Welcome, newsletter, offer and launch emails
The four emails most businesses send most. A welcome keeps the sign-up's promise in its first screen, a newsletter is a contents page with one labelled offer, an offer puts what, how much, until when and the button in the first screen, and a launch names the new thing by what it lets the reader do.
Four emails do most of a business's work: the welcome, the newsletter, the offer and the launch. Each has one job, and an order of parts that does it.
The short version
- Welcome: send it at once, with what the form promised as the headline and the first button. Then say who's writing, what's coming and how often, and end with one question that sorts.
- The welcome sequence: 4 to 5 emails over 7 to 10 days. The gift, the story, proof, a first offer, and a question.
- Newsletter: a contents page. Lead with the best item, give each item a headline and a line or two, link to the full pieces, and include one offer, labelled as one.
- Offer: what, how much, until when and the button, all in the first screen, with your terms in one line under the button.
- A sale is three emails: announce, remind, last chance. Leave out everyone who has already bought.
- Launch: name the new thing by what it lets the reader do, show how it works in three steps or one picture, and say when, how much and for whom beside the button.
- Judge each against its own kind: a welcome against welcomes, a sale against your past sales.
Welcome
A new subscriber is never more interested than in the first minutes.
- GetResponse, 4.4 billion emails sent in 2023: welcome emails were opened 83.63% of the time and clicked 16.60%, far above every other type.
- Omnisend, 2025 data from 150,000 brands: welcome and abandoned-cart emails together brought 76% of all orders that came from automated emails.
The order:
A small logo, no menu.
A headline that keeps the promise: "Your planting guide is here".
The gift's button in the first screen, with one line saying what it is.
A short letter, two or three lines: who's writing, and why the business exists.
What's coming and how often: the day, and the kind of email. "Every Thursday: one plant, one job."
One question that sorts: a reply, or two or three links. "Indoor plants · Garden · Both".
The signature with the writer's photo, and a P.S. pointing at the gift's best part.
The footer, with where and when they signed up.
Keep the promise in the first screen. Whatever the form offered, a guide, a code, a free class, is the headline and the first button of the first email, sent at once. A welcome that makes the reader scroll past a brand story to find the code has broken its first promise.
Say who's writing, what's coming and how often. A named person, a rhythm and the kind of email. That's the expectation every later email is opened against.
End with one question that sorts. Make each choice its own link, so the clicks tell you what each person is after, and send them the right emails from then on: The right email for the right people.
Keep the way out in view. Welcomes lose more readers than any other email: in GetResponse's data, 0.94% unsubscribed from welcomes against 0.12% from newsletters. People who didn't mean to join leave at once, which keeps your list clean. Hide the way out and some of them press "report spam" instead, which does far more harm: Get into the inbox.
Letter-style or designed. A note from a person, with the gift as its first link, suits most welcomes. A designed welcome suits a shop whose gift is a discount and whose range needs showing.
The welcome sequence
| When | Its job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | At once | The gift, who's writing, what's coming |
| 2 | Day 2 | The story: why the business exists, told as a person's story |
| 3 | Day 4 | Proof: one customer's result |
| 4 | Day 6 | A first offer for a newcomer: small, low risk, clearly worth it |
| 5 | Day 8 to 10 | A question: what are you working on, which of these fits you |
After the first, the emails are letter-style, one job each. Two writers' versions of the same idea:
- Ryan Deiss calls the first stage "indoctrination": introduce the business, what it stands for and what to expect, so the reader looks out for the next email (Invisible Selling Machine, 2015).
- Russell Brunson's "soap opera sequence" tells one story over five emails: set the stage and promise tomorrow's email, the writer's own struggle, the moment it changed, the benefits nobody expected, then urgency and the offer (DotCom Secrets, 2015).
Mistakes: the gift below the first screen; "Welcome to the family!" with nothing in it; three buttons of equal weight; a discount code inside a picture; a no-reply address on an email that asks a question.
Newsletter
The job is to be worth opening next week: a few useful things, quickly found, with one offer in the mix.
People skim newsletters. In Nielsen Norman Group's eye-tracking study (42 people, 117 newsletters, 2006), people spent 51 seconds on a newsletter on average, only 19% of newsletters were read fully, 67% of people never looked at the introduction, and readers took in the first two words of headlines. That was on computers; Litmus now puts the average time spent on any email at about 10 seconds.
The order:
The header: the newsletter's name, the issue number and the month.
The lead item: a picture, a headline that tells the story alone, a line or two, a link and a read time.
Two to four more items: a small picture, a headline, a link.
Quick links: three to five one-liners.
One offer, labelled as one.
The footer, with "Forward to a friend".
Lead with the best item, not the editor's note. An introduction, if there is one, is a single line.
A newsletter is a contents page. Each item is a headline that works alone, a line or two and a link. The full piece lives on your website, and the whole email stays under Gmail's 102 KB clip. The click is the measure that counts.
A name, a number and a day. The same name in the subject line, an issue number, the same day of the week: readers learn to look for it. Keep the layout the same from issue to issue, so they know where things are.
