This guide will share tips on how to give new customers a warm welcome during the onboarding process. You will get advice from Stripo’s marketing specialists and review 10 inspiring onboarding email examples to level up your email design and copywriting skills.
A simple and effective onboarding strategy is a goal of 72.6% of specialists, but what about the reality? It differs. Around 40–50% of new users drop off after their first session. Overwhelmed and confused with misaligned information, half the leads never make it to the end of the trial.
How do you minimize drop-offs and maximize the effectiveness of onboarding email campaigns? That’s our task to explore for today.
About onboarding process
While the HR team handles the employee onboarding process, marketing specialists show new subscribers what a warm welcome is. The emphasis on people is no accident — they should be the center of any campaign.
We center on the subscriber — their needs and how Stripo can fulfill them. By offering guidance and support in a non-intrusive way, we motivate recipients to explore the platform’s features fully. This leads to positive outcomes both in email engagement and product interaction.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
As an employee handbook guides new hires, customer onboarding smoothly introduces users to the product. What are the goals?
To encourage open communication, introduce key features, and help with the technology setup — everything to make brand interactions engaging and informative. Let’s check what the numbers say and how vital a well-structured onboarding flow is:
- around 63% of leads consider the onboarding experience when deciding on the subscription;
- some 86% of customers remain loyal to the company if proper onboarding is provided;
- on the other hand, improving customer experience is a goal for 54.9% of onboarding specialists, with scaling being the target for 20.5% of respondents.
The importance of onboarding is recognizable to both customers and dedicated teams. How? Prospects use it to assess the company, and internal teams rely on it to improve customer retention and experience.
Common challenges and pitfalls
The onboarding email sequence requires a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey, their key actions, and time. While the first points come easier with practice, the time spent designing onboarding emails leaves much to be desired. What seems to be the reason?
Around 40.6% of onboarding specialists still work with new users manually throughout the customer lifecycle.
Manual processes slow onboarding down and make it impossible to scale and optimize. That’s when it is time to introduce automated onboarding emails.
Automation addresses all time, scale, and personalization-related concerns. A convenient onboarding email schedule? Check. Personalized emails? Check. A large customer base to process? Check. The key is to use automation wisely and avoid over-automation. Balance is everything.
Key creation steps for onboarding emails
How do you encourage recipients to stay and make the most of your product? You use automation to optimize onboarding emails and get to know your audience to meet their needs.
Now that we have figured out the automation, we can review five main steps for working with customers.
1. Define a customer persona
Start with clearly defining a customer persona. Their needs, interests, and pain points are key details in creating relevant onboarding email templates.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
A customer persona (or buyer persona) is a portrait of your ideal customer based on purchasers’ research. Before you write this off as purely demographics, think of the motives, challenges, likes, and dislikes of your audience — these make a good customer portrait. Why?
Comprehensive buyer personas can let you create user onboarding emails that address and speak to the contacts’ needs.
2. Study user journey
A user journey is a map that revolves around customer’s touchpoints with your company. Think of it as a path from a visitor to an engaged customer to a loyal buyer.
The better you see touchpoints with the company, the better content your email onboarding campaigns have. What’s the connection? Aligned with the user’s journey, messages give a sense of relevance and ensure the audience gets exactly what it needs most.
3. Determine key product features
The best onboarding email examples help subscribers understand the product step by step. They guide the audience through key features and ensure recipients stay engaged without feeling lost or overloaded.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
A well-structured onboarding email sequence should gradually introduce people to the product without having to contact a support team. Starting with advanced features or mixing information is a shortcut to disengagement.
While everything may seem important, not all details need to be covered right away. For example, welcome emails could focus on the company culture, while the next introduce key features and slowly move to advanced functionality.
4. Understand action points
Once customer personas and key features are set, determine main action points. These shed light on what the subscriber needs to do first to engage and to start actively using the product or platform.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
Action points vary depending on the product but often include signing up, completing a profile, and exploring the main features. The key? Proper order of actions and prioritization to avoid overwhelming people with onboarding resources.
For example, if a product requires users to enable 2-step verification for full product usage, an onboarding process should guide them through that step first. Jumping to features without preparation ruins logic.
(Source: Email from Stripo)
5. Add engagement hooks
Since onboarding emails are usually a series, another difficulty is to motivate recipients enough to interact with all the emails in the sequence.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
Besides the fact that all onboarding emails need to continue one another, there should be an engagement hook. Otherwise, what’s the reason for opening further messages in the sequence?
Natural curiosity may not be enough, so think of a way to interest the audience in your product and involve them in the process. Use a catchy email subject line, and add gamification or elements of interactivity — all to make a prospect engaged.
5 ideas for onboarding email templates
With all the theory in mind, let’s move to practice to create a truly warm welcome.
- The first onboarding email we will review includes an overview of the next steps and a short welcome message that adds a personal touch.
(Source: Stripo template) - The next email template is perfect for those who prefer to work with videos instead of text onboarding materials. Videos are a quick and engaging way to learn, so consider adding short ones for improved experience.
(Source: Stripo template) - How about we improve an onboarding template with a video by adding time codes? This email example may be exactly what you seek. Time codes ease navigation and let recipients jump to the needed point in the video.
(Source: Stripo template) - Are you into old-fashioned onboarding with PDF guides? Stripo has just the right email template for you. It has a button to download materials and hyperlinked text for maximum flexibility.
