

People send the best welcome emails, not robots - sandimac
http://quibb.com/links/people-send-the-best-welcome-emails-not-robots

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karpathy
To be honest, at least for me, the best welcome email is no email at all. It
clutters my inbox and I really don't crave the feeling of being your very much
appreciated customer. It usually annoys me more than it helps.

If I have a problem and contact you, then your personal and prompt response is
an entirely different matter. Then it is appreciated.

~~~
Lambdanaut
I like a confirmation email to let me know that my signup to their service
really did go swimmingly, but I don't care whether it's by a robot or a human,
because I don't read them. The email title "You successfully signed up for
Facebook!" gets the point of the message through well enough.

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joshmlewis
I'm not sure about the using your personal email bit. I know when I see
yourname@startup.com that that's pretty intimate for the most part and is
enough to convince me that it's a real person. Also I would think you'd want
to remain aligned with the company name and things pertaining to as well so
using your personal email account may come across as a little odd for people.
Other than that I agree that personal welcome emails are a small but powerful
tool.

~~~
sandimac
It depends on the product. Coming directly from myname@gmail.com makes sense
for Quibb, but I could see yourname@startup.com working in some other cases.

~~~
joshmlewis
Yes, good point.

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icebraining
So, why not have robots send casually written emails sent at random times
using Gmail's SMTP servers?

~~~
sandimac
Yeah, you could - but I still don't think it's authentic :) Actually sending
the emails myself also allows me to add small things on the fly - for example,
I'll sign my name '-Sandi (fellow Canadian!)' if I've noticed that the person
is from Canada.

~~~
skinnymuch
Complex on the fly calculations would probably not be worth it, but simple
stuff like content generation based on seeing where the person is from would
be easy to automate.

Though you and others may still enjoy personally sending emails and that's
fine.

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duck
I did this a lot when starting Hacker Newsletter
(<http://hackernewsletter.com>) and it seemed to always have a positive
response and in a couple cases lead to more (like twitter mentions, reviews,
etc.).

If you want to do this, your friend is Rapportive, as it can quickly give you
a starting point when tailoring your email and/or help you decide who to
email.

~~~
sandimac
Yes, Rapportive is very helpful!

One problem I've notice with Rapportive fyi - the info is a bit
off/conflicting if the person has ever changed their twitter handle (rare, but
it does happen).

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Sidnicious
My favorite part is that you guarantee that anyone who joins gets a real,
working email address for questions and suggestions.

I wish more companies sent every (even automated) email with a working mailbox
to reply to.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried sending automatic welcome messages with
your email address to reply to and the same open-ended request for questions
and comments?

~~~
sandimac
No, I haven't tried any auto messages yet.

Good point re: working email address. That situation has come up a few times -
the person didn't reply to my initial welcome email, but remembered that they
had received it, and replied to that email when they had a question later on.

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laacz
I don't see how this would scale. Would you consider creating a human
responder position in company and multiplying it as product grows? This
actually works only if you have handful of signups. Or am I wrong?

~~~
sandimac
Thanks, forgot to say something about that. I meant to add that this is the
best way to learn about your product at the beginning, and aren't yet focusing
on scaling. I edited the post to clarify. Thanks for reading!

