When it comes to your email marketing, first impressions matter. That’s why it’s important to have a well-structured welcome flow as one of the first building blocks of a larger email marketing strategy.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the step-by-step process of creating a welcome flow using Klaviyo, ensuring that your brand puts its best foot forward with every new subscriber.
So, let’s get into it – starting with the why of it all.
Why You Need a Welcome Flow
As you may anticipate, a welcome flow is an automated series of emails sent to new subscribers or customers after they sign up for your mailing list, whether that is at checkout, in creating an account with your website, or, indeed, simply inputting their email to your subscription header.
It’s all about welcoming the customer to your brand and community – introducing yourself, building trust, and encouraging future engagement.
Some key benefits include:
- Increased engagement: Welcome emails tend to have higher open and click-through rates than regular emails.
- Stronger brand awareness: Your first emails set the tone for your relationship with subscribers, showcasing your brand’s personality.
- Higher conversions: By nurturing leads from the get-go, you improve the chances of turning them into paying customers.
Building Your Welcome Flow
Now for the mechanics of your welcome flow.
If you are already familiar with Klaviyo, you have likely come across the Flows section of your account (on the navigation bar on the lefthand side).
From here:
- Click “Create Flow” and select “Welcome Series” from the flow templates. Alternatively, you can start from scratch to allow for more customisation.
- Choose a Trigger: Set the trigger to add subscribers when they join a specific list, such as your newsletter list.
- Add Email Steps: Start adding the emails that will make up your welcome flow. For a basic series, we would recommend one or two emails.
- Add Time Delays: You are unlikely to add a delay between the trigger and your first welcome flow email (customers prefer to know that their sign up has been successful) but you should space out your first and second email (or third and fourth) by a few days or more.
How to customise your emails
After your flow has been built, you can then customise the email to your branding. We would recommend creating a standard brand template which you can duplicate and adjust for different flows and broadcasts across your email marketing.
Here are a few examples of our clients and their welcome emails:
Wild Atlantic Surf Company
With Wild Atlantic Surf Company, the welcome flow begins with an introduction to the brand – welcome to #LifeUntamed – and its values. It talks about the Wild Atlantic spirit, a sense of adventure, and a love of the natural environment, and continues to establish its personal ethos with the customer. They are not just selling equipment, but access to a lifestyle of salty hair and exciting coastal adventures.
It includes a welcome offer of 10% off the first order – a great incentive for new and possibly hesitant buyers – and a selection of products to inspire and aid discovery. It’s particularly useful to use bestsellers or new products here as they will be an ideal introduction to your online catagloue.
My Skin Stuff
My Skin Stuff is a pre-teen skincare brand, the emails for which are aimed at parents and young people alike. The intention with this welcome email, therefore, must be different: the brand should position itself as knowledgeable and compassionate, an expert in its field. That’s why it begins not with a sense of the values, but with knowledge – pointing to getting started with the products and useful links to further reading.
It is also marked with bright colours, soft shapes, and, of course, imagery of the intended audience. This creative decision allows the customer to immediately understand that this a positive, uplifting, and child-centred brand.
Bern Europe
Helmet brand Bern Europe keeps things simple with minimal introduction, because in this case, the picture is worth a thousand words. It’s another lifestyle-adjacent product, similar to Wild Atlantic Surf, and showcases both the item on sale and what it might look like in practice.
Again, we have the use of the introductory offer – 10%, typically – to encourage new customers to purchase, and ideally, become repeat buyers when they enjoy their purchase.
Gardiner Brothers
This is an example of a second email in a welcome flow. Gardiner Brothers – a Belfast-based jewellery brand – sends new subscribers a brief thank you for signing up style email first, and then a few days later, sends this:
This email acts as a reminder to the customer that they have an introductory offer – and that it expires soon – and also gives the brand another chance to build on their introduction. In this case, it marries the online store with the physical building, lending some established authority to this digital presence.
BTY
Here is another example of a second email in this flow – this time from Moira-based cosmetics and skincare retailer BTY.
Once again, it’s a reminder of the soon-expiring discount code, and an encouragement to use it, with links to products such as their New In selection.
This email reflects the BTY branding found on the website, their socials, their physical marketing items, and indeed, the physical store. All of this helps create a consistent message and tone, and the email marketing builds on that.
In conclusion, creating a welcome flow using Klaviyo is a powerful way to nurture new subscribers and turn them into loyal customers. By offering value from the first interaction, you build trust, increase engagement, and set the stage for a long-lasting relationship.
At Glaze Digital, we’ve helped countless businesses streamline their email marketing and grow their customer base through smart, effective strategies like welcome flows. Ready to create your own? Reach out to us, and we’ll guide you through every step of the process.
If you need some help with this, or want to get in touch about something else related to Shopify, you can get in contact with us via our website.
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