In today’s world where technology is highly accessible, virtually anybody can open their own website or business online. While building a successful enterprise in the digital realm takes time and patience, the framework for such an endeavor can be set up in as little as a few hours. This is particularly good news for small brands that wish to sell a variety of products and services to people from all over the world.
Once your online shop is up and running, the task then turns to marketing and promotion. Getting the word out about your online shop can be difficult at first: without a substantial marketing budget, hardly anybody will know where to find your products or services. However, as your brand grows in size, you will have at least one factor working in your favor: mailing lists.
Making the right first impression with prospective shoppers and one-time customers can make a huge difference in repeat business and brand loyalty. As such, let’s take a look at how you can write a perfect welcome email for those who have just signed up for an account or subscribed for updates from your online shop.
Be Sure to Thank Them
Every time a new shopper creates an account, makes a purchase or signs up for updates via email, it is an opportunity to make yet another good first impression. Every welcome email should always start off by thanking the user for completing the action in question. Ideally, just a simple use of the word “thanks” is enough to convey this sentiment, along with additional personalized elements (such as their name) if and when possible.
By thanking them, your welcome email’s opening is easily devised without complication. Even though readers know that the email they’ve received isn’t hand-written specifically for them, studies show that saying thank you improves reception of any pitch, message or greeting. From there, you’ll want to shift to other elements that provide value and help build loyalty among recipients.
Provide Immediate Benefit
Whether you’ve proactively convinced a potential shopper to sign up for updates or just secured a purchase from a customer for the first time, convincing recipients to care about your email is still vital. As such, your welcome email should contain genuine benefit and/or value in order to properly persuade those who are reading it.
The SendinBlue blog outlines just how valuable a welcome offer email – such as a discount or limited time special – can be in making customers feel appreciated and committed to future action. By providing legitimate and immediate value to your readers, you are building bonds of trust and loyalty for the long-term – not to mention it can help encourage repeat purchases as well.
Introduce Yourself
The most successful businesses online are those that build human connections and personal bonds with their customers. If you want welcome emails to resonate as strongly as possible with first-time customers and users, then you absolutely should use this as an opportunity to introduce yourself.
There are a number of ways in which to do this. You can include a photograph of yourself and your online shop’s team. You can provide a quick paragraph summarizing your shop’s mission and how each (named) employee contributes to the experience. You can share the backstory of how your online store came into existence. The options are numerous, but the theme is the same: start building a human connection to your business in every welcome email and you’ll retain more future business.
Tell Them What to Expect
While those who have just made their first purchase may have some idea of what to expect, those who are being welcomed after signing up for an account might not know how your business operates. In your welcome email, it is imperative that you summarize exactly what each subscriber can expect.
This includes how often you’ll be contacting them via email, where they can find the best deals on your website, or how to get in touch with your shop if necessary. Likewise, it is generally a good idea to also highlight any opt-out or custom subscription options in this email, giving them the ability to configure how often they hear from you.
Experiment with Content
Last but definitely not least, any welcome email should do its best to highlight relevant content to audiences in order to further encourage engagement with online storefronts. While most of the recommendations mentioned above relate directly to text included in the email itself, welcome emails can also be a golden opportunity to show-case other meaningful content on your shop’s website.
This may include specific blog posts, reviews, and comparisons of products, infographics and even videos embedded in the welcome email itself. Content and feature-rich emails tend to deliver better performance than plain text variations, so why not use this as an opportunity to bolster your marketing performance and generate additional shop interest from subscribers?
While each audience is different, your customer base will undoubtedly have a few common expectations. By thanking them first and foremost, humanizing your brand, providing immediate value, experimenting with various types of content and telling them what they can expect in the future, you’ll craft truly perfect welcome emails that accomplish every goal your shop can reasonably set.
