How to Write a Welcome Email for Your Newsletter: Nail Your First Impression and Increase Open Rates

The welcome email for your newsletter should be crafted in such a way that your reader becomes even more excited to receive regular emails from you. 

What this looks like specifically for you depends on your brand voice, vibe, and the type of offerings you have. I’ll provide all of the necessary details you’ll want to cover in your email, and it’ll be your job to add the extra pizzazz (or professional elegance, etc) to write a welcome email that creates momentum and excitement for all the emails to come.

One quick thing note: I suggest creating a general welcome email that you modify as you add additional lead generation funnels. You can keep most of the information the same and update the “what’s next” section to reflect the specific nurture email sequence. You can also send the general welcome email to anyone that subscribes to your newsletter via your website (rather than through a lead magnet).

Without further ado, here are your steps to writing a welcome email that makes your readers impatiently await your next message:

1. Establishing the Basics
2. Create a Subject Line
3. Determine Your Structure
4. Open with “Thank You”
5. Introduce Yourself
6. Tell Them What to Expect
7. Highlight How Your Newsletter is Different
8. Build Excitement for What’s Next
9. Say Goodbye
10. Add Footer Info

Establishing the Basics

Let’s get the basic settings and preliminary instructions out of the way first.

Before you begin writing your welcome letter, make sure the proper “from” email address is selected in your email marketing platform. One study shows that if your “from” address is associated with a name (like Paige Aileen), your open rate could improve 15-35%. You can add your first name in the Email tab in your Settings on Kit.

A majority of marketing emails are automatically filed into a “promotions” tab, something similar, or sometimes worse…the spam folder. Providing simple instructions for your readers to move your emails to the “primary” tab or to add your email address to their contacts will help emails arrive safely to their inboxes.

Create a Subject Line

The subject line of your welcome email should be descriptive and eye-catching to increase the chances of it being opened.

Quickly describe or name what the email is about. This is your email to welcome someone into your newsletter, so it’s only fitting to figure out a creative way to label it as such.

But be careful with your word choice - one study found that if you mention the word “newsletter” in your subject line, it could decrease your open rate. I suggest working around this by either naming your newsletter and referring to it by name, or simply refer to your newsletter as “regular updates” or something similar.

There are conflicting data when it comes to including someone’s first name in the subject line. One study suggests this increases open rates by 29%, and another argues that emails without a first name in the subject line have higher open rates.

So what do you do? I would go with your gut and what you think your audience will most likely respond to based on your brand voice. You can also A/B test your subject lines to determine what works best for your audience. 

Determine Your Structure

Feel free to rearrange the following sections to figure out an optimal flow for your unique welcome email. The most important thing I suggest in regard to structure is that you break up your sections to help with readability.

If your email is written as one long chunk of text, it runs the risk of being dismissed completely, simply because it’s not as inviting as an email that is broken into multiple paragraphs that add more white space on the screen.

Another tactic to use is to add headings to break up the sections. Feel free to get creative and use your brand voice when labeling the sections of your email.

Open with “Thank You”

Someone just signed up for your email list! They didn’t have to do this - they decided that your content is valuable and worthy enough to receive frequent updates. It’s the perfect time to take a quick moment to thank them for joining.

As you’re thanking them, you can also take this opportunity to garner some excitement for how valuable receiving these emails will be to their business, life, etc.

Introduce Yourself

Your readers may have at least a small idea of who you are and what you do. Depending on how they got added to your newsletter (via lead generation tool or a signup form on your website), their level of familiarity with you and your business may vary.

Take the next couple of sentences to build the reader’s trust by introducing yourself, what you do, and what problems your business helps people solve. I’ve seen people also add details about where they started and what inspired them to help others.

I personally prefer to keep this section short and sweet. While your personal story is important and can help identify that you were once in your audience’s shoes, I suggest focusing more on how they can benefit from your newsletter rather than going in-depth on your story at this moment.

Tell Them What to Expect

Setting expectations for your newsletter will give your readers a clear picture of what kind of emails they will be receiving from you. This will help create excitement for each new email that arrives.

For this portion of your email, give details about what they can expect for your overall newsletter, rather than what content is coming in future nurture emails.

Highlight How Your Newsletter is Different

Your newsletter will likely be one of many that your readers receive in their inbox daily. It’s imperative that you convey the value of your newsletter and how it’s different (and better?!) than other similar newsletters.

To accurately and effectively complete this section of your welcome email, you will have to have a clear plan for your newsletter (not to mention your overall content strategy) and what type of information you plan to offer in the newsletter. This may even take signing up for newsletters of other businesses that are similar to yours, figuring out what type of content they are sending, and determining how you can fill the gaps they are missing and how you can deliver content that is even more valuable than what's already out there.

Build Excitement for What’s Next

This is the spot where you give your readers a sneak peek into what emails are coming next (aka the nurture email sequence).

Take the time to pique your reader’s interest and get them to look forward to the next few emails that are heading their way. Ideally, these emails should be directly related to the lead generation tool they signed up for.

Say Goodbye

Signing your email is a bit of a no-brainer. Make sure to keep true to your brand voice and if you’d like, you invite your readers to reply!

Add Footer Info

The last portion of your email should be the footer info - an unsubscribe link, a link to update preferences, and your address (or the address of your email marketing platform). On Kit, all of this information is pre-filled and I suggest leaving it as-is unless you’d like to update the address to your own.

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Now that you’ve got your welcome email written, you’re ready to write your sequence of nurture emails! These emails relate directly to the freebie your reader signed up for, aiding them in their journey towards success.

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