Klaviyo Welcome Flow: The Emails Your New Customers Actually Need
Your welcome flow is the most important automation you'll ever set up.
I always think of it like a hotel reception. You've booked, you've travelled, you feel gross from the flight, and then you walk into a good reception and you just know what your stay is going to be like. Someone greets you, there's a glass of something cold in your hand, everything is beautiful. You haven't seen your room yet, but you already know it's going to be lovely.
A weird analogy, I know. But it's exactly what your welcome flow does. How you greet your subscribers tells them what to expect from you, and helps them decide whether they're staying.
So what the hell should you actually be saying?
Your first email
This one depends entirely on your pop-up.
If you're using an incentive to get sign-ups (a percentage off, free delivery, a freebie) you deliver it first.
If you're not using an incentive, this is your chance to properly woo her. She signed up because she wants to hear what you have to say, which is a rarer and more generous thing than most brands realise. Meet her where she is.
Check out some examples below of welcome emails we’ve made for clients, some of them have an incentive to shout about in the first third of the email, but there’s also a service provider example in there, take a look at the colours, the images, the copy of the first paragraph - it all gives a feeling.
What to put in your first email:
A subject line that does one job. If there's a code, say there's a code. If there isn't, be intriguing - curiosity pays off.
The code or the freebie, above the fold. Don't make her scroll for it.
One line on who you are. Not the full founder story, that should be later.
One JOURNEY. Don’t confuse the message by asking them to follow you on Instagram too, read your book, join your Whatsapp community. Keep it simple.
What to expect, and how often. This is your permission slip for every email that follows.
Your second email aka why you, and not somebody else?
Now you can tell her who you are.
What you make, who you make it for, and what you flatly refuse to do. Keep it short and let it sound like a human being typed it, because this is the email that earns you loyalty. Annndd being human is the best thing you can do right now (we keep banging on about it!). You can share UGC too, show the world you’re building and why they should care about it.
If you're a founder-led brand, put yourself in it. People are extremely nosy and it works in your favour.
Your third email: proof, and a gentle nudge
This is where you handle the quiet objections, they won’t email you about these but they will quietly unsub or close a tab over this. What, at this point, would turn your customer/client off? Sizing. Delivery. Will it actually suit me. Is this worth the money.
Reviews, bestsellers, a "not sure where to start?" edit. Real people wearing, using, loving the thing, reviews and testimonials of your work. This is where it goes - but in a cool way. Don’t overwhelm them.
And if there's a code sitting unused, remind her it's there and it’s about to expire (fomo works well for this kind of email).
How many emails should you actually send?
Three is a lovely, solid, works-for-nearly-everyone answer. A couple of days between each.
But it isn't one size fits all, and anyone telling you it is hasn't looked at your account. You could split your sign-ups by product interest. By customers versus non-customers. By where they signed up. The sky's the limit!
So don't overthink it. Imagine it's you. What would you want landing in your inbox? Certainly nothing boring, and definitely not one email a day.
We've had a lot of brands come to us wanting an extreme number of emails and automations, and we nearly always advise paring it back, because things are changing. People are getting fed up with brands that overstep. The danger is when you go clinical, treating someone’s inbox like a marketing channel instead of someone’s morning before work, the moment of peace on the commute, second glance after dinner. It’s super intimate to be in someone’s email inbox. Treat it with the respect it deserves and people will LOVE your emails.
The brands winning at email treat it like a love letter. Like snail mail your customers have agreed to receive. Something beautiful and fun in among the subscription reminders, and endless promotions.
Keep that in mind while you're building.
The bit almost everyone gets wrong
Set your exit conditions.
If your customer buys from email one, she should not receive "here's 10% off, come and have a look" two days later. It's the fastest way to look like nobody's driving, and it's the single most common broken thing we find when we audit a Klaviyo account.
At minimum, make sure they exit the flow once they’ve placed an order (if that’s your incentive).
Your welcome flow doesn't need to be complicated. It needs to sound like you, arrive when they’re expecting it, and stop when they expect it to.
If yours is currently one sad automated email from 2023, we can fix that.