Design a welcome sequence for readers 🤖

A step-by-step guide, with steps.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

​ Hey, A healthy mailing list is the most powerful tool a writer can have, but if you don't welcome readers to your newsletter properly there is a danger you will lose them right away – even if they are already huge fans of your books. Today, I'm going to show you how to design an automated welcome sequence in MailerLite – which is the email marketing service that most of you use, including myself for my historical fiction readers. I use ConvertKit for this author-focused newsletter, and if you would like a similar guide for that platform as well, or a deeper dive into this topic in a video, so I can gauge interest, let me know by hitting Reply. This is a long and comprehensive email, so make sure you have the wine and vol au vents handy. Hey, it's Friday. If you already know how important welcome sequences are then you can skip down to Step-by-Step below. But if you want a brief whizz through the why and the what first, keep reading. The Why and the What Without getting too technical here, there's a hump – right at the start – which you need to overcome or your emails might get dropped into Promotions or Spam, or even disappear altogether. One of the most important parts of what you can call "subscriber care" is the welcome sequence – the automatic series of emails which is triggered when a reader first signs up to your list. Now, this sequence of emails can be very short, or as long as you like. It can be a complex automation, or a very basic one – depending on your particular needs. Those needs will vary by your genre, audience, immediate goals, longer strategic aims, and all sorts of other factors. I have a long, drawn-out welcome sequence for my historical fiction readers, for example, which takes something like five months to play out fully. It doles out a couple of freebies and then initiates an extended series of canned emails which set the tone for that particular audience. Hey, it's history, it doesn't get old. But for this here newsletter, it's much more important for both me and the audience to get to the regular, live content ASAP. The welcome sequence is much quicker and shorter and more about orienting people – making sure the disparate bunch that signs up gets everything they need. It's a rapid-fire sequence of emails, which works better here because this content is more topical and less evergreen. Plus, this is a weekly newsletter whereas the historical fiction one goes out monthly – so I am attempting to get people used to a different cadence (and content and tone) in both cases. That's the aim, at least. What you need to do is totally dependent on your own goals and I've seen authors take all sorts of approaches here. (And do it well.) I wrote something for this newsletter about eighteen months ago which ran through all the various things you could do in your welcome sequence, but also cautioned strongly that you should be selective, think about your priorities, and avoid overwhelming readers. It's easy to forget that you can always hit them up later for something – especially if you don't mistreat them. Or, you know, bombard them with a million requests the second they sign up. There's also a serious danger those initial emails will drop into Promotions or even Spam if you overload them with too many links – another reason to exercise restraint. (BTW here's that email if you want a refresher on what to focus on in your own welcome sequence: How To Roll Out The Red Carpet.) That's the why and the what of welcome sequences. Today I want to really focus on the how. How do you build a welcome sequence? As in… how do you actually do it in MailerLite? Let's go through it step-by-step, via as many screenshots as I can reasonably squeeze into an email. Although if anything is unclear, let me know. I'll do a video guide as well, if there's enough interest. Step-by-step: the How We're going to build a basic 3-email welcome sequence in MailerLite, which will: 1. Give out the reader magnet 2. Do a little orientation 3. Push them towards more (paid) books Remember, you don't have to follow the same template at all – indeed, I highly recommend thinking about your priorities and adapting this approach to better suit you. MailerLite's automations can be a little quirky. If you aren't familiar with those quirks, and the various associated workarounds, you can end up with situations where subscribers get stuck in automations, or don't end up where they are supposed to go, and so on. Pay special attention to the end of your automation – where I talk about the action to Copy or Move to a new group below, as it's something that trips up almost everyone at some point. To begin, log into your MailerLite account, and click AUTOMATION up there in the top bar. Then the big orange CREATE WORKFLOW button in the top right. You should reach the blankish screen pictured below, which has absolutely no help on it, or indication what you should do next – it's maddening. Fear not, I'll walk you through it. Follow along if you like. ​ Note: this guide applies to Classic MailerLite. If you have switched to New MailerLite – which I haven't done yet, like most authors I speak with – then I recommend cross-referencing this with the official MailerLite guide to automations in case anything is different (from looking through that, I reckon it's pretty similar though). People tend to bounce off this interface because it's not obvious what you should do next. I'll make it simple for you. Click the first box in the top right and name your welcome sequence. Readers won't see this BTW, it's just for your internal use. Use something like "[List Name] Welcome" or