Every subscriber who signs up on your site arrived as a visitor, often one you paid an ad platform to send. The welcome email reaches them minutes after they chose to give you their email address, while they still remember what they were looking at. Few emails you send will meet a subscriber with more interest.

That makes it one of the most valuable emails you send.

What one email can do

In one client account, 15.04% of the people who saw the signup form filled it in. The welcome email those subscribers received had a placed order rate of 28.9%, which is Klaviyo's measure of orders placed per recipient. More than one in four people who received that single email went on to buy.

What the welcome email should do

A welcome email has one job: turn a subscriber into a first-time buyer while the interest is still there. Everything in it should serve that.

Deliver what the form promised, right away. If the form offered a discount code, early access or a guide, it belongs at the top of the email, easy to find and easy to use. A subscriber who has to search for what they signed up for loses interest fast.

Bring them back to the products. Show the products they are most likely to want: your bestsellers, the category they browsed, or the items most new customers start with. Every product should be one tap from the shop.

Give a reason to trust you. Reviews help, and so does a short line on who you are and clear delivery and return terms. A first-time visitor knows little about your store, and the welcome email is a good place to answer the questions that stop people from buying.

Make the next step obvious. One clear button to the shop does more than five links competing for attention.

The offer doesn't have to be a discount

Offering 10% off for signing up works, and it also teaches new customers that your prices are open to negotiation. Depending on what you sell, early access to new collections, a useful guide, free shipping on the first order or a small gift can work just as well and protect your margin. Test it rather than assuming.

The welcome email is the start of a flow

One email catches the people who are ready to buy now. A welcome flow of several emails over the following days catches the people who need a little longer: a second reminder of the offer, more about the products, answers to common questions, and a last nudge before the offer runs out.

The flow also depends on the form in front of it. A great welcome flow fed by a form that converts 1% of visitors will earn little. We cover the form side in Why most of your paid visitors leave without an email address.

How to check your own welcome email

Open your welcome flow in Klaviyo and look at the placed order rate and revenue per recipient for each email. If the first email converts far below the rest of your flows, or the flow is a single email, that is usually the first place to work.

Where Markeity comes in

The signup form and welcome flow work on traffic a store is already buying, so they are a natural place to start. If you want a second opinion on yours, book a free 15-minute call.