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Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

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Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#41

Post by petercooper »

These emails are minimally styled HTML emails rather than "plain text" (in the original email text/plain sense). If there are links using normal text (rather than just autolinked URLs) or a logo, it's HTML – so deliverability or privacy arguments based around being "plain text" don't entirely hold up.

Now, do I think there are accessibility and privacy benefits to be had by sending truly plain text email? Absolutely. No open trackers possible, no potential for HTML related vulnerabilities, no dangerous elements to filter..

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#42

Post by asplake »

sp332 wrote: post #2

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.

Right. Further to this, I consider it spammy when the same organisation uses a range of different From addresses in its mailings. I have unsubscribed from lists for this triage-hostile behaviour.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#43

Post by OCISLY »

emojiSpam wrote: post #12

I have never received any important email with emoji in the subject. Actually, I find them so unprofessional that I send them straight to spam.

Good point. If someone sends you valuable information, he don't have to try to steal your attention with such cheap tricks.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#44

Post by OCISLY »

Swizec wrote: post #17

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…

> spam 3x+ per week

> 0.01% unsub rate

no way

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#45

Post by detritus »

coldpie wrote: post #39
tux3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the introduction you give new people. Welcome them "on board".

"New potential customers," I guess. I'm familiar with onboarding as a term for what you do to new hires and was quite confused by this article until I figured out it's about marketing emails.

Thanks, both - it sounded to me too like something to do with new hires, but that didn't make a lot of sense to me in terms of a newsletter.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#46

Post by hjanssen »

pau_alcala wrote: post #31
hjanssen wrote: post #9

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.

Interesting point there. Does the same happen to you with smaller or earlier companies? I wouldn't trust Tom from Spotify is a real person, but some companies have founders sending and replying to those emails themselves. A good practice I saw from another onboarding sequence was Apollo.io's first email. It was from a person who told me they would be my point of contact if I needed anything from the company. I know i…

I does not make a difference, at least from my point of view.

I think those personal emails are warranted if my first contact with a company was human, like I reached out and contacted someone from the sales team.

But "personal" responses to an obviously automated process like signup is just dishonest. If the founder responds to support requests - fine. Send me a personal response once I have a support request, but not as a signup confirmation.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#47

Post by Finnucane »

OCISLY wrote: post #44
Swizec wrote: post #17

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…

> spam 3x+ per week > 0.01% unsub rate no way

Mail clients do pretty good spam filtering these days.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#48

Post by tweetle_beetle »

continuational wrote: post #16

I don't want to hear from "Ivan". If you send template emails while pretending they're personal, that will come off as dishonest. If you use emoji in your communications, I will think you're not very professional. These emails tend to end up in my spam folder.

Your first point is a personal bugbear. Its worst form is when the tone of the email is personal (first name in title, photo of said person, signed off by said person and bonues points for graphic of hand written signature), but it comes from a no-reply address.

I once received one of these after I was mistakedly billed too much for a product. The person involved had a C suite type role at an ISP. After a bit of searching, I found their personal work email address and forwarded my reply directly to that. It got a more or less instant response, roping someone in to help me and I was phoned twice by an obsequious rep afterwards to make sure I was satisfied with the outcome.

All I wanted was a normal email address I could reply to and expect a response.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#49

Post by derenge »

underdown wrote: post #26
qwerty_123 wrote: post #5

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.

Emojis in subject line reliably increase open rate in my experience. Also others report the same: https://www.outreach.io/blog/will-emojis-increase-reply-rate... Maybe SO emails go over the top though

How much did they increase your open rate?

The linked report actually indicates a decrease in replies.

  Combined across all seven test variations, we saw a 42% decline in reply rate when the subject line featured emojis.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#50

Post by diarrhea »

petercooper wrote: post #41

These emails are minimally styled HTML emails rather than "plain text" (in the original email text/plain sense). If there are links using normal text (rather than just autolinked URLs) or a logo, it's HTML – so deliverability or privacy arguments based around being "plain text" don't entirely hold up. Now, do I think there are accessibility and privacy benefits to be had by sending truly plain text email? Absolutely.…

In an ideal world, I would like to write plain Markdown and send an email off like that, with conversion to HTML happening in the background. A suitable Thunderbird addon for this [1] seems abandoned. Formatting HTML is a real struggle for me in Thunderbird's WYSIWYG editor. On the other hand, using plain-text lacks in readability (lists, short links instead of full URLs, headers, quotes, ...).

[1]: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/markd...

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