How to Create a Welcome Email Series that Actually CONVERTS in 2025

Picture this: You own a clothing boutique. As you’re straightening up your window display, a potential customer walks into the store.

Instead of greeting them, asking what they’re looking for and how you can help, you ignore them and disappear to the back.

After perusing the store, the prospect makes for the exit. But before they get there, you run out and throw some coupons at them. They give you a strange look and turn to walk away, vowing to never return.

In the real world, this would be considered very strange behavior (for a store that wants to stay in business that is). But this is essentially what’s happening in online marketing all the time.

Too often, people visit a site, sign up for the brand’s email list, and either get completely ghosted or are blasted with promotional emails until they finally unsubscribe.

All companies, no matter the industry, need a welcome email series. Yet these emails are some of the most underutilized sequences out there – only 57.7% of brands send welcome emails.

In this article, you’ll see:

• why creating a strategic welcome email series is one of the best business decisions you can make in 2025
• common mistakes brands make with their welcome emails
• different types of welcome email series and how many emails to include
• top tips for an effective welcome series, from industry experts
• how to write a high-converting welcome email series step-by-step
• best practices for incorporating SMS in your welcome flow
• and how to optimize your series for conversion

If you don’t have a welcome email series yet, or think yours could be working harder for your brand, you’re in the right place.

Why use a welcome email series?

When someone decides to hand over their email address and welcome you into their (likely already pretty crowded) inbox, it’s a big deal.

They have explicitly told you they want to hear from you. Now it’s up to you to delight new subscribers with an inbox experience that warms them up to your brand and transforms them from a lead into a happy customer.

Your welcome emails are the chance to break the ice with new subscribers, draw them into your mission, and form a connection.

Beyond the fact that 74% of people expect to receive a welcome email, these emails just make business sense. Here’s why: According to Invesp, compared to typical marketing emails, welcome emails get…

• 4 times more opens
• 5 times more clicks
• 320% more revenue
• 940% higher conversion rate

Simply put, sleeping on this vital sequence means leaving a lot of money on the table.

But just having a sequence set up isn’t enough. You’ll want to avoid the following common mistakes brands make in their welcome emails to drive conversions.

Common mistakes to avoid in your welcome emails

For the best results from your welcome series, steer clear of the following missteps:

1. Overly focusing on the brand

When marketing messaging fails to connect with the target audience, it’s often because the copy centers around the brand instead of the customer. In practice, this looks like a lot of sentences that start with “We” and a heavy focus on the features instead of the value the customer gets.

2. Doing too much at once

Brands often cram too much into their welcome (or onboarding) emails. For instance, when SaaS brands explain every app feature in one message. This quickly becomes overwhelming and makes readers unsure of the first step they should take with the product.

3. Pushing the sale too hard

Although the ultimate goal of your welcome emails should be to get sales, it needs to be a delicate balance. People are just entering your world, so avoid hitting them with a hard sell right off the bat.

4. Using the same sequence for everyone

It’s essential to consider where people came from when they signed up for your email list so you can meet them where they are. If you’ve got multiple lead magnets set up, tailoring your sequence to what brought them in (and what they’re most interested in) will create a personalized experience. And personalization = sales.

5. Waiting too long

After analyzing dozens of email marketing programs and millions of emails, Return Path found that 25% of marketers wait for a day or more to send out the first email to new subscribers. This is a no-no. You should capitalize on the momentum of someone joining your list by emailing them immediately.

6. Sending only one welcome email

Don’t stop at one welcome email and call it a day. You need several emails to build trust and rapport with your subscribers. According to Mailchimp, a series of welcome emails generates 51% more revenue than a single welcome email.

Now that we’ve covered what not to do, let’s explore how you can craft your own welcome email series that will help you stand out in the inbox and drive sales.

How many emails should be in a welcome email series?

4 to 6 emails are generally recommended, but the truth is that there’s no magic number.

You need however many emails it takes to guide new prospects on a journey from cold to warm to hot – ready to take the next step with your brand. The number can vary based on your industry, audience, product complexity, and conversion goal.

