Email

Why most onboarding emails go unread, and the three that don't

We read 1,400 onboarding sequences. Most of them make the same mistake in the first line.

The first email a new customer gets from you is opened more than any other you will ever send them. By the third email that number has usually halved, and by the fifth most sequences are talking to an empty room.

That drop is not a law of nature. It is what happens when the first email says hello, the second lists features and the third asks for a call, and none of them is about the job the person signed up to do.

The one question a welcome email should answer

People sign up with a job in mind. The welcome email that gets read is the one that says, in its first line, how to get that job done today.

The sequences with the best retention shared a shape: email one gets the person to a first result, email two shows someone else's result, and email three removes the most common blocker.

When an offer on the page does the job better

Some of what a sequence tries to do belongs on the site. A reader two thirds of the way down an article is more interested than one who just landed, and a well-timed offer at that moment beats any email sent the next morning.

The same is true of the exit. A reader leaving has a reason. An offer that answers it will keep a share of them.

A sequence to copy

Send the first email within a minute. Make it the shortest path to a result. Send the second when they have that result. Send the third when they get stuck. Then stop.