Help With Welcome Series

Hi emily_wri​

We worked on our welcome series so much, with a lot of A/B tests, and eventually landed on a strategy that really moved the needle for us. I work in a travel company, but the approach we use can be applied to almost any product, including yours.

When users sign up, we give them three tags based on their early actions: unengaged, focused and explorer.

Unengaged are users who created an account but didn’t have a session. For them, the first email is all about brand education and showing the same offers they looked at before signing up. We do this by matching their anonymous user ID so the content still feels relevant. After about three days, if they still haven’t done anything, we send a follow-up with a strong incentive like a promo code because these users usually need a bigger nudge.

Focused users show very clear intent. They have 4 or more sessions, browse destinations, engage with emails, and basically know what they want. For them, the follow-up email is highly personalised and uses their behaviour directly. Since they already have intent, relevance drives the action. This group showed a big lift for us in CTR and conversions compared to the control.

Explorer users fall in the middle. They have more than one session but no more than three, and they browse around without a clear pattern. Here, the follow-up email is more educational. We explain different offer types, how the platform works, and help them understand the value of exploring more. The idea is to nudge them into the focused segment.

This segmentation made a huge impact. Because every user receives something that matches where they are in their journey, our CTR and conversions increased across all groups.

You can probably use a similar strategy for your nutrition-tracking app. Your main goal is getting users to log their first food, so your segments would naturally map to that behaviour.

Unengaged users might be the ones who created an account but didn’t open the app or didn’t tap anything. They might need a stronger push, like a small challenge, a quick reward, or even a faster reminder within the first day.

Explorer users might be the people who opened the app, searched for foods, or browsed around but didn’t log anything. They likely need clarity more than motivation. Short clips or simple examples showing how quick food logging is could work well here. Even showing a list of common first foods helps reduce the mental effort.

Focused users are the ones who searched for foods, viewed FAQs, watched videos, checked recipes, clicked emails, but still didn’t log. These users might have specific doubts or friction points. Sending personalised nudges based on their actions can help. For example, if they viewed FAQs, send something that addresses common myths. If they searched for foods, send them a pre-filled option they can log in one tap. If they browsed recipes, show them how to track a recipe step by step.

The biggest principle that helped us is this: user actions matter more than anything. Even the smallest signal should decide what you send next. The more your follow-ups feel like direct responses to what the user did or didn’t do, the more likely they are to take that first important step.

Hope this helps! :)

Nirnay​ that's extremely helpful, thank you!

Without more details about your users / service, what you are measuring / what type of actions are considered good or bad, here are a few generic ideas:

For initial welcome:  Getting started

For active / engaged users: typical NPS / 5 star survey (would you refer us to a friend / colleague? 

For active / engaged users: Subscribe to mobile push, SMS, or Email massaging.

For users who have not engaged: FAQ's, how to get help, tips & tricks (these are also great initial welcome topics).

For users who have not engaged: Message through other channels (SMS/Email)

Thanks Ted! We're a nutrition tracking app, so our main goal is to get people to log their first food. For those who haven't done that yet, we have set up emails with FAQs, info and tips, links to videos for how to do this and push prompts to remind. However, that canvas is seeing very little uptick in getting people to log a food compared to the control group. 

I was hoping that people might be willing to share tactics / flows / timing wins that they've previously seen in their own use cases. I appreciate any help you can lend!

Cheers!