Onboarding email examples from GTM tools, day by day

The emails GTM tools sent after we signed up, placed on the day each arrived, with subjects as received and every capture caveat stated.

Photo of Natsuki Z.

By

Natsuki Z.

· Co-founder

Published Nov 11, 2026

· 14 min read

We make Oneprofile.

Prices checked Oct 16, 2026

Instead of

Clay logo

Clay

Table-based enrichment workflow builder

$185/mo (Launch, billed monthly)

Compared on this page

Bitscale logo
Airscale logo

Oneprofile: $20/mo (Team, billed monthly)

Prices checked Oct 16, 2026

Instead of

Clay logo

Clay

Table-based enrichment workflow builder

$185/mo (Launch, billed monthly)

Compared on this page

Bitscale logo
Airscale logo

Oneprofile: $20/mo (Team, billed monthly)

Prices checked Oct 16, 2026

Most onboarding email examples online are templates someone wrote for an article. The clock on this page shows the other kind: the emails GTM tools actually sent after we signed up, each placed on the day it arrived.

Instantly, Bitscale, Rox, Airscale, and Clay are the tools in it. To put your own sequence on a clock like this, Oneprofile, which we make, is the pick: Team is $20 a month billed monthly, and each contact gets every email and LinkedIn step on the day you set, until they reply.

Search for onboarding email examples and the first page is mostly templates: numbered lists from companies that sell email software, a Reddit thread, and a few pages about onboarding new employees. Templates show the words. They leave out the part that decides whether anyone reads them, which is the day each email lands.

The clock above is that missing half. We signed up to each tool with our own mailbox and list every email our mailbox capture kept, so you can see when a welcome came, how fast the setup nudges followed, and when the offers started. Subjects are quoted as they arrived, and no email body is published.

If you are here because you are about to write a sequence of your own, who receives it matters more than the cadence, and people search in Find leads is where that list starts.

Want to put your own steps on a clock? Build an email and LinkedIn sequence on the Free plan, with 200 credits a month, 3 tables, and 100 rows per table.

Onboarding email examples from real signups, in one answer

Read across the tools and the clearest sequences share one shape. A welcome arrives first, about the signup day, a run of setup nudges follows in the first days, and the mail then turns toward offers as the trial runs down.

The exceptions say as much as the pattern. For one tool, the welcome is the only email in the capture. Another sent its first few emails without an unsubscribe header, the way one person writes to another. And our Clay account was older than the capture, so its part of the clock shows weekly recaps, not a welcome series.

What the best onboarding email examples here have in common:

  • A subject that names one action, such as connecting your email or getting a first grid running.

  • Short gaps at the start, and longer ones once the first weeks are over.

  • A plain check-in a couple of days in. Bitscale's reads "did you get a chance to log on? here's where to start."

How to read the clock, tool by tool and day by day

The clock opens on every tool at once, counted over the first month. A few controls change what you see:

  • Tool narrows the clock to one tool, or shows them all.

  • Whole capture shows everything we kept, which for some tools runs for months past the first month.

  • Day 0 is the day the first email came. For every tool except Clay, that first email was a welcome, so day 0 is about the signup day.

  • Each dot is one email. A filled dot reached our first address, and a ring reached another address of ours.

  • Download CSV gives you the list for your own notes.

Two cautions before you compare tools. This is our own signups, not a lab test: some tools reached more than one of our addresses, from a later signup or an older account, so read each tool's caveat line before you count anything. And a tool that writes when an account goes quiet may send a busier account fewer emails, so the clock shows what our accounts received, not what every account gets.

The Kind column needs a note of its own. The List-Unsubscribe header was defined for mailing lists in RFC 2369, and Google's email sender guidelines require one-click unsubscribe on marketing mail sent at volume. So most onboarding mail carries it, and Bulk here means the email had the header, not that it was a newsletter.

Oneprofile's own sequence emails carry an unsubscribe header too. To check one of your own emails, paste its headers into our email header analyzer.

What the onboarding email examples show, tool by tool

Every email here comes from our own mailbox capture, checked Nov 10, 2026. Subjects are quoted as received, and sender addresses stay unpublished: only the sending domain shows.

  • Instantly kept writing long after the first month. Its early subjects are setup steps, then the trial ending, then offers such as free sending domains and a team that runs outbound for you. When a second address of ours started getting its mail, the welcome series started again from the top, and later a third address got its own.

  • Bitscale is the closest thing here to the onboarding email sequence examples people go looking for: a welcome on day 0, a nudge to log in, a guide to getting a first grid running, feature emails from a separate marketing subdomain, and later an offer of credits for setting up a workflow.

