This job is writing the three to five emails a new subscriber gets after signing up, then setting them to run on their own. It is a Skill and Tech job that takes an afternoon: the AI drafts the emails in one sitting, and your email tool, such as Kit or Mailchimp, sends them on a schedule. You give the AI what people signed up for, the one offer you want to make, a few real stories from your business and two or three emails you wrote yourself. It gives back the full sequence, with a subject line, a preview line, the body and the send delay for each email. You judge and edit the drafts, paste them into an automation in your email tool, test it with your own address and switch it on.
- Shape
- SkillTech
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Skill and Tech
The Skill half is the writing. A welcome sequence has a known structure: deliver what was promised, earn some trust, then make one offer. That structure is what an AI handles well, as long as it has your real material to fill it with. The brief below works for any business, and once you have it, rewriting the sequence later takes minutes rather than an afternoon.
The Tech half is the automation. The AI does not hold your list, your sign-up form or your sending account. Your email tool does, and the sequence only runs once it is built there as a series of emails with delays, connected to the form or tag that starts it. That part is clicks, not words, and it is where most of the afternoon goes the first time.
What this means for you: you need the AI chat and your email tool open side by side. If you do not yet have a sign-up form feeding a list, that is the job to do first, because a sequence with nothing to start it never sends.
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. A welcome sequence is the first impression your list gets, so the inputs matter more here than almost anywhere.
- What people signed up for, in one line. A checklist, a discount, a guide, a waitlist spot, or just "news from the shop." Include the link or the code if the first email has to deliver it.
- Where they signed up. The page, the form, the event or the checkout. Someone who joined from a guide expects different emails from someone who joined at a farmers market.
- The one offer the sequence ends on. A first booking, a consultation, a product, a class. Its exact name, its exact link and who it is for.
- Three or four real stories or answers. A job you are proud of, the question new customers ask most, why you started the business, a mistake people make before they find you. Rough notes are fine. These become the middle emails.
- Two or three emails you wrote yourself. A long reply to a customer, a past newsletter, a note to a partner. These teach the AI how you sound.
- Facts that must stay exact. Prices, dates, hours, guarantees, the code, the link. List them separately and mark them as not to change.
- Anything off limits. Claims you cannot make, customers you do not have permission to name, topics you never touch.
Leave out private customer details, and do not paste your subscriber list into the chat. The AI does not need a single subscriber's name to write this.
What comes back
Paste this brief, then your inputs underneath it.
You are drafting a welcome email sequence for a small business.
New subscribers get these emails automatically after they sign up.
Write only from the material below. Do not invent offers, numbers, results, testimonials or events.
What they signed up for: [one line, plus the link or code]
Where they signed up: [the page, form or event]
The one offer the sequence ends on: [name, exact link, who it is for]
Facts that must stay exactly as written: [prices, dates, codes, links]
Off limits: [anything not to say]
Write 4 emails. For each one, return:
1. Send timing: when it goes out, counted from sign-up.
2. Two subject line options, each under 50 characters, plain and specific.
3. One preview line, under 90 characters, that adds to the subject.
4. The body, 100 to 200 words, short paragraphs, in the voice of the past emails below.
5. One link at most, and say which one.
The sequence:
- Email 1, sent right away: deliver what they signed up for in the first two lines, say who we are in one sentence, and say what the next few emails will cover.
- Email 2: one real story from the material, with one concrete detail.
- Email 3: answer the question new customers ask most, from the material.
- Email 4: make the one offer, once, with who it is for and the link. No false deadline.
Every email ends by inviting a reply.
Then list every claim in the sequence that we should check, with where it came from in our material.
Our past emails, for voice:
[paste two or three]
Our stories and answers:
[paste your notes]What comes back is four short emails you can read in five minutes, each with its timing, and a list of claims tied to your notes. If you have enough material for five emails, change the number and add one more middle email. If you only have enough for three, change the number to 3, delete the Email 3 line and rename Email 4 to Email 3, so you keep the delivery, the story and the offer.
When the drafts are right, ask the AI for each email once more as plain text with every link written out. Then build it in your email tool: create an automation or sequence, start it from your sign-up form or tag, add each email as a step, and set the delay before each one. Set links on the linked words inside the tool's editor rather than trusting pasted formatting. If you are not sure where those settings live, tell the AI which tool you use and ask for the steps, then check them against the tool's own help pages, because menus change.
