How To Build The Best Welcome Sequence For Your Newsletter

What should you be sending your subscribers after they join your list?

How many emails? What should be in those emails?

These are the questions many people have.

But I want to start this deep dive by making it abundantly clear that we're talking about a Welcome Sequence .. NOT a Welcome Flow.

Let's start by going over the difference between the two:

• Welcome Flow: A Welcome Flow is your Welcome Page and Welcome Email.
  • This is something EVERYONE needs optimized to build an engaged list of subscribers that continue to open and click your emails. We went over how to build the best Welcome Flow here.
• Welcome Sequence: A Welcome Sequence is a sequence of emails you send your subscribers after they sign up.
  • This can include your Welcome Email, of course, but is an actual sequence of emails you send your subscribers after they subscribe. 

And if we really want to go into all our definitions we should also mention "Subscriber Flow" which is just your Welcome Flow but also including your Landing Page, which we have also built out together here.

Once you understand these differences, there's really only a couple other things we need to know going into this deep dive:

1. A Welcome Sequence is NOT mandatory.
2. A Welcome Sequence can be different for everyone, and there are a lot of different goals for how and why you can build them out [the way you do].

I will not be going through the aspects of an optimized Welcome Email in this deep dive being that we already covered that in-depth in our Welcome Flow deep dive; but rather taking a look at how and why you should (or should not) be sending a sequence of emails after it.

There are some marketers who specifically build a Welcome Sequence to bring people directly to a sale, but in typical newsletter fashion we will be leading with value first and worrying about a launch sequence later on.

If you really want to weave in a lower ticket sale, generally to offset ad costs or leverage the foot in the door technique, you can potentially consider a tripwire offer right inside your Welcome Flow.

And here's my last big point before we get into a handful of examples:

The majority of top newsletters I have analyzed actually DO NOT have a Welcome Sequence and instead use JUST an optimized Welcome Flow and lead you right into their regular newsletter content.

So why would you be considering a Welcome Sequence at all...!?

1. Provide Even More Value: Sometimes a Welcome Sequence can be as simple as one additional email (I'll share an example below) that provides more value.
2. Build Trust/Authority/Expertise: While providing more value you will also be building trust, authority, expertise, and the overall relationship you have with your list.
3. Get Them Used To Seeing Your Name: The most optimal send frequency for Creator Newsletters is 1X per week. But our subscribers may be subscribed to tons of other lists, and it's easy to get lost in the noise. Sending a Welcome Sequence can help build your branding so your subscribers get used to seeing your name in their inbox.
4. Your Unique Mechanism: Sometimes your specific niche may need some extra explaining. If you're in a broad niche like "Marketing" it may be easy to tell people exactly what they're getting, but for "Creator Newsletters"; I like to teach people the difference between an email list and a newsletter, and some other things that make what I teach unique.
5. Optimal Tracking: If you eventually make your way to using paid ads to grow your list you'll likely want a way to track whether or not your subscribers are engaging with your list (and the specific targeting you're using with your ads is optimal); but sending a 1X weekly email isn't exactly timely. Having a 5-7+ day welcome sequence makes this much easier.

There are quite a few reasons why a Welcome Sequence can be beneficial, but again, absolutely NOT necessary and there are lots of incredible creators simply sending their Welcome Email and then not landing in their audience's inbox again until their weekly newsletter.

Here are a handful of incredible newsletter operators we'll be taking a look at in this deep dive:

• Alex Garcia
• Justin Welsh
• Katelyn Bourgoin

And at the end I will be sharing the exact level up tactic I would use [if I were you] building out my Welcome Sequence all over again.

So buckle up and dive in.

📬 Katelyn Bourgoin - Why We Buy

I obviously do a lot of deep dives.

And with that I often do teardowns of top creators newsletters, including their Welcome Flow, Welcome Sequence and ways they are optimizing (or not).

When I did a teardown of Katelyn's newsletter she noticed that I recommend optimizing for a click within your initial Welcome Email.

She was currently sending a 3 email Welcome Sequence, but not optimizing for a click in the first email.

So for this deep dive I want to go through her 3-email Welcome Sequence, and then I plan on doing a full deep dive devoted to the changes she made to her Welcome Flow another week.

📬 Here's what Katelyn sends for her Welcome Sequence:

• Welcome Email:
  • Subject Line: You’re in! 🧠 Why We Buy
  • Email Content: Katelyn explains she has a surprise coming your way, asks you to take a poll (click), and then in the PS Section goes into detail about herself, and shares some of her top resources (more clicks).
• Email #2:
  • Subject Line: Your free gift is here 🧠 Why We Buy
  • Timing: One Day Later
  • Email Content: Katelyn shares a free Buyer Psychology Cheatsheet that you can even use as a desktop image for your laptop (and shows a picture of how she saved it to hers!).
• Email #3:
  • Subject Line: Don’t skip this email 🧠 Why We Buy
  • Timing: One Day Later
  • Email Content: Katelyn uses this email to make sure you got your freebie and re-share the picture of how she uses it as her desktop image, but then also get right into teaching a massive marketing psychology lesson.