You’ll also want to consider the cadence. If you wait too long between emails, interest will drop and people will forget about you. Some email marketing experts recommend sending one email per day in the welcome series to stay top of mind. Think about your audience and sales cycle and test out different cadences to find what works best for your brand.

Types of welcome email series and what to include in each email

The first email in your welcome series should acknowledge what brought them here. If they joined your list to access a discount or a downloadable resource, ensure that your very first email fulfills that promise and delivers the goods.

You can also use it as an opportunity to pat them on the back for being proactive and taking a step toward solving the problem that brought them to you.

From there, what you include in your welcome email series will really depend on the type of business you have and your specific objectives. Below are examples of different types of welcome email series you can consider.

Immersion sequence

In his book, This Is Personal: The Art of Delivering the Right Email at the Right Time, Brennan Dunn lays out the following “Immersion” sequence. This can work for any type of business and industry. Here’s how it works:

• Email 1 (send immediately): You’re at the Right Place. The first email centers around the problem that drove someone to sign up for your email list. So if you have a recipe site, and the messaging of your opt-in pop-up talks about saving time in the kitchen, your first email should center around the challenges of preparing healthy, nutritious meals fast – not eating well to lose weight.
• Email 2 (one day later): Here’s What You’ll Become. After talking about the problem and what’s holding your subscriber back from solving it, paint a picture of a better tomorrow using future pacing. Position your brand as the guide who will help them reach their goal, keeping the main focus on the customer.
• Email 3 (one day later): Here’s Someone Like You. Share a customer story of someone who has found success with your product or service and what their life looks like now. Not only does this serve as strong social proof, but your reader can identify with this person. Plus, your email keeps customers in the spotlight.
• Email 4 (one day later): Here’s What’s Next. In the last email of the Immersion Sequence, Dunn recommends helping people take the next step with your brand by soft promoting certain products or services that relate to their current needs, delivering valuable content, and telling them what to expect from your emails.

Here’s a great welcome email from Demand Curve that builds trust and authority and sets clear expectations:

I’m a huge fan of the Why We Buy newsletter by Katelyn Bourgoin, where she sends marketing tips and examples grounded in buyer’s psychology.

And her welcome email is fantastic. Let’s take a look at what she does well:

E-commerce sales sequence

E-commerce companies often use a welcome sequence like the following one from Daye. Daye is a women’s health company that sells sustainable CBD tampons and gynecological health products. Here’s a rundown of their welcome sequence:

• Email 1: Welcome to the Daye community. They introduce the brand, showcase their best-selling products, and deliver a 72-hour only welcome offer. Importantly, they also provide instructions to ensure readers don’t miss their updates, like moving the email into the “Primary” folder on Gmail.
• Email 2: You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. A super short, text-based email that invites people to reply with any questions they have about their products.
• Email 3: Daye does it better. Here they communicate their core differentiators, using customer testimonials to back it up.
• Email 4: Our story so far. A short, text-based email written by Daye’s founder welcoming subscribers into their mission and story.
• Email 5: 24 hours to unlock special subscriber perks. They introduce their subscription offer with a 20% discount and the benefits of subscribing.
• Email 6: 3 reasons why you should change your Daye. They communicate the 3 things that set Daye apart from other tampon brands and back it up with more testimonials.
• Email 7: This won’t last forever 💔. A super short text-based reminder email that the welcome offer is about to expire.

Let’s take a look at their third email and what they do well:

Email course

A popular strategy is to create a welcome sequence that delivers educational value to subscribers over the course of one week. Each day focuses on one, actionable lesson. This is common among service-based businesses and course creators. Once the email course is over, it’s followed by a sales sequence that uses a limited-time offer.