whatever you like really. The box beneath it is what really gets the party started, albeit in relative terms. Click SELECT and then choose one of the first two options, depending on how you have your mailing list set-up, but you'll probably be picking the first option here "When subscriber joins a group". Note: if you haven't set up a Group in MailerLite for those onboarding subscribers, then do that first – I usually name it something like "[List Name] Onboarding" or some variation thereof. There's a handy link right there in the automation creation interface just above the Subscriber group name, so you don't have to navigate away. Final thing on this page, you might want to tick that box just below, even though that sounds funny and is not the default. Basically, if you don't tick this box it means this welcome sequence will only ever fire once for any given subscriber – which is what most people want. But authors are a little different, he says, eyeing his fine collection of capes. We often get readers who will unsubscribe but come back to us later on. Or those who mislaid their reader magnet, and instead of emailing us to get a new link, just sign up again (honestly, this can happen surprisingly often). So, I recommend ticking that box. And we'll do something special to handle those returning subscribers/double subscribers in a minute when we get fancy. But you don't have t, should you prefer simplicity. With that decision made, click that big orange SAVE button at the bottom to proceed to the next stage. You should see this screen, pictured below – the automation workflow editor, I think is the official nomenclature. Being a totally normal and mature adult, I prefer to call it the robot factory. ​ Not much going on here yet, but at least it's a bit more obvious what you should do next. Click that Plus icon, as indicated. Note: if you look to the top left of that screen you should see an OFF button, which is the default on a new automation. Always ensure automations are switched off when working on them – especially existing, active automations – or Bad Things can happen. You get four choices after hitting that Plus sign: Email, Delay, Condition, or Action. Choose Email – but we'll use all the others shortly, in a moment of pedagogical serendipity. A first step now has appeared in your welcome sequence (hair splitters: first step proper, after the trigger at the top). A bunch of info related to it should become visible now on the right of your screen, but if you don't see that just click on the step itself – the Email step you just added – and it should appear. To advance to the next step, and actually write the email, you must put something in the "Email name" field (not seen by readers) and the "Email subject" field (seen by readers!). Be very careful what you put in the "Email subject" field because email subject lines are super sensitive. If you use a word that our betters at Gmail deem to be spammy then you could be in trouble – even something as innocuous and ubiquitous as "free" can trip you up here. Use something else, and check Google for an up-to-date list of spammy words if you are not familiar with them – there's lots of these lists out there. Also ensure the Open tracking is ticked below that (flawed, yes, but still useful). Then click the grey DESIGN EMAIL button. ​ That opens up the regular email interface on MailerLite, which you should be familiar with, and which I won't go through here – I've covered the content of these emails elsewhere and we are focusing on the technical bits here, but if you need more guidance on that, check out the older email I linked to above. (My free course Starting From Zero has more detail on this aspect too.) This email will be giving out your reader magnet, so you know what to do – give them a link to your reader magnet, which you will probably have housed somewhere like BookFunnel if you are smart and all set up in the way I recommend. (My free guidebook Following has more on this aspect also if you need it.) Just remember to minimize links and images in this email. That's good advice generally, but it goes double here. Your relationship with an email subscriber at this point is new and delicate, and the chances of dropping into Promotions and Spam are higher before you have established that relationship further. I'm specifically talking about Gmail here rather than the human element, in case that's not clear. You definitely don't want this email going missing. Readers can get mad and think you have tricked them out of the promised free book – and you'll get emails about it too. Possibly cranky ones. I recommend testing all these welcome sequence emails with a dummy Gmail address, so you know if they are making it to Inbox. Once you are happy with the first email, click the green "Done Editing" button in the top right to get back to the automation workflow editor. BTW you can go back later on and edit that email by clicking on it, which makes the summary details appear again (Email name, Email subject etc.), and then hitting the grey "Edit email content" button. Just so you know and don't waste time fussing too much on the first walkthrough. Moving on. You need to hit that plus button again, but make sure to hit the button under the email you just added to the sequence, to ensure the next step is in the right order. Unfortunately, you can't drag and drop things in this interface, so make sure to get the right order in the first place. Anyway, once you click that button, you'll be presented with the usual four options: Email, Delay, Condition, Action. This time we are going with Delay. This determines the gap between the first two emails. What do you want here? That depends a little on how frequently