  • Rox sent fewer emails, and its first ones came without an unsubscribe header, which is why they read Direct. Later in the capture an announcement reached more than one of our addresses.

  • Airscale appears only with its welcome email, sent to each of our addresses that had an Airscale account.

  • Clay shows weekly recaps. Our account predates the capture, so day 0 is the first recap we kept, and nothing on Clay's line is a welcome series.

A small opinion that sells nothing: the subjects that read best here are the plain, lowercase ones that sound like a person checking in. Capital letters and emoji in a subject line probably do the opposite of what they intend in an inbox already full of them.

If you keep a swipe file of email onboarding examples, keep the day beside each subject. A good subject on day 30 is a different email from the same words on day 0.

Clay strengths and limits

Clay is the reference point for GTM data tools, so its strengths and limits are worth reading on their own.

Pros

  • A marketplace of 150+ data partners by Clay's own count, with waterfalls that stop as soon as a data source answers

  • Claygent, a web-research agent that returns structured answers with a full reasoning trace

  • Clay University courses, live cohorts and certifications, which matter more than they sound when you are learning the builder

  • SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification, so procurement is rarely the blocker

  • No Data Credits or Actions when an enrichment returns nothing, and unlimited seats on every plan

Cons

  • Two meters: Actions bill platform work, Data Credits buy marketplace data, and token-heavy AI models bill by actual tokens

  • CRM auto-sync, warehouse sync, HTTP API integrations, and webhook automation start on Growth: $495 a month billed monthly, or $446 billed annually

  • Actions never roll over, Data Credits roll over only up to 2x the monthly amount, and extra Data Credits cost 30% more

  • The free plan caps tables at 200 rows and leaves out phone enrichment

  • The Clay API itself is Enterprise only, on custom pricing with an annual commitment

What to do next with these onboarding email examples

Pick the tool whose clock looks most like the experience you want to give, then copy its timing, not its words. A few decisions come first:

  • Name the one action a new contact should take, and point every early email at it.

  • Put the first email on day 0 and the next one a couple of days later, while the reader still remembers you.

  • Decide what ends the sequence: the action, a reply, or a date.

  • Send the whole thing to yourself before anyone else gets it.

Instantly sent more as its trial ran out. More mail is the easy lever, and in practice probably the weaker one.

"Playing the numbers game in outreach is expensive and wasteful. A better tool lifts your reply rate far more than sending more ever will."

Utku Zihnioglu, CEO of Oneprofile

In Oneprofile, a sequence is that clock written down once. Each step carries its wait on the top edge of its card, such as 3 days, and Right away means no wait. A new email campaign opens on three emails, on day 0, day 3, and day 7, which the agent writes for each contact, and you can add LinkedIn steps between them.

A reply stops that contact's sequence the moment it arrives and lands in one inbox. Emails go out as plain text by default, from Gmail on your Google Workspace domain.

For outbound rather than onboarding, our guide to the B2B cold email sequence, with steps and timing covers the cadence, and the cold email outreach sequence checker reads your steps one at a time.

Get started free and build your first sequence on the Free plan's 200 credits a month, with 1 seat, up to 3 integrations, and 3 tables of 100 rows.

What Clay and the tools here cost

Each tool bills per workspace and counts credits its own way, so compare what a plan includes. Billed monthly, the entry paid plans are Airscale Starter at $49, Clay Launch at $185, Bitscale Growth at $349, and Oneprofile Team at $20. Prices checked Oct 16, 2026.

Clay

Per workspace, sized on two meters (Actions and Data Credits); unlimited seats on every plan

  1. Free$0per workspace, unlimited seats500 actions and 100 data credits a month; up to 200 rows per table
  2. Launch$185/mobilled monthly, per workspace, unlimited seats15,000 actions and 2,500 data credits a month (180,000 actions and 30,000 data credits a year on annual billing); up to 50,000 rows per table
  3. GrowthCRM sync from this plan$495/mobilled monthly, per workspace, unlimited seats40,000 actions and 6,000 data credits a month (480,000 actions and 72,000 data credits a year on annual billing)
  4. EnterpriseCustom pricingunlimited seatsCustom; the FAQ says 100,000+ data credits and 200,000+ actions a month

Prices checked Oct 16, 2026, clay.com/pricing

What each Clay plan costs, billed monthly, as each pricing page lists it. Prices checked Oct 16, 2026. Sources: clay.com/pricing.

Entry paid plans, billed monthly: Airscale Starter $49, Clay Launch $185, Bitscale Growth $349, Oneprofile Team $20. Each counts credits its own way.

