Orient, do not sell
The structural rule is to tell a new subscriber where they have landed and what happens next. A pitch in the first email spends trust you have not earned yet.
Preview
What's inside
What's inside this welcome email template, module by module.
Read off the file itself, not a spec sheet. This is the module order the download actually ships with, in the order a reader meets them.
- Greeting hero
- Greeting
- Intro copy
- Primary CTA
- Signoff & avatar
- Secondary CTA hideable
- Brand statement
Import
How to import this template into Mailchimp, step by step.
The download is a single HTML file. Here is where it goes in Mailchimp, what the platform expects, and which tags are already wired up.
- Open Email templates and choose Create template.
- Pick Code your own, then Paste in code.
- Paste the downloaded HTML and save the template.
- Replace every placeholder before you send — image sources, link targets, product and price copy, the sender name and the footer address. Anything marked mc:edit is editable in the campaign builder, so most of this needs no HTML.
- Start a campaign from the saved template.
Plan Custom-coded templates are a paid-plan feature. Mailchimp’s free tier does not offer the code-your-own path.
Editing This is a Classic template. Every region marked mc:edit opens in the campaign builder as an editable region with a WYSIWYG toolbar, so a non-technical teammate can change copy and images without touching HTML. Classic and the Drag-and-Drop builder are not interchangeable — an imported HTML template always lands in Classic.
Watch for Do not paste this into the Drag-and-Drop builder. There is no path from custom HTML into a Drag-and-Drop template — importing as code-your-own always yields a Classic template, which is what the mc: regions are built for.
Swapping the placeholder images
A custom-HTML template opens in Mailchimp’s legacy builder. Click the image, open the source view on that editable region, and replace the src with an image from your Mailchimp file manager — those URLs start with mcusercontent.com. The rest of the block can stay as it is.
Shortcut You can skip this entirely. Connect Mailchimp under Connectors in the studio and EmailTemple transfers the files over the API when it pushes the template, so there is no source code to edit. Connectors are on the Starter and Pro plans.
How to use it
When to send this welcome email, and what to change first.
When to send it
The first email of a welcome automation, triggered on confirmed subscription. It sends immediately, because the moment right after signup is the one moment you have someone’s full attention, and it decays fast. The job is orientation: who you are, what arrives, how often. Not an offer. The trigger is set on your Mailchimp audience, not in the template.
What to change first
The copy makes a specific promise — “one short email every Tuesday” — and it is written for an SEO newsletter. Replace both with your cadence and your subject, because a welcome email describing someone else’s product is worse than no welcome at all. The header logo hotlinks an external blob URL rather than a file you control, so upload your own and repoint it before the first send. “Read the greatest hits” goes to mywebsite.com/archive and the promo link “Get a free audit” goes to mywebsite.com/audit. The sign-off reads “Cheers, The Founder” beside a placeholder avatar. The footer carries “YourBusinessName”, a New York address and hello@yourbusiness.com.
The craft
What makes a welcome email worth sending.
Exactly one CTA
One primary button, no second. A welcome email with three competing actions has no action. Secondary paths belong in arrow-links, not buttons.
First person, short sentences
Warm and written, not corporate. A founder note and a small rounded avatar do more for trust here than any hero image, which is why the archetype skips large hero art entirely.
Or refine this
Make this email template yours.
Generate your own with this template as a starting point. Change the colors, the voice, the offer — describe what you want different and the studio recomposes it. Apply your brand kit and ship in your tone, not the template's.
The download is yours either way.
Open this template in the studio →
Questions
Mailchimp template questions, answered.
Can I import a custom HTML template on Mailchimp’s free plan?
No. The code-your-own path is a paid-plan feature — Mailchimp’s free tier does not expose custom-coded templates. Everything else about this template is free and unrestricted.
Will my team be able to edit this without touching HTML?
Yes, for the regions marked editable. Each mc:edit region opens in the campaign builder with a WYSIWYG toolbar, so copy and images can change per send while the layout stays fixed.
How many emails should a welcome series have?
Match the depth to how warm the audience is, not to a template. The documented range runs from a single activation email through to six or seven, and the constant across all of them is one action per email with a single clear CTA.
Does Welcome — Mailchimp hold up in dark mode and Outlook?
Every zone sets its background twice — once as a bgcolor attribute and once as an inline background-color — which is the pattern that survives dark-mode inversion in clients that repaint backgrounds.
The “Read the greatest hits” button is a bulletproof VML button, so Outlook on Windows draws a real filled button instead of collapsing it to a bare text link.
The layout is a 600px table backbone with a mobile breakpoint, and the CSS is already inlined for the clients that strip style blocks.
In the studio
Compose your own.
Describe what you want to send. Get a high-converting, dark-mode-safe template in seconds. Free tier, three generations a month, no card required.