And, just as Katelyn adds in the finale of her third email, please imagine a GIF of Tyra Banks dropping the mic.

📬 What Can We Learn?

Well, it's Katelyn Bourgoin, so a lot...

BUT, for the sake of sticking to the point of this deep dive, let's just discuss a few main things we can emulate for our own Welcome Sequence.

1. Branding: In every single subject line you'll see Katelyn's branded emoji, and her brand name - which is getting you used to what you'll see in your inbox during her weekly emails. 
2. Value: Not only is Katelyn providing value by giving you a SURPRISE freebie (you DID NOT subscribe to the list for a lead magnet, you subscribed for the value Katelyn provides, but then got a BONUS); but then she proceeds to show you just how incredible her "regular" lessons are right in the sequence.
3. Personal Branding and Katelyn's Voice: This could have been called "More Branding" but I also want to touch on the fact that Katelyn injects herself into these three emails A LOT. It could be easy for her to be overshadowed a bit in her weekly newsletters as she teaches incredible lessons and her overall BRAND shines through, but in her Welcome Sequence she makes sure to inject multiple images of herself, and really let her voice shine.

There's about a million other mini lessons that can be taught about Katelyn and branding just in this Welcome Sequence alone (like the freebie being a desktop image!? I mean, c'mon!), but let's end there and move onto some other creators.

📬 Justin Welsh - Saturday Solopreneur

Justin Welsh has over 200,000 newsletter subscribers (he was pushing over 250K, but now has been saying 200K, so I assume there was a list cleaning recently).

We have also seen him in quite a few other deep dives being that he makes millions of dollars from his newsletter, with stats like this: 

• $2.4+ million in earnings from his newsletter in 2023.
• $1.6+ million dollar launch to his newsletter in early 2024.

But why do I preface with this?

Well, you're likely going to think Justin's Welcome Sequence is EXTREMELY simple (because it is); and I want to show you how effective a simple sequence like this can be.

You do NOT need to overcomplicate your sequence. 

📬 Here's what Justin sends for his Welcome Sequence:

• Welcome Email:
  • Subject Line: It's Time to Upgrade Your Saturday 🔥
  • Email Content: Justin does the typical optimized Welcome Email we talk about in our Welcome Flow deep dive and tells you about himself, the newsletter, and optimizes for a click, value and a reply.
• Email #2:
  • Subject Line: 5 of My Most Popular Guides
  • Timing: Three days later
  • Email Content: In his Welcome Email Justin optimizes for a click by saying "I've compiled 24 free articles to help you boost your audience and business growth right away." but in his second email he sends you 5 of his top articles (I checked and none of them are on the page of 24 free articles he sends in the first) and does a small plug for his courses.

That's it!

It really can be that simple.

Justin's Welcome Sequence really just consists of a super optimized Welcome Flow and a bonus email that provides additional value and weaves in his courses without making a pushy sales pitch.

When I started this deep dive I mentioned the fact that the majority of creators actually only send one Welcome Email, and that works too - so do not think you need to run out and build a full sequence today [just for the sake of doing it].

📬 Alex Garcia - Marketing Examined

Alex Garcia's Welcome Sequence is one of my favorites, and one that helped me model my own for Creator Newsletters.

A lot of email marketers build welcome sequences that take you through a bunch of storytelling with the intention of leading you to a sale, but as newsletter creators we want to find a way to teach our audience that we're providing tons of value in every single email.

• Opening Emails = Getting Free Problem Solving Value
• Seeing Our Name In Their Inbox = Definitely Opening The Email

Alex runs a media brand of 5 different newsletters, but everything started with his newsletter Marketing Examined.

Alex set out to become "The Marketing Guy" and writes case studies on brands and specific pieces of their marketing.

You can see some of the emails are on James Clear's marketing, True Classic, Ridge, Quip, and many more.

Alex not only has an incredible Welcome Flow that optimizes for everything we want in our initial flow (Welcome Page and Welcome Email), including sharing tons of great resources and showing the value he provides ... but he also sends 5 welcome emails that take you through some of his best case studies.

Quick Note: Justin, Alex and Katelyn all provide some of their top resources right in their Welcome Email, and Justin provides his top 5 in a second follow up email, while Alex does it over the course of 5 separate emails. 

