Commonly underutilized and a secondary thought the welcome campaign if developed carefully and effectively can help grow a brand online incredibly quickly, providing value, building trust and creating better experiences for your visitors.

Why are welcome series campaigns important

Welcome series campaigns are, at least in our eyes, arguably one of the most important funnels for brands online and unfortunately one of the most under utilized tools for growth. We've seen many business owners spend loads on their brand new website just to neglect the welcome series and honestly it hurts to see. A welcome campaign can be structured in a number of ways but provides a streamlined opportunity to engage with customers, provide important information, grow your other channels and be top-of-mind when they are ready.

The benefit of being proactive with your welcome series is it allows you to be creative while still identifying places that work to inform, educate, promote, cross-sell or engage with customers online. We'd like to set the tone, make a great first impression and present an enjoyable experience. The welcome series campaign can build initial trust, provide resources or direct contact information and by including this information we can present a more uniform and trustworthy first impression.

There is no right or wrong way to build a welcome series campaign

Every business is different and will have it's own take on it's welcome series campaign overall look, feel and motivation. The brand can typically help determine the appropriate approach, length and scope of the campaign.

What can I use to create a welcome series campaign

The welcome series can be created in a variety of formats including, email, text (SMS), webpages and even video.

Each method having its own advantages and disadvantages with email being arguably the most common. We like to advise our customers to really focus on the welcome series and determine the flow, what are you providing of value and how can we, provide needed resources or information and create an overall better experience throughout.

Add Value in Your Welcome Series Campaign for Improved Performance

Like anything marketing nowadays it's important to add value. A welcome series is most commonly the first step of someone really vetting your brand, providing them with information they may not have known and would be useful to them is important. Another common mistake in the welcome series is to base the content all around the brand, product or service. While that approach may produce results we need to find a way to change our thinking and provide solutions. When we begin providing solutions we begin adding value and customers respond well. The customer needs to be the focus after all great marketing always connects at a different level. Provide value to them whether that be information, guidance, support or resources to help them further along their journey will ultimately end up performing better.

Discover Ways to Add Relevant, Valuable Information to Welcome Series Campaigns

So now we know a welcome series campaign should be a cognizant, pre-thought, pre-defined order of events that will be triggered by an event on your website or online channel. What we want to include is relevant, valuable information about the product, service or offer you're providing. If chosen it can become your customer service departments best asset, saving time by redirecting customers to on-site faq pages or other on-topic information they may otherwise reach out to your team. Welcome emails can be made as simple or as complex as you'd like and no two needs to be alike. The best way of determining the length of your welcome series will come down to your product or service offer. Customer cycles vary quite a bit and having a one-and -done approach to welcome series seem just like we aren't doing enough.

What's included in a welcome series campaign?

So what is in a welcome series? Well it can be anything you want it to be. Best practice would be to begin building some kind of dialogue or further segment the customer. This would allow us to fine tune the messaging later down the series and provide more of what the customer is searching for.

If your goal is to sell, bombarding subscribers with buy now or discount offers typically has low returns and just appears spammy. Creating a conversation, showing that your thankful for their time, interest in your offer is a great way to build trust and hopefully build the beginning of a long symbiotic relationship.