It is, unfortunately, common in email marketing: something that is a strength of our craft often has a significant weakness as well. Nothing is perfect. Automation saves us time, gives a precise response to certain triggers, and we can make assumptions on what the response is likely to be. Take welcome emails.
Let’s start with their positives:
• They’re automatic,
• Data shows that new subscribers who opened a welcome email will read more subsequent emails than those who do not,
• They should be expected,
• Subscribers tend to respond to the content.
On the downside they tend to be forgotten once they are set up. What worked adequately when you started in email marketing is not necessarily optimum now your business has expanded. They need to be reviewed. Further, they give a boost to your metrics and so can give a false sense of success despite them being, obviously, a one-off.
When reviewing your welcome email content, ask yourself if the ‘voice’ is appropriate given our problems in the post-Covid world. Should it be more understanding, supportive or positive? Would ignoring Covid be a better option?
In your early days of email marketing you might have been less inclined to ask for more details from your new subscribers for fear of them clicking the unsubscribe button as it was not what they signed up for. It might be a lower risk now to get them to log into their account and update information, and complete other tasks.
You would probably have a limited choice of what to give away back in the day, but since your business has expanded, and the threats from others in your segment struggling with coming out of lockdown, is the free e-book enough of a gift? In any case, a bit more might be appropriate.
You need to be on the ball in all aspects of email marketing, and the fear of out of sight, out of mind can cost you subscribers. It’s rather tedious to review a system that’s working adequately, but is adequate good enough? Well-worked and pertinent welcome emails can increase customer retention, as well as ROI.
