Turning your website visitors into customers isn’t easy. That’s why it’s crucial to build relationship and trust with your new email subscribers from day one.

Your welcome email subject lines can make or break your email marketing strategy. They’ll determine whether the recipients open and read your emails or not.

Your welcome email plays an important role in your marketing strategy. It fulfills the subscribers’ expectation and helps you position yourself as a reliable business as well.

Studies suggest that 74.4% of the people who signed up expect a welcome email. Once the recipient opened your welcome email, you have the chance of making a great first impression with a stunning welcome email design. It will decide your click-through rates. Remember, you have this chance once only! With the help of a visual template builder, you can create an amazing welcome email design within minutes.

Why are welcome emails important?

Grabbing someone’s attention is more difficult than ever. Recipients receive so many emails each day that some emails get lost in the ether inevitable.

A whopping 50% of welcome emails get opened, it’s the highest open rate among other emails. That’s why it’s necessary to nail the welcome email subject lines to increase this ratio and achieve a higher ROI.

Catchy newsletter subject lines help you decrease the number of unread emails. Make sure you take your time coming up with great subject lines as they can make a huge difference.

Apart from greeting the new subscribers, you can also leverage your very first email and make some deals. The study by Wordstream shows that effective welcome emails had 320% more revenue than other promotional emails. If this number doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what else could.

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How to write a great welcome email subject line

Apply a well-thought-out welcome email strategy to maximize your efforts. A great welcome email strategy starts with designing great subject lines.

1.Define your goal before designing your welcome email.

What is the purpose of your welcome emails? How does it fit your marketing strategy?

To start with, define the KPIs of your emails. Track the open rate, conversion rate or the value of the sale for instance. KPIs are business specific, aim to find your North Star.

Test different variables to see which increase these metrics. Work on optimizing both your subject lines and the email copies.

2.Define what action should the recipients take?

Welcome emails offer great opportunities due to the high open rates. It’s a wise decision to include active verbs with a call to action in your subject lines.

Do you want them to download your app or verify their accounts? Do you want them to purchase something or give more information about themselves?

Tell the recipients what they need to do next. The preview text is a great place to include what you want the readers to do.

3.Define how long the subject line for welcome emails should be?

According to Mailchimp there is no direct correlation between the number of characters and the open rate. Most probably, the shorter the subject line is better than a really long one. Experiment with the length of your subject lines to see which work the best for you.

4.Use the 4U model to write compelling welcome email subject lines.

Ultra-specific

Include the information your welcome emails contain. Misleading subject lines annoy the recipients. It’s unprofessional and unethical. You could possibly lose subscribers as well.

Include the information your welcome emails contain. Misleading subject lines annoy the recipients. It’s unprofessional and unethical. You could possibly lose subscribers as well. Urgent

Urgency encourages the recipients to take action now. It’s based on the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) principle. E-commerce welcome emails can help you leverage this tactic well. The study by Mailchimp suggest the words “ urgent, breaking, important and alert ” were the most successful ones in terms of open rate.

Urgency encourages the recipients to take action now. It’s based on the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) principle. E-commerce welcome emails can help you leverage this tactic well. Useful

Tell the recipient why your email is useful for them. Why they should open it. Trigger curiosity, have an impact on the rational mind as well.

Tell the recipient why your email is useful for them. Why they should open it. Trigger curiosity, have an impact on the rational mind as well. Unique

Design welcome email subject lines that are different from the others. Use your creativity, come up with funny newsletter email subject lines, but be cautious and don’t overdo it. Make sure you aren’t boring but stand out from the crowd.

5.Try personalization in your welcome email subject lines

Thanks to technology, we have the tools necessary to send out personalized emails in a more effective way. By using email marketing automation you can send tailored messages to the right person at the right time.

The recipients feel that you give them your full attention and care about them. Studies show that people don’t mind this method as far as your emails are relevant to them. You need to make sure you aren’t creepy when you personalize your emails though.

According to Mailchimp personalization does work.

Surprisingly, the data shows that the first and last name personalization in the subject line triggered a much higher open rate than the first or last name only.

Hubspot recommends sending emails by a person from a company to build trust and increase the open rate.

6.Use emojis in subject lines with care

Use emotional words to increase the open rate. Believe it or not, emojis can also have a positive impact on the performance of your emails. Written communication can be easily misunderstood because it lacks non-verbal elements. Emojis add personality to your subject line and make your message sound more human.

7.Avoid Spam filters

This is a big one.

Certain words such as “Free“, “100%” or “50% OFF” trigger the email client’s spam folder which prevent your emails to be delivered. Make sure you go through a spam word list before crafting the subject line.

Source: Beeketing

Don’t use all capital letters in the subject line either. You don’t want to shout at the recipients. Using several exclamation marks is also odd. Don’t send attachment either to avoid the spam filters.

