
Startups, please write better emails - mikk0j
http://i.mhj.tc/TzcPze
======
sudonim
People don't write bad emails because they don't care. They really do care,
but the emails that come from startups are often written with a mixture of
fear of being perceived as spam, and a lack of understanding of how to connect
with people.

Before I started an email startup, I would probably have written the same
types of emails. It's amazing that once you start to focus on something, you
notice the little things.

I taught a class a few weekends ago on how to write better emails (slides:
[https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-
rea...](https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-read) ). I'm
happy to help anyone (for free) who wants to do things better than they are
now. Contact info is in my profile.

~~~
mikeleeorg
Great deck! Out of curiosity, one of your slides seems to say that plain text
emails perform better than HTML (i.e. fancy) emails:

 _Plain text: $17,500, Fancy: $4,300._

A bunch of replies in this thread have people saying HTML emails perform
better than plain text ones:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4856529>

Am I reading any of this data incorrectly? Is this a case where the answer
really is, "it depends"? Or is there truly one format that is better than the
other?

~~~
sudonim
Hey Mike,

Right now my position is that for the effort, you're better off writing good
content than worrying about your template.

We've seen really strong performance from simple formatting (bold, italics)
where the focus is on building a relationship with the user:

"Hi, I just saw you signed up and wanted to help you get started". This is
meant to feel hand-written.

I saw that thread and rather than make unsubstantiated claims in response, I
want to get a better understanding of _when_ you should use a highly-styled
layout and gather some data.

Many of our customers like to use our "light" layout (
[https://raw.github.com/customerio/skins/master/Light/light_s...](https://raw.github.com/customerio/skins/master/Light/light_screenshot.png))
for transactional emails and put their logo up top. There's a bit of styling,
but it is really subtle.

Multi-column in my opinion is way out. It's a mess on mobile, and you probably
shouldn't do it. A great example of a nice single-column, styled email is
campaign monitor's newsletter.

[http://campmon.createsend.com/t/ViewEmailArchive/y/78AABCA56...](http://campmon.createsend.com/t/ViewEmailArchive/y/78AABCA56BB82CF8/C67FD2F38AC4859C/)

------
petercooper
I wish programmers would also follow this advice when creating their GitHub
repositories and project sites because they can suffer the very same problem.

It's pretty often I hear about a library or project, hit its homepage, and I
_can't figure out what the heck it even is_ without digging around.

The magic phrase, as used in this article, is "[thing] is [describe thing]".
Tell me the name of your thing and what it _is_. Once you've got that
paragraph out of the way, you can go to town!

~~~
mikk0j
Completely agreed. Like pointed above by venus, the "best for" format may
annoy some people and is not necessary in all cases. Your more generic example
works as a better template.

------
venus
Slightly off topic: the introduction the author recommends using, "(name) is
the best (product category)", was slightly annoying a couple years ago when I
first heard it and is now just a full-blown obnoxious cliché. Whenever I hear
a startup type guy talking about how their product is "the best" blah, I
automatically append "according to me". You may as well just say "my
favourite".

Startups, please don't introduce your company as "(My company) is the best
(what we do)" - that's for the market to decide, actually, and for you to just
claim it up front is presumptuous, at best.

~~~
mikk0j
Thanks Venus. No I don't recommend that across the board. I did use "X is the
best Y" 2 out of 5 times in the examples (both are directly from their value
props on the site or on Twitter bio). Personally, I don't find it annoying
anymore but I do agree that it is devalued. Do I believe they are the best X
for Y? Of course not. Maybe I'm more lenient since think of it more in terms
of vision and ambition.

~~~
venus
I'm all for vision and ambition but there's a difference between aspiring to
be the best and claiming to be it already! One is a laudable goal; the other
comes across as wishful thinking.

Imagine if you opened a new restaurant and on day one your sign proclaimed it
as offering the best food in the world. Or a tiny little brand new startup
furniture shop, "X furniture is the best furniture for your home or office in
the whole world". Can you imagine the utter ridicule such a claim would
invite? Why is a software startup any different?

Claim to be the easiest to use, most elegant, most cost effective, fine.
There's nothing wrong with selling your strong points. But just going for
broke and all-out claiming to be "the best"? Maybe I'm just a cynic but I
imagine some little kid putting on a superman costume and claiming they're the
strongest man in the world. Sure you are kiddo!

