Welcome! Can we spam you a little?

Welcome emails are usually the first chance you get to impress your customers. These emails are usually the first interaction and two way communication that your users might get to experience after interacting with your website/mobile app or something else.

A good welcome email can go on to  have a lasting impression on your brand. Check the coolness that Happily Unmarried adds to their welcome email communication and in turn their brand.

It will be your brand’s first interaction using the most often and effective mode of interaction available online in the current day – emails. No matter how cliche it might sound, but “first impression is the last impression” couldn’t have been more true for your first ever email with your subscriber.

The audience online is highly impressionable and will make judgments in a matter of seconds. There is less likelihood that you will get a second chance to revive a mind set that has already been established after your first email.

If you look at it, with a purely transaction view, your welcome emails are the only emails that will give you the sky rocket open rates ever. Hence, it becomes all the more important to leverage the same.

Do like Gmail does..

To start things off, this is how Gmail, the father of all email service providers welcomes you, so that you can manage the spam that you are about to receive in an organized way

Organize your chaos

Above image is the first of 3 welcome mails that you receive as soon as you sign up for Google’s email services. The welcome mail is easy to read, does not hard sell. It gives a good sense of what you can do with Gmail with easy call-to-action links, specially an embedded video in the email is a brilliant way to connect with the audience and introduce them the offering.

Welcome Email No. 2

Subject Line: Three tips to get the most out of Gmail

Organize your chaos with these helpful tips

Since the first email, just about introduces you and does not bombard you with all the information in the world, the second tells you a little more about Gmail’s capability to deliver a wholesome experience. This mail with an interesting subject line (Three tips to get the most out of Gmail) immediately catches your attention. You want to know what are those 3 tips that I can read which can help me beyond just checking emails.

Welcome Email No. 3

Subject Line: The best of Gmail, wherever you go

Now obviously, who,  if not google would want to tap the ever increasing mobile internet users in India. The last in the 3 series email is the one in which Gmail welcomes you to install their app. Gmail could have done so much more because these are the first 3 emails that will land in your inbox. However, they chose to be precise, to the point and clutter free like the current state of your inbox.

If you take a closer look, all three emails serve a very clear objective. That’s the key, one email, one pitch, one objective.

Introduce | Interact | Engage

1. Introduce yourself and highlight the basics
2. Interact with them by giving them tips to make use of additional features of Gmail apart from just checking emails. This email is the first time the brand is talking to it’s audience.
3. Encourage them to engage with you on a regular basis with a clear call-to-action and communication.

What do we know? What have we learnt

• Don’t bombard all your offerings in one huge email. Introduce them slowly and steadily even if it requires you to pitch the same thing in different tones.
• Be very subtle and sophisticated, don’t hardsell, dont ask the user to do a million things in the first pitch itself.
• Wherever possible ask your users to come on your mobile offerings. There is a reason why the strategy is shifting to mobile first and mobile only.