A successful marketing automation onboarding series (often referred to as a welcome series) is designed to welcome a new subscriber to your database, confirm their subscriptions, inform them further about your company, and encourage them to take action sooner than later. An onboarding series offers a high ROI, as it can increase conversion, reduce the time to purchase, eliminate questions, and showcase features and benefits early on.

"Nearly 81% of B2C marketers send welcome emails to their new subscribers" – ExactTarget

Key Benefits

• Create a strong first impression of your company, product, and services
• Reduce the time to your customer's first purchase
• Grow your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube subscribers
• Promote downloads of your mobile app
• Reduce the chances of landing in the junk folder

Setting Up Your Onboarding Series

The following are the steps needed to set up an onboarding series across any marketing automation platform. Some of the phrasing or terminology may vary depending on the vendor, but the overall steps remain the same.

This blueprint is for a series of four onboarding emails over the course of two weeks.

Database Query

This onboarding series assumes the contact has just subscribed and the record has a JoinDate

The query needs to capture anyone with a join date of today, using JoinDate = today. By having a query this simple, it will allow the first email to be sent out immediately, followed by the rest of the series, delayed from the original join date.

A | Enter Program

Subscribers with the join date of today.

B | Send Email #1

This is your opportunity to make a strong first impression with your new subscriber and set the tone of the relationship from day 1. With any new subscriber, remind them who you are, what you offer, and why they should do business with you.

• Subject Line: "Jimmy, Welcome to XYZ!"
• Timing: Immediately after joining

Email Content:

• Start out with a warm welcome and introduce your company and services further
• Remind them what they have subscribed to in terms of the type of emails and the frequency you will be sending
• Share the key benefits of doing business with you compared to the competition
• Provide a link to your subscription preferences page on your website
• Offer a direct link to download your mobile app
• Make it easy to do business by providing your relevant contact information (phone numbers, email addresses, e-commerce links, etc.)

C | Send Email #2

The second email starts to build on the first one, and provides more information about what your company and website offers, along with starting to softly sell your products or services.

• Subject Line: Stop searching and start exploring!
• Timing: 3 days later

Email Content:

• Thank them again for subscribing
• Showcase your top products or services with deep links into your website to more information
• Remind them of the key benefits of doing business with you
• Offer a direct link to download your mobile app
• Share a happy customer testimonial or two

D | Send Email #3

The third email of the series is focused around promoting your social media profiles. By having a dedicated email, you increase your chances of creating more than one touch point with the new subscriber whether its on email, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. The more touch points, the more ability to showcase your products and services — further increasing your chance of sale.

• Subject Line: Let's Get Social!
• Timing: 6 days later

Email Content:

• Let them know you're also on popular social media networks and encourage them to connect
• Share the benefits of connecting such as fan-only exclusives, daily tips, etc.
• Provide direct links to your various social networks

E | Send Email #4

The last email in the onboarding series asks outright if there is anything they need help on or if they have any questions. This email is similar to being in a retail store and the sales rep asks if they can offer any assistance.

• Subject Line: How can we help?
• Timing: 12 days later

Email Content:

• Thank them again for subscribing
• Ask them if they have any questions or need assistance
• Remind them of the benefits of doing business with your company
• Sign off the email with an actual person's name

F | Exit Program

Once the subscriber reaches this step, exit them from the program.

Email Design:

Your onboarding emails are a powerful medium to showcase your company's product and services in a clear and concise way. Your email designs should have a fairly similar look and feel with consistent headers and footers, along with common elements throughout. For each of the individual messages though, make your key point stand out and make up the majority of the email.

Zappos, a major shoe e-retailer, dedicates a whole email to promote their social media channels along with the features and benefits of connecting with each — no doubt growing their reach beyond email.

Take It One Step Further

Make your onboarding series even better by using one or more of these ideas.

Offer a Subscriber-Only Incentive: After welcoming the new subscriber onboard, set an incentive for them to do business with you sooner or later. This can range from % off their first purchase, a free eBook, or a gift with purchase — this can help move them from being passive subscribers to an active customer. You can also promote this as a benefit to subscribing on your website to help grow your overall email subscriptions.

In Banana Republic's onboarding series, they offer a 20% discount to their new subscriber, and follow it up with a reminder two weeks later if it hasn't already been redeemed.

Delay Your Day-to-Day Emails: If you send multiple emails a week, it could be overwhelming to get your onboarding emails along with the day-to-day emails. You can build in a delay to your onboarding process, which ensures that the new subscriber receives the entire series first, before being distracted by the deal of the day, blowout deals, or a demo of a new product. Introduce yourself before you sell!

Promote Whitelisting: If your emails tend to land into the spam folder (or Google's promotions tab), add an additional email campaign to the series that specifically encourages subscribers to whitelist your emails going forward. You can go even further by targeting only those who didn't open your first email or two — if they didn't open those, it's fair to assume they're either not interested or not seeing the emails you're sending.

Finish with a Phone Call: Marketing automation is designed to help enhance the personal relationship, not to replace it. After the new subscriber has worked through the entire onboarding series, have someone make a warm phone call and thank them for subscribing. This not only helps build that one on one relationship, but also helps you stand out in a competitive business environment.

Have a 6 Month Check-in: Your onboarding series does not have to end within a week or two. Add in a final email campaign 6 months after their original join date, which asks the subscriber of what they think of your company and emails thus far. Having a link to a very simple survey is a quick way to measure your email marketing's overall health.