
How to Send Email Like a Startup - bvanvugt
https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide/
======
moe
And then there's the tldr version that everyone seems to be actually using:

1\. Send at least one mail per day to urge your user to try out a random
feature that he doesn't care about.

2\. Make sure every mail claims to be "not a bot", "not automatic", "I'm a
real human!!1".

3\. Close every mail with an offer to be available at any time for everything
and anything. Make sure your user knows that he can call your CEO at 5 in the
morning if he feels a sudden urge to have a personal product tour.

4\. Mention at least two awesome webinars in every e-mail. Send regular
reminders about webinars.

5\. Also send invitations for every congress, meetup, bbq party, that you are
however involved with.

~~~
reledi
6\. Don't explain/remind in the email what your product does, because
"Squinderly" is such an obvious name.

~~~
corobo
Oh man this is my biggest peeve from startups. As someone interested in other
peoples' projects I sign up to a lot of mail lists like this. Please just hint
as to what it is you do if your first email is over a couple of days after
I've signed up

------
cessor
I believe I had mentioned this before - and received a lot of downvotes for
it: I, as a user, wish not to be bothered with emails.

I often just briefly want to see what the fuzz is all about. The app then
"tricks me" into providing them with an email address, by pretending they need
this as an identifier, most of the time in order to create an account. They
then feel free to send me "Greg from blahblah app"-Emails.

To me, this is spam. It is an email I do not want. To me there is no
difference between a random spammer who wants to sell fake viagra and Greg
from blahblah app, who wants me to use his cloud-driven javascript thingy.

I believe there is a role missing, in the view on customer relationships. Just
because I am looking at things in your store doesn't mean I want to be treated
as a customer already. I believe there should be a differentiation between
somebody who already bought something and somebody who is about to.
Aggressively sending email at any chance isn't the way to make this
transformation, imho.

~~~
dkrich
So, focusing strictly on the business side of things, you have two user
groups:

1) Users who have some interest and may purchase your product.

2) Users who "just briefly want to see what all the fuzz is all about" but
"don't want to be treated as a customer already."

User group 1 may very well respond to your emails because they already have
some interest in your product and the benefit it could provide them. These
users like to read about ways to help themselves, thus probably don't consider
email related to the product they are interested in as spam.

User group 2 is not interested in the product. We know that. Therefore few, if
any, are ever going to pay you for it.

So, why as a business owner, would you care about annoying people in User
group 2 (who could always just opt-out of the emails) at the expense of
accelerating people in User group 1 through the funnel and paying you more?

~~~
tehabe
On the other hand, group 2 are the ones who you need to really convince. Group
1 is already convinced. So if you spam group 2, you might lose them completely
and group 1 you don't really need to spam.

~~~
dkrich
No, Group 1 describes users who are interested in your product but, for
whatever reason, have not yet made the purchase. Maybe they're on the fence
about whether they need it, or are deciding between two or three products. The
purpose of the emails is to help tilt them over to making the decision to go
ahead with the purchase.

Users in group 2 are never going to be interested enough to purchase the
product. No email will convince them to. That's why whether you "spam" them or
not (I would argue that it is not spam if you gave the site your email address
with the understanding you may get emails from them) they are not going to
purchase your product, so what difference does it make if they are annoyed by
the emails?

------
bevacqua
Took the liberty of turning it into markdown so people can collaborate on the
guide.

[https://github.com/sourceful/send-email-as-a-
startup](https://github.com/sourceful/send-email-as-a-startup)

~~~
mrmch
This is amazing, we never considered making the guide open source/community
driven. Many of our other resources already are.

We'll fork your markdown version this weekend and make the guide we host
github powered.

~~~
bevacqua
`hget` is pretty awesome in that regard, being able to quickly convert an
entire page into Markdown using a simple CLI is very powerful.

Glad it's useful!

~~~
zo1
Link here:
[https://github.com/bevacqua/hget](https://github.com/bevacqua/hget)

------
jccalhoun
Whoever is telling web companies that it is a good idea to suddenly start
mailing "newsletters" to people that signed up for accounts is lying to them.
Over the past year or so I've started getting emails from web sites I haven't
visited in years - for example I signed into an old hotmail account and
apparently fark is sending out newsletters now?

