Should a local newsletter send one welcome email or a welcome sequence?

For a long time all I sent new subscribers was one welcome email. That's common among the newer local newsletters. A lot of old-school local media companies don't even have a welcome email, which is kind of hilarious.

One email isn't enough for a weekly newsletter, though. Someone gets it five minutes after subscribing and then may not hear from you for seven, eight or nine days. By the time the first real issue shows up, they've forgotten about you.

"That's not good. They need to see three or four in the first seven days."

What's the case for a sequence?

The first days are when people pay the most attention. One B2B newsletter I've followed sends an email every day for a subscriber's first seven days. The content is valuable, and inside it they pitch products. They spend money on Meta for subscribers and make money on the acquisition.

Here's the logic, with made-up numbers. Say you spend $1 to get a subscriber. If 10% buy a $10 product in that first week, you're making about $1 for every signup. At that point, why wouldn't you throw more and more money at ads? That's the flywheel I've been racking my brain on for months.

It's easier in B2B, where there are obvious things to sell. For a consumer local newsletter, I'm still working it out. There's got to be a happy medium between that and one.

For a new brand, a warm-up sequence also buys time. I start ads with a welcome and warm-up emails and send the first real issue around three weeks in.

What should the welcome email itself say?

Ask for a one-word reply, at the top. I used to ask people to reply with their favorite restaurant or what they were most excited about. We got very few responses. Then I changed it to "reply with yes" or "reply I'm ready," and we get a crazy amount of replies. On a couple of my newsletters, they hit my phone all day.

Two reasons it works:

• No brain power. Naming a favorite restaurant takes thinking. People read emails fast and don't want to think. Replying "yes" is just following instructions.
• Inbox reputation. I'm convinced it helps a ton for Google and the other email providers to see lots of people replying to you. It tells them you're a legit brand.

We also made the welcome email shorter and cut most of the "about us" part, because most people don't read all of it. Put the ask first. They're never more likely to reply than right after they subscribe.

A newer version I've pushed for works like a fake double opt-in: thanks for subscribing, but we really need you to do one of two things, reply yes or click this button, or you might not get our future emails. They're already subscribed. The point is to get the reply or click.

How should it look?

• Turn off double opt-in. You don't want it.
• Add a GIF or image. People zone out when they see too much text in a row. Make it a little more fun.
• Put yourself in it. A bit about you and a photo, so it's provable this comes from a real local resident.
• Use a friendly reply-to like hi@ or hello@ your domain. It can be an alias that forwards to your Gmail, so there's no extra account.

If you import an existing list, skip the welcome email for them. They already get your emails, and "welcome to our list" will just confuse them.

What should the rest of the first week do?

• Introduce the brand. Three or four emails over seven days that remind people who you are.
• Nudge the survey. If they didn't fill it out at signup, say in the first or second email that you'd really appreciate it. There's no harm.
• Carry an offer. A local business can pay for an offer shown to new subscribers. If that covers your cost per subscriber, growth is effectively free.

The hard question is how to make each email really valuable before you have events and news to send. One guest on my podcast sends new subscribers the whole month's events in an early email, since the newsletter itself only covers the week. That's the kind of idea I'm looking for.

What's the risk?

Turning the welcome into constant pitching. It's always value first. I sign up for a lot of other media companies' sequences, and many are just "here's an offer, here's an offer." If I weren't in the industry, I'd unsubscribe from all of them instantly. You can spam people. It's a bad idea.

You also have to sell the business and set up tracking. Anybody can sign up for Beehiiv. Getting the survey, welcome email and sequences right is hard, and there's a ton of value if you do.

What about automations after the welcome?

Click triggers. In Beehiiv you can set an automation so that when someone clicks a link, like a lead magnet, another email goes to them right away: hey, I saw you were checking this out. You know they're interested right now.

Pair that with survey tags. A tag like "interested in buying a business" can route someone into a five- to ten-email sequence for the matching offer.

One last thing: don't count on the welcome email for data. Put your survey on the page right after subscribe. My surveys get 50% or more there. Linked from a welcome email, the same survey gets about 2%.