Luke Matthews is a LinkedIn coach who helps people use AI to create content. Across his free one-week email course, he teaches you how to:

• Find your niche
• Plan content
• Write and edit with AI
• Optimize your profile
• Sell on LinkedIn
• Repurpose content

Throughout the course, he shares YouTube videos, ChatGPT prompts, and Notion guides. He also invites you to join a free group coaching call in the middle of the sequence. At the end of the week, he pitches his AI Writing Course with a special 10% off offer.

SaaS product onboarding

With product onboarding emails, the goal is to get people to start using the app so they can see the value in it, reach their “aha” moment, realize they can’t live without it, and subscribe.

Zapier is an automation tool that connects different apps and services so you can create workflows (called “Zaps”) and eliminate repetitive tasks. In their welcome sequence, they do a 14-day crash course that tells the story of how their customer, Zoey, a taco truck owner, uses Zapier to automate different things in her business and save time. Each day is broken down into a lesson, from automating customer support to employee onboarding.

This is a really smart strategy because it guides people through the product step-by-step. Because they tell it through the lens of a customer, subscribers can put themselves in Zoey’s shoes and imagine how their business can also benefit from this tool.

Here’s what that sequence looks like:

They use behavior-based triggers to congratulate new users for completing their first action in the app. This helps people celebrate this small “win” and encourages them to continue.

Behavioral triggers are a great way to nudge people along and provide a personalized experience. If people haven’t used the app yet, you can remind them to take the first step.

Another company with fantastic onboarding emails is Komodo, a screen recording tool. Like Zapier, each email is focused on a specific feature or benefit.

Here’s one of the emails:

Accountability sequence

If someone joins your list after downloading a free resource like a white paper, e-book, infographic, or checklist, you can use your welcome sequence to walk them through the key parts of it and ensure they find value from it (and actually use it).

Because let’s be honest, how many times have we downloaded an e-book only to file it away somewhere vowing to read it… but then it just sits there gathering digital dust? An accountability sequence helps make sure this doesn’t happen.

In This Is Personal, Dunn explains that he once created a “10 Steps to Get Your First Client” checklist PDF. People who downloaded the checklist received a 10-email series that explained each step with more context and referenced the resource throughout.

Dunn writes, “By giving subscribers easy access to the checklist PDF and methodically walking through each step, new subscribers were much more likely to take the checklist seriously (and later go on to become fantastic customers of mine).”

How to plan an effective welcome email series

I asked a handful of email marketing experts to weigh in with their insights on what makes welcome emails effective. Here are their top tips based on over a decade of experience working across industries.

Share your most valuable content

Your welcome series is your chance to show subscribers the value they’ll get by engaging with your brand. To that end, be very strategic about the content you link to in your welcome email series.

Javier Monterrosa is an enterprise marketing leader focused on building scalable GTM strategies that deliver strong pipeline outcomes and impactful customer experiences.

He says, “Drive top-of-funnel demand through content pieces of high value – whether that’s a whitepaper, case study, or infographic. These pieces are great hooks to get leads through the (marketing) door. From there, set up an automation that enrolls leads in an email sequence of 3 to 4 touch points where you share your highest value assets, just ensure that the first email acknowledges the action they’ve taken.”

But how can you tell if your audience finds the content you’re sharing truly valuable? That’s where tracking metrics and testing come into play.

“A/B test messaging so you can learn what is resonating with your audience. You can start small by A/B testing subject lines and expand from there,” explains Javier.

Aim to build long-term relationships with your audience

Instead of looking at your welcome emails as something transactional, focus first on building a strong connection with your audience. When they feel like you get them, they’ll be much more likely to buy from you.

Kimberlee Alexandria-Day is a retention marketing consultant focused on building intentional customer relationships that lead with value over transaction. She says, "Some brands believe offering a sale to get through the door is good enough – they'll come back. Instead, it becomes transactional. This makes it hard to retain those customers in the long run. Yes, you want to make money, but you want to show people why they should continue to come back to you and invite them into your brand's story."

Be clear and focused on the customer

Ensure that your welcome email series shows you understand what people are going through before they enter your world. Call out their problems by name using what you’ve learned through research. And use that to position your solution as the obvious choice to solve their problems.

