Three tips for improving an email welcome series

Word Welcome on beachFor anyone considering an email welcome series I have some tips on how to make it better.

Let’s say you are a cancer organization and you want to gather more information about your supporters after they have subscribed to your newsletter. Here’s what you can do:

Spread Your Questions Out
Rather than ask someone to fill out a long survey that makes someone’s eyes glaze over, ask a series of short questions over several emails instead. When you are done you will have compiled the same information and have a complete profile of the individual. You can then use this to segment your audience.

Progressive Profiling
Certain systems like Hubspot offer progressive profiling which allow you to ask questions depending on what information you already know about that person.

Let’s say for example that in step two of your welcome series, you ask someone to pledge to fight cervical cancer. Because this person is new to your organization you might ask them basic questions like have they ever had cervical cancer or do they know someone who has.

The same form can be configured to show different questions to someone already in your system where you already have a certain level of knowledge. If you already know someone has cervical cancer for example, you might ask them to read a case study of someone your organization has helped and ask them if they would be willing to volunteer with your organization.

Content Ideas
If you are short on staff and time and don’t know what content to direct people to in your welcome series try re-purposing past blog posts into a short white paper. For example, one of my clients focused on Africa plans on producing a paper “Ten Examples of Positive Change in Sub Saharan Africa” based on these previous blog posts they have written.

What ideas do you have for creating a killer welcome series?