you send regular emails. Tammi Labrecque gave a great piece of advice once, recommending that you get subscribers used to the cadence of your regular emails – or start moving towards that direction in your welcome sequence. Obviously, we don't want to wait a month until we send the second welcome email, but you might want to wait one day, or two days, or three/four days here – depending. Let's go with two days – but you can test this and tweak it if necessary. (For reference, I think I do two or three days on my fiction list – going out monthly, remember – and just one day on my non-fiction list – which goes out weekly, of course. But I settled on that after testing a few options.) To summarize, click the Plus button under the email you just wrote, select Delay, and then choose 2 days. Don't forget to hit the big orange SAVE button afterwards – not the most intuitive part. And now you are ready to design the second email, just like the first, which will now automatically go out three days after they sign up (the first going out immediately, of course, as we don't want anyone waiting for their free book, lest they get antsy – and they will get antsy!). This second email – in our hypothetical here – is going to do two things. First, it's going to check people got their reader magnet. Some people miss the email. Some people have trouble getting it. Some people forget to download it. Whatever the reason, if you don't put in some kind of check here, you'll get tons of emails about it. You might notice a theme here. Less of a nuisance, perhaps, when you are starting out. But when your list hits 1,000 or 10,000 you will absolutely know all about it if you don't have this stuff set up correctly. Much more importantly, it's not just about managing reader replies and your inbox. Always remember that most people won't bother emailing you if something doesn't work; they'll just tap out. You should always aim to minimize that kind of leakage. Don't slosh that reader-bucket around too much. When it comes to designing the second email, do it just like the first: click the plus sign under your last Delay step, hit the Email option, fill out the details on the right hand side like before, then click the grey "Design email" button underneath – which takes you to that email editing interface again. Take care again here with the subject line and the contents – things are still at a delicate stage with your new subscriber and must be managed carefully. Both in technical terms, and in actuality! Once again, I don't want to speak too much about content here as that's a huge topic all on its own, but I generally use this second email to quickly check they got their reader magnet (i.e. I will drop a link here again), and then to do some more housekeeping. I might tell them about some other books I have. I might point them towards social channels. I might do some Allowlisting (i.e. where you ask readers to add you to their Gmail contacts to improve deliverability). You can test all sorts of things here, or adapt this approach for your own specific needs. Right now, for my fiction list, I drop another link for the reader magnet in this second email, talk about some of my other books, and then point them towards my website where they can check them out – and mention they can grab another freebie (my permafree) if they head on over. For my non-fiction list, I point them towards some useful resources instead, and do some Allowlisting again. Once you have finished the second email, click the green Done editing button in the top right and head back to the automation workflow editor. We have one more email in this hypothetical sequence but we don't want it going out immediately so hit that Plus sign underneath your second email and choose the Delay option again. You want a longer delay here – heading more in the direction of your usual cadence – but not too long. I think I wait 7 days at this point for my fiction list, and maybe 3 days for my (more frequent) non-fiction list. Play around with those numbers yourself, but let's choose 7 days for now, and move on. At this point, you should know how to add the final email in your welcome sequence. Can you remember? (Click the plus sign, select Email, fill out the details, design your email, and then save it.) The content is up to you and highly variable. You might want to push them towards the first book in your main series. Or if you have a permafree – and this is the main path that readers enter your list – then you might want to push them towards that Book 2 to keep momentum going. Alternatively, you might want to start getting them used to the kind of content you regularly put out on your newsletter, and it can be good to choose a nice, popular, evergreen piece of content here that is interesting and representative of your usual newsletters. For reference, I do exactly that for my fiction list, and for non-fiction I push them towards more resources, my website, and social channels. Horses for courses. We are not quite done with this welcome sequence and need to tie up loose ends. Namely, we need to move people to your main subscriber group, where they will receive regular emails from you (I don't usually send regular emails to those who are onboarding, unless it's something critical like a new release). This step is trickier than you might think – with MailerLite anyway, due to those aforementioned quirks. First, you might want to put in a little delay – maybe it's not the best reader experience to get the final email in your sequence one day, and then a "regular" email the next. So pick some kind of delay there to prevent that – but not too long. I'll go with seven days again here, but these is very flexible. Click that Plus button