Cory Docken, Sales and Partnership Director at Br8kthru Consulting, shares, “Welcome emails are about warming the lead up to the sale. You need to ensure that the content and message have value to them. The whole strategy should be built around the ICP, what their problem is, what we are trying to solve, and a clear call to action. You don’t want to confuse anybody about the action you want them to take. When you confuse them, you lose.”

Build a path towards customer loyalty

At the end of the day, your welcome emails should create customers. Brett Doyle is an expert in building strategic email programs for companies from the ground up so they can scale sustainably. When I asked him about effective welcome emails, he said, “It's really about trying to go a little deeper in segmentation and understanding where people came from, why, and what's the next step that they should take on the path to becoming a loyal customer. Understanding what your loyal customers are is the first step to knowing what you should be doing within the welcome series.”

So that begs the question, what does loyalty mean for you? Brett explains that “it’s not one person—loyalty has different facets for people. They don’t necessarily need to come back every week. But when they do need what you offer, your brand is the one they think of.”

Balance branding with CRO best practices

Another important factor to consider is the visual appearance of your email. The design and copy need to work seamlessly together to support your conversion goals.

Nicole Silver is a Product Marketing and Growth Advisor who has spent a decade refining strategies to acquire, nurture, and retain customers. She shares, "Email design is a big part of the success of an email. The use of color, appearance of the CTA button, and different clickable elements are all important. Brands need to think critically about whether the visual design supports conversion goals. I’ve seen so many welcome and onboarding emails that lean heavily into brand – I suppose they are trying to solidify their visual identity in the customer’s mind, but it comes at the risk of conversion.”

For instance, she says that tech brands often use black as the main color in their emails with white text, which is generally poor for conversion. Nicole recommends that companies find a way to modify brand guidelines for email marketing purposes.

“There’s usually a lot of pressure to make it look like part of the product, but that doesn’t always translate to email,” she explains. “Balance between brand, CRO best practices, and product marketing objectives should weigh heavily in as well. While design is very important to prioritize, it's critical to also consider the content, messaging, product marketing, and product engagement objectives in the overall strategy.”

How to write a high-converting welcome email series step-by-step

Step 1: Research your audience

Great copy comes from customer research. So before you think about putting words on the page, the very first thing you should do is get to know your audience.

Here are the key insights to look for in your research:

• Common problems that drove people to you
• Wants and needs in a solution like yours
• The biggest benefits people experience from your offers
• Alternative solutions they tried before that failed them
• Any doubts or hesitations they had before buying and how they overcame them

Surveys and interviews are the best way to get this information from your customers.

Pro tip: create a one-question “Thank you” page survey, where you ask people what was going on in their life before buying. This is an optimal time to collect feedback from people because they have just clicked the “buy” button.

For additional insights and sticky language you can use in your copy, here are some places you can look:

• Forums like Reddit and Quora
• Comments on social media posts
• Amazon book reviews
• Product demo calls
• Customer support tickets

Through this research, you can uncover the words and phrases that people are using so you can write copy that truly speaks to their needs.

Step 2: Plot out your sequence based on business objectives and create tags

What do you want people to do by the end of your welcome sequence? Sign up for a webinar, book a product demo, schedule a call, or buy something from your website?

To plan your welcome sequence, map out what you want people to think, feel, and do, always keeping your end goal in mind as your North Star. Then work backward from there. Whimsical is a free flowchart tool you can use to visually map out your sequence.

Note that engagement is the highest when someone joins an email list and starts dropping out around day 3 or 4, so be strategic about when you introduce your offers.

When plotting your sequence, choose triggers that will cause subscribers to be tagged based on actions. For instance, if they click on your content link, you can tag them as interested in that content so you can send them more like it. If they convert, ensure that they’re automatically removed from your welcome sequence.

Step 3: Choose your supporting content

Your welcome sequence should cement your brand as a credible expert in subscribers’ minds. Sharing valuable blogs, YouTube videos, e-books, and other valuable resources increases trust and builds authority.

