The Ultimate Welcome Email Sequence For Coaches and Consultants

You’ve done the hard part — someone has signed up for your newsletter, downloaded your lead magnet, or booked an introductory call. But then…radio silence.

No follow-up, no interaction, and no next steps.

You are officially in inbox purgatory. You’re now one of those email addresses that potential customers see and promptly ignore, or forget why they signed up in the first place.

In a world where attention spans are short and inboxes are flooded, your welcome sequence is your first, best, and potentially only chance to build trust, demonstrate your value, and spark momentum.

This article will show you how to use a Welcome Email Sequence so it’s an effective part of prospecting and builds stronger relationships with your clients.

Table of Contents

Why a Welcome Email Sequence is a Powerful Sales Tool

How to Approach Your Welcome Email Sequence

What You Need in Every Welcome Email Series

How to Write a Good Welcome Email: The Building Blocks of a High-Converting Email

How Often Should You Send Emails in a Welcome Sequence?

Tools and Tips for Setting up Your Welcome Sequence

Download my Sample Coach/Consultant Welcome Sequence!

Why a Welcome Email Sequence is a Powerful Sales Tool

A welcome email sequence is a series of introductory messages that introduce your brand, build trust, and guide new leads toward working with you.

For business coaches and consultants, it’s your chance to make a strong first impression, show off your expertise, and establish your services as the answer to your prospective client’s key needs.

Is it really worth the effort?

You bet. A welcome sequence gives you a chance to roll out the welcome mat to leads when they are most interested in your services and want to know how you can help them. Think about it for a moment: If someone finds your business and subscribes to your list to learn more, they are likely eager to hear what you have to say and see if you can solve their problem.

Like a barista who eagerly greets a customer in need of a cup of coffee at 8 a.m., you don’t want to ignore leads in their time of need, especially when they’ve just come through the digital door.

The numbers don’t lie, either. The newsletter and e-marketing platform Mailchimp reports that, on average, sending a series of welcome emails yields 51% more revenue than a single welcome email.

How to Approach Your Welcome Email Sequence

A welcome sequence is a bit like dating.

You can’t go and propose marriage right away. You need to introduce yourself and try to capture the other person’s interest while showing why you’re such a great catch. Going in for the sell too early can put potential customers off and raise your unsubscribe rate.

That’s why I recommend avoiding the following in your welcome sequence:

Coming across as too salesy or aggressive. You do want to sell (and the ROI on email marketing is astounding), but don’t sell in the first email.
Talking all about you. No one likes to talk to someone who goes on and on about themselves, their hobbies, and where they flew to last weekend. Your leads care about themselves, so write your emails in a way that reflects them. The best way to do that? Talk about their problems and position yourself as the solution and not the star.
Sending too many emails too soon. When someone downloads a lead magnet and ends up on your list, they know they are probably going to get a few, or even a half dozen emails… but if they were to get 10 in the next seven days, they’d probably press the “unsubscribe” button so fast they punch a hole through their screen. Yes, you need to introduce your brand, but take your time and don’t overwhelm leads.

I recommend taking a structured approach to your welcome sequence that methodically introduces your brand and warms leads up. Read on for what to include in your welcome sequence and a handy framework you can follow.

What You Need in Every Welcome Email Series

Ready? Let’s get to writing!

Visualize your welcome email sequence like a flowchart.

Each step in the process enriches, doubles back on what came before, and warms up the prospect for future communications. The number of emails to send in the sequence is up to you, but in general, you should strive to come up with a structured approach that contains the following:

The introduction: Say hello, set the tone, and give your lead a sense of who you are and what you can offer them.
Establish yourself as a problem-solver: Acknowledge the lead’s pain points or challenge and convey that you’re ready to help.
Demonstrate your value: Send an email containing content that explains the short and long-term benefits your services provide.
Share a client story: Showcase a case study or testimonial that adds credibility.
Invite your lead to take a first step: Create a compelling narrative that will invite a lead to turn into a paying customer or deepen their relationship with you.

I’ll walk you through each of these next.

The Ultimate Welcome Email Sequence For Coaches and Consultants

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Email 1: Introduce Yourself

Start by welcoming your new subscriber and sharing your origin story.

I recommend you share what led you to become a coach or consultant and who you help. This isn’t the time for the hard sell; it’s just a place to stop and say “hello.” You’ll get to the sales campaign a bit later on. It’s also a good time to instruct them about what comes next: how often you send emails, what type of emails you send, and what they should do next (for example, add you to their email contacts, reply with their origin story, etc).

If your subscribers join your list by downloading a lead magnet, make sure to include it in this email as well, or send it before — either works!

Email 2: Start With the Problem Your Customer Has (And You Solve)

After the intro email, you’ll be tempted to jump into a sales letter that will flood your business with inquiries. Let’s hold off on that for now; in the second email, I find it’s helpful to start with the problem your customer has and position yourself as the solution to it.

Doing that requires a bit of empathy.

Describe the challenges, frustrations, or goals your ideal clients often face — the kind that keep them up at night. Position yourself as someone who’s helped others overcome these same issues. Not sure where to start? Start with your existing clients, or do some customer research on forums like Reddit or other places your ideal customers hang out.

Email 3: Walk Leads Through the Benefits You Provide

Now that the problem is clear, your leads will nod in agreement as this email dives into how you solve it, and the meaningful transformation they can expect.

Here’s where you share results — qualitative or quantitative — that showcase the impact you’ve delivered for your past clients.

