
Writing Effective Welcome Emails - veesahni
http://www.vinaysahni.com/11-tips-for-writing-effective-welcome-emails
======
dendory
Every web site I sign up to these days, I'm 100% certain that from that point
forward I will now be spammed by them on a regular basis. It's a simple fact
of the modern web now and I despise it. But when those emails look like this
one, I hate them even more. Why? Because a normal form spam mail is easy to
recognize. I can hit the spam button in under a second. But when they use my
first name, sound all happy and cheery, and talk like they're my best friend,
I have to actually read the first sentence to see that it's spam. It not only
takes me longer, but it makes them seem even worse. To me an email like that
doesn't tell me they are more interested to 'engage', but instead that they
want to trick people to read them. You know what I want? For them to never
send me any email unless I specifically request it.

~~~
searchergss
If you're using gmail or google apps just add a +words to your email and then
you can set up easy filters and figure out if anyone is selling or renting
your information.

e.g. sergey@gmail.com --> sergey+zappos@gmail.com

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
Here is the method that I use, which has been extremely effective for me.

This is a Gmail filter that will leave in your inbox ONLY emails that are from
people you specify, AND emails that haven't already been labeled from some
other filter rule:

    
    
      Matches: (label:inbox has:nouserlabels -from:(importantPerson1@gmail.com OR importantPerson2@gmail.com OR ... ))
    
      Do this: Skip Inbox, Apply label "_Non-VIP", Never mark it as important
    

Boom!

Now I never get emails to my inbox unless they are from my girlfriend, family
members, friends, and other important people. This has the added benefit of
also meaning that I never get email notifications on my phone unless they are
from the important (and _REAL_ ) people I specified above. (And obviously I
can add easily emails to the whitelist if necessary.)

The other benefit is that this WILL take into account any other filter rules
you have in place. And also no need to worry about signing up for services
with +emails.

Before you post that _zomg this would never work for me_ , please don't. This
works extremely well for me and it might work well for someone else so I
wanted to share. If you have a way to make it even better, I would love to
hear it!

~~~
saraid216
Out of curiosity, how do you handle whitelisted people changing their email
address? My dad recently switched from Y!Mail to Gmail, for instance.

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
I simply change the filter.

The first time I see an email that gets filtered that I don't want filtered in
the future, I simply add that email to the whitelist. It takes me 15 to 30
seconds, and now it is set forever.

A) Gmail filters aren't etched in stone. They are easy to edit. Much more so
than Outlook anyway.

B) The impact of not seeing an email on my phone for an hour or two because I
didn't get an Android email notification is near zero. The important people
are already whitelisted, and for those emails that aren't, they're never 100%
urgent and can wait an hour or two until I check my labels in one batch
session.

This works extremely well for me but YMMV.

Does that answer your question?

