Five. A welcome sequence should have five emails, sent over roughly two weeks: a delivery email within minutes of signup, then a story email, a proof email, an objection email, and a direct ask. Three is the floor, Klaviyo's own playbook tells customers to start with three over a week, and past six you are burning goodwill before you have earned any. Adjust for what you sell: three for a newsletter, four or five for ecommerce, five or six for SaaS and services, where the decision is bigger and needs more argument.
The number matters because this is the most attention your list will ever give you. GetResponse's analysis of 4.4 billion sends puts welcome emails at an 83.63 percent open rate and a 16.60 percent click rate, against 40.08 and 3.84 for a regular newsletter. Roughly four times the clicks of anything you will send later. Sending one welcome email and going quiet wastes the only window where people actually want to hear from you.
This guide gives you the full build: the exact spacing between each email and why the gaps widen, what each of the five emails says for a SaaS trial, an ecommerce store, a newsletter, and a service business, with copy skeletons for each, plus the 2026 problem nobody warns you about: Apple Mail Privacy Protection has made open rates fiction, so a sequence that branches on opens is branching on noise. You will learn what to trigger on instead, how often to email once the sequence ends, and how to steal abandoned cart mechanics even if you have no cart.