The very first email a new subscriber receives sets the tone for everything that follows — yet most lists send nothing at all until the next campaign happens to go out. A welcome automation fixes that: the moment someone joins your list, they get a warm, on-brand email automatically, with no manual work from you. This guide walks you through building one from scratch in the visual automation editor, one step at a time. It's written for beginners — if you can fill in a form, you can finish this in about ten minutes.
By the end you'll have a live automation that greets every new contact the instant they subscribe.
Before you start
A few things should be in place first:
- A mailing list that new contacts actually join — through a signup form, an import, or your API. Sign-ups on this list are what will trigger the welcome email. (Still filling your list? See importing contacts from a CSV.)
- An authenticated sending domain, so your welcome email is signed and lands in the inbox rather than the spam folder. If you haven't done this yet, work through setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC first.
- A sender name and address your subscribers will recognize at a glance.
Why bother automating it? Welcome emails are opened far more often than regular campaigns — people just signed up, so they are expecting to hear from you. Sending automatically, within seconds, catches that attention at its peak. A welcome that arrives three weeks later has already missed the moment.
Step 1 — Choose the "Welcome new subscribers" trigger
Open Automation in the left sidebar and click New Automation. Every automation begins with a trigger — the event that makes a subscriber enter the workflow. You'll land on a grid headed "What should trigger this automation?"
Pick the first card, Welcome new subscribers. This trigger fires the moment a contact is added to a list, which is exactly the behavior a welcome email needs.
Choose "Welcome new subscribers" — it starts the workflow the instant someone joins your list.
Step 2 — Name it and choose the list
As soon as you pick the trigger, a short Configure your trigger panel appears below. Fill in three things:
- Automation name — type something you'll recognize later, such as
Welcome series. Only you see this; it is never shown to subscribers. - Mailing list — pick the list that new contacts join. In the example we've chosen Free Trial Users. This is the single most important choice on the page: the automation only reacts to sign-ups on this list.
- Segment (optional) — leave it as All subscribers for now. If you'd rather greet only part of the list (say, contacts who match certain criteria), you can point it at a saved segment instead.
Give the automation a name, then pick the list whose new subscribers should be welcomed.
Click Create automation. You'll arrive at the visual flow editor with one node already placed — your trigger, sitting at the top of the canvas.
Step 3 — Add a "Send email" step
The editor is a canvas you build on. Your trigger sits at the top, and directly beneath it is a small + button. Click it to open the Add node menu.
Five kinds of step are offered — Send email, Wait, Condition, Operation, and Webhook. For the welcome message, choose Send email.
Click the + under the trigger and choose "Send email" to attach your welcome message.
Tip: The other node types are how you grow a single email into a proper series later — a Wait to pause a day or two, then another Send email. We'll come back to that at the end.
Step 4 — Write your welcome email
A panel slides in from the right with three tabs across the top: Setup → Template → Overview.
On the Setup tab:
- Subject — write the line that lands in the inbox. Friendly and specific beats clever, e.g. Welcome aboard — here's how to get started. You can drop in list fields like
{{ list.name }}if you want. - From name and From email — these pre-fill from your list's defaults. Double-check they're the sender your subscribers expect to see.
- Tracking & delivery — keep Track opens, Track clicks, and Sign with DKIM switched on. Opens and clicks let you measure how the welcome performs; DKIM signing helps it reach the inbox.
Set the subject and sender, keep tracking on, then Save & Continue.
Click Save & Continue to move to the Template tab. Click Browse templates, pick a starter design that suits your brand, and refine it in the visual editor if you like. Once the email looks right, the step is complete and the Overview tab shows a summary of it.
The subject is doing the heavy lifting here. Because welcome emails are opened so often, the subject line earns its keep. If you'd like a shortcut, these subject-line formulas are a solid starting point.
Step 5 — Turn it on
Back on the canvas, your flow now reads Trigger → Send email. Until you switch it on, the automation stays in PAUSED — nothing goes out.
When you're happy with it, click Activate in the top-right corner. From that moment, every new contact added to the chosen list receives your welcome email automatically. You can pause it again anytime from the same button.
Test before you trust it. Add yourself (or a test contact) to the list and confirm the welcome email actually arrives and looks right, before real sign-ups start depending on it.
Make it a welcome series (optional)
One email is a great start; a short series is even better. Back in the editor, click the + below your first email and add:
- A Wait step — pause for, say, two days.
- A second Send email — a follow-up with a useful tip, a popular resource, or a gentle call to action.
Repeat to build a three- or four-email onboarding sequence. To send different messages to different people, add a Condition node — see advanced automation triggers and conditions for how branching works.
Troubleshooting
- The email node shows "No email bound." You added the Send email step but haven't finished the Template tab. Open the node and pick a template so the step turns valid — an automation won't activate while an email is unfinished.
- New subscribers aren't getting the email. Check that the automation is Activated (not Paused), and that new contacts are joining the exact list you chose in Step 2. The trigger reacts only to that one list.
- The welcome lands in spam. Make sure your sending domain is authenticated. Working through SPF, DKIM, and DMARC is the biggest single lever on inbox placement.
Recap
You just built a welcome automation: a trigger that fires when someone joins your list, a welcome email attached to it, and one click to make it live. Every new subscriber now gets a warm first impression automatically — no manual sending, and nobody slipping through the cracks.
From here, turn that single email into a short onboarding series, or branch it with conditions so different subscribers get different messages. The welcome is the highest-leverage email you'll ever set up once and then forget about.
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