Below is a real 4-email welcome flow, built as a practice example for a fictional skincare brand — Lumé Skin — so you can see exactly how a sequence like this comes together, email by email, rather than just a list of best practices.
Why welcome flow comes first
Of the three core flows — welcome, abandoned cart, and post-purchase — welcome is the one every new subscriber sees, before they've bought anything. It's doing double duty: converting a first sale, and setting up whether they'll ever open your emails again. Get it wrong and every other flow you build afterward is working against a colder list.
The flow: Lumé Skin, 4 emails
Practice build — not a live client — used here to show the structure.
Welcome
Goes out the second someone signs up, while intent is highest. This isn't a product pitch — it's an introduction. Who the brand is, what it stands for, and what to expect from being on the list. Saving the sales push for later emails means this one doesn't feel like a discount-hunting transaction from the first message.
The routine
Shows the product in actual use — how it fits into a real routine, not just a product shot and a price. For a skincare brand this is a simple AM/PM routine; for other categories it's whatever "how someone actually uses this" looks like. The goal is to make the product feel useful before it's ever framed as a purchase.
Ingredients
Addresses the "why should I trust this" question directly — ingredients, sourcing, what makes the formulation different. This is the credibility email, and it's deliberately placed after the routine email, not before — people care why it works once they can already picture themselves using it.
First-order offer
The only email in the sequence with a real incentive attached. By day 8, the subscriber has seen the brand story, the product in use, and the credibility case — the offer is there to close, not to carry the whole flow on its own.
What to change for a real brand
- Timing — 8 days works for a considered purchase like skincare. A lower-cost, impulse category can compress this to 4–5 days; a higher-cost or subscription product might need to stretch it further.
- Email 3's focus — "ingredients" is specific to skincare. The equivalent is whichever question answers your category's version of "why should I trust this" — sourcing, craftsmanship, guarantees, reviews.
- Whether there's an offer at all — not every brand should lead with a discount by email 4. Some are better served by a free guide, a loyalty program mention, or simply a clear next step.
Introduce, demonstrate, build trust, then ask. The exact content changes brand to brand — the order rarely should.