re welcome email should provide all the information they need to log-in, but it should also contain information on how to get started with your control panel and product.

You don’t need to put all the information in to the email, but you should link to guides/ resources that provide step by step information on using their product.

Keep it short and sweet

You don’t need to give every morsel of information about your company and products at this stage, and in fact you shouldn’t.

No one wants to read an essay upon signing up, and it makes your product look overly complicated.

Let your customers decide which information they want to read more about by linking to guide based pages on your website/ control panel, giving them control over what they read more about and when.

Cross-sell, but don’t up-sell

The period after an initial purchase is a great time to cross-sell complimentary add-ons and products a customer can benefit from associated with their product.

Don’t push this too hard and make it feel like it is informational and supportive rather than hard sales.

I personally would not attempt an up-sell at this stage, it instantly makes their product feel inferior. I’d save that for renewal reminders.

Encourage referrals

One thing Dropbox do very well is incentivise word of mouth through the promise of more free storage space.

This starts instantly with their welcome email and a link to their storage bonus page with instructions on how to claim it by advertising them via social media or referring a friend. You can do the same!

Optimise for mobile

41% of email is now opened on a mobile device, and that figure is growing.

When designing any email, not just your welcome email, ensure your subject line is written for the shorter subject lines you get on mobile phones and the design is responsive based on screen size.


One thought on “Your welcome email is your most important piece of customer marketing

  1. Hi Matt,

    Thanks for sharing this. Oh yes, I can’t agree more on this.

    At times, a simple welcome email goes a long way. I always try to make my welcome email as short as possible. It is meant to give my readers an insight of what they will be getting from me and what to expect.

    Voted up on BizSugar and have a great Sunday!

    Reginald

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