~~~
mikk0j
I come from a marketing background, so I guess I'm both numb to and guilty of
that kind of text. But I don't see how "most elegant" or other superlatives
are different from "best for X" though. Both are equally difficult to prove,
both may be completely subjective and contingent.

I like the kid in the superman costume analogy for startups and big ambitions.
I'd cheer him on. If he believes it he'll try to act the part, so the more
I'll be inclined to believe him, too (though I might stop him from trying to
halt a truck).

~~~
venus
> I don't see how "most elegant" or other superlatives are different from
> "best for X"

I've already argued about this way too much but let me give you an example : P

If I asked you what are your strengths, what distinguishes you as a person,
what would you say?

Now if you're like a normal person, reasonably modest and yet confident of
their merits, you might say you're an ambitious person who's serious about
their goals but knows how to have fun, you're an excellent communicator and
listener, you're a good friend and you bring a genuine passion to everything
you do.

You'd come across as a really cool guy.

Now imagine if you just crossed your arms, assumed a smug grin, and said,
"well, I'm the best".

What do you think people would think of you if you did that? Well I don't know
about you but I'd grin and nod and think "this guy is a fuckin' douchebag".

I'm not trying to say I think every marketer who ever wrote "X is the best Y"
is a douchebag; I'm saying that claiming to be "the best" is a very, very big
claim. Coming from a giant of software it would be questionable; coming from
some tiny unknown startup it is simply laughable.

Stick to pointing out your merits, strengths and focuses. Don't make a claim
to be all-categories, all-uses, undisputed best thing in the world. You are
almost certainly not, and to this engineer, it raises questions about what
kind of person would even make such a ludicrous boast.

------
etfb
He reckons a sentence like "Learnist is the mobile product for curating and
following complete learning experience" is worth adding to an email? Good
grief! I actually have _less_ idea of what it is than I did before I read
that, and I've never even heard of it. If you're keeping track, that's
_negative knowledge_. No, I didn't know that was possible either. You live and
learn.

Seriously, though: if you have a business, and you can't explain what it's
about without making people's brains bleed, perhaps you should go work for
Google instead.

~~~
mikk0j
I'm keeping track. Thanks for the feedback - obviously not a good description
for everyone. Would have worked for me, though.

Maybe I should've stayed at Google then? :)

~~~
etfb
My suggestion (which is worth exactly what you paid for it) is this: find
someone who has no contact with the IT world beyond, _maybe_ , a passing
familiarity with mobile phone apps and Google Mail. Tell them you want a one-
sentence description of your own business. Give them as much information as
they think they need, explaining everything in sufficient detail so they feel
they understand it. Then ask them for their one sentence. Write it down. Do
this a bunch of times. Finally, take all the collected sentences to someone
who does understand IT but knows nothing of your business, and get them to
condense them all into a final description.

I strongly suspect the result will be an improvement!

~~~
mikk0j
That's a great suggestion. It will certainly be an improvement. Just
explaining it to a wide variety of people can help your thinking about it. If
you get outsiders to describe it for you, even better.

------
ph0rcyas
It isn't just emails in particular. Think for a moment about some fancy sites
you've come across - say a startup advertising their service/product. How many
times after being fed a plate full of bells and whistles, you still don't know
what they _actually_ do? It tells you how wonderful their product is without
telling you exactly what is that product.

But this does make sense, because if they put things in plain words most of
them will be "This is another social platform", or "this is another cloud
service", "another image processing tool", "another education software". That
doesn't sound very attractive, and they're well aware of it. The trick is to
first convince that this is something wonderful, _then_ subconsciously people
will perceive it as something different from all existing services - and so
willing to try it out.

However, most users are getting increasingly sophisticated and skeptical, and
this sensible strategy sometimes backfires.

