This is a tutorial to show you how to set up the timing of your welcome emails so that new members complete your welcome sequence before they get added to your main mailing list.
We'll be using Kit as an example, though you can tailor this strategy to your preferred email service if you use a different one!
Here's an overview of the order you'll be sending your emails:
Have a welcome email set up for any of your paid or free MV products/offers. At the end of this, send them into a new subscriber sequence that will only run once and removes a tag at the end of this automation.
Once the subscriber completes the welcome email, they will go into the new subscriber sequence (only if they are new and haven't already done so).
Once both your welcome email and the new subscriber sequence are complete, your members will be added to your regular newsletter.
This strategy is going to work best for you if:
You send emails to your list on a weekly or more frequent basis.
You have a default welcome/introductory email series (2 or more emails) set up that you want all new subscribers to go through when they join your list.
You want your members to complete your welcome email series prior to receiving your regular newsletter.
If this is you, or you're curious to learn how to do this, great! Here is how to set this up:
Create the New Subscriber Sequence
In your Kit Dashboard, select "Send" then "Sequences" in the top menu.
Click "+ New Sequence" and then choose a Template you want to use for welcoming your new subscribers. I'm using Monterey in this example.
Give your Sequence a title that is easily recognizable (ie "New Subscriber Nurture Series").
Customize your email's subject line and content.
If you want this email series to begin delivering right away when you get a new subscriber, change the "Send this email" section to 0 days.
Click the toggle button under "Published" to activate this series.
By default, all of your sequences are only set to run one time. If you want to double check this, you can click on "Settings" from within your Sequence editor page. We want to keep this set to "No, only allow subscribers to receive emails once" in this case.
Now that your sequence is published, it's available to use in your active automations. Publishing your sequence does not mean it will automatically send to new subscribers just yet, so now we need to create the automation piece!
Create the New Subscriber Automation
Click on "Automate" > "Visual Automations" in your Kit Dashboard.
Click "+ New Automation," then select which automation you'd like to use (we recommend the empty "Start from Scratch" option).
Click "Start Building" and choose "tag is added" to start your automation.
If you have a pre-existing tag, you can select this from your menu. Otherwise you can type in your new tag here. Remember to make it something that's easy for you to identify!
Click the plus button below your tag to add your next step. Under the "Actions" button, click "Email sequence."
Add your new subscriber nurture email sequence you created in the above steps. (You can also create your sequence from this step if you haven't already done so!)
Click the plus button below your Email Sequence in the automation to add a step.
Next we're going to remove the tag you used to trigger this automation so that your members can begin receiving your regular newsletter (more on this below).
Make sure you click "Remove" above the tag field, then add in your tag from the first step of this automation.
Congrats! You now have your onboarding nurture email automation set up! Make sure to switch this automation to "Active."
How this works with your regular newsletter
After you write your newsletters (aka "Broadcasts") in Kit, you'll see a screen that allows you to control who receives your email.
Select the option for Matching "none" of the following, and select the "Subscribed To (insert your onboarding tag)."
Now those members who have the "[New Subscriber] Onboarding" tag will not receive that email newsletter until they complete your automation and have that tag removed.
This is an example of what this looks like in a recent broadcast I created in my Kit account:
How this works with your MV Products and Offers
For any free or paid product/offer in your MV account where you want to have members go through your new subscriber sequence, add an Action in the Actions section of your product to tag your members with the "[New Subscriber] Onboarding" tag.
This action will be in addition to the tag you create for the welcome email for that product. See steps for this here.
Since you've set up your new subscriber sequence to only run once, your member will only go through that part of your automation when they join your first product or offer in MemberVault.
As long as they use the same email address to join your other products in future, this will allow them to skip over the new subscriber sequence in your automation and go straight to your newsletter after receiving their welcome email.
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Questions? Reach out to us at hello@membervault.co, within our Facebook group, The MV Collaborative, or via chat support within your admin account (not sure how to log in? look up your account here).