Second impressions. You don’t really get one of those—unless you black out and don’t remember the first time.
Welcome emails are your first—and sometimes last—chance to make a good and lasting impression on prospective customers. So, make that welcome a good one.
The author of today’s Read wants to help you make the best one possible. He also happens to be Buffer’s marketing director, so he knows what’s up.
He spent 35 days with 13 different brands learning how they approach onboarding a new user via email. He looked at several different industries: e-commerce, SaaS, entertainment, etc., each bringing something unique and different (and effective) to the table.
Let’s check out some of these takeaways, trends, and tips observed from some particularly amazing email campaigns.
1) Give your email address an avatar.
Putting a face to your name will no doubt build a stronger connection between you and the reader.
2) Longform is okay, especially if it’s from a person.
Keep in mind: Many people’s authenticity radar is pretty well tuned. If you’re going to send a plain-text email from a real person, it’s probably best to have that real person write it.
3) Use emojis in your subject lines.
Hehe, we love this one. Naturally, they’re best used when relevant to the text, though. Otherwise, you’re kind of just hopping on a bandwagon without knowing where you’re going. Awkward…
4) Make your own “cart abandonment” email.
Not every online business has shopping carts to fill. But most online businesses do have a key element in their onboarding that they’d love to drive home. AKA, we can all have cart abandonment emails, even if we don’t have carts! Here’s one that Treehouse sends to people who make it partway through the trial start process but don’t actually finish.
5) What one job does your email do?
Every email should have one job. And only one! If you want to say a couple things in your email, then send a couple different emails.
Five more golden nuggets to unearth! →
