Published on Mar 25, 2021

5 Emails Every Ecommerce Brand Should Include In Their Welcome Series (With Examples)

When a new visitor to your store signs up for your email list, you should be sending a welcome series to welcome them. These 5 examples will help you get started.

Connor Gross

Written by Connor Gross

First impressions matter.

woman-working-at-computer

And if your website is like your store front, your welcome emails are like your sales reps that help customers make their purchase decisions (and welcome them to your business).

A welcome series is an automated series of emails that help ecommerce brands introduce their stories, products, and FAQs.

These automated emails are quick to set up and pay dividends for weeks and years to come.

And whether you’re sending only one or a series of 12, the important thing is to be sending them.

That’s why today, I’m going to share with you five ideas that you can use in your welcome series to build your brand and boost your sales.

1. Follow up with their coupon offer

First of all, you should think about why this contact is even receiving this welcome series in the first place.

Chances are, they came to your site and saw a welcome popup like this one from Death Wish Coffee:

A screenshot of a popup on Death Wish Coffee's website. The popup says "Who doesn't like free cash?" with a form underneath it to collect the viewer's contact information. To the right of that form is an image showing a Death Wish branded dollar falling into a hole. Everything is in black and white except the form submission button which is bright red.

Now at this point they’ve given you their email, gotten a discount code, andddd they’re gone.

Maybe they got distracted or now’s not the right time for them to buy.

Either way, the best thing you can do from here is follow up with them and send their coupon code over email.

Here’s what Death Wish sends immediately after capturing a customer’s email:

A screenshot of the email you receive from Death Wish Coffee after interacting with their popups. It shows a skeleton hand holding a coupon that says "$3.00". The image is red, black, and white.

2. Remind them about their coupon

While your brand is the most important thing in the world to you, the reality is that most other people don’t care about your brand as much as you do.

Seriously.

You’ve probably been on half a dozen ecommerce sites this week. How many do you remember?

That’s why it’s so important to be diligent about reminding customers about your brand and the coupon code you gave them.

Tiger Lily does a great job at this by using Privy to set up a coupon that expires in 1 week.

Then, 4 days after a customer signs up, they remind them about their coupon and to use it before it expires.

A webpage confirming the submission of someone's contact information to subscribe to the newsletter from Tiger Lily Crafts. There's an orange button at the bottom that populates a unique coupon code for each submission.

3. Share your founding story

The hardest part about selling online is that it really doesn’t feel personal.

You’re not walking into your downtown shop on Main Street. You’re on a random website on the internet!

That’s why sharing your founder's story is so important. It’s a great way to humanize your brand.

That’s exactly what Wandert Heart has done (bonus points if you can add a video like they did).

Wanderheart's email for people interested in contributing to their charity "The Wanderheart Project." A video of the founders (a middle aged woman and middle aged man) is embedded in the emails. A coupon code and a tribute to the impacted is pictured as well.

This is the perfect email to include in your welcome series to help a customer learn more about your company (and start building a connection with you on a personal level).

4. Show off your best selling products

These days, at least 50% of your traffic is coming from mobile.

And let’s be honest for a minute...

Mobile traffic is great, but there’s a high chance that they're not seeing everything that your store has to offer.

It’s just harder to navigate around dozens of pages from your phone.

That’s why featuring your product catalog in your welcome email series is a great way to highlight products your subscribers may have missed on your site.

Take a look at how West & Willow does it in their welcome email:

An email from West & Willow that calls out to the consumer about creating products, "For Your Entire Pet Family."
An email display of multiple products sold by West & Willow is laid out in a grid format with links to the products and the option to "buy now" in a brown CTA button.

5. Introduce your happy customers

Social proof is a great way to sell more to new visitors to your store.

Show them how happy other customers are that have bought your products and what the reviews on your website are saying.

I love this example from Recess where they formatted customer photos to look like social graphics and stories.

This lets new subscribers see their happy customers and even helps Recess promote their social media accounts to potential customers.

An email from Recess on a pink and orange gradient background with their signature white floating clouds on the background. The email says "hi friend, we have a small (and definitely healthy) obsession with watching every single post/story/comment we're tagged in on instagram. one of the most surprising things we've seen is how many different reasons people have for drinking Recess"
Images that recess grabbed of their cans in people's Instagram story's explaining when, where, and why they're drinking their product.

Turn on your welcome emails today

If you’re capturing emails today and you’re not already sending out welcome emails, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table.

Lucky for you, you can get started with a free 15 day trial of Privy email here.

Connor Gross

Writen by Connor Gross

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