Download - Creating an email welcome series
CREATING AN EMAIL WELCOME SERIES
Chris Vaughn,
Director of Client Services
• Set up an autoresponse or streaming email as a welcome series
• Configure conditions of the series of emails
• Create a trigger page or group that starts the series
• Create a group to suppress welcome series recipients from your normal email list
Learning objectives
By the conclusion of this session, participants will be able to:
What is a Welcome Series?
24 hours
1week
3weeks
New Supporter
Signs petition for first time
Follow up intro to your work
Take action on second
campaign
Request a donation
Engaged Supporter
A set of emails sent to a supporter after joining your list or performing a certain action (donating, attending an event, etc.). It 'welcomes' them to your organization and automatically moves them along an engagement ladder.
All welcome series in Salsa are built on a set of Autoresponses or Streaming Emails• These will then be timed to send at
an interval apart from one another• Create each one as a continuous
narrative of introduction/engagement• Can be set to queue up on events a
supporter takes in Salsa.
Ingredients for a Welcome Series
Ingredients: Autoresponse
Both Autoresponses and Streaming Emails are found in the “Email Blast” section of Salsa.
• Emails that get sent an after activity on a Salsa page
• Unique because they carry “transactional” data
• “Set it and forget it”• They can be attached to pages in
Salsa to send immediately or on a delay
What are autoresponses?
Ingredients: Autoresponse
Types of autoresponses
• Reply Email• Goes to the submitter
immediately• Individual Email
• Goes to specific email address(es)
• Timed Trigger• Goes to the submitter on a
delayed send
There are a couple types of autoresponses, all of which you may want to use on a Welcome Series
Ingredients: Autoresponse
Autoresponses have HTML and Text content like regular Email Blasts in Salsa, but there isn’t a templating feature or statistics.
That said, you can quickly add them to any page in Salsa under the “Follow up” tab:
Ingredients: Streaming Email
Streaming emails are upgraded autoresponses that allow you to use a template and include statistics. They add the “trigger” function of an autoresponse to the content and tracking of an email blast.
Ingredients: Send Conditions
One easy way to set up a welcome series is to attach three autoresponse/streaming emails to a sign up page. Set the first to be a “Reply Email” and the subsequent emails to be a “Timed Trigger”.
Ingredients: Send Conditions
Then set a timed delay that staggers the messages by a period of time. This is found in the “Send Options” or “Stream Options” in a Streaming Email.
The key will be to stagger the timing with the messaging, taking supporters along a ladder of engagement from newly oriented to engaged. So, time the delays according to the kind of ask you would expect (if any ask is a part of the series).
Ingredients: Send Conditions
Now that you have your autoresponses or streaming emails created and set with delays, you need to ensure that only new supporters receive them.
If you’re using a page in Salsa that is not connected to a credit card transaction, you can use a simple send condition that will limit the welcome series to ONLY new supporters:
[[isNew]] == 1
Ingredients: Attach to page
Finally, attach your autoresponses or streaming emails with the required send conditions to your sign up page and the welcome series is set to start.
You can attach as many autoresponses as you want to a page in the “Follow Up” tab.
Using smart groups
Now not everyone that comes into your database comes through a sign up page. So, how do you catch supporters through:
• Imports• Donation Pages• Paid Event Pages• Simply Supporters you
Tag
Smart Groups
Using Smart Groups
Smart groups are groups that get populated each night by Salsa based upon a query. Any supporter that meets the query will get added.
There are two kinds of Smart Groups:
Smart Group: Each night this group is emptied and then re-populated.
Greedy Smart Group: Each night only new supporters that meet query are added, none removed.
Using Smart Groups
Greedy Smart groups can be paired with Streaming Emails to queue up a set of Welcome Series messages.
When you’re setting up a Welcome Series group, you can attach Streaming Email messages to the group.
Navigate to the “Options” tab of the group in Salsa, then highlight your series emails.
Using Smart Groups
Next, create a query that will be the basis of your smart group. This is the query that you want to capture people who should receive your Welcome Series
Using Smart Groups
Finally, set your group to be a Greedy Smart Group and tell it to use the query you want.
Then, when the smart group populates later that night, your supporters will get the streaming emails queued up.
That’s it!!!!!
Using Smart Groups
Bottom line: If you can dream up a query to find the supporters you’re looking for, it can be used to kick off a Welcome Series or Drip Campaign.
Here’s an example of a query for anyone tagged, “Donor”
This could be the basis of a donor appreciation drip campaign that gets them excited about an upcoming event.
Creating a Suppression Group
Now, in many cases, you’d like to suppress the supporters in a Welcome Series from your normal email campaign. This can be done using a regular smart group (not greedy). When a supporter doesn’t meet the criteria of the query, it will be removed from the suppression group.
If you’re using autoresponses…
You’ll need to create a smart group which only holds onto supporters who fall into your “welcome series” window.
Creating a Suppression Group
If you’re using Streaming Emails…
You’ll need to create a query on “Email Status,” then choose the final streaming email in your series, then set it to “New.” When a supporter gets sent a Streaming Email, the status will change to “Sent.” The supporter will then be removed from the smart group that evening and be back in your general email list.
Just attach this query to the smart group and exclude it from your email list.
• Check out Salsa Commons at help.salsalabs.com• Streaming Emails:• https://help.salsalabs.com/entries/22407142-Streaming-Em
ails• Smart Groups:
https://help.salsalabs.com/entries/22509702-Manage-Groups#6
• Welcome Series Primer: https://help.salsalabs.com/entries/21595934-Welcome-Series-primer
• Or, send us a an email at [email protected]
Questions?
CONTACT INFO
Phone: 866.796.8345
Web: www.salsalabs.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @salsalabs
THANK YOU!