Welcome! Can we spam you a little?

Welcome Emails are the most important part of your online communication. If you are in a business where your brand needs a lot of interaction online and email addresses are of a lot more value than likes and followers then you should put a lot of thought before finalizing the welcome email campaign.

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 rate 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.

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 (you are anyway sold, what will you use instead? yahoomail?). 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.

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.

Subject Line: The best of Gmail, wherever you go

Now obviously, who, if not google would want to tap the 110mn mobile internet users in India. The last in the 3 series email 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

Introduce yourself and highlight the basics Give 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. 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, he’s given his email id to you, there will be time for that, for now, play it cool.

Let them know you have your offerings on mobile as well. Dont quote me on this but I have heard people in the industry say that it’s the future of internet marketing. Not my words, people say.

Thank you for your time. Until next post. Keep clicking.