The Anatomy of a Welcome Workflow

¡Bienvenidos! Bienvenu! Welcome! Whatever your preferred greeting, welcoming folks to your brand is more than just polite, it can be lucrative, too. 

Now that we have your attention…👀

At TFD we refer to this automated email series as a ‘welcome workflow’. (I know, revolutionary.) And the idea behind a welcome workflow is to set up an automated email series to introduce yourself/share your value proposition to new eyeballs no matter how those eyeballs got there (i.e. event registration, newsletter subscriptions, form completion, etc., etc.) And what makes one successful? Like most things, it's a balance of art and science, one that we’ve spent years optimizing and perfecting for our clients. We plan to dive even deeper into the anatomy of a successful welcome workflow (data, examples, and more) and our upcoming TFD Talks on Friday, August 27th at 12 p.m. CST/1 p.m. EST. We’ll also give away a ticket to INBOUND then too, so tell all your friends to register (and attend)! 

But for now, let’s just cover the basics. 

SET A GOAL 🤑. Here’s where the lucrative part comes in. Identify the action you want the user to take upon their introduction to your brand. Perhaps it’s directing them to an area of your website or a particular type of content you’re known for. Maybe you want to offer a print magazine subscription or pitch your paywall membership or even upsell a popular product. Strike while the iron is hot. A new user is never more intune with your brand than when they first sign up to receive more content from you or recently attended an event. Whatever it may be -- identifying the purpose (aside from a polite ‘welcome’) can help lay the framework for your email series. Once you have that decided, you can get strategic about how you present it. Which brings me to my next point...

Don’t propose on the first date. First dates are meant for slow, casual conversations, not proposals. Which is why when it comes to creating the emails for your welcome workflow, you want to start slow. And if you’re planning to pitch a product sale, it’s best to save it for the second or third date … err email. Start by giving. Include a favorite customer service piece, like a list of the best brunches in your city, or a popular download or a free recipe. Something that makes the user think, “Wow. This brand is super helpful and generous. I’m so glad I signed up!” 

The Goldie Locks effect 👧🐻🐻🐻. Not too long, not too short, juuuust right. As Goldie Locks taught us, there is such a thing as too much and not enough. Remember, the user doesn’t explicitly know the emails they are getting are part of a ‘welcome workflow’ so we want to be careful on how many emails we include. If you send too many, the user could get annoyed and unsubscribe. That would be a very bad first impression, wouldn’t it? 

We suggest 3-4 emails with a delay in between each one. The window between each email depends on how aggressive your offer is. Is the offer really competitive? Think about shortening the length of your workflow to keep the discount window limited. Consider incorporating a survey into your welcome series, with third party data becoming more regulated, this is your chance to openly ask your user to tell them a little more about yourself! A good date is a good listener. We also suggest suppressing folks who are in your welcome workflow from receiving other emails from  your brand. We want to protect this stage of the relationship and only deliver a very curated series of emails! (This of course doesn’t apply to any emails or email types the user specifically signed up for.) 

Optimize, optimize, optimize. Once your workflow is on and running, we recommend checking in on it at least quarterly. Look at the data! Change up a subject line. Have you tested emojis? Swap in a more seasonally appropriate image. The secret here is to not get too comfortable. Your welcome workflow can evolve along with your content or offerings. We don’t, however, suggest making it too time-specific. You don’t want to be constantly switching out links or images, but you also don’t want to continue to share content that is old and irrelevant. Remember what Goldie Locks said … Not too much, not too little. Juuuuust right. 

Ash, our resident email marketing expert, will lead our upcoming webinar on the continued anatomy of the welcome workflow. We’ll get deeper into data, share some examples of our client’s top performing welcome workflow, and more. Bring your questions!