⌚ 7-12 minute read (depending on how much this irritates you)
Let’s start with a line that will annoy a few people (good):
Not because automated journeys have stopped working. Not because “email is dead” (10/10 do not recommend that take). But because most welcome flows are built on the wrong premise.
They’re built like a brand, business or person ntroduction.
They’re written like a speech.
They’re designed like a brochure.
And they’re sent into the one place people are least emotionally available to receive them: the inbox.
People do not join your list to be welcomed, they join your list because they want something, or they need something, or they’re solving something, or they’re curious about one specific thing you promised them.
And that means your first job isn’t to welcome them.
It’s to orient them.
RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.
Which is fine… if someone has actively asked to be in a relationship with your brand.
But that’s not what most opt-ins are.
Most opt-ins are transactional or consequential. They’re a moment. A click. A decision. A quick exchange.
And the person on the other side is not thinking:
“Wow, I can’t wait to get to know this brand.”
They’re thinking:
That’s not a welcome moment.
That’s a risk evaluation.
A welcome flow assumes the inbox is a friendly room where someone has invited you in for a chat.
It isn’t (not always).
The inbox is a task environment, a scanning environment and a filtering environment.
It is shaped by habits, pressure, emotional load, and subconscious triage.
People enter their inbox to:They do not enter their inbox to be “welcomed”. And when you send a new subscriber three glossy emails about your origin story and your values, you’re not building a relationship.
You’re creating cognitive friction, you’re forcing them to do work. You’re asking for attention they haven’t decided to give you yet.
This is the part you all miss!
Your first emails aren’t judged like normal marketing emails.
They’re judged like a first impression in a high-risk environment.
A new sender triggers a set of subconscious checks:
You train the brain to treat you as ignorable.
That’s predictive coding in action: your audience learns what you are before they even open you.
And once you’ve been filed as “noise”, the best subject line in the world won’t save you.
If we’re honest, “welcome flow” has become shorthand for:
“a sequence we build because everyone says we should build one.”
Not because it’s strategically designed around the subscriber’s entry point, motivation, and expectations.
Not because it’s aligned to how people behave in the inbox.
Not because it’s engineered to reduce uncertainty and increase relevance.
It’s just… there.
And that’s why most welcome flows “work” in the short term (a few nice metrics), then quietly fail long-term (attention decay, disengagement, spam complaints, lower inbox placement).
Because they don’t create orientation.
They create output.
Plus 99% of email knowledge out there is for eComm brands - not B2B, education, membership etc (I see you and I'm working on it!).
An orientation flow is not about welcoming someone into your world.
It’s about helping someone understand where they are, WHY, what’s going to happen next, and how to navigate it safely.
Orientation flows are built around three jobs:
Orientation flows protect inbox permission.
And permission is everything.
If you take nothing else from this blog, take this:
Not all subscribers are equal.
And if you treat them as equal in your welcome flow, your metrics will lie to you.
Most welcome flows treat both of these groups the same. They send the same “welcome series” to:
That’s not an email problem, that’s an expectation problem.
An orientation flow is not one-size-fits-all.
It starts with a single question:
What did this person come here for?
Your entry point is your truth. Your promise and so much context.
If someone signed up for:
They want the next logical step.
Most teams build a welcome flow, then immediately ruin it by sending everything else at the same time.
This is where “orientation” becomes a deliverability and trust tool.
If someone is in an orientation flow, they should not also receive:
It feels like an interruption!
It feels like you do not understand your own messaging.
It feels like your brand is not in control.
And if your brand is not in control, the subscriber does not feel safe.
When someone enters an orientation flow, you should exclude them from:
This is not over-engineering; it is experience design.
You are protecting someone’s early relationship with you.
You are reducing cognitive load.
You are avoiding message collision.
And inbox filters like this too, because early engagement signals are cleaner and more consistent.
Let’s get practical.
A good orientation flow answers the unspoken questions a subscriber has, whether they say them or not.
There’s no one perfect sequence, but here are strong structures depending on opt-in type.
This is for people who actively want ongoing content.
This is where most teams mess up.
The difference here is pacing but the MOST important thing is reminding people in both flows, HOW they found you, what they did - because people forget so so much!!
Consequential opt-ins need slower trust-building and more control.
Here’s the part you asked for—something people can actually do.
Orientation is not “a welcome series”. It’s the first layer of your email ecosystem.
It sits at the intersection of:
Not because you “wrote better emails”, because you designed a better experience.
Stop asking:
“How do we welcome them?”
Start asking:
“How do we make them feel oriented, safe, and clear on what happens next?”
That’s the whole game.
Go and look at your current welcome flow and ask:
If you can’t confidently say yes, you don’t have a welcome flow problem.
You have an orientation problem.
This is exactly the kind of work I do with teams who are sick of churny lists, flat engagement, and “send more” pressure from above.
If you want me to:
…get in touch and we’ll sort it.
Work with me on email strategy, journeys, and onboarding/orientation flows.
→ Book a consultation and let’s build something that doesn’t burn your list on day one.
RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.