One offer, labelled as one. The useful items earn the next open, and one marked offer ("From the studio") earns money without turning the issue into an advert. Two offers compete with each other; no offer leaves the money unearned. Ian Brodie's rule holds for the whole list: "little and often" beats "big and infrequent" (Email Persuasion, 2014). A list that only ever gets offers stops opening, and a list that never gets offers never buys. How often: How often to send.
Letter-style works too. One idea, told as a story by a person, suits a founder or a service business with one thing to say each issue. Brunson calls these "Seinfeld" emails: short, regular, built on everyday stories, each tied to an offer.
Benchmark. GetResponse, 2023 data: newsletters were opened 40.08% of the time, clicked 3.84%, and 0.12% of readers unsubscribed.
Mistakes: a long welcome paragraph at the top; whole articles in the email; a button of equal weight on every item; a new layout every issue; never an offer.
Offer
The job is to sell one offer before it ends.
The order:
A small header.
The offer as the headline: what, and how much. The end on the next line, with its time zone.
The button, with the end under it.
Your terms in one or two lines: code or none, exclusions, minimum spend.
What the offer buys: two to four products, each with a photo, the name, the new and old price, and its own link.
One review beside the products.
The button again, with the end.
The footer.
Offer, end and button in the first screen. The reader should know what, how much, until when and how to take it without scrolling. Everything below the button is reasons and choices.
Your terms where the reader decides. Exclusions, minimum spend, whether a code is needed, and the exact end with its time zone, in one line under the button, exactly as you set them. Your prices, discounts and deadlines are the facts in an offer that must always be right.
Show what the money buys. A percentage on its own leaves the reader to do the sums.
Test how the discount is written. In Return Path's study of win-back emails (2014), subject lines with money off as an amount ("$50 off") did nearly twice as well at getting emails opened and read as those with a percentage ("50% off"). It's one data set, about win-backs only, and Return Path itself says to test. So test "£5 off" against "20% off" on your own list: Test your emails.
A sale is three emails. Most sales happen at the start and in the last hours, so announce, remind, and give a last chance before it ends. Leave everyone who has already bought out of the reminders.
The last-chance email says only that. The subject and the headline say it ends tonight, at a stated time. Below them: the offer in one line, the button, two or three products at most.
Gmail's Promotions tab can show an offer's code, its end and product pictures beside the email, when the email carries Google's markup for them. Google decides when to show them, and only personal Gmail accounts see them, not Google Workspace ones. The subject line and the preview carry the offer either way.
Benchmark. A sale email is a campaign: in Klaviyo's 2026 figures, campaigns averaged a 1.69% click rate and a 0.16% placed-order rate. Judge a sale against your own past sales.
Mistakes: the offer only inside a picture; an end date that moves; an "up to" figure almost nothing reaches, so the reader feels tricked at the first click; the same email sent again with the same subject line.
Launch
The job is to make the new thing wanted, and say how to get it.
The order:
The header.
A "New" label, and a headline saying what the reader can now do.
One picture: a still, linked to a short video where there is one.
The button, with when and for whom under it.
How it works: three numbered steps.
Proof: one person's result.
What it costs, when, and who gets it, and the button again.
The footer.
Name it by what it changes. "Snap a receipt. Ledgerly files it for you.", not "Introducing Receipt Capture 2.0". The product's name can come second.
Show how it works in three steps or one picture. Three short numbered lines, or one still linked to a short video, let the reader picture using it. A feature list doesn't.
When, how much and for whom, beside the button. "Included in every plan, live from Monday" answers the three questions that stop the click. They're your own terms, stated as they are.
Each email of a launch has its own lead:
| Its job | Leads with | Subject line | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before, only with a real date | Interest | The problem it solves, and the date | Monday: something for shoebox receipts |
| Open | The new thing | The headline, the picture, how it works | New: snap a receipt, Ledgerly files it |
| Proof | Belief | One person's story | How Sam found £340 of receipts |
| Close, only when it really closes | The deadline | The end, and what changes after it | Launch price ends Friday at 5 pm |
The letter-style version, the founder's story of why it was built, is often the strongest second email. Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula takes the run further: interest first, then three pieces of free, useful content over 7 to 10 days, then the cart opens, and it closes on a stated date (Launch, 2014). The close must be real.
Benchmark. None was found for launch emails, so judge a launch against your own campaigns.
Mistakes: a release-note headline; five new things in one email; no price or date; a "launch price" that never ends.
Doing it here
- A landing page's form can start a welcome sequence for everyone who fills it in, whether a campaign, an ad, a social post or a shared link brought them: What starts a sequence.
- Every campaign goes out as at least four versions, each with its own subject line, so every newsletter issue and every sale tests its subject lines for you: What your results count.
- From the announcement of a sale, save the people who didn't open, or who opened without clicking, and send the reminder to just them: The right email for the right people.
- A click in a campaign you name can start a short follow-up sequence for each person who clicked: Follow up with a sequence.
All four emails, drawn on a phone screen with their words, are in the free guide Everything you need to know about email marketing.