Tool
5 tools sent 1 to 15 emails in the first 30 daysMost: Instantly, 15. Fewest: Airscale, 1. Day 0 is the first email.

Every email, by day: 33 in days 0 to 30

  1. Day 0Welcome to Instantly ⚡ Let’s get you startedInstantly · instantly.ai · Bulk · Arrived Jun 29, 2026
  2. Day 0Welcome to Bitscale - your first move starts hereBitscale · support.bitscale.ai · Bulk · Arrived Oct 17, 2026
  3. Day 0Automate your GTM research with BitAgentBitscale · marketing.bitscale.ai · Bulk · Arrived Oct 17, 2026
  4. Day 0Your week in Clay (Aug 03 - Aug 09)Clay · clay.com · Bulk · Arrived Aug 11, 2026
  5. Day 0Welcome to Rox!Rox · rox.com · Direct · Arrived Sep 9, 2026
  6. Day 0Welcome on board ! How to get the most out of AirscaleAirscale · airscale.io · Bulk · Arrived Aug 7, 2026
  7. Day 2Meet your always-on deliverability agentInstantly · instantly.ai · Bulk · Arrived Jul 1, 2026
  8. Day 2Connect your email in 2 minutes (we’ll handle the rest)Instantly · instantly.ai · Bulk · Arrived Jul 1, 2026
43 more emails after day 30.
Data checked Nov 10, 2026Sources

We signed up to each tool with our own mailbox and list every email from it that our mailbox capture kept, with its subject as received. Day 0 is the day the first email came. For every tool here except Clay that first email was a welcome email, so day 0 is about the day we signed up.

Kind comes from the email's headers: bulk mail carries an unsubscribe header, direct mail does not. Most onboarding emails go out as bulk mail, so kind cannot tell a newsletter from an onboarding step. Bulk: Sent with an unsubscribe header, as bulk mail. Direct: Sent without an unsubscribe header, like a one-to-one email.

Some tools reached more than one of our addresses, from a later signup or an older account. Address 1 is the first one that got mail, and days 0 to 30 are address 1 for every tool.

Instantly: Three of our addresses got Instantly mail. Days 0 to 30 are the first address only. On day 84 a second address of ours started the onboarding emails again, and on day 109 a third address started its own.

Clay: The capture starts after signup: our account was older than the capture, so day 0 is the first weekly recap we kept, not a welcome email.

Rox: The first three emails came without an unsubscribe header. The day 37 email reached two of our addresses, so it is listed twice.

Airscale: All three are the same welcome email, each sent to a different address of ours that had an Airscale account. No other Airscale email is in the capture.

Subjects are quoted as received. Bodies are never published, and only the sending domain is shown, never the sender.

Source: our own mailbox capture (marketing/email/intel/sequences/instantly.yaml, marketing/email/intel/sequences/bitscale.yaml, marketing/email/intel/sequences/clay.yaml, marketing/email/intel/sequences/rox.yaml, marketing/email/intel/sequences/airscale.yaml).

Clay alternatives at a glance

Bitscale logo

Bitscale

Best for: SOC 2 Type II and a waterfall order you set yourself

Bitscale is an enrichment workspace with buying signals, an AI research agent on each record, and a waterfall whose order you set. Growth is $349 a month billed monthly ($314 billed annually) for 15,000 credits and carries the HubSpot integration; Salesforce starts on Booster at $799 a month billed monthly. Its pricing FAQ lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, and says failed lookups cost nothing.

Does well

Its pricing FAQ lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001

A waterfall order you set, and your own data source API keys

Falls short

Paid plans start at $349 a month, billed monthly

Salesforce waits for Booster at $799 a month, billed monthly

Entry price: $349/mo (Growth, billed monthly)

Source: bitscale.ai/pricing

Airscale logo

Airscale

Best for: Bulk lookups on one credit balance, with unlimited users

Airscale sells lead sourcing and enrichment from 30+ data partners on one credit balance. Starter is $49 a month billed monthly ($490 a year) for 4,000 credits, with unlimited users and credits that never expire while you stay subscribed. A verified work email is 2 credits, and nothing when none is found. Exports go to CRMs and email sequencers, and it offers a 14-day free trial rather than a free plan.

