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Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
Welcome to Issue #236 of All About Email!
Last week, we concluded our two-part series on Newsletter Reactivation.
This week is about using an actionable framework for creating Welcome Sequences that actually work.
Let’s go! 👇
Most paid media doesn't fail because of budget. It fails because of strategy. On Monday, April 27, we're going live with HubSpot for Startups to fix that. You'll walk away knowing:
Which channels to prioritize and in what order (and why most people get this wrong)
Why following up with leads within 1 minute can improve conversion by 391%
How to set up tracking so your AI bidding actually optimizes for pipeline, not just clicks
The top gotchas on Google and LinkedIn that quietly kill performance
Free to attend. Free ad credits for everyone who shows up live.
Welcome Sequences can be Awesome! But, how do you actually build one?
Maybe you've needed to build that welcome sequence for a while, but haven't quite got around to it. Maybe you have one, it’s been on autopilot, and you're not entirely sure it's doing what it's supposed to.
Either way, this is the practical bit. No more convincing, and no more “why”.
Just a clear, actionable framework for building a welcome sequence that works.
Step 1: Define the Purpose before you write a single word
Every welcome sequence needs a defined purpose before anything else.
You might have different goals, but the baseline is always the same:
Welcome new subscribers.
Introduce your brand.
Set expectations.
Begin a real relationship.
From there, add a secondary goal “if” your business needs one:
Getting a first click.
Surfacing your best content.
Or moving subscribers toward a product or offer.
🚨 A sequence without a defined purpose is just a series of emails. Know your purpose first.
Step 2: Honour what brought them here
Whatever brought someone to your list: a lead magnet, a newsletter, a product, a specific promise, your welcome sequence needs to reflect that immediately.
✅ The first email should feel like a natural continuation of the signup experience. If your form promised one thing and your emails deliver something different, trust can drop fast and can be hard to recover.
💡 This also directly affects deliverability. Welcome sequences that feel relevant get opened. And strong engagement in those first few days can carry disproportionate weight in how inbox providers treat your future sends.
The connection between relevance and deliverability is one of the most underappreciated dynamics in email.
If deliverability is still a problem after that, check the basics: sender reputation, list hygiene, and make sure your domain is properly authenticated (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).
Even the best sequence struggles if the technical foundation isn't solid.
Step 3: Map the journey before you touch your platform
🤔 Mapping the journey is the step that saves the most time and prevents the most errors, but I wonder how many of us actually do it?
Before opening your email platform, sketch the flow somewhere outside of it: a doc, a piece of paper, a whiteboard (whatever works for you).
Decide:
How many emails does the sequence need?
What each one means to do.
When each one sends.
Where a subscriber might naturally exit the flow.
Whether different subscribers need different paths based on how or why they signed up.
🚨 Only once the structure is clear should you start building. Jumping straight into your platform without a map is how you end up with a sequence that does too much, too soon, or in the wrong order.
Step 4: Use a simple structure as your starting point
For most brands and audiences, three to five emails is the right place to begin:
Email 1 - Welcome and confirm what they signed up for. Send this immediately to maximise engagement.
Email 2 - Your brand story. Who you are, why you started this, what makes you different, and why it's worth staying subscribed.
Email 3 - Your single best piece of content, your most useful resources, or your clearest next steps.
Email 4 - A product, offer, or deeper education if it's relevant to the relationship you're building.
Email 5 - A reply prompt, a preference question, or a soft conversion. Something that invites a genuine response and signals there's a real person on the other end.
🧠 Not every sequence needs all five; match the length to the relationship, not to a rigid framework.
And one rule applies across every email in the sequence: “One email, one purpose.”
Define the main message, the single action you want the reader to take, and why this email belongs at this point in the relationship.
Emails that try to do too much usually do nothing particularly well.
Step 5: Test it properly before it goes live
🤔 I’m going to make an educated guess that step gets skipped more than any other, and it's the one that can cause the most problems.
Before your sequence reaches a real subscriber, walk through the entire flow with test data.
Test:
Triggers fire correctly.
Delays work as expected.
Every link goes where it should.
Personalisation renders properly.
Subscribers are entering and exiting at the right points.
💡 A welcome sequence that misbehaves on day one can be hard to recover from. Fifteen minutes of testing saves a lot of headaches.
Step 6: Watch the first live runs closely
🚨Once it's live, check it daily for the first few days.
Confirm subscribers are moving through the sequence correctly and that nothing is stalling, duplicating, or firing out of order.
Real sends often surface small issues that testing missed.
Step 7: Review it regularly
💡 A review is not set-and-forget. Schedule regular reviews and track the numbers that tell you whether the sequence is actually working:
Open rates,
Click rates,
Replies,
Unsubscribes,
Drop-off by email,
And always: is it achieving the original goal you defined in Step 1?
As a baseline, most welcome sequences achieve average open rates of 50 - 60%, click rates of 15 - 25%, and unsubscribe rates below 2%.
💡 Those statistics vary by industry, but you can use them as a reference point for how your sequence stacks up.
🔧 When something isn't working, fix the weakest point first, and use A/B testing to validate your changes rather than guessing:
Low opens - Subject lines or send timing need attention.
Low clicks - Calls to action are competing or unclear.
Unsubscribe spikes - Content doesn't match what subscribers expected at signup.
Drop-off after a specific email - That email is the weak link in the chain.
One Final Thought
💡 Your framework above isn't complicated.
But doing it intentionally, testing it properly, and reviewing it regularly puts you ahead of the majority of senders who either have nothing or have something running quietly in the background that nobody has looked at in months.
Go and read your own welcome email today. Then ask yourself honestly: “Does it earn the next open?”
If the answer is anything other than a confident “yes”, now you know what to do. 😉
That’s it for this week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
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(Please note: the original version of this issue first appeared as a guest post in Email Advice From A Friend.)
All About Email - Playlist 🎧
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Build Webinars That Keep Working After You Stop
Webinars drive major results when they're built to perform. The Wistia Webinar Guidebook breaks down how to plan, promote, and run webinars that actually convert. Get more sign-ups, increase engagement, and turn every session into a consistent source of pipeline.
Email Marketing News & Tips
This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:
DKIIM2 - What it means for the future of email. (Word To The Wise)
Screenshots Extension - Capture fast previews from local files, internal builds, and email builder previews with our screenshot browser extension. (Preflight)
Report Illegal Content - Does anyone else have this in Gmail? [I don’t]… (LoriBeth Blaor)
😎 Sinceerly - Be sinceerly human. AI to undo your AI writing. (Ben Horwitz)
Introducing Mailgun Inspect - A powerful new email preview and QA platform fully integrated into the high-performance Mailgun Platform. (Mailgun)
The Email Open Fallacy - What drives email opens is not what you think... (Email Advice In Your Inbox)
Unspam 2026 Recap - AI, email relevance, and trust are reshaping deliverability and engagement. Here are ideas to take from Unspam 2026. (Really Good Emails)
AI and the Inbox - How to Optimize Emails for Summaries and Extractions. (Inbox Monster)
List Hygiene - The Case for Reactivation (and Sunsetting). (Spam Resource)
If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
I hope you have a great week! 👋