How to judge it
A good welcome sequence reads like a person introducing themselves to someone who just raised a hand. A bad one is easy to spot in a minute. Reject it, or push back in the same chat, when you see any of these.
- The first email makes them wait for what they signed up for. If the guide, the code or the link is not in the first two lines, the reader goes looking for it and leaves annoyed.
- It invents something. A testimonial you never received, a number of happy customers, a result you cannot point to. The claims list should catch it; anything without a source in your notes goes.
- Every email sells. If the offer shows up before email 4, or every email ends with "book now," readers learn to stop opening. One offer, at the end.
- It sounds like nobody. Openings like "Welcome to the family," stacked adjectives and talk about "your journey" fit any business and say nothing about yours. Compare it with the past emails you gave it.
- It makes up urgency. "Only three spots left" or "this offer ends tonight" when neither is true. A false deadline costs more trust than it earns.
- The emails repeat each other. If two emails tell the same story in different words, the AI ran out of material. Give it another real story or cut the sequence to three.
- It changed a fact you marked exact. A different code, a rounded price or a broken link in an email that sends to every new subscriber for months is worth rereading every line over.
If the drafts fail on voice, the fix is usually a longer past email, not a better instruction.
What stays with you
The AI drafts the emails. These parts stay yours, and no AI does them for you.
- The offer. What you sell, to whom, and whether it is right for someone who just met you. The AI can phrase it; it cannot decide it.
- The stories. The AI cannot know what happened in your business. If the middle emails feel thin, the honest fix is a shorter sequence, not invented ones.
- Every fact and every link. A welcome sequence runs for months without anyone rereading it, so a wrong link keeps failing quietly. Check each one before you switch it on, and again whenever your prices, hours or pages change.
- Permission and consent. Whether a customer is happy to be named, and whether everyone entering the sequence actually asked to hear from you. Your email tool usually adds the unsubscribe link and your mailing address; check that both are there, and leave them in.
- The automation. Building the steps, setting the delays, connecting the form and testing the whole thing with your own address. Sign up through your real form, then watch each email arrive on your phone.
- The replies. You asked people to reply, so some will. Each reply is a real person who just met your business, and the answer is yours to give.
An editorial example
This is an invented example, not a customer. Say you run a small dog-grooming salon, and the sign-up form on your website offers a one-page guide to brushing a double-coated dog between visits.
Your notes say: the guide link, the question every new customer asks (how often should my dog be groomed), the story of a nervous rescue dog who now trots in on her own, why you work with one dog at a time, and the offer of a first full groom with an online booking link. You paste them in with two long replies you once wrote to customers, the booking link marked as exact, and a note never to name the rescue dog's owner.
The first draft opens email 1 with "Welcome to the pack." You reject that and ask for the guide link in the first line. The second draft opens with the guide, says in one sentence who you are, and says the next emails cover the most common question, one story and a first booking. Email 2 tells the rescue dog story with one detail from your notes. Email 3 answers how often to groom, using only what you wrote. Email 4 offers the first full groom once, with the booking link.
You cut one adjective from each email, pick the plainest subject lines and paste the four emails into a new automation in your email tool. You set email 1 to send right away and the others two days apart, connect the automation to the guide form and sign up with your own address to test it. When all four arrive with working links, you switch it on. That is the job.
Which tool runs it
The automation lives in whatever email tool already holds your list.
| If you already have | Build it in | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A list in Kit | Kit | Sign-up forms there can start a sequence directly |
| A list in Mailchimp | Mailchimp | Your audience and forms are already there; moving a list is its own project |
| An email tool built into your website or shop platform | That tool | Sign-ups from your site already land in it |
| A sign-up form but not yet an email tool | Pick one tool and connect the form first | A personal inbox cannot send automated, delayed emails with unsubscribe handling |
Plans, limits and which features sit on a free plan change, so check each tool's own pricing page before you build.
Once the sequence ends, subscribers move on to your regular emails, which is the email newsletter job. If you need something worth signing up for in the first place, start with lead magnets. When this one is done, the full list of DIY marketing jobs has the next one.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
