Steal These Ideas: Best Onboarding Email Examples

How Onboarding Emails Differ From Welcome Emails

An onboarding email helps a new user get value from your product. It usually arrives in the first days or weeks after signup.

Onboarding emails usually come as a sequence, not a single message. Each email moves the user one step closer to their first real result.

That’s the difference from a welcome email. A welcome email says hello and confirms the signup. Onboarding emails do the follow-up work: setup, first win, habits, and the decision to pay.

We’ve covered that first message in our guide to welcome email examples. This post picks up where it left off.

7 Traits of a Good Onboarding Email

Good onboarding emails get people using the product. That’s the whole job.

When they work, users activate sooner, adopt more features, and stick around longer. Here’s what the effective ones have in common.

It Reaches the Inbox

None of this matters if the email lands in spam.

User actions trigger onboarding emails. They need to arrive while the user still cares. We’ll cover how to make that happen near the end of this post.

Be Simple and Clear

New users don’t know your product yet. Skip the jargon.

Give each email one focus and one goal. If the email has three jobs, split it into three emails.

Value-Driven Messaging

Talk about what the user gets, not what the feature is called.

“Send your first invoice in two minutes” beats “Explore invoicing.” One is a result. The other is a menu item.

Personalization

A first name is the minimum. The real win is using what the user has done.

Someone who connected their calendar needs a different next step than someone who hasn’t. Your product data knows the difference, so your emails should too.

One Clear Call to Action

Every onboarding email should ask for one thing. That might be completing a profile, inviting a teammate, or creating a first project.

Put that action in a button, and make the button say exactly what happens next.

Visual Appeal

Use a clean layout with plenty of white space. A screenshot of the exact screen you’re describing helps more than a stock photo.

Keep it readable on a phone, since that’s where many people will see it first.

Strategic Segmentation

Different users need different paths. A team admin and an invited teammate shouldn’t get the same emails.

Start with two branches: users who finished setup and users who didn’t. You can add role or plan branches later.

A Simple Onboarding Email Sequence

Here’s a sequence that suits most SaaS products with a free trial. Adjust the days to fit your product.

Two rules make this sequence work.

Trigger on behavior where you can. On Day 3, users who finished setup get “First win.” Everyone else gets the stalled nudge.

Set exit conditions. Once someone completes a step, stop emailing them about it. Nothing feels more robotic than a reminder for something you finished yesterday.

Best Onboarding Email Examples

Here are 9 real onboarding emails. For each one, I’ve noted where it fits in the sequence above.

Vimeo: A Simple Welcome with a Powerful Visual Focus

Sequence stage: Welcome and setup.

Vimeo’s email for its Record tool opens with a product screenshot. The headline reads “A simple way to say it all.”

Below that is a four-step list: record, share, collaborate, track views. Each step gets one short line.

What to copy: Number your setup steps. “4 steps. that’s it.” tells users exactly how much work is ahead.

Bitly: Gamifying Onboarding with a Progress-Driven Approach

Sequence stage: Setup checklist.

Bitly’s “Bitly-o-meter” shows a progress bar at 50%. Below it is a four-item checklist with two items already ticked off.

The copy is encouraging: “Wow! You’re on a roll.” The single button, “Share your link,” points to the next unchecked step.

What to copy: Show progress that’s already made. A half-full bar is more motivating than an empty one.

Grammarly: A Feature-Rich Welcome for Polished Writing

Sequence stage: Post-purchase onboarding.

This email goes to someone who has just paid for Grammarly Premium. It isn’t trying to sell an upgrade. It’s making sure the buyer uses what they paid for.

It lists five Premium features, each with an icon and a one-line description. Then it gives install links for every desktop app.

What to copy: Onboard paying customers too. A new subscriber who never installs the app is a refund request waiting to happen.

Spotify for Podcasters: One Goal, Four Steps

Sequence stage: First win.

Spotify for Podcasters has one goal here: get the first episode published.

Four illustrated steps cover the whole job, from drag-and-drop upload to publish. The design uses the brand’s green and lime throughout.

What to copy: Pick the one action that makes users feel successful. Build the email around it.

Headway: A Playful Nudge Towards Knowledge

Sequence stage: Welcome (email confirmation).

Strictly speaking, this is a confirmation email. It asks the user to confirm their address with a single “CONFIRM” button.

What makes it onboarding is what follows. Three short hints show where the app fits into a normal day.

What to copy: Use a required email to teach something. The user has to open it anyway.

Zoom: A Fast Track to Your First Meeting

Sequence stage: Setup checklist.

Zoom’s email leads with a “Start a meeting” button, then breaks setup into three cards.

They cover downloading the app, testing audio and video, and hosting a meeting. A Learning Center block at the bottom offers one-minute videos.

What to copy: Include the step people forget. “Are you on mute?” solves a real first-meeting problem before it happens.

Lulu: A Simplified Path to Publishing for Aspiring Authors

Sequence stage: Stalled nudge.

This email goes to someone who signed up but hasn’t started a book. It says so directly.

A progress tracker shows registration crossed off and three steps left. There’s also a short video walkthrough and a link to a beginner’s guide.

What to copy: Name the gap. Show users exactly where they stopped.

Miro: A Visual Invitation to Collaborative Creativity

Sequence stage: Setup checklist.

Miro’s email looks like a Miro board. The header even carries the app’s toolbar and cursor labels.