📬 Here's what Alex sends for his Welcome Sequence:

• Welcome Email:
  • Subject Line: 🔎 Can you do this?
  • Email Content: In Alex's Welcome Email he optimizes for a click, getting a reply and getting his readers to move him to primary inbox (if necessary); but he also tells us that if we open all of his Welcome Sequence he will send us a bonus swipe file.
• Email #2:
  • Subject Line: How Ridge Scaled To $100M+ W/ Influencers
  • Timing: One Day Later
  • Email Content: I'm not going to break down the content of each one of these emails but rather explain what the first email is and the rest will make sense.
  • Throughout the sequence Alex is sending you his best case studies, but he is sending them in the same way his regular emails are going to show up in your inbox. These are case studies he has sent out in the past that he is using to indoctrinate you into his style of email and get you used to getting value from his name in your inbox.
• Email #3: 🔎 How I'd Grow Quip
  • Timing: One Day Later
• Email #4: 🔎 How James Clear Built A 2M+ Person Newsletter
  • Timing: One Day Later
• Email #5:  🔎 Use Video To Grow On Twitter?
  • Timing: One Day Later
• Email #6:  🔎 How True Classic Grew To $250M
  • Timing: One Day Later

There's a lot to learn from Alex's Welcome Sequence (and even just Welcome Flow), but for this one I just want to take some small notes.

1. Branded Emoji: As we saw with Katelyn, Alex is consistently building on his branded emoji, which we'll see in the subject line of all of his emails.
2. Repurposing Value: Alex is leading with value and sending us his top resources, just like Justin did, but he is teaching us what to expect from his follow up emails by sending the same format.
3. Engagement Magnet: Like Katelyn, Alex doesn't have a lead magnet. He also doesn't give us a free bonus right away, though. Instead, he tells us we get a bonus if we actually open all of his emails, knowing that if we DO read his top case studies; we're far more likely to continue engaging with follow up emails.

Bonus Note: This type of Welcome Sequence is also good for paid growth.

Being that Alex is sending 6 total emails, instead of 1-2 emails and then moving into a weekly format, he could have a much quicker analysis of his engagement rates from the leads he gets through paid acquisition. 

📬 How To Build YOUR Welcome Sequence

Making a perfectly optimized Welcome Flow with an awesome Welcome Page and Welcome Email is perfectly fine.

In many cases it's more than enough.

I mean, just look at that awesome Welcome Email from Ann Handley I included in the image above...

That said, depending on the type of newsletter you write, you may decide you want to start using past resources to build out more of a Welcome Sequence and optimize for some of the things you saw from the creators we analyzed above.

📬 Here's what I would do [if I were you]:

I would use a level up technique.

1. Start with an optimized Welcome Flow. 
   • I know we have been over this what feels like 100 times now, but just to reiterate: I mean your ONE optimized Welcome Email (and a Welcome Page).
2. Level up to a sequence of 1-2 extra emails. 
   • This can be to give a freebie like Katelyn, or simply to send top resources like Justin. If you write a newsletter that allows you to send top resources like Justin does, then I would likely keep it simple with that one follow up email.
3. Level up to a sequence of 5 or so emails 
   • Over time you're going to begin to learn what you need to teach your audience in order for them to fully grasp your specific niche. As I mentioned above, you may be in a super broad niche that you don't HAVE TO do this for, but you may still want to, like Alex.

📬 What do I do with my other emails?!

There may be a few scenarios where you are questioning what to do with your regular newsletter emails DURING your Welcome Sequence.

For example:

• Daily Emails: If you have a newsletter like Heather Cox Richardson (we saw her in our Paid Newsletter deep dive), you almost certainly don't need a Welcome Sequence unless you were using it for a hyper-specific reason.
• Regular Emails: With Creator Newsletters the optimal send frequency is almost always 1X email per week. But some people prefer 2-3X and that's fine. So what do you do with that 1-3X other emails that are going out to your subscribers as they go through your Welcome Sequence!?
  • 1X Weekly: If you're sending 1X per week, it's almost always fine to just continue sending and not restrict users in your Welcome Sequence from getting your weekly newsletter. The extra email is fine, and they may be seeing your Pre-Newsletter CTA on social media and actually WAITING for that newsletter!
  • 2-3X Weekly: If you're sending 2-3X per week this will likely depend on your Welcome Sequence. I would likely go with a Justin Welsh or Katelyn style sequence and continue sending the regular emails.
• Optional Shift: Depending on your ESP you also have 2 other options to restrict the double up of emails being sent.
  • Restrict Welcome Sequence: If you're sending a Welcome Sequence like Alex and I, they don't necessarily have to be delivered in exact order, and you could choose to not have it delivered on the day of the week you send your regular newsletter.
  • Restrict Weekly Newsletter: Alternatively, you can choose to tag people who are in your Welcome Sequence and not send them your weekly newsletter. This method isn't my favorite, but it may be an option depending on your flow.

If there's one thing I want you to take away from this deep dive it's that a Welcome Sequence is highly variable. 

Just like your newsletter content, you should be building it based on YOUR STYLE and what's best for your audience.

Prioritize your Welcome Flow, and then add-on accordingly!