Steal My Email Welcome Sequence (Step-by-Step Guide)
Are you collecting emails but hearing crickets when you hit send?
The problem might be your Welcome Sequence. Your very first emails have the highest open rates you will ever get from a subscriber—don't waste that opportunity!
In this post, I am taking you behind the scenes of Calibrated Concepts to show you exactly how I am revamping my own welcome sequence this year.
We will cover the strategy behind what to send (and when), how to segment your audience so they only get what they want, and the exact tech triggers I use in Flodesk to put the whole thing on autopilot.
Whether you are delivering a freebie or just saying hello, this is how you turn a cold lead into a community member.
Links Mentioned:
Freebies: https://www.calibratedconcepts.com/freebies
Toolkits: https://www.calibratedconcepts.com/shop
Transcript below!
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00:00 If you're looking to set up or revamp your email newsletter sequence, specifically how you welcome people onto your email list, you're in the right place.
00:12 If you're new here, my name is Ellie. I'm the founder of Calibrated Concepts, I'm really excited to dive into you today.
00:18 This with you today, it's one of my favorite topics, and there's a lot that has changed. And this is something in my business that we evaluate at least annually.
00:28 Uhm, and as we are evaluating it and updating it in my business right now, I thought I'd share with you what that looks like, the why's behind some of our decisions, and show you actually in practice what our welcome sequence looks like.
00:42 But first, let's talk a little bit about email sequences. So why bother with an email list at all? That's a big question.
00:52 But the main answer to that is because you have the privilege of showing up in their inbox and waiting and hanging out until they're ready to actually open the email.
01:01 And if you're sending good emails, the likelihood is they will. Whereas if you're relying on social media, you never know if you'll get the chance to actually cross paths with them, if they're the algorithms hating you, et cetera, et cetera.
01:14 and if you're sending good emails, you will by default have good open rates and all sorts of good statistics. And so you won't show up a spam if you're doing things right.
01:27 And there's a lot of little things around in that, but mainly, send genuinely valuable emails, use good, language and not like clickbaity stuff, register your domain and warm up your list.
01:40 That's in a nutshell, how to send good emails. But your welcome sequence specifically is great because it has the highest open rates of all.
01:51 You've just made that contact. They're a warm lead. They're top of mind. And they're curious as to whether they should let you stay in their inbox.
01:59 So they're going to open those emails because they want to know if you're going to earn your place in there or if they should unsubscribe.
02:05 So how do we make sure they stay and don't unsubscribe? Well, here's a few things to think about when you're creating your email list.
02:13 One, think about your goals. Like, what do you want your email list to achieve for your business? Is that more sales, more website visits, uhm, you know, whatever it is.
02:24 Uhm, think about your audience. Who are you talking to? What do they want? What do they need? What are they like crying out for?
02:32 Uhm, and that's really how does obviously, in some ways, shape or form, you're hoping to deliver that through your words, through your services, through your, what you're selling.
02:42 And then think about how to warm them up. So, what do they need to get from where they found you at, which is probably a fairly cold lead, to trusting you and finally taking that next step with you, so.
02:57 Let's dial it back a little and figure out, what are you giving them in exchange for that, like, holy grail of their email address.
03:04 you've probably signed up for some email lists, you have an idea, but this could be, uh, discount codes, this could be exclusive content, this could be a really valuable free, uhm, offer or freebie.
03:17 it might be a one-to one something with you. Whatever it is, you need to make sure that it's high value and easily deliverable on, like, a repeated basis.
03:28 And then you need to think through, okay, so what next? They sign up for your email, what next? And you want to deliver whatever it is that you're giving them first, right?
03:37 That freebie, that discount code, uhm, you know, that exclusive content, whatever it is. And then you need to think about, okay, how do I, where do we go from there?
03:48 You follow up, make sure they're using it, how are they getting on, you tell them a story, you offer them your best resources or tips, uhm, you're just providing value, value, value without going, you know, too overboard.
04:03 Uhm, and then you want to think through really specifically your subject lines, the preview text and make sure that they're really highly engaging, again, while being human and not overly clickbaity or overly, like, what they might consider to be spammy, right?