The only thing these things do is make me click unsubscribe and make a mental
note that the site sucks.

~~~
csbrooks
Have they lost anything when you do that, though? You weren't really a
customer or user anymore anyway, and now they can figure that out.

If they send out that email to 100 people, and 95 inactive users unsubscribe
but 5 become active users again, that's a huge net gain for them, right?

------
Pephers
What a great resource, bookmarked!

Of course much of this has been written about in various blog posts, but
having it all compiled in a single resource is very handy, especially when
being in the startup phase of a SaaS business selling booking software
([https://zapla.co](https://zapla.co)). I'll definitely be implementing a lot
of this advice!

~~~
veb
Seconded. This is my 5th bookmark of the year. Wonderful resource.

~~~
mrmch
Thanks veb! We're still adding to the guide so it'll be even more useful soon.

------
shalnoff
This article actually explains how to make your client hate you and your
business.

Dear colelagues, please don't use HTML email notifications as far as some
technically advanced people just turn HTML off to a) reduse valnurability
(i.e. see all links and remove possible frames, img & JS) b) make email
processing faster and less resource consumptive

IMHO I see just one common and most important rule of email notifications. it
must be simple as possible and not obstructive. And please never force client
to register and leave email without real necessity. Minimize it and keep
simpe. Then your audience (smart and most referenced group of it, at least)
will love you.

------
thebiglebrewski
Spam people until they unsubscribe?

~~~
username223
Best tl;dr on the thread. I tolerate quite a bit of email pestering from
companies with this approach; the majority of what hits my inbox is dealt with
by pressing the "delete" key in less than a second, without reading anything
beyond the subject line. For the ones who get too aggressive, I just filter
their spam directly to the trash rather than dealing with their usually
dishonest "unsubscribe" process. I'm not interested in being "onboarded" or
shoved through a "sales funnel."

------
dreeves
Really good advice here. One thing I particularly liked is the advice to email
the first 1000 users manually and only set up automated drip campaigns as a
way to automate what you find yourself sending over and over.

I'd also like to add this PSA: Don't send automated emails that pretend to be
from a human.
[http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot](http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot) (Blog
post, "Don't Be a Smarmbot", in which I argue with @patio11 about this.)

------
oblio
Minor nitpick: surely the title should actually be "How to Send Email as a
Startup". The current phrasing seems a bit odd - especially considering the
fact that it is a lecture on reaching out to potential future customers :)

------
tehabe
I was disappointed. I hoped for a satirical view on what weird emails I get
from sites but no. :-(

------
stevebot
percent of acquisition emails that I click through: zero

~~~
chrisan
The Ministry of Statistics thanks you for your contribution. We have noted
your click through rate and have added it to our population sample.

------
curiously
I like that first 1000 customers you must touch them personally.

My biggest hinderance is getting a phone number that won't cost a fortune to
call people in US or abroad from Canada. some Canadian telecom companies
absolutely adore ripping people off when it comes to dialing other countries
as if we were in the 1980s.

Basically I want to approach my customers with a call me number that won't
cost them a lot and won't cost me a lot to talk on.

I'm still reading through this wonderful guide it is ripe with useful
information.

~~~
dangrossman
Use the dialer in Hangouts (Android's default messaging app), and calls to US
and Canada are free. VOIP is the answer to free or nearly free calls with all
your customers. You can get an 800 number for ~$2/month to make it toll-free
for them.

~~~
curiously
I have hangouts on my android phone but I don't know what my hangout number
is.

The $2/month, where can I find that?

All in all, I want to talk with my customers and do a tech demo (would need a
tool to share screen as well).

~~~
mrmch
Hangouts can still work for this, you can do a screenshare in a video hangout.
Requires everyone to have google accounts though (personal or business).

There are also numerous great conference/screen share tools out there, like
speek.com

~~~
curiously
how do you find out your hangout number so that people can call you at that
number?

~~~
zo1
Looks like you need to sign up for Google Voice to get/choose the number:

[https://support.google.com/voice/answer/150640?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/150640?hl=en)

~~~
curiously
darn it I cannot get a google voice as I'm in Canada.