Three steps follow. The third is inviting your team. That’s the real activation moment for a collaboration tool.

What to copy: Put your real activation step in the first email.

Shutterstock: Your Creative Canvas Awaits

Sequence stage: Feature discovery.

Shutterstock’s email teaches two search features most new users wouldn’t find on their own.

One block covers search filters, like number of people and color. The other covers uploading a reference image to find similar content. Each block gets its own “Try it now” button.

What to copy: Teach one hidden feature per section. The things users can’t find on their own make strong onboarding content.

Onboarding Email Templates You Can Copy

These three templates follow the sequence above. They’re written for a made-up invoicing app called Ledgerly. Swap in your product name and your own setup steps.

Template 1: Setup Checklist (Day 1)

Subject: 3 steps to your first invoice
Preview text: Most people finish in under 10 minutes.

Hi {first_name},

You're three steps away from sending your first invoice with Ledgerly.

1. Add your business details
2. Connect your bank account
3. Add your first client

Most people finish all three in under 10 minutes.

[Button: Finish setup]

Stuck on a step? Just reply to this email. A real person reads every reply.

Template 2: Stalled Nudge (Day 4, setup not complete)

Subject: Still need to connect your bank?
Preview text: Here's the quickest way to do it.

Hi {first_name},

You've added your business details. The next step is connecting your bank account, so clients can pay you directly.

This is where most people get stuck. It's usually because their bank asks for a second login step.

Here's a 90-second walkthrough that covers it.

[Button: Connect my bank]

Prefer to skip it for now? You can still send invoices and add payment details later.

Template 3: Trial Ending (3 days before expiry)

Subject: Your Ledgerly trial ends on {trial_end_date}
Preview text: Here's what happens next.

Hi {first_name},

Your free trial ends on {trial_end_date}.

So far, you've sent {invoice_count} invoices and been paid {amount_paid}.

To keep sending invoices, pick a plan before your trial ends. If you don't, your account will switch to read-only. Nothing gets deleted.

[Button: Choose a plan]

Questions about which plan fits? Reply and we'll help you pick.

Notice that the trial email says what happens if the user does nothing. Everyone wonders about that, and most trial emails dodge it.

Transactional vs. Marketing: Where Onboarding Emails Fit

This matters more than most guides admit. The answer decides whether your emails need an unsubscribe link.

In the US, the FTC’s CAN-SPAM guidance judges an email by its primary purpose. Transactional or relationship messages are exempt from most of the rules. These include messages that deliver a service someone has already agreed to.

But the FTC says it views those categories “narrowly.” An existing customer relationship doesn’t make every email transactional.

Here’s a practical way to sort them:

• Likely transactional: account confirmation, password setup, setup steps, and trial expiry notices.
• Likely marketing: upgrade pitches, discounts, and promotions for other products.

Mixed emails are where people get caught.

Does the subject line read like a promotion? Then the FTC treats the whole email as commercial. The same applies if the promotional content comes before the transactional content.

So the trial-ending email above sits close to the line. It states a fact about the user’s account, but it also asks them to buy.

My advice is simple. Put an unsubscribe link in any onboarding email that sells something. Keep the transactional content at the top.

Sending 5,000+ emails a day to Gmail? Google also requires one-click unsubscribe on marketing mail.

This isn’t legal advice, and rules outside the US are often stricter. Check with your legal team if you’re unsure.

How to Measure Your Onboarding Emails

Open rates won’t tell you much. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images, so many “opens” aren’t real.

Track these instead:

• Delivery rate. How many emails reached a mailbox at all. Fix this first if it’s low.
• Click rate on the main button. A more reliable email-level signal than opens.
• Activation rate. The share of new users who complete your key setup step. This is the number onboarding exists to move.
• Time to first value. How long until a user gets their first real result.
• Trial-to-paid conversion. The share of trial users who become paying customers.
• Unsubscribes and spam complaints. A spike usually means an email is too pushy.

To know whether the emails themselves are working, hold some users back. Send the sequence to most new signups and skip a small random group. Then compare activation rates between the two.

Without that comparison, you can’t tell if the emails caused the result.

Make Sure Onboarding Emails Reach the Inbox

Every example above assumes the email arrived. With onboarding, that’s never guaranteed.

Each user action triggers one of these emails, one at a time. A setup reminder that shows up three hours late feels broken. One that lands in spam never gets seen.

Here’s what helps most:

1. Authenticate your domain. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Google and Yahoo have required this for bulk senders since February 2024. Microsoft added similar rules for high-volume senders in May 2025.
2. Separate onboarding mail from newsletters. Use different subdomains so marketing complaints don’t hurt setup emails.
3. Send from an address people can reply to. Templates above invite replies on purpose. A no-reply address shuts that down.
4. Remove bounced addresses. Stop sending to addresses that hard bounce. Repeated bounces hurt your sender reputation.
5. Use a sending service built for triggered email. Your web server’s default mailer usually isn’t.

That last point is where a service like SendLayer fits. SendLayer sends triggered email through an API or SMTP relay. Domain authentication is part of setup, and every message gets a delivery log.

If a user says a setup email never arrived, you can check what happened.

Frequently Asked Questions

Rachel Adnyana

Rachel has been writing about WordPress for a decade and building websites for much longer. Alongside web development, she's fascinated with the art and science of SEO and digital marketing.

See Full Bio