Washington Post subscriber onboarding series
Welcome to The Post
Design director: Tova Diamond
Copy director: Sheila Hayes
Email designer/developer: Jason Morrow
One of my first projects when I joined The Post was writing a 30-day, 9-email journey to onboard new subscribers. Two years later, I led copy in our lifecycle marketing team's efforts to expand the onboarding series into a 100-day omnichannel experience across email, app and site.
The goals were to more effectively:
- Introduce subscribers to The Post's wide range of content and features
- Nurture habits during this critical early window
- Boost engagement and retention (measured by active days, retention rate, etc.)
As the lead email copywriter, I wrote the copy for the entire 22-email journey, featured below. This new onboarding email journey achieved a 2.27% average clickthrough rate (CTR) in its first week in market, doubling the 1.13% average click rate of the previous iteration. In the months since launch, unique CTR has stayed roughly 2x higher than the previous journey, and opt-outs have decreased by 1/3.
This email series was named as a finalist in International News Media Association (INMA)'s Global Media Awards in the category of Best Initiative to Engage and Retain Subscribers.
