
Guide to Sending Email Like a Startup - mrmch
https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide/?
======
eli
It's mentioned in there, but I really want to emphasize how important it is to
ditch the do-not-reply return address and, in fact, to have actual people read
every single reply.

We get great suggestions, feedback, sales opportunities, etc. from replies to
automated messages. We don't get many complaint emails, but when we do the
author seems to think they're yelling into a void. People seem genuinely
impressed when they get at thoughtful reply back and sometimes it changes
their whole impression of us.

~~~
larrywright
No email should ever be sent from a do-not-reply return address. Ever. You
have _no_ idea how much email I get because some idiot used my email address
to sign up for something/order something/whatever.

To this I'd also add: Always confirm email addresses. Every time someone signs
up for an account, send a confirmation email with an easy means of notifying
you that I'm not the person who signed up for the account. So few do this.

~~~
voltagex_
I see big companies do this all the time. It's annoying. Even a support@ that
gives me a ticket number out of ZenDesk is better than no-reply@

------
vishaldpatel
Remember folks, every single piece of correspondence we send should be
valuable to the receiver.

Welcome email? Great - tell them something that will help them to get setup.

Referral email? Great - tell them how they can win by referring you, and I
mean really win.

Promotional email? Make sure that promo is worth their while.

And never take your audience's time for granted. You're trying to build a
relationship.

~~~
tabio
I notice that your examples don't include the "'begging for re-engagement from
someone who doesn't need to use your app' email"

~~~
robwormald
I call these the "reminder to actually cancel/close my account" emails.

------
mrmch
Excited to share this -- we just completed the guide (5 chapters in all).

Includes contributions from Ivan Kirigin (YesGraph), Noah Kagan (AppSumo), and
more.

No matter how much you may/may not like receiving email, there are a lot of
people out there who do. This guide should help you reach them, without
annoying the others.

~~~
santoshalper
It's really excellent. Nice work!

------
benjaminfox
Wow, that's comprehensive. The Net Promoter survey is very powerful, if you've
never used it: once you've identified and bucketed all of your users who give
you a 9 or 10, you can hit them up for referrals, reviews, and shares, and
skip all the users who might not have anything nice to say about you.

~~~
alexophile
Yeah we like NPS a lot. Not only can you segment and specifically reach out to
9s and 10s, but you can dynamically fill your emails. So for example your
standard footer could say "share for x bonus" if they're a 8-10, but "give
feedback for x bonus" for <8.

direct link to that section:
[https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide#ch3-survey](https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide#ch3-survey)

------
parennoob
There are several parts of this I disagree with, but the one I disagree with
the most is onboarding emails.

Can I use your product _in_ the email? No? Then don't send me an onboarding
email, do the onboarding in-product with overlays when I log into it for the
first time. Google does this with some success for Gmail if I recall
correctly, it has arrows pointing at different sections and everything, and
you can click to dismiss them.

Bombarding the consumer with multiple onboarding emails may generate a high
click rate, but if your target market has people that hate spam, it will
instantly leave a bad taste in their mouth. It really sucks when I sign up for
a new product I am peripherally interested in, and they clutter up my empty
inbox with 5 enthusiastic emails, none of which has any content that I can
actually use -- just links to the website.

~~~
fraserharris
The point of onboarding emails is to boost your activation rate. Users
frequently get distracted during onboarding and drop of. A drip campaign that
highlights the benefits of completing the onboarding is highly effective. The
majority of people consider emails spam if _they aren 't relevant_. Someone
who intends to complete an onboarding process but was sidetracked _usually_
finds these reminders useful.

------
pekk
This bag of tricks seems to focus more on doing things as other companies do
than on what data there is to tell you it is the right thing for you. No
guarantees those companies made the right inferences from the right data, and
even if they did, no guarantees their conclusions apply without modification
to your situation.

Is there some inherent value to being "like a startup" or following "trends"?

~~~
mrmch
Valid feedback pekk. One of the reasons we consulted with people who have run
growth at a number of companies is because they could give the inside story;
company X did Y because their metrics told them to.

That said, a huge caveat is that this all depends on your audience and what
they're going to respond to.

I would posit that startups are more apt (than a larger company) to experiment
with marketing, which is valuable.

------
ivankirigin
This is such a great resource.

I helped with the referrals bits, but the other sections taught me a lot too.

~~~
mrmch
Really appreciate your contribution Ivan, definitely learned a LOT about
referrals from you.

------
gboss
These are not transactional emails, but triggered emails that are automated by
a user's actions. Transactional emails typically revolve around a transaction,
example emails include an order confirmation, shipping confirmation, or order
cancellation email. I'm pretty sure most of these emails would require the
customer to be subscribed to your email list, while a true transactional email
would not.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing#Transactional_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_marketing#Transactional_emails)

~~~
mrmch
It's a fair point to highlight what constitutes a true transactional email,
but the content of this guide does cover both transactional and triggered
emails (Welcome or registration email is one example of a transactional email
covered).

