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Welcome Series

A welcome series is an automation that greets new subscribers the moment they join your project. It's the most common automation and often the first one you'll set up.

Creating a Welcome Automation

  1. Navigate to your project and open Automations.
  2. Create a new automation and choose On Subscribe as the trigger.
  3. Add a Send Email action and select the draft you want to send.
  4. Give your automation a name (e.g., "Welcome Email") and activate it.

That's it — every new subscriber will now receive your welcome email automatically.

On Subscribe ──► Send Email

Tip

Each project can have one welcome automation. If you already have one, you'll need to deactivate it before creating a replacement.

Adding More Steps

A welcome series doesn't have to be a single email. You can chain multiple steps with wait nodes in between:

On Subscribe ──► Send Email ──► Wait 2 days ──► Send Email ──► Wait 5 days ──► Set Tag
       │              │                              │                            │
    "Welcome!"   "Getting Started"          "Pro Tips"                  "onboarded"

This gives new subscribers a guided introduction to your app over the first week, then tags them as onboarded so you can target them differently in future campaigns.

Backfill Guard

When you activate a welcome automation, you probably don't want every existing subscriber to receive a welcome email — only people who subscribe after you turn it on.

MailJawn handles this automatically with a backfill guard. Here's how it works:

When you activate the automation, MailJawn records an activated_at timestamp. When a new subscriber event arrives, MailJawn compares the subscriber's first_seen date against activated_at. If the subscriber existed before the automation was activated, they're skipped.

Example Scenario

Imagine you have 500 subscribers and you create a welcome automation on March 1st:

Subscriber First Seen Enrolled? Why
Alice February 15 No First seen before March 1 activation
Bob March 2 Yes First seen after March 1 activation
Carol March 5 Yes First seen after March 1 activation

If you later pause and re-activate the automation on March 10, the activated_at timestamp resets to March 10. Bob and Carol won't receive duplicate welcome emails because the enrollment rules prevent concurrent active enrollments.

Note

The backfill guard compares first_seen (when the subscriber was first added) against the automation's activated_at timestamp. Subscribers who were added via CSV import before activation won't receive welcome emails — which is almost always what you want.

Draft Snapshot

When a subscriber is enrolled in a welcome automation, MailJawn takes a snapshot of the draft's content at that moment — subject line, HTML body, and MJML source. This snapshot is stored with the enrollment and is what the subscriber actually receives.

This means:

  • Editing the draft after enrollment does not change what already-enrolled subscribers will receive. Their email was locked in when they joined.
  • Editing the draft before new subscribers join means future subscribers get the updated version.

Tip

Think of it like printing a letter. Once it's in the envelope (enrolled), changing the original document doesn't affect what's already been sent. But the next letter you print will use the updated version.

The snapshot applies to the first Send Email node in the automation. If your series has multiple emails, subsequent Send Email nodes fetch the draft fresh from the database at execution time. See Drip Sequences for details.

What's Next

  • Drip Sequences — Extend your welcome series into a full multi-step onboarding flow
  • Managing Enrollments — Monitor which subscribers are progressing through your automation