again, but this time choose Action. On the right hand side, you will pick the Action you want. Now, most people pick Move here because that's the obvious choice – you literally want to move subscribers to your main group when they have completed the sequence. However, MailerLite can be a bit funny with this and a few different things can go wrong – leading subscribers to get stuck in places where they shouldn't be. The most common is that resubscribing/double subscribing I mentioned above, i.e. where a reader can't find their reader magnet and just sign up to your list again to generate a new download link. If you use the Move action here, MailerLite won't actually move those guys – because they are already in the target group. The easiest way to handle that is to use the Copy step instead. Choose the group you wish to send the subscriber to, and then click the orange Save button at the bottom – again, not very intuitive. And then add one more Action step underneath, but pick Remove from group instead, and choose this current group, and then hit that Save button once more. That's your basic welcome sequence completed, although I recommend doing lots of testing to make sure it's in good shape before putting anything live. And here's a screenshot of how it should look – sorry about being so zoomed back but it's the only way to squeeze all this in. Sorry didn't mean to catch myself in the shot there. ​ There is a better way to handle those resubscribing/double subscribing guys though, it's just a bit more complicated, if you are game. What we are going to do here is put in a conditional step in the sequence, which basically checks if these people are existing subscribers and curtails the welcome sequence. We still want the welcome sequence to fire – so they get that download link for the book – but we want it to end (for them) after that. It's a neat trick, with all sorts of uses. And here's how you do it. We're going to get fancy. Scroll back up to your first email. Hit the plus sign under that initial email – before the Delay step – and choose Condition from the four usual choices which pop up. You will be presented with a weird green thumbs up/red thumbs down choice. Choose the red thumbs down for reasons that will be clear in a second. You will see that the automation has forked here, and the remain steps have shunted to the right. Click the "Define condition" step just above the green/red boxes. Information will appear on the right hand side of your screen, as usual. There's a drop down titled "Condition" – hit that and choose Group Membership. And then select the name of your main group. Don't forget to hit that stupid orange Save button underneath or the entire world will fall apart. Just so you know, what we are doing here is checking if the subscriber is in your main group already, and if they are, kicking them back out after the first email of this welcome sequence. We don't need to onboard them again fully – they just want the book; they probably don't need to meet Mr. Pickles again. And for those who are not members of your main group already, they will proceed as normal – all this happening automatically while you are gamboling in the fields or alphabetizing your grudges. Nearly there. We just need to tie up the loose ends of those wayward double subscribers. Hit the Plus sign under the green thumbs up button – the left side of your now-forking automations. (Reader, I have said forking automations several times while writing this.) Select Action. And then on the right hand side, select Remove from group and pick the current group – i.e. the group for the onboarding readers which this automation is attached to. And hit that pesky Save button below or the entire automation will break. I'm not even joking. Finally – he says to universal relief, including his own – scroll all the way down to the bottom of your automation so we can finesse those final steps. Click the Copy step and change it on the right-hand side to a Move step, and then delete the final Remove step from your sequence – you don't need it anymore. And you're done! You now have a (fancy) welcome sequence. In this final screenshot, I've zoomed in on the tricky conditional step part - you don't want to make a mistake there. ​ Undoubtedly, you'll need to tweak this a little and test it a fair bit and make the changes you need so it suits you and your audience better. This was – necessarily – a pretty dry and technical summary of what you need to do, but make sure your emails are warm and personal, and written in the voice that readers expect from you. That's it, you have a welcome sequence now. First time I built one, I thought it was magical I still kind of feel that way. Videos For Your Eyeholes I'm currently working on a number of videos – e.g. my extended Remarkable 2 review, a video advanced Facebook tricks, an over-the-shoulder tutorial on chart-topping book launches, and many more besides – remember to subscribe here to get a ping when they drop. (FYI it's clicking the notification bell as well which gives you an actual ping when the drop, I think these days the Subscribe button on YouTube is more like a suggestion to the algorithms. Oh, tech companies.) And as I said earlier, do let me know if you want a deeper video guide to building welcome sequences – happy to do it, if there's interest – or something more on automations generally. We just skimmed the surface here, and I'm sure you can begin to see some of the possibilities with these magical email doodads. See you next Friday, Dave P.S. Bowing down to our new overlords this week with Connie Francis and Robot Man. Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin K36 AT04 ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile​