When someone subscribes to your newsletter, they probably are new to your site. They read couple of blogposts or consumed other content, but in general they are new to YOU and what you are doing.

My website is my domain and I am the host here (I meant none of these in the technical way.) and I want to make my visitors (guests) feel comfortable.

Did it ever happened to you, that you are late for a party, a bunch of fun things happened and someone brings you up to speed, so you understand what you missed? You would get a quick summary why fully dressed people are swimming in the pool, why someone sleeps with a turkey on the head in the corner and why is the dinner table sawed in half. (None of this ever happened.)

I called this ‘The story so far’. A letter that features the most important blogposts, videos, pages on your website in a short easy-to-digest format.

I recommend to use this format, because it’s easy:

• You already have the content, so you don’t have to create new content right in the beginning
• It brings your readers up to speed and they right away get what’s going on here
• You start your conversation with your subscribers in a more intimate way: like that friend who told you what happened at the party so far
• You are laying the groundwork for your nurturing campaign

There is a backside however:

• You need to keep this email up-to-date. From time to time you’ll need to make additions, remove outdated info.
• You might need to separate these emails into more emails

The good news:

Mautic can totally handle this. This is what you do:

• Create your welcome email by featuring your best blog posts from the past. Don’t worry, you won’t send this email to those, who already read your previous newsletters.
• Don’t make it look like you are summarising your old posts and news. Make it feel like you are the host at a party and showing someone around.
• Create a segment for the new subscribers or make your form into a campaign form, both can start a campaign right away.
• In the beginning you’ll have only one email in this campaign, but with time you can add more.
• Once someone goes through your campaign, they won’t enter it again, so they won’t get the updated ‘Story So Far emails. Just the new newsletters.
• Once you sent out a newsletter to your current subscribers, consider to add the content to your ‘Story So Far’ welcome email.

Want to see how my Story So Far looks like? Enter your email address here, I’ll show you around! 🙂