A guide to writing a killer welcome email on Substack

An evergreen series for fiction writers

read more from the killer series

If you’ve ever had a newsletter before on platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit or Mailerlite, then you’re familiar with the Welcome Email. It’s one of those things that you typically would treat as a “set it and forget it” email. At least, that is how I would always treat it.

But I find many of us writers here on Substack fall into three very distinct camps when it comes to the Welcome Email:

Camp A - You never bothered to edit your welcome email and have left it as the default language.

Camp B - You actually took the time to write up a welcome email right from the beginning of your Substack journey.

Camp C - You’ve not touched your welcome email since the beginning and you’ve been using Substack for several months (or years) and had many evolutions on what you’re writing since that time.

Regardless of which camp you happen to be a member of, this post is going to help you figure out how to write a KILLER welcome email and ways to remember how/when to keep it up to date. Let’s begin…

NOTE: I will in fact cover Welcome emails for PAID, FREE, IMPORTED, & FOUNDING subscribers! Yes, there are four different emails to welcome people, depending on how they decide to interact with you and your wonderful content.

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WELCOME EMAIL FOR FREE SUBSCRIBERS

All of us will have free subscribers. So, it is important that we get this one right above all the others. Now, it’s easy to think we should put everything in this email but when it comes to a welcome email I feel less is more. Especially, if you’re like me and you have a killer About Page as well as a pretty decent navigation page that new subscribers can go to if they want a more in-depth analysis of your newsletter. But we’ll get to that later.

NOTE: There is often this feeling that we should try to be something we’re not in the welcome email. Crack a joke. Say something witty or sarcastic. If that isn’t how you speak day-to-day or if it’t not how your emails will be written on a regular basis, I caution against doing this. Your welcome email is your first (or second if they’ve already seen your About Page) impression. You don’t want to come off as fake. So, I urge you to write this as you would say it, nothing more.

I like to divide my welcome email into 3 parts:

PART 1 - The intro

Just a short 1 - 3 sentences saying your hellos and welcomes. Substack allows you to have a sort of “Dear Reader” header that is large and bold. I keep mine simple with a “Welcome to Erica Drayton Writes.” I intentionally mention the name of my newsletter in the welcome just so the newbie gets familiar with the name. If yours is unique or doesn’t include your name in it, then use this introduction as a time to mention your name (or what you’d like to be called).

PART 2 - The really short bio & map

Answer the why question that most new subscribers might wonder when they sign up. Remember, if they are getting this email it means they’ve already signed up, so this isn’t a why you should sign up question you’re answering. Instead, answer the why I have a newsletter question. Ask yourself this question and answer it here. Maybe you want to work on your storytelling or you want to document your journey or you want to read/watch a piece of media and have others join you on the journey. Whatever your why for having this newsletter, let your new subscriber know what your why is.

I recommend a paragraph (3 - 5 sentences). Don’t want to spend too long on this unless you will be writing long form content and you want your new subscriber to get used to that fact about yourself.

Lastly, a paragraph written out to share what Sections you may have and what they are about. One sentence per Section and when you mention the name of the Section be sure to have it LINK to the Section page. I used to have this as a list on my welcome email but I found it to be way too long and informal and besides, I already have this same information in my About page as well as my navigation page. Having the same information in 3 different places is just too much repetition.

PART 3 - The CTA buttons

CTA is a Call-To-Action that is typically represented in the form of a button.

You have two possible CTA’s that I recommend putting in your welcome email and one of them is specific to those of you who may have PAID subscriptions turned on:

CTA #1 | Share Publication button. Be sure to say a sentence about how it would be great if they could share your newsletter with their friends and family on their social media.

CTA #2 | [ONLY USE IF YOU HAVE PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS TURNED ON] Upgrade to Paid button. This one isn’t standard in the Button drop down menu unfortunately, so you’ll have to create a CUSTOM button instead. I like to use the text “Upgrade to Paid” and then the URL would be <https://(your substack url)/subscribe>. If they are subscribed already (which, of course, they would be) then when the click that button it will send them to the page where they can choose to become a paid subscriber.

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WELCOME EMAIL FOR PAID SUBSCRIBERS

This is only relevant if you have paid subscriptions turned on, of course, and far be it from me to push you one way or the other, but if you don’t have it turned on, might I suggest you think about it. You could be leaving money on the table for the great work you’re putting out into the world. Okay, so, for paid subscribers here are the three parts I like to make sure I have in mine:

PART 1 - Thanks and salutations

Unlike the welcome email for free subscribers, this is someone who has just chosen to give their credit card information so that they could put their money where their mouth is and show their support for you monetarily. Dispense with the hellos and start with the thank yous. Because you are immensely thankful and grateful for their new patronage.

