Say hello with your first email automation

Part 3 of “6 steps to start email marketing for your Shopify store”

Hello there! Thanks so much for reading this blog series. I hope to educate merchants new to email marketing, and empower them to build a solid program with a consistently growing ROI. 

Guess what? The first message you send to an email subscriber can be as simple as the paragraph above. 

In email marketing jargon, this is the welcome message. It is the greeting a subscriber receives after signing up for your newsletter. The welcome email is one of the highest converting emails in your program! Research shows they generate, on average, up to 320% more in revenue than a regular promotional email. 

That’s why this is the first automation you should activate.

It can be a single message or a series. A welcome message sets the foundation for the shopper/merchant relationship and is an important first step to building trust with your subscribers. 

Use your welcome automation to say thank you and tell subscribers what they can expect in your emails moving forward. I urge you to go further by explaining why the subscriber made a good choice. We’re using the unique selling proposition (USP) developed during our first session to guide the content of your welcome message. It’s the basis for a show-and-tell of your value.

Bonus: Adding an incentive or discount to a popup or newsletter subscription form can be effective, so ensure it’s easy to access in the email.

Task: customize and activate your welcome automation

As mentioned, the welcome automation can be a series of emails. We recommend three to four across 7 to 10 days. But because you are just getting started, we’ll go over creating the first one. 

We recommend keeping these four goals in mind when designing the message:

1. Make a great first impression by introducing your brand story
2. If you have one, clearly state your welcome incentive and reinforce it with a solid call to action (CTA) 
3. Show off your best products with great lifestyle imagery
4. Remind them why you’re a unique and valuable brand that’s different from the competition 

Grab that brand positioning worksheet you worked on earlier. Choose a succinct way to present the most important aspects. Write a paragraph of no more than three sentences, four at the max. 

You might think that's not enough, but it's perfect when you choose your words wisely. Plus, society doesn’t have a very long attention span. Consider that you’ve got about eight seconds to grab someone’s attention and convince them to act. So you want to make an immediate impact that drives the subscriber back to your site. You can use bullet points when you need to say more.

The examples below show a few different approaches to the welcome email or three messages you can use in one welcome series.

Check out footers that function for a fun way to highlight your uniqueness without cluttering your main message. You likely have some images on hand, or easily create some in Canva.

Some structural design basics apply to emails of all kinds, welcome automations included. For starters, any email has four major components: headline, hero (or main) image, copy and CTA. 

The components can be in any order. Below are four examples of foolproof layouts to use to create your first welcome message.

In need of some inspiration? We’ve got the rundown on different angles you can take with your welcome messaging.

Additionally, I recommend you adjust your theme settings now. It will save you time in the future and keep your brand style aligned across all messages. Theme settings allow you to establish commonality between all automations and newsletters — through features such as logo placement, colors, typography, and button styling. 

Tip: How to create email automations goes into great detail about the welcome series and includes examples. It also covers the abandoned cart emails. We’ll go over those later, but feel free to hop in there now if you are ready!

In the next session, you’ll learn more about growing the relationship with a regular, consistent newsletter cadence.

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