Welcome everybody to Omnisend’s marketing tip series, where in roughly 3 minutes or less each day, I’ll give you actionable tips on ways to improve your email & SMS marketing program and make you better marketers. 

This week is the first of two all about creating a revenue-driving welcome series. Today, let’s talk about outdated welcome series best practices and what you should REALLY be thinking about.

First, a quick welcome series refresher. A welcome series is an automated set of messages a company sends to brand new email subscribers. 

For example, Mary visits your website and is presented with a pop-up asking her to subscribe to receive emails. When Mary submits her email address, that triggers a series of automated messages to be sent to her. This is the welcome series.

These messages see a conversion rate nearly 2800% better than scheduled promotional emails and they’re responsible for 40% of automated email orders.

So maximizing your welcome series revenue is kind of a smart thing.

What holds many brands back from doing this is actually best practices!

With traditional best practices, these messages inform the subscriber about the brand, such as with a founder story, introduce the brand’s social networks, and ask them to manage their preferences. 

These “best practices” are outdated and limit your sales potential.

Now, why is that? Because they ignore the intent of the new subscriber.  

The most important question you need to ask yourself is, “what is the intention of the customer who just signed up?”  

Did they sign up for your emails in order to learn about the founder’s story, because they couldn’t find your social networks, or because they really really wanted to fill out a form about their interests? 

Of course not.

Their likely intention is to make a purchase — with you or with someone else.  

Understanding this purchase intent will help you create a welcome series that not only connects with your audience but guides them along their path to purchase.

So today, look at your welcome series messages and see if they cater to the INTENT of your new subscribers.

Tomorrow, we’ll start building out a welcome series focused on customer intent, so be sure to check back. 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of our marketing tips series, Feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Until next time, happy marketing!