I'll give you a +1 Upvote for apparently the only person who read my post
haha, and that bit of insight into what might not be clear.

~~~
saraid216
The problem is that the new email address would get filtered out of the inbox
and I wouldn't see it, if I understood the filter correctly. My dad would have
had to let me know through some means other than email.

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
Ah, I think there may be some confusion as to how Gmail works. The purpose of
labels in Gmail is that you can click them and see all the emails with that
particular label. This is analogous to a folder in Windows XP or Windows 7
with files in it.

You may be confusing "filtering" with "deleting", where this is definitely
_NOT_ the case. The point of my above post is that inessential emails skip my
inbox until I _CHOOSE_ to click the label (when I have time), and then I see
the inessential emails all at once.

I do this several times per day, so there is no risk of "missing" an email. In
the case of getting an email from your dad at a new address, I would click the
label at lunch or whenever convenient, and boom, there it is.

Just because an email is not in your "Inbox" doesn't mean it is gone forever.

Does that make sense?

\-----

I did a bit of research and below I inserted some snippets from the official
Gmail Help pages that would be good to read over to understand more about what
I am getting at:

\-----

<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/32608>

    
    
      Deleting unimportant mail is a great way to free up some of your storage, 
      but with Gmail's free storage, you can probably keep those messages, 
      too! If it's possible that you'll need a message or conversation in the 
      future, we recommend archiving.
    
      Archiving mail moves messages out of your inbox and into your "All Mail" 
      label for safekeeping-- you won't be bothered with extra messages 
      cluttering your inbox, but you'll still be able to find a message if you need 
      it six years from now!
    

\-----

<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6576>

    
    
      Archiving lets you tidy up your inbox by moving messages from your inbox 
      into your All Mail label, so you don't have to delete anything. It's like 
      moving something into a filing cabinet for safekeeping, rather than 
      putting it in the trash can.
    
      Any message you've archived can be found by clicking the "All Mail" label 
      on the left side of your Gmail page. You can also find a message you've 
      archived by clicking on any other labels you've applied to it, or by 
      searching for it.
    
      When someone responds to a message you've archived, the conversation 
      containing that message will reappear in your inbox.
    

\----

<https://support.google.com/mail/answer/118708>

    
    
      Labels help you organize your messages into categories -- work, family, 
      to do, read later, jokes, recipes, any category you want. Labels do all 
      the work that folders do, but with an added bonus: you can add more 
      than one to a message.
    
      Only you can see your labels, so whether you mark a message with "Best 
      friend" or "Read later," the sender will never know.

------
bdunn
Great post. I recently rewrote Planscope's welcome email (original here:
[http://copy-cat.co/blog/a-followup-email-that-actually-works...](http://copy-
cat.co/blog/a-followup-email-that-actually-works/)), and this time around
really emphasized point #9 of yours: providing onboarding tips.

If you don't have a big, fat textarea on your cancellation page that asks
people why they're canceling, stop whatever you're doing and spend 30 minutes
adding it.

Once you have enough cancellation data, you should know why a lot of people
who sign up for a trial cancel within the first few days. Recycle that
feedback directly into your welcome email (and in-app onboarding), and aim to
eliminate as many confusion points as possible while continuing to reinforce
your product benefits.

For the curious, here's the new email template I'm using:
[http://glui.me/?i=h5f7alhn92c131t/2013-05-07_at_9.52.24_AM.p...](http://glui.me/?i=h5f7alhn92c131t/2013-05-07_at_9.52.24_AM.png/)

~~~
PebblesRox
You have an infestation of apostrophes in some of your plurals! I wouldn't
want someone to stop taking you seriously because of a few typos (you have
"Monday's" and "customer's" instead of "Mondays" and "customers").

~~~
bdunn
Good point! Thanks. Serves me right for writing them in a bar in the center of
a Vegas casino :-)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I can't find the article now, but I'm positive I have seen cases of higher
open/click rates in emails with grammatical errors as it seems more "human"
and less a template.

------
6d0debc071
> Studies have shown that people love to hear their name.

That's not, it seems at the moment, what that study said. It seems to say that
areas of the brain responsible for self-representation seem to activate when
people hear their own names:

 _> 3.4. Conclusions

> The findings of this simple paradigm are consistent with the findings in the
> literature. There is unique brain activation specific to one’s own name in
> relation to the names of others. In addition, the patterns of activation
> when hearing one’s own name relative to hearing the names of others are
> similar to the patterns reported when individuals make judgments about
> themselves and their personal qualities, and include the regions of the
> medial frontal cortex and superior temporal cortex near the temporo-parietal
> junction. These results will enable us to study young children and even
> infants’ responses to their own names in order to see when self
> representation first occurs.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647299/> _

It may, of course, be true that people like to hear their own names. It seems
rare for someone to go bankrupt gambling on how interested in themselves
people can be. But just the same...

~~~
JohnLBevan
Personally I hate it when my name's overused; it makes me feel as if I'm
talking to a pushy sales guy / the person using it gets a high score on either
the "creepy" or "slimey" meter.

"John, I'm so glad you downloaded a copy of MegaThingyFoo. I know that you,
John, like myself must have to struggle with generic problem which
MegaThingyFoo is supposed to resolve. John; if you could provide me with some
feedback on this product I'd be eternally grateful." Eugh!

