Welcome campaigns: An integral part of any email marketing strategy

As an agency, we work closely with clients to ensure their email marketing strategy delivers against their objectives. Often, when planning the customer journey, the role of the welcome email comes into question – why is it important? What should be included? Is it essential?

Historically, email marketing focused on sending as many emails to as many people as possible. More recently, as marketers become more savvy and tools more sophisticated the focus has changed and its now about sending relevant, personalised communications which engage and develop a relationship with the recipient.

The optimum way to start this relationship is to develop an impactful welcome campaign. Very often, the first interaction a customer has with the brand is via the welcome email. Hence this is vital communications tool – after all, first impressions last!

Welcome campaigns often have one of the highest engagement/click through levels of all marketing emails which are sent. According to a Salesforce 2015 benchmark study, only 42% of companies actually send welcome emails. Those that do send them, however, claim that they are useful: 72% of companies that send these automated emails assess them as very effective/effective and only 5% see little or any value in them. We feel the on-boarding process is one of the best opportunities to increase ROI on email campaigns.

So what makes a good welcome campaign? Obviously, it is dependent on the industry and target audience however, we recommend following this formula to help build brand loyalty and engagement:

1. Acknowledgement:

The first stage of a welcome campaign is acknowledgement - confirmation of sign up message. In this message, we recommend thanking the user for signing up to your emails. However, this is also an ideal opportunity to provide a bit of information about you as a brand. This can help to personalise their experience with you, make a positive impression and help to create a relationship. We also recommend setting the expectations of the type or amount of emails that they will be receiving from you. This provides recipients with a teaser and can persuade them to open and interact with your emails.

2. Information gathering:

The middle stage of your welcome campaign is to find out some more information. When they signed up for your emails you may have collected some information or maybe just their email address. By focusing this next email on them you can direct your recipients to a preference centre that will allow them to update their preferences and ‘personalise their emails’. The more details which are collected, the more you can segment your data and ensure that you are sending relevant emails, thus resulting in higher engagement rates.

3. Personalisation:

The final stage of your welcome campaign is to use the information that you have collected to send relevant content. By sending a message such as this, you are proving that you are taking into account the information they provided and it is being used to benefit them. It will also encourage members to continue to provide you with information in the future

Throughout all these messages you should ensure you have provided links to your other channels, specifically social channels. You may find that some members will be more likely to interact with you through these channels, so you need to ensure they are aware you are present on social and make it easy for them to interact by providing clear links.

By following these steps you can create an effective, multi-level welcome campaign and start to build a long lasting relationship with your customers. Therefore, the answer to the question, ‘Are welcome campaigns integral to your email marketing strategy’ we always answer with a resounding ‘yes!’

Further reading: Data HQ's complete guide to email marketing