Be strategic about the content you choose to include. Check your analytics to assess which content drives conversions. You’ll want to choose the assets that both support your messaging objectives and move people along the stages of awareness (from problem aware to most aware) towards becoming a customer.

Step 4: Write your emails

Once you’re ready to get writing, choose a proven, persuasive copywriting framework for your email. Following a framework puts guardrails on your email copy and helps ensure that all of the content supports your conversion goals.

There are tons to choose from. My personal favorites for writing high-converting email copy are:

• AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
• PAS: Problem, Agitation, Solution
• DOS: Desire, Obstacle, Solution
• 4 P’s: Picture, Promise, Proof, Push

Pay close attention to your hook (the first 1-2 sentences of your email) as this is what determines whether the rest of your content will get read.

To have the highest chances of conversion, each email should follow the Rule of One. This means that you keep it focused on one goal, one key message, and one CTA. The more CTAs you have, the more you dilute your conversions. Note: you can have multiple links or buttons within the email, but they should all lead to the same place.

Step 5: Craft your subject line

People decide whether or not to open your email based on your subject line, so it’s a vital part of the success of your welcome email series strategy.

Here are some top tips for crafting subject lines:

• Pique interest: Build curiosity about what’s inside the email, but without giving too much away that they feel they don’t need to read it.
• Personalize it: Using the person’s first name can increase open rates by up to 14%. Just make sure to do this sparingly.
• Use emojis: Research by Experian found that subject lines that included an emoji had 56% higher open rates.

If you need a little help to get the ball rolling, paste your email copy into this ChatGPT subject line generator by Funnel Craze. Brainstorm 20 subject lines, and then pick the best one that matches your email hook and customer’s stage of awareness with this email.

Once you feel you’ve got some winners, you can take it a step further by testing your subject lines with Sharethrough’s engagement analysis.

Step 6: Choose your email design

There’s a tendency for brands to use very design-heavy templates in their emails, which isn’t the best for deliverability or conversion goals. Some email providers block images because they can’t read them. And emails full of images can trigger spam filters.

My Gmail promotions folder is overflowing with 100% image-based emails. Plain text emails can get 21% higher open rates and 17% higher click-through rates than image-based emails, meaning they are more effective at getting the subscriber to take the desired action and convert.

Step 7: Set up your emails and test

Once your emails are all set up in your email provider, make sure to test all of the elements before going live. Sign up for the trigger event to see if it starts the sequence, check all the links, look at the timing and cadence, and ensure there are no typos.

Now you’re ready to go forth and launch your emails!

Best practices for using SMS in your welcome flow

If you plan on incorporating SMS in your marketing strategy, your welcome email sequence is a great place to ask for consent to text. To entice them to provide their phone number, you can offer them something extra that they can only access via SMS.

Mobile Text Alerts is an SMS Marketing and Text Alerts Platform trusted by 20,000 companies across the U.S. – you can start your free 14-day trial here.

When it comes to incorporating texts into your welcome flow strategy, Kimberlee Alexandria-Day recommends keeping it conversational. She says that you can ask people to reply, for instance with the number 1 or 2, which triggers the next message. This makes people feel like they are part of the conversation instead of just another sale to be had.

Because SMS works well to remind people about time-limited offers, you can incorporate it at the end of the flow as the final nudge to convert on your welcome promotion.

Optimizing your welcome email series for conversions

When your new welcome email series has been running for a couple of months and you’ve gathered data on core metrics, you can develop a plan to optimize and improve performance.

The metrics you should look at include:

• Open rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of people who received your email and opened it.
  • Why it matters: It indicates how effective your subject line and sender name are.
  • How to improve: Test different subject lines, sender names, and send times.
• Click-through rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of people who clicked on a link in your email.
  • Why it matters: It shows how interested people are in your content.
  • How to improve: Try making your copy more compelling with a different copywriting framework. Look at any new research you’ve gathered to find a new angle.
• Click-to-open rate:
  • What it is: Clicks divided by the number of opens.
  • Why it matters: It tells you how compelling your copy is once people have already opened the email.
  • How to improve: Try new copy in and around the CTAs to drive interest.
• Reply rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of people who reply to your email.
  • Why it matters: Replies are great for building personal relationships with your subscribers and improving email deliverability.
  • How to improve: Ask questions and let them know that you read and reply to each email.
• Unsubscribe rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of recipients who unsubscribe.
  • Why it matters: High unsubscribe rates signal that your content isn’t resonating with the people on your list.
  • How to improve: Consider how people joined your list. Does your opt-in link clearly to your email content? Are these people a good fit for your products and services? Try segmenting your audience more so you can deliver relevant content that fits their needs.
• Spam complaint rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of recipients who mark your email as spam.
  • Why it matters: A high spam complaint rate damages your sender's reputation and deliverability.
  • How to improve: Avoid spam trigger words, assess email cadence, and ensure the emails are relevant for your audience.
• Bounce rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of emails that weren’t delivered.
  • Why it matters: High bounce rates harm your deliverability, increasing the chance that your emails won’t arrive in subscribers’ primary inboxes.
  • How to improve: Clean your list of inactive subscribers.
• Conversion rate:
  • What it is: The percentage of recipients who complete a desired action (like making a purchase, booking a call, or signing up for a webinar).
  • Why it matters: This is the most important metric to look at because it tells you how well your welcome emails are supporting your overall business goals.
  • How to improve: Optimize the landing page people arrive on from your emails, ensuring that the messaging in your email and on the page are aligned.

Brett Doyle weighs in on email optimization and says, “Test everything. Create a comprehensive testing plan so that you can understand what happened, why, and what the next steps are. Scoping a proper test is more important than what you’re going to test. Understand how long it’s going to take to get to significance and the actual event or KPI you want to track. You could run a test and think it’s a winner and then look back six months later to find that your conversion event tanked because you were tracking click-throughs instead of the actual KPI.”

After reviewing your metrics, create a hypothesis focusing on one thing you want to optimize. For instance, ‘If I change the subject line, I can improve my open rates.’ In each test, ensure that you only change one aspect of the email so you can draw conclusions on what worked.

Beyond the metrics mentioned above, you can also test different content formats (like a blog, short-form video, etc.) and new offers to see what performs best for your audience.

You can use an online calculator like this tool from SurveyMonkey to determine the statistical significance of your A/B tests. With the results in tow, you can be confident that the difference between the control version and test version isn’t random. Once you’ve got a statistically significant result from a test, you can use your new metric as the baseline for further testing to drive better performance.

Doyle explains, “There’s no silver bullet in any welcome flow. You’re going to have to test multiple strategies. If you don’t have the proper testing strategy in place, you’ll never get to the right answer.”

Finally, don’t think of your welcome emails as something to “set and forget." It’s such a crucial sequence for your bottom line, and things can change over time. Messaging that resonates with your audience may not work a couple of years from now. So ensure that you’re keeping an eye on performance and be open to adjust as your industry shifts.

Welcome email FAQs

How many emails do I need in my welcome email series?

The amount of emails you need depends on the type of sequence and goals by the end of it. 4 to 6 emails are generally recommended, but it can vary depending on the industry, sequence strategy, and typical buyer’s journey.

What’s the ideal cadence for your welcome email sequence?

Some experts recommend sending one email a day during your welcome sequence to stay top of mind, but it depends on your audience. B2B email marketers suggest parsing out emails over several weeks to avoid turning people off.

How can you improve conversions in your welcome emails?

Track important metrics, create hypotheses, and test different strategies. There’s no magic answer – it’s about finding the best strategy that works for your brand and audience.

About the author

Kayla Plettenberg is a certified conversion copywriter. She writes data-backed website and email copy that helps healthtech and femtech brands convince prospects that their product is the obvious choice. In her weekly newsletter, HealthTech Hype, she decodes the DNA of successful healthtech brands with marketing teardowns and case studies.