Welcome journey: loyal customer at first sight

The first impression is often decisive and there is not always the opportunity to start over. In marketing, this is not necessarily a negative thing. Moreover, it is a good motivation to take prospective customers by the hand at the first point of contact and guide them through our marketing communication channels! With the welcome journey, we can build strong trust and brand loyalty and increase our sales! In our article we present the meaning, purpose, means and ideal structure of the welcome journey.

A welcome journey, as the first point of contact, is a series of automated communications designed for new customers or users from a marketing point of view. Its main goal is to create a positive first impression and provide an experience that provides immediate value. This series may also include welcome emails, personalized messages or offers to contact you through other channels.

The welcome journey is also great for building relationships, improving user experience, increasing sales and collecting data, helping to strengthen brand loyalty and increase the number of repeat customers.

Why is the welcome journey beneficial for a company?Because it helps you build relationships with new customers, strengthen trust, build brand loyalty and cross-selling. An excellent opportunity to make a positive first impression with the client, greet them, introduce yourself. It also gives customers the opportunity to receive personalized messages that show that the company truly values and takes into account their unique needs and preferences.

Types of welcome email

• DESCRIPTION:This type of welcome email usually begins with a short, friendly message in which we greet the new user or client. We will briefly introduce our business or service and possibly highlight our main advantages or values related to the brand.
• RECOMMENDATION: In this type of email, we encourage the new user to further activity or purchase by giving him a special offer. This can be, for example, a coupon code or a trial of a free product that encourages participation and loyalty from new customers.
• PRODUCT FOCUS:These emails focus on introducing the new user to the main products or services that our business offers. We describe these products or services in detail, highlighting their advantages, functions and the problems they solve.
• OBTAINING INFORMATION:These emails encourage the new user to share some information with us, such as their user preferences, goals or feedback by filling out a short questionnaire. The purpose of this type is to provide a deeper insight into the needs and preferences of new users, so that we can provide them with a more personalized service.

The course of the automated process

Many people make the mistake of trying to deliver welcome emails to the user in a single long message. This approach will often be overcrowded and opaque, or just so frivolous that it loses the user's interest. Instead worthwhilerather more Send a shorter, focused message, in which we highlight the main advantages, give instructions on how to use the product and possibly make offers. This way, we can reach users' attention much more effectively and increase the chances of a successful conversion.

One of the most ideal is to use a total of 4 emailsin the course of our automated welcome process and we prepare them based on:

What to communicate about?

When building an ideal welcome journey, it is important to keep in mindcustomer-tailored contentcriteria. Include product suggestions or links to our more popular blog posts to to provide relevant and valuable information to our client.We fine-tune our communications using A/B testing to make our emails even more responsive to customer preferences.

In order to convince our customers, special attention must be paid to emphasizing the value of our services. Let's highlight how we can help solve their problems or increase their efficiency. Also, be sure to offer something in exchange for their subscription, such as a downloadable guide or exclusive content. Prove our credibility and reliability with feedback from satisfied customers, positive reviews available online or share success stories that help support our claims and build trust.

What should be the subject?

The more personal and friendly the welcome email, the greater our chances that the client will read and perform the actions we want. For this, however, it is essential to communicate with him correctly already in the subject. If possible, Let's call him by his first name, as if this email was just for him, highlighting him from the “crowd”. However, keep the subject short and concise so that it can be easily interpreted for him as to why we are looking for him. It is important to arouse your curiosity and use words or phrases that encourage you to want to know what is in our letter.

Be careful with the use of emojis, which is very widespread these days and we can fall into the mistake of having to follow the trend. However, it is important to know that in many cases it negatively affects our judgment and, instead of standing out with our email from the rest, we can easily get lost among them.

Also, do not forget to use the “pre-header”, which is the preliminary text after the subject. Here we can start with our topic, leaving out the essential part of it. Thus, again, we can only arouse the curiosity of the reader, and if we have put it right, he will yearn to know what our letter contains.

What does it look like?

Use persuasive buttons that indicate a clear action and are easily identifiable to the user. Do not confuse them, let them be visually distinguishable from the average newsletter templates. Make it easy for the user to easily distinguish which email is part of the welcome journey and which is already a monthly or weekly product recommendation or newsletter, so you will be able to separate the communication thematically and will not feel as if you are receiving unsolicited mail.

Make sure that your mail gives you a complete experience on the phone, let us know about it in KEY TO SUCCESSFUL EMAIL MARKETING: MOBILE-FRIENDLY EMAILc. we summarized it in our blog article.

How often should you send a letter?

Pay attention to sending only as many emails as the customer cycle of our customers. This is usually around 20 days (it may vary depending on the company) and distribute 3-4 emails during this period. Avoid sending too many emails to users during the welcome journey. Let's wait for them to go through the process and then redirect them to our other similar automated communications.

How do you measure performance?

We are marketing professionals and we know that the performance of any email depends on its content. In addition, we are aware that our letters may perform differently independently of each other based on different topics. Therefore, it is essential to manage the performance of the welcome journey separately from other emails and our automated communications. Thus, our measurements will provide us with clearer data.

Overall, we can say that an effective welcome journey can not only create a positive first impression, but also provide a foundation for a long-term relationship with our customers. When all our messages are personalized, valuable and relevant, we have a better chance of developing a satisfied and loyal customer base. In this way, every welcome email will be an opportunity to strengthen trust and brand loyalty, with which we can stabilize our company against our competitors.