SaaS welcome email template you can copy

When to send it

Send it as soon as someone signs up, within a minute or two. They just said yes to your product and they are looking at it right now. A welcome that arrives the next morning goes to a person who has moved on.

One email, one job: say who you are and point them at the one thing to do first.

The email

Subject: Welcome to [Product]

Hi {{first_name}},

Thanks for signing up for [Product]. I'm Sam, and I built it.

[Product] [does one thing, in plain words]. The quickest way to see it work is to [first action]. It takes about two minutes.

[Link to the first action]

If you get stuck, or something is not what you expected, reply to this email and tell me.

Sam

Swap the brackets for your own words. Keep the line about replying, because it makes you easy to reach.

Two variations

Ask one question. Replace the last paragraph with: "What are you hoping to use [Product] for? One line is plenty, and it tells me what to build next." The answers come back as real replies.

The very short one, for a product people understand at a glance:

Subject: You're in

Thanks for trying [Product]. Start here: [link]. I'm Sam, and you can reply to this email with anything.

Sam

What to avoid

• A tour of every feature. One action. The rest belongs in the emails that follow, like the day 1, 3 and 7 onboarding emails.
• More than one link. Each extra link is a reason not to click the first.
• A no-reply address. The point of the email is that they can answer a person.
• Marketing voice. "We're so excited to have you" reads like every other welcome. Say what you built and why.
• A big ask. A review, a share, a survey. They have not used the product yet.

How Kicklace sends it

Paste your site's address and Kicklace reads it, works out the stages your customers go through, and puts them on the Lifecycle map: visitor, signed up, activated, paying, and any of your own. The Signed up stage carries a welcome. Kicklace writes a first version in your voice from what it read on your site, and you change whatever you like.

Kicklace hears about a sign-up from your own server with the kicklace package, from Clerk or Kinde, or from a new row in your users table, which it reads every hour. When someone makes an account they arrive at Signed up, and the first email goes within about a minute.

Nothing sends until you switch it on. Before you do, Kicklace shows who would have got it over the last 30 days, and you can send yourself a test that arrives exactly as it would for them. Once it is on, each person gets it once, and nothing goes out for something that happened before you switched it on.

Until you verify your own domain, it goes out with your name on it from Kicklace's own address, up to 50 a day, and replies go to your own email address. You can try the whole thing on your own site in the demo, with no sign-up. The pricing page has the rest.

FAQ

How long should a welcome email be?

Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling: a handful of sentences and one link. If you need more room, that is what the next emails in your onboarding sequence are for.

Is a welcome email the same as an onboarding sequence?

No. The welcome is the first email, sent once. An onboarding sequence is the few that come after it over the first week, each with one job.

Should it come from me or from the company?

From you, by name. People answer a person, and an answer is the best thing a welcome email can get.