Create your Automated Welcome Email on Mailchimp in Three Steps.

You badly craved for them to subscribe to your email newsletter. They indulged you; so what next? As long as you wish to include email marketing strategy as one of your selected digital marketing channels, you should start taking your welcome email very seriously. A welcome email is one sent out to new subscribers to introduce them to your business, offers/promos, upcoming events, and your world generally. How inappropriate will it be if, after a subscriber sign up to your newsletter, the first email they’ll get is one where you are already selling them something? Quite awkward. In fact, doing this could lead to a high unsubscribe rate as some won’t either remember signing up to your content or find it irrelevant at that moment.

For the purpose of this guide, we’ll assume that you have selected Mailchimp as your preferred Email Service Provider and integrated it’s API into your website to help you collect the emails of new sign-ups. As the world keeps changing, there are more options for automation to give room for other activities in our otherwise busy lives.

Preparing An Automated Welcome Email on Mailchimp.

Step 1: Create Your Content

This is the first-ever email you are sending out to a subscriber. You need to clearly present what you intend to say in the most precise and interesting way that you can. Start out with a draft. The introductory part should show your gratitude to them for signing up. Next, briefly highlight what your brand is about, i.e the solutions you proffer and how you help your customers. Give your subscriber an idea of what type of content or resources you’ll be sharing with them and how frequently they should expect it. While creating your content, don’t forget to select the most appropriate graphic representation to accompany the newsletter. This makes it more visually appealing. 

Also, just like creating other types of content for a digital audience, you must pay attention to your communication style and language, writing technique, punctuation, grammar, design, and other tweaks that can improve the general output that your audience will view. Remember, you’ll need a subject line, headline (optional), salutation, body, closing, and appropriate call-to-action. Apart from all this, do not communicate with your audience like you are a hiring manager, be warm enough and make them feel comfortable around you. To achieve this, feel free to craft your message in a more personal way you deem fit for your brand.

Step 2: Set Up The Automated Welcome Email

Once you have your email content set, the next thing to do is set up the automated welcome email on Mailchimp. Start by clicking ‘create’ then select ‘Email’ and click on ‘Automated’. Among the various options displayed, select ‘Welcome New Subscribers’. Click on your preferred option depending on the nature of the welcome email you want to put out. Click ‘Onboarding Series’ or ‘Education Series’ if you are on a standard or premium plan and need to put out a series of emails to introduce your brand. These options are useful if you want to inform and engage your audience at the same time.

If you want to send out just one email, use the ‘Single Email’ option; fill in the campaign name and select the audience that will receive the automated welcome email then click on the ‘Begin’ button. The next page that comes up is where you are required to put in the information regarding who you are sending it to, the subject, preview, and content. Under the ‘Send To’ section, select the trigger which is either immediately after a subscriber joins your list or when you import a list into Mailchimp. As the name implies, ‘a trigger’ is more like a set command that prompts the system to carry out a predefined/automated action. Fill in the subject line and preview text as appropriate, then head right into the content section.

Inserting your content is a lot easier if you have carried out Step 1 diligently. Insert your logo in the space provided, put in your content, format it appropriately, and add as many blocks as you need. Add a call to action button if you want your audience to take action after reading your mail. No, you aren’t done yet. Put in your social and website links in the footer. Save and return to the previous page where you’ll see the option to test email. 

Step 3: Test Email

Although it is not compulsory to test your email before sending it but it is very helpful and will save you the embarrassment caused by an unprofessionally crafted email. If everything looks good from your test mail, it is safe to start sending your automated welcome email. We created a post to teach you how to start using email marketing for your business. This article includes tips on how to build your list, choose your email service provider, create an opt-in form, segment your list, automate your responses and improve your open and click-through rate. You should check it out.