Even welcome emails make a difference in attracting customer

Say Hi! In Style

Of all the ammunitions in your arsenal to woo and entice customers who stumble upon your ecommerce site and decide to join you, email is undoubtedly the most potent. Sent off immediately after a user signs up for your newsletter, a Welcome Email is essentially the most important step in this email relationship that you build with your customer. First impressions always are the last impressions, this adage has never been more true for anything else.

So how does the perfect Welcome Email look like?

Before one goes about answering that, you need to understand WHY a welcome email is worth the effort and time you spend on it.

First Impressions Last Longer

To restate the obvious, a welcome email is your first point of contact with your customer at an individual personal level. A welcome email has different aims, different goals, depending on what your site is and what for you are engaging your customer via email. Yet, what is common to all these types is the fact that a welcome email deserves and demands utmost care and attention.

A welcome email is important since it is meant to :

• Build a Brand

• Reward the user

• Retain and bring the customer back to you

The user can learn a lot about what you and your brand stand for from a welcome email. A simple mail saying you are welcome goes a long way to state that you value this customer and take his or her presence with you very seriously. It is a token of appreciation and gratitude, at having being chosen to serve the customer. It is also an assurance, of always taking care of the customer, delighting him or her with your service, with features and items on your ecommerce site and of being with the customer at every step of the buying journey.

According to Epsilon’s strategic and analytic consulting group, 50 to 60% welcome emails re opened and read always. Customers who receive welcome emails are more likely to engage with a brand over the long term than those who have not.

What does the mail have?

What constitutes a welcome email is guided entirely by what is your aim with the communication. Basically, welcome emails can serve the following three purposes effectively:

Build your Brand

A simple effective means of reinforcing your brand in the eyes of the customer is a simple essential welcome email. Such a mail contains a simple “Thank You” or “Welcome”. The following welcome mail for Flipkart First , for example,  greets you on joining the elite group service and reinstates that privileges that await you- essentially reinstating the fact that this is a elite special branded service.

Similarly this next one from the music app Guevara is styled and colored in the brand themes and gives a succinct impression of the youthful energetic app that it is.

Such an email is effective means to establish what your store or brand or product stands for and set customer expectations accordingly.

Rewarding emails

Another approach to a welcome email is to entice the customer with deals hoping he or she would not be able to resist the temptation to shop with you right away.

PepperFry does this beautifully; a welcome email from them gives you a list of discounts, offers and exclusive deals. A mail like this makes your user feel celebrated, his or her acquisition into the customer fold an event, and pushes them to use the discounts to come shop- in effect discover more of you instantly.

Retention and Engagement

A welcome email by nature is after the first visit of the customer to your site. Hence, this email can also be used to engage the customer and ensure he or she returns back to the site for more. Such an email reinforces why your site is the best option the user has, elaborates your USP and features that make life easier for the user, and ensure he or she knows that you have new deals, products, offers every day and each day on your site is a brand new delightful experience. For example, this mail from PepperFry.com.

Getting this Right

Getting the welcome email is essential, but more important is to have it in the first place. Remember, shopping is a relationship that you establish with the customer- managing it, taking care of it, nurturing it is of importance for you. Get the welcome email right, and set the correct tone for your engagement with the customer. At the very least, just say a hi to the new guy buying from you, it would not harm you.