This messaging strategy enables leads to shift their mindsets from problem to possibility. Some examples of what to share include:

Walk them through your process in a bit more depth
Share a client case study or testimonial
Highlight tangible outcomes you’ve driven for clients

Whatever it is, back it up with a real client story. This provides social proof to back up your claims and gives potential clients a clearer picture of where they could be after working with you.

Email 4: Share a Client Story

While you’ve just sent an email that should paint a picture of what it’s like to work with you, this email goes a step further.

Sometimes it’s best to show, not tell. Who have you helped that can be your greatest ambassador? Consider spotlighting a person you helped and clearly defining the impact you delivered.

Finding someone to profile in a case study is easier than people think. Not only is it free publicity, but you’re also invested in making them look good.

You want your prospect to think, “I want that too.” This builds credibility and positions your offer as a proven, trusted solution. You can also invite them to connect further by following you on LinkedIn, referring a friend, or replying with feedback.

Email 5: Now You Can Sell

After you’ve…

Introduced yourself
Established empathy by talking about the problem(s) you solve
Shared the benefits of working with you
Backed it up with client testimonials and social proof

Now you can start selling. You could run through those emails multiple times before getting to the sales letter, but if you’ve provided and demonstrated enough value and want to move on, then here is what to do.

It’s time to extend an invitation to leads to take action: book a call, enroll in a program, or respond with a challenge they are facing. You’ve provided value, so now you’re trying to get them to commit to a small step towards a solution to their problem.

Whatever it is, keep it simple, clear, and benefit-focused.

You may want to experiment with offers to entice them:

A free consulting hour
A discount on a bundle
A special resource
A money-back guarantee

In sales lingo, we call this lowering the barriers to buy. However you define it, it can make it a bit less “scary” for your leads to take action.

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How to Write a Good Welcome Email: The Building Blocks of a High-Converting Email

Now that we’ve reviewed the essential elements of a welcome email sequence at a high level, let’s focus on what each individual email needs to achieve its goal. Whether it’s an intro email or a sales letter, every email needs the following:

A hook: Every piece of effective content starts with a good hook. A hook is something that grabs the attention of your reader and gives them a reason to continue spending their valuable time reading your email.
Personalization: Small things like using your subscriber’s name or other tidbits you can customize with your email software go a long way to making the email seem less canned.
Well-written and researched content: No matter how good your hook is, if the email falls flat, it will turn readers off. Your emails should be as long as they need to be to hold your readers’ attention and inspire them to take action. You don’t need to be a New York Times bestselling author to write a good email — simply write clearly and use your voice, and give it a once-over before sending.
One clear call to action: Finally, one call to action. You can (and should) place the call to action throughout the email, but only ask your reader to take one action. Anything more and you risk confusing them!

You’ll probably notice that these are pretty loose guidelines. That’s intentional. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to email: some newsletters get away with 1,000-word campaigns while others are short, or filled with images.

If you’ve got writer’s block, start with your reader and work backwards. What content do they enjoy? How do you speak to them in person? By pausing for a moment and focusing on creating content your customers actually want to read, you’ll set yourself up for success.

How Often Should You Send Emails in a Welcome Sequence?

It depends — don’t you just hate that answer though!

I hate to leave you at that, but how many emails you send and how often you send them does depend on your audience. It may help to look at some of your competitors to see how they use email to nurture and warm their lists.

As a rule of thumb, though, every two to three days is fine as a start, but you might want to mix things up as you go. Perhaps a five-day email series with a daily email will do the trick? Or once per week to stretch things out a bit?

There’s no one rule that “works,” other than to pay attention to your list to see what new leads respond to best.

Tools and Tips for Setting up Your Welcome Sequence

We’ve covered quite a bit of ground! Already you’ve learned:

What a welcome sequence is
What to include in one
How to write your emails
How often you should send them

Now, I’ll share some tools and tips to make your life a lot easier. There are dozens of automation and analytics tools that you can use, so here are my favorites.

The best tools for a welcome sequence:

ActiveCampaign: My tool of choice, ActiveCampaign gives you everything you need to build a list, automate your email series, segment your subscribers, and more.
Kit: Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is a popular and affordable email platform for creators and for good reason — it’s super simple and easy to set up and use.
HubSpot: If you want a more robust tool, HubSpot is a fantastic option. HubSpot gives you a full marketing suite of tools along with automations, triggers, and even sales tools. It’s the priciest option by far, though, so it may not be for everyone.

No matter which tool you choose, make sure to…

Track everything: Track opens, clicks, and replies for starters, and don’t forget the negatives too, like unsubscribes and spam reports.
Adjust as you go: Test out your subject lines, timing, and email copy as you go to see how the above metrics change.
But wait for data to guide your changes: If you get an unsubscribe, you may feel the temptation to make a tweak, but don’t. If your volume is low, then one unsubscribe here or there can make a big difference. When you get to 50 or 100 people in your welcome sequence, though, then you’ll have better data to make an informed decision.

You won’t get everything right the first time — but that’s OK. Pay attention to your list and adjust. Remember, this is about introducing yourself to prospective customers, so make sure to have a bit of fun too.

Download my Sample Coach/Consultant Welcome Sequence!

Avoid “inbox purgatory” with a welcome sequence that introduces you, demonstrates your value, and warms your list to a sale.

You have everything you need to roll out the welcome mat to new leads… but why not make things even easier for yourself? Click the button below for a free sample welcome sequence that you can tweak and use.

In minutes, you’ll have a welcome sequence that turns leads into potential buyers, setting your business up for success this year.