
Lifecycle Messaging - epi0Bauqu
http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/05/lifecycle-messa.html
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raja
Many startups undervalue the importance of knowing their customer/user half
life. It's vital to know the relationship between user acquisition and churn
and I can not reccomend enough setting up a daily reporting system (even a
plain text email from a crontab script) that gives you a sense of your
startups heartbeat against historicals (prev day, 2 weeks, 3 months, 1 yr).

Also, a lot of startups develop these wonderful signup systems and acquire
user emails but fail to realize the potential of ambient messaging. Even if
they don't read the email, it keeps your users thinking about you. RescueTime
does an excellent job with their email marketing. Not only is it pertinent,
but I find myself going back to RescueTime more often because of my level of
awareness for their product. The lack of user retention initiatives in my
first startup was likely the ultimate driver of its inability to build
community despite a very strong launch (it was still acquired for its tech
assets/hr). Now, working on strong online properties, I can see the impact of
reaching out to your users. Dollar for dollar, I think email has the highest
roi. Much more so than your run of the mill facebook app.

"The most significant finding from our usability research on email newsletters
is that users have highly emotional reactions to them. This is in strong
contrast to research on website usability, where users are usually much more
oriented toward functionality. Even a website that users visit daily seems to
feel like a tool: users want to get in and get out as quickly as possible
rather than “connect” with the site. Users tend to glance at websites when
they need to accomplish something or to find the answer to a specific
question. In contrast, newsletters feel personal because they arrive in users’
inboxes, and users have an ongoing relationship with them. Newsletters also
have a social aspect, as users often forward them to colleagues and friends.
The positive aspect of this emotional relationship is that newsletters can
create much more of a bond between users and a company than a website can." -
<http://www.nngroup.com/reports/newsletters/summary.html>

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subpixel
"Even a website that users visit daily seems to feel like a tool: users want
to get in and get out as quickly as possible rather than “connect” with the
site."

This is great advice and makes me think of the recently failed Nau -
<http://nau.com> \- they tried so hard to make their web site "engaging" that
they wound up making it impossible to shop there. If they had a really simple
site and Threadless-quality emails things might have worked out.

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fubar
As usual Josh nails it with an incredibly useful post. I highly recommend
watching Josh's blog for pearls like this one.