04:23 And then, and again, I'm going to give you great examples. Of this all in a moment, but you want to think through the techie bit.
04:31 Okay. So the timeline of this. Okay. So they sign up and immediately get their freebie. And then how long until they get the next email?
04:40 And then how long until they get the next email? you don't want to wait too long. Because you want them to remember who you are and for it to feel like you're building on something, but you don't want to go too quickly and overwhelm them and inundate them either.
04:55 So it's about striking that balance just right for whoever your community and audience are. And then I'm going to show you some of this too, but you should think about triggers with welcome sequence.
05:06 The most common triggers are going to be filling out a form or being added to a specific tag or segment, uh, when they filled out, you know, when they've signed up for that freebie or offer that you're sending them this welcome sequence for.
05:23 Then you want to think about branching. there's a lot you can do with that, but it's maybe allowing them to have a more natural journey through your email list other than forcing everyone through the same pathway.
05:35 And along those lines, you also want to think about segmenting or tagging those people again, so you can allow them to get the emails that apply to them and not receive the emails that don't, which is more important because if they're receiving a bunch of emails that they don't feel like are a good fit
05:52 for them. They're probably going to unsubscribe. So how does this all work in practice? Let me show you. All right.
05:59 So here is my Google doc. I duplicate this, like I said, roughly every year, tweak all my emails, and then either my team or I will go ahead and update them.
06:08 And so the way that this works in my business is if we were to go to my website, my freebies website, part of my website, we've got three freebies.
06:18 And if you're interested in any of these, it's calibratedconcepts.com forward slash freebies. And the first one is this hometown business health check and a little snippet and then a signup form.
06:28 And this is embedded directly from my email list right here. And then we have the Calm CEO starter pack and a little bit of information about that and make sure to make sure to show them that it's videos.
06:40 And then we have another signup for that. These are all three different signups. You can see that the buttons are specific to what they're getting and there's no overlap.
06:50 And then we have the business bottleneck and it's a quiz for how to get to pinpoint what the biggest hangup in their business is, what's going to free up the most time.
07:01 And so, when they fill out any of these forms, let me show you what happens in the background. are built out in here, and when they fill them in, then they get added to specific segments.
07:16 So, when they get added to specific segments, then I will tag them with, and I've gone and done some work to make these really clearly labeled, so if I sort them alphabetically, they all stick together bundles I've been apart.
07:28 of, people who clicked specific things, fans, so this is helping me figure out who my biggest fans are, freebies people have signed up for, as well as things they've opted out of, things they have preference and want to hear about, and quiz results and all sorts of here.
07:48 So, going forward. Peace. People, the workflow that they get goes like this. And I'm doing some tidying up of these.
08:00 So I used to have a different delivery for each major freebie. And then they, with segmenting, we're all funneled into one big sequence for the remainder.
08:10 Um, but we're doing something different. We're tidying it up. So in here you can see with, they get the first email for the business health check.
08:21 And we've outlined the first email. We figured out that that's going to go to a button. We've got my sign-off.
08:27 And that's how that goes for everything. So we've got for all of them, it starts with delivery of the freebie, right?
08:35 Then it's follow-up. How did you score? How'd you get on? Can I support you in any way? Reminding them that they've gotten the freebie and not to just let it sit in their downloads folder and go there to die and never be looked at again.
08:49 Um, I am also utilizing some segmenting questions in here so that I can figure out just who my people are and what they're interested in.
09:01 So commerce, service-based. And then again. For the next freebie, it is delivery, follow-up. And then same again, quiz, delivery, follow-up.
09:13 Then we have, if they just signed up in the footer of my website and haven't signed up for a specific freebie, we have that email as well.
09:21 And then everybody, all four of those other ones funnel into this main opening. Welcome sequence. And so you can see, wait two days.
09:30 These are these timeline things I'm talking about. And we talk about my journey to my business and that's my telling a really, you know, story that was hard for me and why I started my business.
