# What is a welcome sequence?

A welcome sequence is a short series of emails that goes out automatically after someone joins your list, starting with what they signed up for. It introduces you while they still remember why they subscribed, and it does the job a single welcome email cannot: teach something, then ask for something.

Updated 30 October 2026. Web page: https://chapbook.ink/glossary/welcome-sequence/

## What it means in practice

Most email tools build this as an automation, sequence, flow or drip: a trigger and a list of emails with delays between them. Set the trigger to "confirms subscription" if you use [double opt-in](/glossary/double-opt-in/), so the sequence starts after the confirmation.

Read the whole series with a second address before you switch it on. People who subscribed earlier won't get it unless you add them, which is usually fine.

## How Chapbook uses it

On a paid plan, [the launch campaign](/manual/launch-and-export/#write-the-launch-campaign) writes a 5-email sequence from the finished book, in your voice. The first email delivers the book, the next three each teach one lesson from a chapter, and the last points to the book's next step.

Links open your book's public page once it is published, tagged so its numbers show the readers who came from the emails. The exception is the last email of a book with a next step: its link goes straight to your own address, not the page, so it counts in your analytics, through its own UTM tags unless you turned them off. You paste the emails into your own tool, a few days apart.

The sample on this page is a guide to writing a longer sequence by hand. Its outline shows what each of its seven emails does.

## Made with Chapbook: The Welcome Sequence

The Welcome Sequence: Seven emails that turn a subscriber into a reader, by Dana Okafor. Lead magnet, 3,626 words, 17 pages. A sample generated from one brief and exported unedited; it is not a customer's book. Read every page: https://chapbook.ink/examples/newsletter/

The brief:

> A seven-email welcome sequence for a new newsletter: what each email does, what to write, and when to send it. Promise: By the end you have a complete seven-email welcome sequence drafted, with a send schedule. Reader: Someone with fewer than a thousand subscribers who writes the newsletter themselves. Voice: Second person, warm and direct, worked examples with fictional newsletters, no invented open-rate statistics.

The outline the planner proposed:

1. Introduction (282 words)
2. Email 1: The one they actually open (681 words)
3. Emails 2 and 3: Who you are and what to expect (729 words)
4. Emails 4 and 5: Your best two pieces, reframed (669 words)
5. Emails 6 and 7: The ask, and the door left open (743 words)
6. The schedule and the template (478 words)

## Questions

### How many emails should a welcome sequence have?

There is no rule. Chapbook's launch campaign writes 5, and the sample on this page, a guide to writing one by hand, plans seven over sixteen days. Fewer, better emails beat a long series you can't keep useful.

### Does Chapbook send the welcome sequence?

No. Chapbook writes the emails and you paste them into your own email tool's automation. Chapbook never sends email to a reader.