The welcome email is doing all the work

Across the newsletters I have had access to the numbers for, the welcome email is opened between three and five times more often than a regular issue. It is the only message you will ever send at a moment when the reader is actively thinking about you.

It is also, almost universally, the worst-written thing on the list. Usually it is the provider’s default with the name changed.

Why it matters more than the next six issues

A new subscriber is making one decision in the first few days: is this going to be worth the inbox space. Nothing you send in week three can fix a bad answer in week one, because by week three you are being filtered, ignored, or archived unread.

There is also a mechanical reason. A brand-new address that opens and replies to your first message is the cleanest possible engagement signal, and it arrives at exactly the moment your sending reputation to that recipient is being established.

What to put in it

Four things, in this order, and nothing else.

Confirm what they get and when. One sentence. “Mailer arrives every other Thursday morning.” If your schedule is irregular, say that instead — vagueness is worse than irregularity.

Give them something to read now. Not “check out the archive”. Link two specific issues, with one line each on why. The gap between signing up and receiving anything is the most dangerous window you have; fill it.

Ask one question. “What made you subscribe?” gets a real answer surprisingly often, and every answer is research you cannot buy. It also generates a reply from a new address, which is the single best thing that can happen to your deliverability with that recipient.

Set the unsubscribe expectation. Counterintuitive, and it works. Telling someone the exit is easy makes them less likely to use it, because the decision stops feeling permanent.

Everything else people put in a welcome email — the founder story, the manifesto, the list of what you will never do — is for the writer, not the reader.

What to leave out

• A five-part onboarding sequence. Nobody asked for a course.
• Your life story. It goes on the about page, where someone who wants it can find it.
• A request to add you to their contacts. It reads as needy and almost nobody does it.
• Attachments of any kind.

The bit people skip

Read yours. Out loud. Right now, in the account you subscribed to your own newsletter with — because you did subscribe to your own newsletter, on a normal consumer address, and you do check what it looks like on a phone.

Most people find at least one of: a broken link, a merge tag that never got filled in, a sentence about a schedule they abandoned eighteen months ago, or a sign-off from someone who no longer works on it.

Then diary a reminder to read it again in six months. It is the only email you send that goes stale silently.

Next issue: Iris on the tools she stopped paying for, and the one she would pay double for.