PART 2 - The rewards

You don’t have to have rewards. There are plenty of people who will subscribe and never take you up on whatever it is you are offering, whether it be a physical item or a digital one. I believe the majority of paid subscribers honestly do it because they support your work and believe in it and that is A-OK. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least consider some sort of reward for paying subscribers and there are so many you could offer that cost you nothing or cost you a little something. If you’re interested in ideas I have for what you provide paying subscribers as rewards let me know in the comments section.

If you know exactly what you give as a reward for their patronage then you should mention what that is or provide a link to a page where you have that listed out in detail. I currently provide a link to the rewards page because I may add or change it frequently and rather than making the change in the welcome email I can do it on the separate page instead.

PART 3 - The CTA buttons

See FREE SUBSCRIBERS for info on the Share button but another you can put here is the gift subscription. You already know they have money because they just became a paid subscriber. Doesn’t hurt anything to see if they might consider giving a gift to a friend or family member who they think might benefit from your creative work.

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WELCOME EMAIL FOR IMPORTED SUBSCRIBERS

This is an email that few, if any, will know exists or consider changing but you may want to consider it if:

You are migrating your list from any other newsletter platform (ie Mailchimp, Convertkit, Mailerlite, etc.).

When I moved my list over I didn’t know this existed and so I just imported them and never bothered sending a welcome email to begin with. But if I’m catching you before you do this import or if you will be doing an import over time from a service like Bookfunnel that doesn’t have syncing capabilities, then it’s never too late to craft a welcome email specifically for them. But what would you say?

PART 1 - The change-up

The main reason for wanting to send a welcome email to your imported subscribers is simple; you want them to know that you’ve moved. They might be used to seeing your emails looks a certain way and now they will look different. Substack is definitely more different than the others. So, out of just common curtesy you’ll want to tell them the news. You may also want to tell them why you’re changing. Be honest. In my case, I made the move because Mailchimps practice for how they were treating me (and others like me) was appalling. They only care about the customers who are paying and they have done everything they possibly could to push out the rest of us to make us feel like freeloaders. It couldn’t have happened at a better time because I discovered Substack.

PART 2 - What else has changed

If you’re anything like me, you don’t make a drastic change from one newsletter service to another without also looking at what you’ve been doing and how you might change it slightly. Add some things. What will stay the same. What is Substack offering that you didn’t have with the other platforms and you can now offer your faithful subscribers. All of these things you can and should mention to your imported list. Let them know what they can continue to expect (and when) and what might be new and different and amazing for them to connect with you.

PART 3 - The CTA’s

Yes, I’m going to hammer this home in every welcome email type. But as I’ll explain later, this is the one part that you truly can set and forget. For this email I would suggest the ever popular “share” button as well as the “upgrade to paid” button as well. This list may not even be aware they can support you financially so this move is as good a time as any to let them know.

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WELCOME EMAIL FOR FOUNDING SUBSCRIBERS

Something that is very unique to Substack is the Founding Member. It’s really just a way for you to let your paid subscribers know they can be even more special than they already are in your eyes by giving them an opportunity to give more, if they want.

For this email you really only need two things:

PART 1 - Thank you and why

Let them know how thankful you are for their enormous patronage. At this level they have just given you a rather large amount, typically higher than an annual subscription. Also, giving a good reason why their decision was worth it wouldn’t go amiss.

PART 2 - Rewards and AMAs

It’s great to give something to this paid subscriber. They believe in your work so much and they’ve proven it with their wallet. Even just sending them a personal thank you email after they’ve subscribed would be acceptable but telling them that you’ll be sending them XX thing as a thank you is a great idea.

Also, leave an open door policy between yourself and this subscriber. Let them know if they have any questions for you they should feel free to ask and as long as it’s within reason, you should answer it. You never know, they might ask a question that has such a long answer you decide to make it an entire email to share with others.

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ADDITIONAL IDEA

POLLS & SURVEYS

Asking multiple choice questtions in each welcome email might work for you, depending on the question you’re thinking of asking. And adding polls is now possible.

Also, you can create surveys that you can link to within the welcome email. Survey questions are great for asking a series of questions to perhaps find out what kind of reader your new subscriber is.

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What do you include in your welcome emails that I haven’t mentioned here?

Let me know in the comments if you found any of this helpful and if there is anything else about Substack, newsletters, or fiction writing in general you’d love to learn more about and I’ll see if I can write that suggestion up next time.