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How to send a WordPress new user registration email for beginners

Reading Time: 7 minutes

New users signing up to your WordPress site can be exciting — after all, it shows that people are interested in what you offer.

But it can be frustrating when these users don’t engage any further. All that time spent attracting people to your website, all that hard work — and nothing. 

Luckily, there is a simple and effective solution to this problem — sending an automated welcome email. By sending a welcome email to new users, you can engage them from the beginning and increase the likelihood of turning them into loyal customers.

In this article, we’ll guide you through setting up and sending a WordPress new user registration email that will add value, captivate your audience and drive meaningful interactions.

 Specifically, we’ll review:

Let’s get into it!

What is a WordPress new user registration email?

When new users sign up on your WordPress website, they will receive an automatic email to confirm their registration. This email will share important information, and often instructs them on creating a password for their new account. 

New user registration emails are essential to helping your users set up their accounts and engage with your website. In fact, people typically expect a confirmation email to verify their email addresses and complete registration.

This email is also a great opportunity to share helpful tips. You can learn how to customize your WordPress emails to show some of the results other users have achieved, promote additional services or products, and offer special deals. By sending WordPress new user registration emails, you can start a positive relationship with all new customers.

WordPress new user registration email example
Account confirmation email

Benefits of sending welcome emails on WordPress

A welcome email is the first email your subscribers will receive from you. These emails boast one of the highest open rates, and convert around 50% of people who click them. You want to ensure you send this email to get early investment from your WordPress email users and unlock other benefits, like:

  • Strong first impression: Carefully crafted and full of your brand’s personality, it sets a positive tone for future interactions
  • Increased retention: A well-written welcome email can show appreciation, build stronger, long lasting customer relationships and establish a personal connection from the start
  • Showing your value: It gives you an opportunity to highlight exclusive content, discounts, or personalized recommendations, thus showcasing the value of subscribing
  • Set expectations: A welcome email allows you to clearly outline the type and frequency of future emails to manage subscriber expectations
  • Reduced support tickets: Address FAQs proactively, saving you and your users time by minimizing customer support inquiries
  • Improved user experience: Guide users in the right direction, creating a more efficient and positive experience

How to send custom WordPress new user registration email

WordPress is famous for its large library of plugins, and a lot of these can be used to send emails. This section will compare sending custom emails using Omnisend, one of the best platforms for email marketing, and Better Notifications for WP as an example plugin.

Sending new user registration emails using a plugin

Once you have installed the plugin, you can create a welcome email:

1. Head to Notifications > Add New — this should take you to a screen where you can create a new email.

New user registration emails with WordPress plugin

2. Give it a name that will help you quickly identify it in the future.

New user registration emails with WordPress plugin

3. You’ll need to specify that you want the email to trigger as a welcome email, as other types of email are also supported. 

4. Under the “Notification for” drop-down, select “New User – Post-registration Email.

5. You can then begin designing the email, including the subject and main body text. This design process is where you can add flair, and it’s just as intuitive as working with the typical WordPress editor.

6. You can even make things more personalized by using shortcodes. These are text referencing customer-specific variables such as usernames (this one would be [email_user_display_name]).

7. Once you’ve finished writing the email, just click save. You can then send yourself a test email to check that it looks how you want it to and to confirm its deliverability. If you’re having trouble with the latter, check out this article on how to improve email deliverability with WordPress

While this is a valuable method for sending a WordPress new user registration email, it has some downsides. Namely, you can only use the preset triggers for your emails and are limited to existing WordPress infrastructure for email design and testing. You are also limited to sending only one welcome email.

Ultimately, this method is simple and easy to follow, but it lacks flexibility and the ability to customize WordPress emails well.

Sending custom new user registration emails with Omnisend

If you’re looking for more flexibility in sending WordPress user registration emails and value the ability to customize, Omnisend is the tool for you.

First, you’ll need to set up Omnisend. We have a step-by-step guide for this.

How to install Omnisend on WordPress

1. Install the WordPress app in Omnisend or generate an API key as described here.

Custom new user registration emails with Omnisend

2. Install and activate Omnisend for WordPress plugin in your WP-admin.

Omnisend for WordPress plugin in WP-admin

3. Go to the Omnisend tab, enter the API key, and click Connect to Omnisend.

Connection to Omnisend with API key

4. You can now easily create, publish, and manage forms to collect subscribers, segment them, and send email campaigns.

Successful Omnisend connection

How Omnisend email automation works

Now that you’re set up, you can design your welcome email. Omnisend allows you to customize WordPress emails with nuance. As such, your WordPress new user registration email can fully reflect your brand. 

To create a welcome email automation, you need to start with an entry trigger, contain a set of steps, and have an exit trigger.

How to send a new user registration email with Omnisend

1. Head to the Automations tab and click Create Workflow. You’ll see a list of presets for a Welcome Email. Choose one of these presets.

New user registration email with Omnisend

2. You can customize the email and add or remove steps on the Edit automation steps screen. The default trigger is Signup, but you can specify a form to trigger the email. 

You can use filters to exclude contacts who subscribe via the footer form, and tags or unique properties to create segment-based automation for third-party forms.

You can also send different welcome workflows to customers who subscribe to a form created with a third-party app. Again, tags or any other unique property can be used to create segment-based automation.

New user registration email with Omnisend

3. Customizing your automation based on your customers’ data is also possible. You can consider country, gender, tag, and membership in a particular segment.

Automation customization

4. By default, the Welcome automation’s cancellation trigger is set to “Order is Placed.” This means the customer exits the flow after placing an order. 

However, there are certain situations where you may want to cancel the flow. For example, customers might abandon their cart or purchase a specific product in your store.

Order placement

5. Customers might abuse the system by repeatedly subscribing and unsubscribing to receive discounts. As such, you should choose not to trigger the workflow for contacts already in the automation. This way, customers will only receive the welcome email with the discount code once.

Welcome emails on Omnisend

6. Use the Conditional Split block to send customized messages based on the data provided by your customers. Put questions in your signup form to gather customer information and personalize your messages.

Related reading:

Conditional splits

Conditional splits via Omnisend

7. You can also add a delay block to any automation stage, ranging from immediately to several months. The first message should be sent immediately, then spread out the second and third messages.

Delay block placement to automation page via Omnisend

For tips on what to include in your welcome email, check out our article on engaging welcome email subject lines

Effortlessly create and automate WordPress emails with Omnisend

What’s next after sending a new user registration email?

While your WordPress new user registration email may have made a great first impression, this is only part of the puzzle. It’s essential to keep customers engaged and active on your platform by creating follow-up emails.

Follow-up emails can include helpful tips, reminders for WordPress email users to complete their profiles, and suggestions to explore features on your platform. 

You can also offer personalized messages based on customer interests and behavior patterns. For tips on other plugins, check out  our articles on the top 20 WordPress automation tools and the 30 best WordPress plugins.

Continuing customer interactions can help to keep your brand top of mind, drive repeat business, and build loyalty, making them a highly effective tool in your arsenal.

Wrap up

You can now set up a personalized welcome email for new WordPress users. 

Remember, good customization is often the key to increasing customer interest and keeping customers. Although WordPress can send signup emails, they lack the flexibility to make it truly reflective of your brand — and you’re limited to a single email instead of sending a sequence.

To make the most of new user registration emails, get started with Omnisend and enjoy an intuitive platform with powerful features to nurture new subscribers.

Richard White
Article by

Richard is a Content Marketing Manager at Omnisend. An avid writer, he's said to have been born holding a pencil. Fascinated by all things handmade, if he's not reading or writing he can often be found practicing leathercraft.