A welcome email is the first email you send to your subscribers as soon as they join your email list.

Because they JUST asked to hear from you, it often has the highest open rate and click rate compared to almost EVERY email you’ll send.

For example, the welcome email sent by our Chief Sumo, Noah Kagan, to his OkDork list has an open rate as high as 53.52%.

That’s why in this article, I’m going to show you five welcome email examples that will help you build rapport quickly, improve future open rates, identify your audience’s pain points, and, ultimately, generate more sales for your business.

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Example #1: Send Your Most Popular Content [OkDork]

Goal: Content consumption.

Best For: Content creators, influencers, personal brand builders (instead of a business brand).

Ain’t nobody got time for a 3,000-word welcome email on why they should care about your emails.

Here’s a rule of thumb: Never waste the reader’s time.

If you can get your point across in two minutes, do it.

In the example below, Noah Kagan sends a short, to-the-point welcome email when a visitor joins his email list.

The welcome email serves two simple purposes:

1. To showcase some of the best content Noah has.

2. To get people to subscribe to the podcast.

Instead of a dreadful business tone, Noah uses a casual, friendly approach for building rapport with the new subscriber.

If you’re a content creator and want to build a closer, more personal relationship with your audience, a brief email like this will work well.

Example #2: Get Subscribers To Whitelist Your Email Address [Morning Brew]

Goal: Email engagement.

Best For: Everyone who depends on email marketing.

Your emails should have higher open rates if they all get into the Primary inbox instead of the Promotions or Updates tab (in Gmail), or worse — the Spam folder.

To make sure that doesn’t happen, get your subscribers to add your email address to their contact list as soon as possible.

Morning Brew does that in the first email they send to their subscribers.

It’s so much more effective to ask your subscribers to whitelist your email address in the welcome email because they just joined your list, so it’s:

• likely they’re waiting for your email and will open it as soon as it hits their inbox.

• easier to get them to take a small action now compared to asking them weeks or months later. 

Example #3: Find Out Your Audience’s Pain Points By Asking One Question [DeanYeong.com]

Goal: Email engagement.

Best For: Content creators, freelancers, service-based businesses.

Business is about solving a problem people are willing to pay you for. This is especially true if you’re a content creator, freelancer, or service-based agency.

But how do you know what problem your audience is dying to get rid of?

The shortcut: You ask them.

On the side, I run a blog sharing about personal productivity for professionals and executives. To get into their heads, I ask every new subscriber about ONE thing they want to improve.

Instead of guessing what my readers need and want, I get them to talk about it themselves.

This way, I can create more relevant content for them. The best part is, I get to come up with product ideas based on the pain points my subscribers have already told me.

Example #4: Offer A Welcome Discount For The First Purchase [Iron Studios]

Goal: Product sales.

Best for: Ecommerce stores.

If you’re running an ecommerce store with a small team, it can be challenging to dive straight into content marketing.

We get it. Content marketing takes lots of effort, and the ROI doesn’t happen overnight.

So how do you get visitors to join your email list without content or lead magnets?

One of the BEST strategies is to offer an exclusive discount to your visitors when they join your email list.

Set up a Sumo email capture form to show to people who visit your site, like this:

As soon as someone becomes a subscriber, send an automated welcome email with the discount code you’ve promised to encourage them to make the first purchase.

This is precisely what Iron Studios does using Sumo.

It’s quick and straightforward. Plus, it helps grow your email list and generate more revenue for your online store at the same time. Here are three Sumo forms (with welcome emails) that have made Iron Studios over $8,000 in revenue.

Example #5: Offer Your Most Popular Products [Perfect Keto]

Goal: Product sales.

Best For: Ecommerce stores, indie software makers, evergreen digital products.

In retail stores, you often see “Great Buy” products being featured in a separate section. Online, businesses create unique landing pages for products they want to promote.

The same strategy can be applied to email — especially the welcome email.

Perfect Keto offers a 10% discount when a visitor joins their email list like Iron Studios above. 

But they don’t stop there.

In the welcome email, they include a section that features their bestselling products to encourage immediate purchase.

This simple strategy makes the buying process quick and easy. It removes the hassle from going through the entire store and deciding what’s best to buy.

Download Our Welcome Email Templates

You don’t need to deploy 274 marketing tactics to make your welcome email work. Instead, focus on two things:

1. Deliver what you promised when you asked subscribers to join your list.

2. Decide on the ONE objective (content consumption, email engagement or product sales) you want your welcome email to accomplish, and use one of the five examples in this blog post to accomplish it.

   • Content consumption: Send your most popular content.

   • Email engagement: Whitelist your email address OR ask a question.

   • Product sales: Discount code OR offer your most popular products.

To get you started immediately, I’ve prepared five welcome email templates you can use today, based on the five examples above.

Download them now to take your welcome email to the next level.

Get The Welcome Email Templates