226: Turn Subscribers Into Fans with a High-Converting Welcome Email

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of Digital Product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there, Destiny here. Welcome back to the Creators MBA Podcast. I'm super excited that you are here with me today because today's episode just might change the way you think a little bit about email marketing. And I'm going to be diving into what I believe is one of the most important emails that you are ever going to send to one of your readers. And it's not your launch email, is not your promo email for your course or your digital product, is not even your weekly newsletter. What I am talking about here and what I think is the most important email that you will ever send to them is your welcome email. And this is the first email that you are sending to them after they sign up to get on your list. And if you have been treating this as an afterthought or maybe even kind of skipping it altogether, I don't want you to worry. By the end of this episode you're going to know exactly what to include, what to avoid in this email, and how to make your welcome email really do some of this heavy lifting in your business. Okay, so let's get right into it and first let's talk about why your welcome email matters so much. And here's the deal. You have done all the work. You've created the freebie, you've built your landing page. You finally got somebody to hit that subscribe button, which is so very difficult. But what happens next? A lot of people are just tossing out a thanks for joining type email and they're moving on. But really, this first email that you send to them is everything. Not just because it sets the tone for your relationship, but because inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook are really paying attention to what's going on here. They are looking at and they're asking, does the subscriber open up your email? Do they click on anything inside it? Do they reply to it? And their inbox placement algorithm is watching that behavior. So if your welcome email gets opened, gets clicked and reply to that is really, really good. So your emails are more likely to land in that primary inbox instead of the promotions tab or maybe even worse, which is going to spam. So let's talk about how you can make that happen. There are two goals of every welcome email that you have. And they really only need to do two main things, but they're so very crucial. Number one, you need to get them to click. And number two, you need to try to get them to reply to you. So let me break those down. The first is getting them to click. So the easiest way to improve your email deliverability is to get your new email subscriber to take an action with your email. So if you promised a free guide, a workshop or a checklist, I want you to make that download link very, very obvious and easy to find. So, and if they just signed up for your newsletter, also give them a reason to click here. There's a lot of things you can do. You could share like a super helpful blog post, a favorite tool or resource of yours, a quick start guide, so you can kind of like surprise them even if you didn't promise it, or you could even put your most downloaded like podcast episode there. But it's really just giving them that one clear, relevant link because that particular link is going to tell their inbox, hey, yes, this is legit. I definitely want these emails. The next thing I want you to try to do is to get them to reply. And this one's just a little less talked about, but is so very powerful. So when somebody replies to the email that you have sent them, it really does create that kind of that two way connection. So it's telling the inbox filters this sender is trustworthy. So in your welcome email, ask a simple question like what is your biggest struggle with X? Or you know, what is your business website? You something super, super simple that they can easily just respond back to you and say, you know, this is it. Like for instance, in hobby school, one of the things that we ask a lot is what is your most favorite hobby? And people will respond back and say, I love to knit or I love to crochet or I love to paint watercolors or I love to do whatever. I mean there's tons of answers that we get back there, but really something super, super simple for them. So make it casual, but most importantly, make it easy to answer and you will be surprised at how many people actually respond back to you. And those replies that you're getting, those are solid gold. Not just for engagement, but really for understanding your audience and what they like. So let me give you a really quick and repeatable structure for writing your welcome email. And this will work whether you are delivering a freebie or just walking, welcoming people to your newsletter. So you start out with a warm hello. Like sound like a human, not a brand. Say hey there, I'm so glad you're here. Kind of keep it conversational. You could do a quick intro so let them know who you are and what to expect. What kind of emails will you be sending? How often? Like in mine I tell them, you know, basically who I am, what I do, how I help people. But here's what you can expect. I will generally send you a weekly email newsletter on Sunday that Sundays are the days that I generally send out my newsletters then deliver the things. So if they signed up for a lead magnet, you're going to link to that very clearly. You're going to use a button or a bold link. You don't want to hide this. You want them to know exactly where to go in that email to click and make sure it's working. Because I have done some audits here lately for some of my newsletter profit club members and I couldn't get the links to work or I couldn't even find it. I didn't even know where to go in the email to grab that particular gift. Okay, step four is ask them to click and reply. So this is the heart of your email. So one strong link and one low pressure question, all of that just kind of equals magic. If you would and then do your sign off. So in with something that sounds like you like I like to use talk soon or excited to connect or cheering you on or whatever just sounds like you you're going to end it there. So now let's talk about what to avoid in this welcome email. So there are some things that you don't want to do. You don't want to write a novel, make it easy people, skim it. You don't want to overload them with like 20 links here. One clear call to action to click here and get your download and then respond back. That super, super simple. Don't skip that ask. So so if they don't click or reply, your future emails might get buried. And there is a trick here. Let's say that you send out a welcome email and they don't like click or do do basically do anything with it. You can set it up in your email service provider to do an automation to send them an email four hours later. Say oops, looked like you missed this. Make sure you click here. That sort of thing you really, really, really want them clicking. The other thing is I would say is don't sell right away. It's definitely an email that you need to be kind of introducing yourself and building that trust first. So you want this email to feel helpful, welcoming and easy to take action on. Okay, so here's kind of my final thoughts here. Your welcome email isn't just a nice gesture, is really the foundation of your entire email relationship. So if you are seeing like low engagement or deliverability issues or if your subscribers kind of ghosting you after they get that freebie, it might be time to go back and revisit this first email. So you want to get them to click and you want to get them to reply. But most of all, right, just get them excited to hear hear from you again. And that's how you build trust and that's how you keep your emails out of spam and it's how you turn those casual kind of subscribers and readers into loyal fans and paying customers. All right, that is it for today's episode. If you want help writing your welcome email or you want my templates for this, definitely check out the newsletter Profit Club. I'm more than happy to help you there. Until next time, keep creating, keep connecting and I will talk with you soon. Bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.