3 Easy Tests for your Welcome Stages

Welcome Series

If you already have a welcome series, this is a great place to start. You likely already know a few things about your Welcome Series such as:

1. Which stage performs the best based on opens, clicks, conversions
2. What order the templates are supposed to go in
3. Engagement and performance decrease as a lead gets older

Point 3 calls into question the true performance of your Welcome Series. Based on the order that you, the marketer, placed the templates, determines how well the messaging works. In this article we'll discuss how to identify templates in your Welcome Series to utilize in the Cortex New User Stages. 

A Brief Look at a Welcome Series

The below Welcome Series shows you the emails that a user receives as they sign up to receive email. As you can see it's difficult to understand the exact reasoning behind each one of these emails, or what the cadence is, if it wasn't pointed out on the templates themselves. In the following steps, we'll show you how to identify good templates to test in each of the New User stages, and explain what the test is and why we made those decisions. Your Welcome series might not look exactly like this, but there may be some similarities. Use this guide as a conceptual framework for mapping your Welcome Series.

Hypothesis 1: New To Your Brand

Normally your, first two templates have the highest engagement. This should be the very first test you set up in Cortex. Here is how to define your test:

Hypothesis: Template #1 outperforms template #2 because of the order in which the emails are presented to the user

Null Hypothesis: Order did not determine performance, template #1 performs better than template #2 regardless of order.

We chose these two templates for the New To Your Brand Stage for the following reasons:

1. Both templates have a similar message, "Welcome to the Fam!"
2. The variance between the two templates is wide
   1. Template 1
      1. Focuses on a single value proposition
      2. Utilizes product recommendations
      3. One Clear call to action
   2. Template 2
      1. Gives multiple value propositions
      2. Contains multiple call to actions
      3. Includes a specific incentive
3. The variance allows us to make a clear distinctive decision on what type of messaging performs the best for early stage prospects

Hypothesis 2: New + High Intent

Now that we have the first test up and running let's focus on the next test. In this stage we will want to find two emails in our welcome series that compliment each other but have a variance to the layout and messaging. The important thing to remember here is that these users all have a High Intent to purchase, so let's make sure that any incentive that we utilize isn't giving away the farm.

Here is how we define this test:

Hypothesis:  New + High Intent users want to be shown products that are relevant to them

Null Hypothesis: New + High Intent users prefer to see to see static content picked by the marketer

We chose these two templates for the New + High Intent for the following reasons:

1. Both templates utilize a low value incentive
2. There is one distinct difference between the two
   1. Template 3 utilizes product recs specific to the unique actions of the user
   2. Template 4 uses static content selected by the marketer
3. This single variance allows us to see how powerful personalized recommendations can be for users with High Intent

Hypothesis 3: New + Low Intent

The final test for your new welcome flow will be identifying the right incentive to serve to the users who have a lower chance of converting. In this test we will be testing two different incentives to see how they perform for this group of prospects.

Hypothesis: Free Tacos has a higher perceived value than 10% off deal

Null hypothesis: 10% off has a higher perceived value than free tacos

We chose these two templates for the New + Low Intent for the following reasons:

1. Both templates utilize a higher value incentive
2. The incentives are of equivalent value to the company
3. The perceived value to the customers may or may not be higher.
4. This single variance allows us to see what types of incentives are valued by Low Intent Customers

Congratulations! You're now ready to set up your initial Welcome flow and begin your first marketing tests, guided with the power of the Scientific Method.