09:44 And then we've got another, um, question about people segmenting themselves again. Then we wait three days and then we talk about why working with me looks like and why it matters.
09:58 And the why behind my business in more deep ways of like the why I do things with my clients and why I do things that specific way.
10:07 And then three days later we have another story about another kind of version of the why behind my business. is how I develop my skills.
10:15 Uhm, from some adversity. And I think a lot of people in entrepreneurship can relate to that. I know a lot of entrepreneurs are, um, non neurotypical or have anxiety or other things.
10:27 And there's a reason we're not necessarily in like nine to five jobs. And then this is an email that this email continues on with some really useful resources and then some more.
10:39 And then some testimonials slash case studies in the next email. So proving I'm good at what I do and people trust me.
10:50 And that's a huge thing. Showing that other people have trusted me with their business. Uhm, so talking about what I do for websites and systems all in here.
10:59 And then some other quick testimonials and reminders. For the free discount code. And so what that looks like in here in our 2026 tidied up version is we have the four triggers, right?
11:15 So they've been the triggers in um, Flowdesk and they, these all work differently for different email, um, providers, but they're not going to be that different.
11:25 There's some similarity, but you can see whether they filled out a form, um, added to a specific segment. Um, so a lot of these segments I have multiple forms for, so I'm definitely going to go with the segment because I might have a pop-up and I might have that inline in my website and If you were to
11:41 actually look at my Flowdesk here, I have multiple forms. Multiples. Um, so I don't want to just use the form for this.
11:46 I want to make sure it's the segment or if they've made a purchase and you can see there's integrations with several e-commerce things or abandoned their cart.
11:53 There's other triggers you can do, but these ones are most specific to what we're talking about today, which is the welcome sequence.
12:01 I'm just gonna delete that one. So when someone is added to one of these segments based on a, any of the forms they filled out for any of these segments, they will get their first email and these are all designed out from this here and we're going to be tweaking on a little.
12:16 I'm going to leave that to my assistant, but I did get started. And so, you know, welcome to the Calibrated Concepts Clubhouse.
12:24 And that's just for anybody that signed up, but not for a freebie. And that email is everything we talked about.
12:30 It has a little bit about me. It's all branded. It's got pictures of me. So again, building trust, some really useful resources, a testimonial, all good.
12:43 And that's how all these are. Then we've got the ones that deliver the freebies, as we talked about, waiting a few days, asking how they got on with the freebies.
12:52 And then they're all funneled into the same place. And we wait a day, add them to the newsletter segment, and also to the do not disturb, because they're in the welcome sequence, I might tweak this and add this actually up here for making sure that in this, like, four day period, that they're not getting
13:10 harassed by other emails I'm sending. So I might do that, probably will, just, you know, seeing how things work, ah, real time.
13:20 and then from there, they are going to get all of those follow up emails so the path to the cloud.
13:25 rated concepts, turning my anxiety into a superpower, what does working with me look like, these are going to be reversed in the newer version, uhm, meeting my testimonial slash case studies, and then removing them from the Do Not Disturb, uhm, once they're all done.
13:42 So, and then this year is the first year we're adding all of those segmenting questions in as well. So that is how that works.
13:49 Um, every newsletter provider is a little bit different, but just what you need to know is that it's really about setting it up with a really good trigger, uhm, sending valuable emails, making sure you're not bombarding people, and testing, lots and lots of testing, because inevitably you will make a
14:10 mistake, there will be something that's not linked, or there will that is linked incorrectly, or that you've gotten the timing wrong, or the trigger wrong or something, so it's, run yourself through any new workflow, any, uhm, welcome sequence that you create before you send, uh, new subscribers through
14:29 it. And, that's really all from me, uhm, if this has been helpful for you, feel free to subscribe. Use any of my toolkits, so, Marketing Communication is a really useful one, uhm, the Simplified Business Toolkit is probably also really useful for you all, and then, as you saw, I've got some really awesome
14:50 freebies, and those will all be linked in the description. If you found this helpful, please like, comment, subscribe, share, all the things, it just makes a world of difference for small creators.
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