(Source: Stripo template) - The fifth template features the product’s key features, a friendly welcome message, and a catchy CTA button. It is a great way to show customers they are welcomed.
(Source: Stripo template)
3 recommendations from a seasoned email marketer
While onboarding email templates are a great source of inspiration, they are just the foundation. Now, I suggest that we review a few tips from Stripo’s marketing specialist, Oleksandr, on how to improve emails.
Below are three practical ideas to add to your campaigns, two of which are Stripo’s personal.
Include a progress bar
Do you ever feel like you are completing an endless loop of onboarding steps? Sometimes, the email sequence gives no visual of your path, and that’s when a progress bar comes in handy.
Indicating the number of steps or progress in percent helps recipients see the journey instead of blindly following it. Furthermore, this element helped Stripo’s email marketing team increase the number of opens, so you may want to add it to your onboarding documents.
(Source: Email from Stripo)
Create behavioral triggers
Do you stick to time-based onboarding emails? There may be a better way — behavior-based triggers. Sending automated messages without considering recipients’ actions often feels robotic. Instead, adjust the onboarding process and move customers to sequences based on their actions (or no actions at all).
(Source: Email from Stripo)
This way, you are always on the same page with the recipient, giving them precisely what they need most.
Add social proof or user-generated content
Around 72% of buyers consider reviews before making a purchase, and 40% of prospects find user-generated content essential to making a decision.
Onboarding emails are no different. If you have a few success stories or feature reviews to add to the campaign naturally, try it! Social proof elements are key to fostering trust in the early stages of interactions with the brand.
(Source: Email from VEED)
5 onboarding text copies
Designed onboarding emails are great, but what about those who would like to stick to text messages? I have a few variants for your inspiration as well:
Welcome email
Subject line: Welcome to [product/service]! Let’s get you started.
Hi [First name],
Welcome to [company name]! We’re excited to have you on board. To help you get started, here’s a little overview of what’s ahead:
- Set up your account: [Link].
- Explore key features: [Feature overview link].
- Book training sessions: [Scheduling link].
Your journey with [product/service] starts here, and our team is always here to assist.
Best regards,
[First name], [job title] at [company name].
Feature introduction
Subject line: A must-try for a smooth start at [company name].
Hi [First name],
Does your new customer/employee feel welcomed? We know exactly how to smooth the onboarding process with one of our features: [Feature name].
Here is how you can benefit from it:
- [Challenges the feature addresses].
- [Challenges the feature addresses].
- [Challenges the feature addresses].
Here’s how to use it:
- Go to [feature link].
- Click on [button name].
- Start using [feature] to [achieve goal].
We have simplified the process so that you can handle tasks faster and with less effort. Let us know if you have any questions. Our team is one message away.
Best,
[First name] at [company name].
Progress check
Subject line: How’s it going? Let’s get you going.
Hi [First name],
You’ve been with [company name] for a few days, and we’d love to check in with you. Have you tried [feature name]?
- If yes — awesome! Let us know if you have questions.
- If not — now’s the perfect time! Here’s why: [brief benefit].
Take 2 minutes and complete it now: [CTA link].
Our support team is here if you need anything.
Best,
[First name], [job title] at [company name].
Onboarding reminder
Subject line: You almost made it! One step left.
Hey [first name],
You signed up for [product] but haven’t completed [key action]. This could be the last remaining piece of the puzzle, and we’d love to guide you through this journey till the very end. How about a little spoiler of what awaits you?
- [Brief overview of the steps].
We have saved your progress; just click below to complete your onboarding:
[CTA button]
Need help? Reply to this email or check out our onboarding resources.
See you!
Final onboarding email
Subject line: ⅞ steps done. Finish your journey today.
Hi [First name],
You’ve come a long way and completed [steps, key features]. Now, you are one step away from getting the most out of [product]. We are so proud to have you with us.
Here’s what’s left to do:
- [Step 1 description].
- [Step 2 description].
- [Step 3 description].
This is where things get exciting! Click below to wrap up your onboarding:
[CTA button]
Every journey has a final step — you’re right at the finish line. Let us know if you need anything; we are here to support you.
Good luck!
How to measure the success of onboarding email campaigns
Start with checking core email metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, or views. Next, measure engagement by tracking how many recipients interact with the first and last onboarding emails in your sequence.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
Similar to the onboarding flow, work with the metrics gradually. Analyze the basics to study the subject line performance and engagement with layout elements. Generic email subject lines often result in low open rates, while low-quality content or ineffective CTA buttons lead to declined clicks.
Besides standard metrics, compare the results of the first and last emails to study drop-offs. Analyze at which point the rates vary most and test a few options to improve the onboarding experience. But what about product metrics?
At Stripo, we also focus on the product metrics. The goal of our onboarding emails is not just to get recipients to open them, but to educate people on how to interact with the platform effectively.
Oleksandr Dieiev,
Email marketing specialist at Stripo.
When you measure the success of your onboarding sequence, always consider both standard email metrics and product metrics. This way, you get a comprehensive look at the results and can ensure onboarding reaches all the targets.
Wrapping up
Customers deserve a warm welcome, and well-crafted onboarding emails are a way to show it. When done right, these messages not only introduce new visitors to the product but turn them into loyal customers. The key is to keep in mind who the onboarding is for and adjust emails accordingly to turn every step into a journey.
We hope with this article up your sleeve, the onboarding process will be a challenge you welcome. Good luck!
Make a warm welcome with Stripo templates
