There’s no time like the present—or the time of first signing up to a newsletter or product. Whenever a new subscriber opts into your mailing list, it creates unique momentum for you as a business owner. At that very moment, the user is most excited by your product or service, and is looking forward to finding out more. Which makes it the ideal timing for you to extend a warm, friendly welcome email.
Incorporating this practice as part of your email marketing strategy can increase your email engagement. In fact, welcome emails are the single most important message you need to be sending out to subscribers, as they enjoy open rates that are 86% higher than all other types of promotional emails.
Additionally, welcome emails have become a norm in most industries. Customers have therefore come to expect a first email from you to arrive around the time of signing up.
In this article, we will explain what a welcome email is, showcase 20 beautiful examples for you to learn from, and offer some professional tips to help you craft an effective welcome email:
What is a welcome email?
A welcome email is the first email communication that a business sends out to a new customer, user or email list subscriber. Welcome emails usually serve one or more of the following purposes: thanking the customer for subscribing, introducing the brand and its values, guiding users through product onboarding, or offering valuable content such as resources or discount offers.
Sending out a welcome email can help make users excited about having just subscribed, while also building brand recognition and trust. Above all, welcome emails help form lasting, loyal relationships with your client base.
On the technical side of things, welcome emails can be sent through email automation, using triggered responses to predefined actions. This enables emails to go out automatically after each new subscription, eliminating the need to perform the task manually.
20 welcome email examples
01. Google
Subject line: Finish setting up your new Google Account
Onboarding users to a new product or service is an important process to get right, as it plays an important role in making the user experience as frictionless as possible. This welcome email by Google manages to guide users through all of the relevant information in a simple and intuitive manner.
The text, while instructive, is also concise and friendly. Tailored to fit our short attention spans, it’s broken up into short bite-size chunks. Each section is paired with a call-to-action (CTA) button, so that readers can find out more about topics that are of interest to them.
The newsletter design here perfectly captures the brand’s identity, starting with Google’s famous logo design at the top, down to the use of the company’s equally recognizable brand colors throughout the email.
02. Pet Plate
Subject line: Welcome to Pet Plate. Here's 35% off!
Discount offers are a common practice in email marketing, serving as a dual incentive for users to first subscribe to the mailing list, and second, to perform an initial purchase. In this welcome email by pet food brand Pet Plate, the discount code is paired with the added value of introducing the company and its products.
From the quirky tone-of-voice (like attributing a customer testimonial to a dog’s dad) to photos of the company’s founder and pet, this email feels friendly, light and at eye-level. Supplementing this are the stylish use of vector art, typography and color palette, all of which enhance the fun-loving vibe.
03. The New Yorker
Subject line: Welcome to The New Yorker
Click to view the welcome email
The New Yorker greets subscribers with a cordial welcome email, thanking them for signing up. It then goes on to set readers’ expectations by explaining what the newsletter has in store for them. This simple email marketing tip can build users’ anticipation and reduce unsubscriptions and spam complaints.
The rest of the email introduces the publication’s different platforms by linking to their website, mobile app, and printed magazine subscription.
The design of the email embodies that of the publication’s, from the use of typography to the style of illustration and iconic dandy figure. These elements help the email appear branded and in line with all other content coming from The New Yorker.
04. Patagonia
Subject line: A guide to Patagonia
The welcome email by outdoor clothing and gear brand Patagonia creates an encompassing storytelling experience. Teeming with nature-loving visuals, this email ensures that readers will gain much insight into this company’s brand identity, even if they merely skim read through it.
The email uses beautiful landscape photography and on-point microcopy to encapsulate the brand’s mission. By shedding light on values such as adventure and environmentalism, rather than simply focusing on the company’s products, the messaging doesn’t come off as overly promotional. Instead, it encourages a strong emotional bond to the brand.
05. Postable
Subject line: Your first Postable deal! As promised.
Postable’s welcome email checks all of the major email marketing boxes. This greeting card website thanks users for subscribing both in text and in the image, using language that’s human and informal. The email also delivers on the promise of a discount offer, and immediately leads users to purchase a card on the brand’s online store.
The design of the email includes the company logo as well as product photography of a greeting card in all its glory, and social media links. The text here is typed out as a live part of the email (so that it’s not a flat like an image), an important web accessibility feature.