------
foolforyou
Why is sendwithus.com allowed to advertise by posting as a blog site, why
isn't it flagged by now? These are the types of people I block in my server's
email configuration.

~~~
takinola
Promoting your business on HN is not a bad thing per se. This post is actually
a great example of HOW TO promote your service on HN. By providing very useful
information to startups and companies who need to send email to their
customers, SendWithUs has made us all smarter and in doing so have improved
their credibility as an email service.

------
xg15
I'm somewhat puzzled by this paragraph - even moreso as they seem to base a
lot of advice on top of it:

 _For Facebook, they’ve defined core retention behavior as the point when a
user has added at least 15 friends to their account. In Alex Schultz’s Startup
Class lecture he discloses that, for Facebook, someone that has 15 friends is
likely to remain active on the service for a long time, so their retention
strategies are all focused around promoting the behavior of adding friends.

To find your own core retention behavior, look for specific actions that are
common to your ideal users, then promote that behavior in your retention
strategies._

I'm not a marketing expert, but this seems like a classic example of
"confusing causation and correlation" to me. So, in the example above,
facebook has found that "user has > 15 friends" is a good indicator for "user
is loyal". Fair enough. but instead of going "we have this awesome way of
identifying loyal users, now let's find out what made them loyal in the first
place", the guide assumes that the high friend count actually _causes_ the
loyality and advises to do everything to bump it up.

In Facebook's case, this probably works, because friend count might actually
influence retention in some ways. (e.g., your news feed might become more
active or more interesting, making you want to stay). But even then, you're
kept completely in the dark what made those people sign up and add friends in
the first place.

i think taking this as a general advice might actually be dangerous. In the
best case, you keep a high retention rate but have no idea why; In the worst
case, it might tempt you to build "features" that try to manipulate or even
force the users into particular behaviors, only to inflate some metric. (see,
e.g. Pinterest's "auto-following" routine:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-a-minute-pinterests-
sign...](http://www.businessinsider.com/wait-a-minute-pinterests-sign-up-
process-is-down-right-sketchy-2012-2?IR=T) )

------
nakodari
This is the most comprehensive and useful guide on sending emails I have come
across so far. Going to implement a few ideas right away and track the
results.

------
mathgeek
I feel like the point on "Set a Conversational Tone & Sign from Real People"
is reaching a bit of over-saturation currently. As soon as I get such an email
from a company, it leads to my thinking that "they're trying to deceive me
into thinking someone is actually sending out these automated messages. Do
they think I'm an idiot?" It feels very disingenuous.

------
joeyspn
Clear and simple. Good job.

I've got a question about your starter/hacker plan... _Up to 1,000 recipients
/month_ means that I can do X sends up to 1,000 different emails? For
instance, mandrill has 12,000 Free emails limit. Can I connect mandrill and
use those 12k/month as long as I don't have more than 1k/users in your system?

~~~
mrmch
Thanks joeyspn! Means a lot to the team that their work is appreciated.

You're absolutely correct about our hacker plan; up to 1,000 unique email
recipients per month (it resets each month).

------
cessor
Following every step of this program is a very good way in making me avoid
your product.

------
bshimmin
"Surprise & delight your new readers with a funny cat picture. Seriously,
never underestimate the effectiveness of a well-timed cat picture."

This might work for some types of businesses, I suppose. For others it would
be a huge misstep.

------
michaelZejoop
Thanks for this guide; I think it is great!

------
meowbird
This article is really great for a marketer at any level!

~~~
mrmch
Thanks -- we've tried to ensure there's basic information and more involved
tips for experienced email folks. The guide also highlights some of the trends
we've seen in the last year.

------
hobonobo
"Transactional emails are the mechanism by which you keep in contact with your
users, just because they’re automated, doesn’t mean they should be robotic."

Whether its origin is a startup or a giant corporation, any email can be made
to sound like a poor marketing scam - just include run-on sentences like that
one.

~~~
mpdehaan2
One tip that should probably be shared - Marketing that is so obvious that
it's marketing doesn't work. Most firms seem to play by exactly the book in
the article, and it's a little predictable. Does it work? I don't know. Maybe
it does. Though I'm interested if some experimentation can remove some local
maxima.

And once you are trained to spot a NPS question, yeah, it starts to rub you
completely wrong. And you can tell when you are part of a email drip campaign
more quickly, or when you go from being a automated plast to a warm lead or
whatever.

re NPS, I do think it's useful to ask people who aren't 8's why they don't
like you maybe more so than asking the 9-10s to engage more. I am also not
sold of the NPS idea of only asking that 1 question - but surveys can often be
constructed to only answer the known unknowns [sic] and can be misleading.
Arbitrary comment boxes without leading questions I think are great.

Use it as a learning tool, not a selling tool. It is more interesting to try
to make being awesome your selling tool.

Same goes for blog posts, if it's full of buzzwords with no details, and it's
obviously marketing, if the buyer audience is actually technical users, those
efforts are likely misapplied.

How to blogs are much more genuine.

------
slrz
Oh, a spammer's manual. Disgusting.

~~~
alexophile
Actually the point was precisely the opposite. If you give marketing creative
control of your transactional emails, you don't have to blast your users
constantly to maintain their attention.

~~~
detaro
Drip campaigns push the envelope on "transactional mail" a lot, and a lot of
what the article suggests could IMHO easily push in the area that I'd consider
spammy (sending multiple mails per week) and which makes sure I don't actually
read any future mails unless I explicitly look for them, because they get
filtered away.

