Welcome Email Sequence

Plans a welcome email series with send timing, one goal per email, and the CAN-SPAM elements every message in the series has to carry. Written for US marketing teams that onboard new subscribers and new customers by email.

Use this skill when someone asks for:

• welcome email sequence
• welcome email drip campaign plan
• onboarding email sequence timing
• can-spam welcome email

The job

Teams write six emails that all sell the same thing, send them on the same day, and the subscriber stops opening after the second one.

What you get

1. Collect the trigger, the goal of the series and the one action the series should drive.
2. Give every email a single goal and a single next step, then set the send days in order.
3. Write the subject line and the one line that says what the email will deliver.
4. Add the legal elements to every send in the series, and check that each message still makes sense on its own.

Output contract:

• plan - dated sends with the day, the goal, the subject line and the call to action
• email_rows - one row per send with the body placeholder and the goal
• legal_elements - the sender identity, postal address, opt-out and reason for writing on every send
• reason_to_write - why each subscriber receives this series, tied to the trigger
• claim_checks - every claim paired with the source the team must supply

US specifics that matter

• A welcome email triggered by a signup is a commercial message, so the CAN-SPAM postal address, opt-out notice and 10 business day opt-out rule apply to it.
• The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says a message counts as commercial when the subject line or the body would lead a reasonable recipient to think it advertises a product or service, even when transactional content is mixed in.
• Gmail requires one-click unsubscribe on marketing and subscribed-list messages from senders of 5,000 or more messages a day.
• The FTC's Endorsement Guides put the duty to disclose a material connection on both the reviewer and the brand, not on the platform.

Guardrails (hard rules)

• Never treat a welcome email as transactional and drop the opt-out because the recipient signed up.
• Never claim a result in a welcome email that the team has not sourced.
• Never send the series; the lifecycle manager schedules it in their own platform.
• Never reuse a subscriber's name or signup details in the copy beyond what the signup form collected.

Quickstart

1. Fill in the brief

templates/welcome-sequence-plan.yaml is the starting point. Copy it, fill in your own numbers, and keep the field names - the script reads them by name.

2. Run the script

python3 scripts/build_welcome_calendar.py --input welcome-sequence-plan.yaml --out ./out

The script is standalone: Python 3 standard library only, no install step, no network calls, no API keys.

3. Check the result against the reference

references/welcome-sequence-rules.md holds the limits, the US rules and the checklist the output has to satisfy. Read it before you send anything to a customer or a platform.

One job per email

• Welcome email: deliver what the signup promised, and nothing else.
• Second email: show the product or service doing the job it was signed up for.
• Middle emails: answer the objections that show up in the replies.
• Last email: one offer, one deadline if there is a real one, one call to action.

Timing

• Day 0 belongs to the confirmation, not to a pitch.
• Space the series so each email has something new to say.
• A plan with a day for every send lets the team skip a day without breaking the sequence.

Legal elements on every send

• Sender name, postal address and a working opt-out on each message.
• The reason the recipient is receiving mail, tied to the signup.
• An opt-out honored within 10 business days, and a mechanism that stays live for 30 days.

The Windows app (optional)

The workflow above runs anywhere Python 3 runs. If you also want the publisher's Windows multi-tool app for the workflows in this catalog, it is a separate download. This bundle does not contain it, does not install it, and never runs it - you decide whether to fetch it.

Check the download before you run it. PowerShell:

Get-FileHash .\multitool.zip -Algorithm SHA256

The hash must match the value in the table. Then extract the archive and start multitool/toolkit.exe.

The program is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen shows Unknown publisher. Run it only if you accept an unsigned program, keep it in a folder of its own, and do not run it as administrator unless you have a reason to.

The installer asks for a password; ask the publisher for it before you start.

Files in this bundle

• SKILL.md - this file
• references/welcome-sequence-rules.md - Building a welcome series that stays legal and readable
• templates/welcome-sequence-plan.yaml - the brief to fill in
• scripts/build_welcome_calendar.py - the working script

Verify the bundle

python3 scripts/build_welcome_calendar.py --input welcome-sequence-plan.yaml --out ./out

Related

• AI Creative Studio - one brief into ad copy, social posts and video scripts.
• B2B Lead Research Agent - find the US accounts to run this against.
• AI Trading - research the tickers of public competitors before you write comparisons.
• Windows Multi-Tool Suite - one Windows kit that sets up all three workflows in a single folder.