21–30 of 178 posts
While on the topic of onboarding emails and how the read focuses around early stage company development, what I would like to also see is a breakdown of lessons learned with SMTP services and how to approach for an early stage company. Anyone have any advice/recommendations/suggestions?
In this thread: lots of grumpy people forgetting that if you’re on HN you are weird and not representative I email 10,000+ engineers 3x+ per week. Individually they’re all grumpy and ugh about email. En masse, only 0.01% of them unsubscribe and 24%+ read the emails. Many even email back saying how wonderful they are. And yes adding emojis to both subjects and emails themselves helps. The open and engagement rates imp…
While on the topic of onboarding emails and how the read focuses around early stage company development, what I would like to also see is a breakdown of lessons learned with SMTP services and how to approach for an early stage company. Anyone have any advice/recommendations/suggestions?
I caution the use of emoji, I've seen so many stack overflow job posts with memey use of emojis and it just makes me cringe and I find it hard to take the company seriously.
I try to make them really personalized. Like if your website is acmewidgets.com - I'll put "Acme Widget Help?" as the subject.
My own takeaways:
1. Plain Text for sure
2. Super short - my standard sort of email is now about 3 sentences.
3. Ask a question - in my case there's a couple of driving reasons to sign up so I try and make sure they're doing ok.
Even with all of the above I still maybe am only getting a 30% response rate.
I caution the use of emoji, I've seen so many stack overflow job posts with memey use of emojis and it just makes me cringe and I find it hard to take the company seriously.
https://www.outreach.io/blog/will-emojis-increase-reply-rate...
Maybe SO emails go over the top though
Good points in here, but I disagree about using a person's name as the From address. If I'm getting an email from Notion, I want it to show up as "From: Notion" in my inbox, not "From: Ivan". I have several companies that do this and I never know who the email is from, which adds some cognitive friction I don't need when triaging my inbox. You can put your name in the subject line if you want.
To add to the points others have made: If I see an email with a name in the title I don't recognize, I instantly think it is spam. Please do not do this, it neither helps with your credibility nor does it help to build a "connection". I want to know where this email is coming from, and if I have signed up at Spotify, I expect to recieve my emails from Spotify, not Tom whoever at Spotify.
Edit: I don't mind if I think the person is even vaguely aware I exist. But an email claiming to be from an executive of some huge company saying how happy they are that I have signed up doesn't fall into that category.
To add to the points others have made: If I see an email with a name in the title I don't recognize, I instantly think it is spam. Please do not do this, it neither helps with your credibility nor does it help to build a "connection". I want to know where this email is coming from, and if I have signed up at Spotify, I expect to recieve my emails from Spotify, not Tom whoever at Spotify.
Why would someone feel awkward? It's from neither of those. It's automated so I think it's awkward and misleading to use a name.
I disagree with the premise of the article: “Every SaaS company must start their onboarding sequences with a welcome message that is sent when a user joins the platform. This is a must by now, since everyone who signs up will expect some sort of confirmation of their transaction.” These emails invariably waste my time. They repeat what the website already told me when I signed up. If I sign up for your SaaS, I expect…