------
kevinconroy
Everyone, please write better emails. Provide me with a single, clear call-to-
action (aka next step) so that I "level up" and become more awesome. Side
effect: I'll use your product and learn about your company.

Remember Kathy Sierra's advice: Don't buy this because we kick ass, buy this
because we want YOU to kick ass.

[http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/...](http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/buythis.jpg)

~~~
sudonim
I saw Kathy Sierra speak at BoS 2012. After her talk, we wrote on our wall in
the office as a constant reminder our mission is to: "Help our customers be
badass at emailing their users".

------
jqueryin
Copyrighting isn't easy, much the same as writing isn't easy. There's an
inherently different mindset than most technical people are used to: putting
yourself in your target audiences shoes and trying to fulfill their
wants/needs/questions.

Writing better emails comes with practice and some good ol' analytics checking
on user engagement. Also, the title is as important as a blog title. Study up
on words that tend to drive engagement and curiosity.

------
jonathanjaeger
Well put. There are many services, like Mailchimp, that allow you to send a
portion of your messages before sending out all your invites (basically an A/B
test before unleashing ALL your email with one untested subject line). I don't
think startups always think through their open rates to the extent they
should.

The body copy is a whole different story, but you nailed that in your post.

~~~
mikk0j
A/B testing is a great thing to do with email. On the point of Mailchimp, they
also allow you edit the little preview text box - this is what shows as the
preview snippet in many email programs and is a good place to remind the
recipient what's going on (very briefly, though).

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Cool, thanks. I actually don't use the service as of now, but I've been over
some of the features. I will probably use that service or a similar one in the
near future.

------
tanepiper
This that annoys me the most - it seems a few startups don't know to include
unsubscribe links in their emails any more. Two examples from just this
morning:

<http://cl.ly/image/0R101l3O101Y>

<http://cl.ly/image/34020b0m3n1m>

Now yes, with ShiftEdit they tell me I can delete my account, and probably in
both cases I could email them asking to unsubscribe me - but it's an extra
effort I shouldn't need.

I have another service (to be honest I've blocked the name from my brain at
the moment) - it was some spammy twitter app that continues to send me emails
via a personal account rather than the company - with no way to switch them
off - I've emailed them a couple of times asking them to stop, but they don't
- so I just mark them as junk now.

------
irisshoor
One thing which worked very well for me is focusing only on one thing per
email. Startups always have this conflict of trying not to spam their users
too much but still making sure they know everything. The outcome is that every
time they do send emails they try to include e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in it. I
struggled with it a lot as well, at one point we decided to dedicate each
email to one new small feature, asking for a certain feedback, etc. Even when
we released a new version we focused only on one thing. I think users find it
much easier to read and digest. It also increases the chances your users will
understand what you want them to do :)

------
c0riander
I've definitely experienced this on the receiving end, both with startups and
new products, but also with random mailing lists that only send out updates
sporadically.

A good rule of thumb for ANY mass email communication is to lead with a short
explanation of why they're receiving the email: "Thanks for signing up for
updates from Newproduct, a new platform for knitters to connect online."

Remind them 1) they signed up, 2) what they signed up for (updates), and 3)
who you are (descriptively).

------
44Aman
Incredible. This is exactly what I thought when that Cue email popped into my
inbox this morning. "What the hell is this?"

~~~
mikk0j
It was that email that prompted the blog post. For the Cue team's credit, they
got in touch afterwards and we exchanged a couple of emails about it.

------
buzz27
PeoplePerHour I'm looking at you! Your emails are awful, border on offensive,
and I can't reply to them. Finally unsubscribed, which means I'll probably
forget about their service /even though I actually like it/.

------
sippndipp
Great insights. Need more of that!

~~~
mikk0j
Thanks!

------
mylittlepony
I thought the exact same thing the other day. I have deleted many startup
emails recently, only because I didn't know wtf they were all about, and
didn't want to sign up just to find out. Example: "Startup X. It was a long
way bla bla but.. We have finally released!", like I had been waiting for them
all this time.

~~~
mikk0j
That's the key thing: "like I had been waiting for them". No, we haven't been
waiting for you, sorry. So please remind me what it was you do again?