What is a welcome email sequence?

You might think of one single email when we discuss welcome emails. If you do so, you miss out on a great opportunity!

The welcome email sequence is sent after the Opt-in email and before the regular email campaign. Its purpose is to educate the recipients and build trust.

Automated welcome email sequence example

I designed three different welcome email sequence for you. Of course, you can tailor the messages to your customers and business.

1. E-commerce welcome email series

Welcome email: Introduction, what the company does, what the recipient can expect. Welcome email: Follow us on social. Welcome email: Shop now. Welcome email: Read our blog.

2. Loyalty program welcome email series

Welcome email: Loyalty program, what it includes. Welcome email: Follow us on social. Welcome email: Discount Voucher. Welcome email: If the voucher wasn’t used within a week, send a reminder to redeem it.

3. SaaS onboarding welcome email series

Welcome email: Introduce your software and include value proposition. Welcome email: How to get started with our tool. Welcome email: Invite your colleagues and start collaborating. Welcome email: Download our mobile app. Welcome email: Join our Slack group community.

Timing of the welcome email sequence

People are the most engaged when they signed up for a newsletter. You have a very short period of time to take advantage of it as the interest of these people will drop.

This is the reason why one single welcome email isn’t enough to keep subscribers engaged. You need an evil master plan to keep these people in the loop. This plan is the welcome email sequence itself.

Schedule at least 3 emails in your welcome email sequence and set additional triggered emails depending on the recipients’ actions.

1.Immediately – Welcome and thank you.

Goal: the introduction of the company and what the subscriber can expect.

Send the first welcome email immediately. Say hi and thank the recipient for the subscription. Give instructions if further actions are required to be taken.

Most welcome email subject lines include the word “welcome to” so the recipients can easily screen their email boxes.

Subject line examples:

Welcome to The Company. Please, complete your profile.

Welcome to The Company. Please, verify your account.

Good decision. Welcome to our family. 🙂

2.In 12-28 hours – Follow on social media

Goal: increasing the number of followers on the company’s social media channels.

You can’t send emails to your recipients on a daily basis. They would most probably unsubscribe from your email list. However, social media is a great platform to communicate with the followers every day without being annoying.

Subject line examples:

Let’s hang out on social.

Are you following us yet?

Follow us on Facebook.

3.In one-week – Send a voucher.

Goal: Activate the subscriber to purchase their first item.

Sending a voucher to a new subscriber is a nice gesture and will encourage shopping. Who doesn’t like a good deal?

Subject line examples:

Pssst. We have a surprise for you.

10% OFF just for you

4.In two weeks – If the recipient didn’t redeem the voucher, send a reminder to use it.

Goal: Remind the subscriber to use their coupon.

People get distracted very often that’s why they need a little reminder every now and then. It’s also possible that subscribers weren’t ready to purchase a couple of weeks ago. Give it a try and see if they are ready now.

At this stage, you can use count down in your email to trigger a sense of urgency.

Subject line examples:

⏰ 1 week remains to redeem your voucher

Hurry up James, only 24 hrs left to use your coupon

A/B test welcome email subject lines

Split testing helps you find out which subject line works the best. You can experiment with the copy, the subject line or personalization. You can also use questions vs statement or different emotions.

Experiment with different words depending on the emotion you want to trigger. The most important thing to keep in mind that you should change one variable at a time only. Otherwise, you won’t know which variable made the impact.

Source: Pinterest

Don’t try to sell hard

Keep in mind that your welcome email isn’t your sales pitch. Don’t try to sell in your subject line either. Don’t be pushy.

Welcome email design samples

Before diving into the welcome emails subject lines, let’s see a few welcome email design examples to put subject lines in context so you understand how to line up your subject line and the email.

Matching the subject line and the content of the email is a must. Don’t use the same subject line for every email in your sequence.

Leverage automated emails from the very beginning and use triggered welcome emails.

In order to create a good email design, we recommend you to use a professional email template designer because of it’s flexible drag’n’drop editor. You can craft a beautiful email within minutes. There are email template builders & designers that you can use for free.

In Chamaileon, we already have predesigned welcome email templates that you can easily modify to match with your brand. You can register and access them for free.

Now let’s take a look at some of the examples.

The example below shows how you can combine the onboarding process with your email strategy.

For SaaS companies, it’s important that the users don’t just register but use the product as well. This welcome email campaign sample by Asana shows you how to activate users.

1.Complete your Asana sign up – Creating your Asana account. To get started, just verify your email by visiting our website. (1st email)

The journey of your subscribers starts with the double opt-in. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes it very seriously, make sure you get it right.

When the recipients open the email, they know exactly what to do. Asana asked them to complete their sign up by clicking the Verify your email address button in the email.