06. Vimeo
Subject line: [Your Name], meet Vimeo
This welcome email cuts right to the chase, leading users to perform the next step in creating a Vimeo account: sharing a video on the platform. To make the process entirely hassle free, it leads users directly to the upload page on their website.
The rest of the newsletter details this video hosting website’s features. Additional CTAs allow users to read more in-depth content about the product’s various capabilities.
By adding the user’s name into the email’s subject line, Vimeo is able to create a more personalized email campaign. The result is a much more engaging email.
07. Asana
Subject line: Welcome to Asana
When new Asana users receive this welcome email, it serves in confirming their account as well as introducing the product and its main capabilities.
The gif at the top of the email shows a task being checked off a to-do list on the Asana interface. It’s this sense of achievement that the email aims to establish. Along with a rundown of the key benefits of Asana, the email offers tips for taking on successful people habits at work, providing valuable content for users.
08. Ace & Tate
Subject line: things just got real
Ace & Tate’s first email for its subscribers is sharp and effortlessly chic. It’s main image alludes to eyewear while refraining from being too literal, with two flowers in place of eyes. The written copy is conversational and friendly, thanking users for “joining the party!”
Two navigation menus are included in the design. At the top of the email are links to different product pages, while the bottom menu links to the brand’s various online whereabouts, from their blog to an FAQ page, and more.
09. Great Jones
Subject line: Come on in!
Great Jones’ welcome email feels like a real-life introduction to a new friend. It’s personal and honest, acquainting readers with the founders’ friendship and their story of starting a business together.
Although the brand’s cooking products are proudly displayed, they are accompanied by illustrations of vegetables and a photo of the founders in a kitchen setting, putting them in context. This can help users visualize the products put to good use in their own homes.
This idea is a continuation of the company’s homepage design. There, the pots and pans are shot in a style closer to food photography than to traditional product photography, bringing the products to life.
10. Wix
Subject line: Welcome to Wix
When users first sign up to Wix, this welcome email is one additional way for getting them excited about building a website. The headline, “It’s Your Time to Create,” turns the focus on the users’ personal experience and creativity, rather than on the company.
The imagery brings to mind the product’s flexibility, showing both desktop and mobile designs of a website. The added icons, buttons and marks taken from Wix’s interface suggest that these elements can be edited and rearranged to the user’s liking, allowing for complete web design freedom.
Readers can easily follow one of two prominently located CTA buttons to start creating their site. They can also find out more about the brand through the social bar located at the newsletter’s footer.
11. COS
Subject line: Hello, thanks for subscribing
COS’s welcome email is composed of three main sections and includes several CTAs. By distinctly differentiating the three sections using dividers, the hierarchy between them remains plain.
Signifying importance, the top fold is eye-catching with a large image and a large CTA button, leading straight to their online store. The remaining CTAs (leading to a store locator and to a style gallery) are much more subtle in their button design, implying lower priority.
By incorporating gifs of real customers wearing COS outfits, the email fosters a sense of community and relatability early on.
12. Headspace
Subject line: Ready to meditate?
Continuing on their app and website design, Headspace’s welcome email features peaceful illustrations and a calming color scheme. This ties the visual language into the same cohesive look as all of the brand’s other assets.
By inviting users to “Start Meditating” instead of to begin using the app, the email draws attention to what the users will gain from using the product, and their personal experience.
13. KonMari
Subject line: Welcome to KonMari
Tidying expert Marie Kondo’s personal brand welcomes new subscribers with a clean email design, very much in line with the lifestyle it promotes. The email showcases pictures of Marie herself, cultivating the feeling of a familiar, personal connection.
Beginning with the mission statement behind her work, the email then goes on to link to different sections of KonMari’s online presence: from her blog, to her YouTube channel, to social media accounts.
14. Dims.
Subject line: Welcome home to Dims.
Furniture brand Dims.’ welcome email offers subscribers a discount code, but the reduced pricing is not the main focus of this email. Instead, it generates a feeling that’s just as sophisticated as it is cozy. The illustrated gif, for example, is almost causal in its approach to furnishings. The animated rays of sun and warm cup of tea are rendered in more detail than does the coffee table.
At the bottom of the email is a snippet of the brand’s Instagram feed. Here we see sleek close-ups of actual furniture, as well as a hand drawn sketch, highlighting the craftsmanship that goes into their production.
