We only have one chance to make a good first impression. Present the uniqueness of your brand, your vision, and your values in a welcome flow: a special moment to establish a relationship with your contacts.
The Welcome Series is an email flow where the brand introduces itself to new contacts. This makes it one of the most important moments in their lifecycle, much more than just a simple email to deliver the promised coupon during Newsletter signup: it's the opportunity to highlight the newly established relationship and communicate what users can expect from it.
Activate a Welcome Workflow
Create a new workflow or choose a template from those already available in magnews, where the events to trigger the flow, the actions, and the waits are already defined.
Before diving into the details, let’s review some useful information.
- The New Contact event adds to the flow anyone present in the magnews database, whether it's someone who filled out a landing page, completed their first purchase, or was imported from the integration with your CRM or eCommerce.
- Waits are preset to ensure messages are sent at the right time. You can modify the wait time according to your requirements or use the new Q Wait nodes to adapt it to the flow's results.
- The brand kit configurations allow you to quickly design email layouts aligned with your brand's graphic identity.
- To diversify the messaging and identify the most effective version, insert a split node. The Q Split function favors the flow with the best conversion rate, making your job easier.
First step: Define the target
Click on the New Contact node to apply the flow only to certain magnews databases or a single source (for example, filling out a form). Remember that you can insert multiple event nodes into the workflow and link them to the same flow or, conversely, create multiple workflows specific to each database or source.
Second step: Modify the emails
Use the magnews email designer to create responsive and effective layouts. If you’ve already set up the brand kit, you'll find blocks already aligned with your brand’s graphic identity: the logo for the header, the text font, the background colors, and buttons.
Now, focus on the content, starting with a subject line and copy that align with your brand's tone.
After completing these steps, click on Preview: you'll see the email as it will appear on both desktop and mobile devices. If you're satisfied with the result, click Activate and return to the workflow editor.
Follow the same steps for the other emails in the flow.
Create memorable content
According to data, in eCommerce, a Welcome Series of 3 emails generates 90% more orders than a single email.
Ensure the best results by using high-quality images and a clean design. Whatever the goal of your flow, set up a clear structure and prominent conversion buttons to guide the contact toward valuable actions.
Here’s an example of how to structure a 3-email flow.
- Email 1: Introduce your brand, thank the contact for joining your community, and inform them of the brand's purpose and the benefits they can expect.
- Email 2: Talk about your values, what makes your products and services unique.
- Email 3: Suggest some product or service lines, highlighting the flagship offerings that best represent you.
Third step: Activate the workflow
Now that your emails are ready, test the workflow to see if the journey meets your expectations. Use a test contact, allowing them to enter from the starting point of the workflow and proceed through the flow.
Don’t want to wait for the set time? Look through the active sessions in the workflow related to your test and manually advance to the next step.
In just a few minutes, you can test a workflow with a series of emails, set to last for a few days.
Wait some time after activating the flow, then check how it’s performing from the workflow dashboard.
Here you can verify the Open Rate and Click Rate of the communications and understand how the contacts are interacting.
Did you use the Q Split nodes? You will also notice if one branch of the flow has a higher conversion rate and automatically converge toward that.
Some useful tips
Here are some useful tips regarding workflows.
- Only contacts acquired after the workflow is activated enter the flow: create one as soon as possible to engage as many users as you can.
- The flow proceeds from the event to an exit node: when a contact subscribes to the newsletter, they enter from the first event and proceed through the flow from top to bottom.
- Narrow down eligible contacts: in the workflow settings, under the Limits section, you can enable entry only for contacts belonging to certain audiences or who meet specific conditions. During testing, restrict it only to your contact and team members.
- A contact can enter the workflow only once or multiple times within a certain timeframe: typically, a welcome flow runs only on the first registration of the contact.
Best practices for Welcome workflows
- Define your brand, values, and story. When someone subscribes to your newsletter, they are expressing interest in your brand, even if they haven't yet made a purchase or taken any other valuable action. This moment of interest is incredibly important for communicating the brand's vision, values, and story.
- Focus on content or products that convert. When considering which content to promote in the very first messages, make sure to showcase those that most easily convert a contact into a new customer, or content that best represents you.
- Collect interests. If you include more than one product or content in your messages, you can gather information about your new contact’s interests. Use content tags to classify the contacts' interests. Later, you can leverage the data collected to segment your audience or send personalized content.
- Social proof. Most consumers look at product reviews before making a purchase: include them in your content.
- Make your message personal. From a staff member to the business owner: putting a face to the message creates a more intimate relationship.