

Email Patterns for Web Apps - aytekin
https://medium.com/start-up-vision/c6303f3b6e8c

======
kjhughes
Taxonomies are great. Patterns are great.

    
    
      People expect emails from products they love.
    

Rationalizations for spamming customers: Not so great.

People are sensitive to how you handle the privilege of having their email
address. You must be extra careful to avoid looking like a spammer and
eliciting the response that's completely opposite from what you want. While it
may be in _your_ interest to keep in your customers' face frequently, it is
not in _their_ interest.

I recently received an email reminder from a company about daylight savings
time. Not good. #22 on OP's list is "Seasonal Greetings". Again, not good.

Apply this test before you mass mail your customers: _Would I want to get a
similar email from the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of companies with which I
have accounts?_

~~~
nmcfarl
I don't think that's the right test - because it would mean i would get no
emails at all.

From some minority companies, I expect, and frankly demand, a monthly receipt
for others I'd rather you didn't spam me with the thing.

I have no problem with the only emails I get from my dentist, being schedule
reminders and a cheesy ecard for Christmas. Frankly I think it's cute, and re-
enforces their brand as a small company.

The test should be much closer to: does this email make our customers happier?

~~~
kjhughes
Ah, but it's a better test than the one you're suggesting. Here's why:

Yes, I would expect monthly receipts where billing is concerned from all
companies with which I have an account. Reminders for true appointments are
also ok across the board (but I'd prefer to be able to disable and rely upon
my own calendar, but fine). These possibilities are consistent with the test I
suggest.

No, I do not want "cheesy ecards" from every (or any) company. This
possibility is precisely precluded from the test I suggest by design. If you
want this from _all_ of the companies with which you have accounts, I'm
surprised.

    
    
      The test should be much closer to: does this email make our customers happier?
    

Unfortunately, this test is too vague when companies think that "people expect
emails from products they love" so much so that they believe seasonal
greetings and daylight savings reminders will make their customer happy. If
companies stop and think first what would happen if every company followed
their lead, their decision making might be a bit more objectively informed.

At best, companies who abuse their customers' email accounts as the OP
suggests rationalize that it makes their customers happy. At worst, they'll
take small percentage of increased sales at the expense of annoying the rest
of their customer base and just not care.

~~~
nmcfarl
What is inconsistent is that I consider some receipts spamº. As a matter of
fact I consider A LOT of transactional mail spam.

And under the test of "would I want to get a similar email" from all the
companies I do business with, I’d have to say I want no mail at all. But
that’s not the truth - I want emails that are helpful, and not emails that are
pointless.

What’s helpful and pointless varies from recipient to recipient - but it also
varies from company to company - some mails that are appropriate for other
companies are not for yours. And vis versa. A blanket rule that if one kind of
mail is unacceptable if everyone sends is unacceptable for anyone to send
really isn’t true. There needs to be a middle ground.

I think my rule is fine - if the person using the test is close enough to me
in what they want. Perhaps your rule is fine, if the person is closer to you.
This is probably why this is so hard - we can’t even formulate a rule that
people of good faith can follow to build an acceptable policy.

º Spam receipts I my company gets include every mail from AT&T, Zendesk, and
Safari Books where we're just paying the standard monthly charge. Overages -
those I’d like to know about but of course we don’t get those kinds of
_useful_ emails - we get those when do the books.

------
eximius
Um... No... I do not want 25+ e-mails a week from a service.
([https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1400/1*RgON1O9C4Ot...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1400/1*RgON1O9C4OtOtkH5Idj9jQ.png)
WHO WOULD WANT THIS?)

This is literally the exact opposite of what I want. Your e-mails will
immediately go into a label and they will not be read. Please, no one ever.
do. this.

EDIT: Half of them are redundant too!?

~~~
aytekin
You should definitely not send 25 emails a week. I wouldn't advise that. Just
so you understand where I am coming from: We have been sending 4 emails per
year in the past. To improve the quality and quantity of emails we send I have
done this research and shared this knowledge in the post.

When I signed up for loggly they sent me one email every day for a month. I
could have unsubscribed but I didn't. Because the emails contained tutorials
about the service and I wanted to know more about how their service worked. I
can't say I read every email, but I have at least took a glance of the
screenshots in the tutorials. So, sometimes if you like the product you want
to receive emails. It is a good thing as long as it is extremely easy to
unsubscribe.

~~~
mgkimsal
"It is a good thing as long as it is extremely easy to unsubscribe"

There will never be agreement on this point. Some people will always view
incoming email as bad by default, not 'good by default' as you're looking at
it. This will never be 'fixed' by 'easy to unsub' processes. It's a
philosophical view of the world.

------
bigd
Please. Stop.

Can you imagine your hammer writing you a mail every day "you know you can use
me hammer to ..."?

those are awful ideas. Especially since nowadays every app require
registration and mail authentication, and is it impossible to test it without.
And that often you have to try 3/4 before finding some satisfying. So, please,
I'm using your product, eventually paying, but If you think we are friends now
you are wrong.

You are providing me a tool, and I'll be happy to share my productivity
increases if any with my friends etc. And that's where it should end. Focus on
a decent documentation instead.

------
Aardwolf
25? I'd rather have 0.

While reading through, I'm more and more thinking that the page is sarcastic,
especially when there is a screenshot of "tutorial emails" that fill the whole
inbox and the author saying "They sent an email pretty much every day." (...)
"If you add up all the tutorials they have sent me it could become some book."

This behaviour is exactly why I never use my real email address to sign up for
anything.

------
edvinbesic
Problem is I view any email I did not opt in for as spam with the only
exception being service changes and/or disruptions, monthly bills and the
like.

Unless I invited you, you're not welcome.

~~~
wangman
I agree. The e-mail patterns here are so different that I don't think they
belong in the same article.

------
aytekin
Last month, I have spent quite a time researching various types of emails web
apps / SaaS businesses send to their users. This is my findings. Hope it
helps!

