Template
Welcome email
The first email after signup, and the one with the highest open rate you will ever have. Spend it on one action, not on a tour.
Your Product <[email protected]>
Your account is ready. Here is the first thing to do
It takes about two minutes and the rest makes sense after it.
Your Product
Welcome to Your Product
Your account is ready. There is one thing worth doing before anything else: connect a data source. Everything in the product is built on top of it, so nothing looks useful until it is done.
Connect a data source
It takes about two minutes and you can disconnect it whenever you want. If your source is not in the list, reply and tell us which one it is.
I am Alex, one of the two people who built this. If anything is confusing, that is worth knowing about, so reply to this email and it comes to me.
Alex, Your Product
Your Product Inc, 1 Example Street
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The blueprint
Rebuild it anywhere
Subject lines (5 options)
- Your account is ready. Here is the first thing to doshown above
- Welcome to Your Product
- Start here: connect a data source
- You are in. One thing to do first
- Your Product is set up. Now the two minute part
When it fires
- Trigger
- Fires when the account is created, from the same request that creates it, so a signup can never exist without its welcome.
- Timing
- Within seconds. This is transactional mail: it is the receipt for an action somebody just took, and a delay reads as a broken signup.
- Conditions
- If the account was created through a team invitation, send the invited-member version instead: they are joining a workspace that already has data in it, so the setup step is somebody else's and telling them to do it is wrong.
The body, block by block
Confirmation, one line
The account exists. One line, because they just watched it happen and the email is confirming, not informing.
The single next step
One action, and it has to be the one that makes the product work. Pick the thing without which every screen looks empty. That is almost never "take the tour".
Why that step first
One sentence. A reader who understands why the step matters will do it later if they do not do it now, and a reader who does not will skip it permanently.
One button
Deep link into the product, already signed in if you can. Every additional link in a welcome email measurably splits the click, and the second-best action is not worth what it costs the first.
The effort estimate
"About two minutes" removes the main reason people postpone: not knowing whether they are starting something that finishes today.
A person, and a way back to them
A name and a real reply address. This is the moment a new account is most willing to ask a question, and a no-reply sender is a decision to not hear it.
When to use it
Every time an account is created, without exception. It is the one email in this gallery that is not a judgement call, and it is worth more attention than any campaign you will run, because no campaign will ever be opened by this share of its recipients.
The discipline that makes it work is subtraction. A welcome email is asked to do six jobs by six different people: confirm the account, teach the product, introduce the team, link the docs, push the mobile app, and mention the upgrade. Doing all six means the reader does none of them. Pick the one action that makes the product start working, spend the whole email on it, and let the onboarding sequence carry the rest.
What kills this email
Sending a tour instead of a task
Six features with six links reads as a menu, and a menu at the moment of highest intent converts worse than a single instruction. The tour belongs in the onboarding sequence, spread across days, where each step has room to be acted on.
Sending it from no-reply
The welcome email gets more replies per thousand than anything else you send, and every one of them is a person telling you where they are stuck. A no-reply address turns that into silence and throws away a deliverability signal at the same time.
Batching it instead of sending it on the event
A welcome that arrives an hour after signup lands when the person has closed the tab. Fire it from the request that creates the account, on your transactional path, so nothing queues behind a campaign.
Choosing the action that suits you, not them
"Invite your team" and "upgrade" are actions that help the sender. The first step has to be the one that makes the product look like it works, or the invited teammates arrive at the same empty screen.
When not to send it
Do not send it in addition to a verification email when both would arrive within a minute of each other. Two emails competing for the same click halves the click, so put the welcome content in the verification email or wait for the address to be verified.
Do not send it to somebody who joined an existing workspace by invitation without changing what it says. The setup step is already done, and telling them to do it makes the product look like it does not know who they are.
Next
Private beta
Welcome email, drafted from your website
SendHeron reads your website and drafts a suite like this one, in your product's own words, ready to edit. Private beta, and we onboard a few teams at a time.