15. BAGGU
Subject line: Welcome to BAGGU!
BAGGU’s reusable bags are bold and colorful, and their welcome email is no exception. With a lilac email background, a groovy vintage font thanking subscribers, and a gif of the company’s products, the email can definitely spark readers’ curiosity for the brand.
The three CTAs are straightforward, leading users to shop, follow the brand on Instagram, or to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Each of them comes with additional imagery, making this welcome message an especially visual one.
16. National Geographic
Subject line: Welcome to National Geographic.
Being a publication so rich in content, National Geographic samples their main areas of expertise in their welcome email. From photos and articles, to award-winning documentaries and coverage of the plastic crisis, this email is packed-full of CTAs. In order to employ hierarchy in this much information, some button designs are larger and more prominent than others.
In addition, the email is abundant with high-resolution photography, as we’ve grown to expect from the brand.
17. Aesop
Subject line: A handshake across the ether
Most newsletters include a ‘View in browser’ option, so that users can view the email outside of their inbox (in case they’ve disabled images on mobile, for example). In this email by Aesop, the skin and hair care company created this button in different languages, fitting for their multilingual website.
The email thanks users for subscribing and links to different products in their eCommerce website. But it also goes a step further, providing value for readers by linking to blog posts and even adding an inspirational quote by American poet Walt Whitman.
18. Apple
Subject line: Welcome to your new Apple Watch.
This email welcomes users to their brand new Apple Watch, detailing the product’s many features. This newsletter idea allows users to discover more about the product, providing a bit of guidance at a time when it’s most likely still unfamiliar to them.
The watch’s features couldn’t be clearer with large images to display it in action and explanatory text. Furthermore, in order to make certain that all users will be able to use the watch smoothly and easily, the email also links to tutorials and customer support.
19. Casper
Subject line: Welcome to Casper!
Casper’s welcome email invites subscribers into a “world of better sleep.” The illustrated email cradles us into a starry, moonlit night as if setting the scene for a bedtime story, not even showing the product until the very end.
The text serves as an introduction to the company, describing their mission and values in a friendly tone-of-voice full of sleep puns. Down at the email’s footer are social media icons and other contact details, as well as the option to unsuscribe.
20. The Sill
Subject line: Welcome to The Sill 🌱
Plant company The Sill invites users to subscribe by use of a website lightbox with an intriguing header - “Get the dirt.” The welcome email which arrives soon after focuses on the emotional reason for purchasing plants - they simply “make people happy.” This insight plays a key role in the psychology of selling, as emotions are a driving force behind the choices we make.
After getting newcomers in the mood for some greenery, the email immediately leads them to take action and buy a plant. The elegant serif fonts of the text is a great match for the logo font, which is also repeated down at the email footer.
Best practices for crafting the perfect welcome email
1. Show your appreciation: Letting your brand into the personal space of one’s inbox is a big deal, and expressing gratitude for your new subscribers can go a long way, building brand loyalty.
2. Introduce your product or brand: As the newest members of your community, tell your subscribers more about your company or service. They’ve already shown initial interest in your brand by subscribing, so now educate them as to why they’ve made the right choice.
3. Set readers’ expectations: Let subscribers know what to expect from your newsletter. Include information about what it is that you’ll be sending out, as well as how often they’ll be seeing you in their inbox.
4. Provide real value: Offer something of value to your users. This can be anything from a discount code, to insightful writing, to useful resources and links. If your website promises users to receive something after subscribing (such as a special offer), be sure to deliver on the incentive.
5. Lead subscribers to take the next step: Whether it’s purchasing a product, booking an appointment on your online scheduling calendar, or setting up their account, be extra clear about what your users’ next step should be and guide them towards completing it.
6. Help readers stay connected: Link to your business website, social media presence, and any other place where users can reach you online.
7. Write a compelling subject line: Your subject line will have a direct effect on your open rates, so be sure to make it truly enticing. Keeping your audience in mind when you write will help you stray away from text that feels too commercial.
8. Follow email design tips: The design of your welcome email should reflect your brand identity, including your logo design and all other major assets. Make sure that the text is live (typed out) and written in large fonts, and that CTA buttons are prominent. Lastly, optimize the email for different devices and different email service platforms.