I have a feeling that as soon as these studies are made public they begin to
effect their own findings - i.e. those who can take advantage of the findings
do and for a while this works. However as this becomes standard people build
up a social immunity to these tricks (either through familiarity with the
texts (social vaccination) or through exposure to the users of such techniques
(previous infection).

I'd be interested to see a fake study published which claimed something like
"People who wear yellow ties generally make 1% more sales", when in fact
genuine studies show that tie colour has no effect. 5-10 years later repeat
the genuine study and (assuming this fake knowledge went viral) I suspect
you'd find people who wore yellow ties would fall behind other tie colours on
sales.

------
nixy
I appreciate the body text of his e-mail, it does feel personal and engaging.
However, I wonder if I would have gotten as far as reading the body of an
e-mail had it come with the subject line "SupportFu is going to change your
life - let me show you how." The subject just reeks of spam.

A better way of structuring the subject line to get my attention would be
something a bit less "Enlarge your penis - let me show you how"-ish and a bit
more along the lines of "On using our tool" or "SupportFu introduction." They
might not be as striking as far as subjects go, but I would not be as quick to
dismiss them as spam.

------
larrys
This is good advice. We've been sending emails like this for a long time. The
method is fairly low tech. Pull list of new customers > file.txt and then
newcustomer.sh < file.txt

Most importantly though a few points. Even if you aren't doing a personal
email (because it might not scale), even if it's not suppose to be personal
make sure to have it come from a real person where if someone has an issue
they feel that if they write back a real person will read _what they say_. Of
course if you have 29 million customers this might not apply (say free
product) but then again you probably won't be reading HN right now anyway.

Separately, nothing is a bigger turn off (to me) that getting a letter from a
company appearing to care but not being signed by anyone other than "support
team" or being signed by a person who has a non person sounding email address.

------
deepak-kumar
Being a business development guy I have seen a pattern that personally written
email will get you a positive response rather than a formal HTML template
email which people tend to ignore without even reading it. Very well
summarized article. Thanks for the share.

~~~
veesahni
I find that I barely skim heavy branded emails thinking it's just marketing
stuff. Plain email always gets more interest from me.

On that note, this is something I also considered heavily when building
Supportfu - all outbound replies mimic a traditional modern email client,
graphical branding isn't even an option.

------
abraxasz
I have never answered this type of email. Why? Because at this stage, I don't
know your product, and I don't want you to annoy me (you may not think it's
annoying, but really, it is).

That being said, I sent spontaneous feedback emails exactly twice:

\- The first was to the guy who wrote the 'learn you a Haskell for great good'
free online tutorial (now book, website is still free). I just wrote to let
him know that his tutorial was awesome and that it was the only tutorial I'd
read that made sense of monads.

\- The second was to Hipmunk. Again, after using Hipmunk for the third time or
so, and having such a great and painless experience, I sent an email saying
how much I appreciate the service, and thanking them for keeping it free
(although I'd gladly pay for it).

I guess you could say that neither my emails contained feedback. In both
cases, I felt that it would be a shame if these people stopped doing what
they're doing, thinking that nobody cares (I know, Hipmunk is not gonna go
away, but well, I guess was just not rational)so I just wanted to let them
know that I found there work remarkable.

What I'm trying to say is that the best way to get feedback from users without
pissing them off is simply to do something that they really really like, and
that they want to you to keep improving.

~~~
rgbrenner
"What I'm trying to say is that the best way to get feedback from users
without pissing them off is simply to do something that they really really
like, and that they want to you to keep improving."

To me, the type of email you sent is the most useless email I could receive.
It contains: nothing I can help you with; nothing I can improve; nothing that
you had a problem with... it's empty kudos.

Secondly, it's very difficult to create something people "really really like"
without asking them why they don't like what you are currently providing. And
since people don't care about products they don't like, they will rarely tell
you what's wrong if you don't ask... they'll just leave, and you'll never know
why.

To improve your email, instead of simply telling them that their service was
great.. tell them what your favorite feature was or what was the most helpful
about their service. At least that will give them some idea of why you liked
it, and it might give them some idea how they can improve other parts of their
service.

------
keenahn
My one comment would be, I wonder how the customer feels receiving a message
from the Founder of the company. One of two possible reactions:

1) Wow I'm really special to receive personal attention from the founder.