2.Welcome to Asana. Here is the best way to start tracking tasks in Asana – Create a task. (2nd email)

Onboarding is one of the major factors when it comes to activating users. It’s necessary to show how to use your software to improve the user experience.

The subject line clearly tells the recipients that they would learn how to set tasks and how to track them.

3.Signed up? Now set up. (3rd email)

The second part of the welcome email series explains how to set up an Asana project. The question in the subject line grabs the attention and tells what to do next.

4.Ease your team into Asana. (4th email)

Well, the preview text above isn’t the best but we can learn from this mistake. If you want to use UTM tag to track your email performance, insert the tag in your CTA.

This email is the second piece explaining another great feature. Dedicating an email to each feature is a great way of introducing your product.

5.Find your files. – In Asana, files stay with your work. We’ve all forgotten to attach a file. (5th email)

This email was about finding files. Simple but important guide the users can follow.

The example above shows how your newsletter email subject lines and emails copies should align.

15 Newsletter subscription welcome email subject line examples

Being creative when writing welcome email subject lines is easier said than done.

Most of the companies send a “Welcome to our company” subject line and pat themselves on their shoulders.

Certainly, this simple message could do the job but why not sprinkle some personality into your message? Try to create creative subject lines for your welcoming emails.

SUMO – Welcome to SumoMe Support 🙂 Please click the link below to create a password.

The smiley definitely gives a personal, friendly touch to the email. The first step is to click the link provided and log in.

Figma – Welcome to Figma!- Useful links to help you get started: Figma Help Center: The answers to most of your questions.

It’s never too early to start the onboarding process. Provide information about the product in your very first email already.

Google Analytics – Welcome to Google Analytics. – Download the mobile app to see your data anywhere.

Do you have an app? Encourage your users to download it just as Google does. Provide a quick link, so the recipients can download your app by one single click. Remember, the fewer people have to navigate the more likely they will take actions.

MixMax – Welcome to Mixmax! – I wanted to personally reach out and welcome you.

This subject line is a sweet message from MixMax saying that they wanted to connect on a more personal level. They also mentioned that their software increased productivity by 33-45%. Great reminder to persuade the users to use the tool.

Bitly – Welcome to Bitly! We’re happy to have you on board! Ready to get started?

This subject line is a very common one, I still like it very much. Bitly made sure that they included a to-do checklist in their welcome email.

Creative Buzz – Welcome to our #AWESOME community!

Creative Buzz used the hashtag Awesome to spice up their welcome email subject line.

Sprout Social – Welcome to Sprout Social!- time being social.

This email subject encourages the users of Sprout Social to get out there and be social by using their software.

Vimeo – Please, verify your account

Do you users need to log in to use your software? Ask them to verify their account in your welcome email. Vimeo provided the link in the subject line where the recipient could confirm their email addresses right away.

RocketReach – Welcome! Start saving time now. – Welcome to RocketReach!

RocketReach included their value proposition in their welcome email. It encouraged the users to take a step further.

Medium – Welcome to Medium John Doe. – Discover interesting ideas and unique perspectives from writers.

Medium used a conservative approach. Using both first and second name could be beneficial.

Ecommerce welcome email subject lines

Creating a great e-commerce email that follows best practice isn’t enough. Subject Lines offer a great opportunity to boost your sales if you do it right.

Tula – Welcome to TULA! Enjoy 20% off your first purchase.

TULA knows how to make the recipients tick. Offering discount in the welcome subject line is a bold move but I’m sure that this email had a very high open rate.

Nike – Welcome to Nike Unlaced. – NikeWomen

Customers feel special when they join an exclusive club. In this case, Nike created a new store for women only. You can also segment the recipients and send them welcome emails based on products, gender or other factors.

Waitrose Thank you for registering with Waitrose.com. (1st email)

This subject line by Waitrose confirmed that the subscription was successful and that the registration details were in the welcome email.

Waitrose – Receive £40 off your first two shops at waitrose.com (2nd email)

Waitrose wanted to encourage online shopping so they offered a coupon for the newbies.

StumbleUpon – Welcome to StumbleUpon. (just for the contrast)

After seeing how you can leverage your welcome email subject lines it’s obvious that StumbleUpon misses out a great opportunity here.

The Takeaway

Subscribers open the emails based on the subject lines that describe them. Although welcome emails have a high open rate by default, you can increase this number and help move the recipients through the customer lifecycle.

Align the message of your subject line and the copy of your email. If you do so, you can prevent disappointment and keep the subscribers in a long term. Bear in mind that your welcome email represents the company, the first impression is very important.

Use automated messages to create a killer welcome email sequence with the relevant subject lines. Split testing allows you to experiment with the subject lines to get the most out of it. You will see, sooner or later you will turn visitors into loyal customers.