Welcome sequences

What a welcome sequence is

A welcome sequence is a short series of emails, usually five, sent automatically over the ten days or so after somebody joins your list. It is written once and then runs for everyone who signs up afterwards, each person starting at the first email on the day they arrive.

It exists because of a simple fact about attention. The day somebody hands over an email address is the day they are most interested in you, and every day after that they are slightly less so. A welcome sequence spends that attention deliberately instead of letting it drain away while the subscriber waits for whenever the next newsletter happens to go out.

It is not a newsletter. An email newsletter is written fresh, dated, and sent to everyone at once. A welcome sequence is written once, undated, and sent to one person at a time from their own day one.

Which of the three you need

Three services on this site are automated email series, and people mix them up.

A welcome sequence is for somebody who has just joined and does not know you yet. It is short, it runs in the first fortnight, and its job is to make the relationship real before it goes cold.

A lead nurture sequence is for somebody who has shown buying interest — asked for a quote, downloaded a pricing guide, sat through a demonstration — and is not ready. It is longer, it answers objections in order, and its job is to still be there when they are ready.

A drip campaign is the broad case: any automated series on a timer or a trigger, running unattended for months. A welcome sequence is a drip campaign with one specific trigger and a short run.

If you have no list and no signup form, none of the three is the first job. Fix where people sign up and what the thank-you page says, then come back.

What goes in the five

• Email one, immediately. Deliver whatever was promised at signup, and say plainly what will arrive, how often, and how to leave. Sent within minutes, because that is when they are looking for it.
• Email two, day two. The one thing you want them to understand about how you work. Not your history. The thing that makes you different from the firm they would otherwise ring.
• Email three, day four or five. Something genuinely useful that costs them nothing: the answer to the question new customers always ask, a checklist, the mistake that costs people money.
• Email four, day seven or eight. Proof. A real customer story, a named review, a piece of work described honestly, including what was hard about it.
• Email five, day ten to twelve. The ask. One action, stated once, with what happens after they take it. This is also where the sequence hands over to the newsletter.

Five is the usual number, not a rule. A business with a long, considered sale sometimes needs seven. A shop usually needs three.

What you get

The emails. Each as its own document, with the subject line candidates, the preview text, the body copy with links in place, the one action it asks for, and the send delay in days. Written so that somebody who reads only one of the five still gets something.

The sequence map. One page showing the trigger, the order, the timing, and what happens at the end: which list they join, what stops sending if they buy, and what happens if they reply. This is the page you hand to whoever builds it in your sending platform.

Notes on consent and leaving. Where the unsubscribe sits in each email and how the signup should record consent, in plain terms, within Canadian anti-spam law. I work inside those rules on every list. This is not legal advice; where a question is genuinely a legal one, I will say so and point you to a lawyer.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A veterinary clinic in a Vancouver Island town offers a puppy care checklist on its site. About twenty people a month download it. They then hear nothing until the next quarterly newsletter, which is about opening hours over a long weekend.

The sequence written for them is five emails over eleven days. The first delivers the checklist and says the clinic sends one short email a month. The second explains why the clinic books longer first appointments than most, which is the thing owners notice and remember. The third is the vaccination schedule laid out as dates rather than a table, because that is the question the front desk answers ten times a week. The fourth is a short account of a dog brought in late with a preventable problem, told without blame. The fifth offers a first appointment and says what happens at it, minute by minute, because new owners are nervous about exactly that. At the end everyone joins the monthly list. The clinic builds it once and it runs for the next two years without anybody touching it.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. How people join the list, what they were promised, what you sell, and what you want a new subscriber to do. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. The number of emails, the revision rounds, and whether I also build it in your platform, agreed before anything starts.
3. Inputs. The signup form and its promise, read access to your sending platform, and anything you have sent before. Three working days.
4. The map, then the drafts. The sequence map is approved first, then all five emails arrive together, usually seven to ten working days after the call.
5. Final copy and handover. One round of revisions included, then the files and a short call with whoever wires it up.

What it costs

A welcome sequence is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because a three-email sequence for a shop and a seven-email sequence for a professional firm are different jobs. Building it in your sending platform is quoted separately if you want it. The pricing page shows the four ways of working, and the number is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

A welcome sequence creates an obvious gap: subscribers finish it and then need somewhere to go, which is usually a regular issue they open on purpose. For the ones who read all five and still do not buy, the next series is follow-up for slow buyers. And for the addresses already on the list from before the sequence existed, who never got any of it, the right job is waking the quiet part of the list. This piece of work is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.