Does well

Unlimited users, and credits never expire while you subscribe

A verified work email is 2 credits, and nothing when none is found

Falls short

No free plan, only a 14-day free trial

Your own API keys and HTTP API enrichments start on Growth

Entry price: $49/mo (Starter, billed monthly)

Source: airscale.io/pricing

Oneprofile

Best for: Email and LinkedIn sequences where each step waits the days you set

Oneprofile finds the people to write to and their work emails, then sends email and LinkedIn sequences from the same list. Each step waits the days you set, the agent writes each email for its contact, and a reply stops that contact's sequence the moment it arrives and lands in one inbox. Emails go out as plain text by default, from Gmail on your Google Workspace domain. Team is $20 a month billed monthly for 1,000 credits that never expire, with unlimited seats.

Does well

Each step waits the days you set, and a reply stops the sequence

Email and LinkedIn steps in one sequence, with replies in one inbox

Falls short

Oneprofile sends only from Gmail on a Google Workspace domain, so a team that runs its mail on Microsoft 365 needs another sender.

Get started free

See how it works

Free plan: 200 credits a month, 3 integrations, no card

Keep your tools, and put your own sequence on a clock

Keeping Clay?

Keeping Clay for the tables your ops person built? Run email and LinkedIn sequences in Oneprofile beside it: each step waits the days you set, and a reply stops that contact at once. Team is $20 a month, billed monthly.

1

Read the clock for one tool

Pick a tool above and note when its welcome came, when the setup nudges stopped, and when the offers began.

2

Name the first action

Write down the one thing a new contact should do first. Every early email should point at it.

3

Set the days between steps

On the Builder tab, click the wait on a step's card and type the days. Right away means no wait.

4

Send yourself a test

Send test mails you a copy with the same signature, footer, and unsubscribe header as the real email.

5

Launch, and let replies stop it

A reply stops that contact's sequence the moment it arrives, and the conversation lands in one inbox.

Get started free

Free plan: 200 credits a month, 3 integrations, no card

More on email sequences

How we compared

Where the facts come from

Each tool's prices and plans come from its own pricing page, read on the date shown. Oneprofile's come from our own plan and enrichment catalogs. We make Oneprofile, and we do not score or star-rate tools.

How we research and compare tools

Sources and dates checked

Every email in the clock comes from our own mailbox: we signed up to each tool and kept the emails that arrived, with each subject as received and only the sending domain shown. Day 0 is the day the first email came. For every tool except Clay, whose account predates the capture, that was a welcome email, so day 0 is about the signup day. Some tools reached more than one of our addresses, and the first month is counted from the first address only. Tools with fewer than three emails in the capture are left out, and email bodies are never published.

  • Onboarding emails: our own mailbox capture, checked Nov 10, 2026

  • Clay: clay.com/pricing, checked Oct 16, 2026

  • Airscale: airscale.io/pricing, checked Oct 16, 2026

  • Bitscale: bitscale.ai/pricing, checked Oct 16, 2026

  • Oneprofile: getoneprofile.ai/pricing and docs.getoneprofile.ai, checked Nov 10, 2026

Search results for this query were read on Nov 10, 2026.

Onboarding email examples: common questions

What are good onboarding email examples?

The useful ones show timing as well as words: when the welcome arrives, when setup nudges stop, and when offers begin. The clock on this page lays out real onboarding email examples from GTM tools by the day each arrived, with every subject as received.

How many emails should an onboarding sequence have?

There is no fixed number. The tools here range from a single welcome email to mail that kept coming months after signup. Start with one email for each action you need from a new user, and stop once they take it.

What should the first onboarding email say?

Welcome the reader and point at one first action. The welcome emails here came first, about the signup day, and several early subjects that followed named one step, such as connecting your email or getting a first grid running.

Are onboarding emails sent as bulk mail?

By their headers, usually yes. Nearly every email in the capture carried an unsubscribe header, the mark of list mail, so the header alone cannot tell an onboarding step from a newsletter. Oneprofile's own sequence emails carry an unsubscribe header too.

Did you sign up to each tool once, with a fresh address?

No. Some tools reached more than one of our addresses, from a later signup or an older account, and our Clay account was older than the capture. The first month is counted from our first address only, and each tool's caveat says what happened.

How do I time the steps of my own email sequence?

Set a wait before each step. In Oneprofile the wait sits on the top edge of a step's card, such as 3 days, and Right away means no wait. A new email campaign opens on three emails, on day 0, day 3, and day 7, and a reply stops that contact's sequence.

About this article

Photo of Natsuki Z.

Natsuki Z.

Co-founder

Managed product across proxy infrastructure and developer APIs at scale. Now leads product at Oneprofile, which finds the right people, researches each one, and follows up until they reply.

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Drafted with AI from our product docs and code. Natsuki Z. answers for what it says.

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Start free with 200 credits a month, 3 tables, and 100 rows per table. A reply stops a contact's sequence the moment it arrives.

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