2) This company must be small potatoes if the founder has time to be writing
emails.

I wonder if you could follow up with an A/B test, same exact message from you
and from a "Community Manager"

------
philhippus
I agree that where possible one should be as personal as possible in email
correspondence, but this does not scale well. If you start getting 15 (that's
fifteen, not fifteen thousand)or more signups per day, being personal
approaches a full time job.

I suppose the crux of the matter is honesty. If you try to automate
individualised emails, that comes off as a bit sleazy and 'markety'. In this
case I think it would be of net benefit to make an auto response email read
like an auto response email, in the same spirit as you do with the personal
hand written versions.

~~~
veesahni
The only part that isn't automatable (and therefore scalable) is adding
something unique in the email. Skip that part and it scales fine.

One approach I've been thinking of is to have the system automatically send
the email but have a mechanism in place to selectively disable for single
email. This would allow me to be more personal where desired but still have a
decent default being sent out in within the ideal window.

~~~
timjahn
Exactly. We do this with matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>). We're not
trying to be sleazy, as the GP suggests. Instead, we're trying to be as
personable as possible while at the same time, growing the business in a
healthy way and providing more value for all our customers.

~~~
philhippus
Hi there [enter your mark's name here] old friend...is what I refer to as
'sleazy'. A strong term I admit, but if you are going to send me an auto
response, don't pretend like we're close buddies.

I would respect more something like 'You are the 159th signup we had today,
send an email to [a real person] to request support.'

Perhaps I am just an outlier.

~~~
eropple
You are an extreme outlier and nobody looking to drive user engagement would
ever write that email. But, then, nobody would use "old friend" in a welcome
email and nobody reputable considers them "marks" so I am curious where to
procure one of these windmills at which you are tilting.

These emails are targeted toward normal people, not social-discomfort-
masquerading-as-efficiency people (because there are still a lot more of the
former among developers than the latter) and normal people respond favorably
to the appearance (which becomes the reality) of being valued and appreciated
by people who they are looking to do business with.

That's why they work: because they connect at a real level. And it's not
"manipulation" or any other carefully chosen fear-word any more than any other
communication method is; it's simply--literally simply--how people are.

------
veesahni
OP here. I try to establish "first contact" as soon as possible as it helps
identify gaps in the product & helps answer the question "What should I work
on today?" ..

What else works well for increasing early feedback?

~~~
dreen
I find this generally helpful and I like the attitude of these emails, but you
are making a massive mistake that every single one of those websites which do
the same thing make as well - you don't provide a clear and quick way to be
removed from your mailing list.

This should be in every email, a simple link or even asking to reply with the
word "unsubscribe" in the subject.

If you don't do this a lot of people are going to think you're spamming them.

------
orangethirty
Not a bad start, but it could still use some work. When people sign up for
something, they still have a lot of questions. Address those by including
links to FAQs or sending them an users manual. That will increase your numbers
by a good amount. Plus, you can upsell without much problem.

An email subject that tends to work well with this approach:

"Here are some helpful links to get you started with $name."

~~~
veesahni
This is the next step for me - providing additional onboarding tips. The
questions I get in response to the current email identify gaps in
documentation and clarity.

------
helipad
These emails work staggeringly well.

Most responses are "I'm OK thanks", but people think they're genuine enough to
respond to.

Even when automated, I've still seen many tech founders, nevermind lay users,
responding to these as if they've been personally touched.

~~~
wilfra
The 'tech founders' are likely to be responding to see what happens next,
because their intrigued by the idea - not because 'they've been personally
touched'.

Source: I reply to all of these for exactly that reason.

------
Alekanekelo
Thanks for the post. They are simple but extremely helpful and not always
apparent tips. Courtesy and personal conversation gets you a long way.

------
alan_cx
There is good advice there for many other applications, like writing to a bank
or public official.

------
fyi80
#5 "Echo their name back at them"

That is literally a specific advice to write low-quality "porn" content that
stimulates superficially and then trigger an anger/betrayal reaction.

These "tricks" are copied straight from a used car sales lot, and we hated
them there too.

