Live data from Hacker News

Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

blog.palabra.io

141–150 of 178 posts

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#141
post #34

Who on Earth think onboadrding mail is a good idea? It's junk mail and nobody reads it. Never place there any important information - most users completely ignore them. The only mail I expect is email address confirmation.

If I buy a product it is not usefull to me. If I add a user in my org they are golden when done right. It becomes one less thing i need to demo and train a new hire right now before they can be productive.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#142
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps American culture is more receptive to this As an American I don't think people like corporations feigning social intimacy either.

But it happens all the time (according to my tiny sample size). A tong time ago, I was in an American coffee shop (probably Starbucks, I guess), and they asked for my name. I found that very strange and weird. You would neither be able to spell or pronouce it, so let's just go with James. This trend is beginning in Denmark as well, and I don't like it. It'd be easier for everyone if you just assign me a number and an…

I think this solution from Dave Gorman is perfect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTaEeTRHDE&feature=youtu.be...

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#143
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect,your order is #56 You don't have to ask for a number, just give them one.

You'd need a ticketing system so people even remember what their number is. And for what upside when names work fine?

It works fine for McDonalds. They just print the number in a huge typeface on the receipt. They don’t have to pretend to care, and I don’t have to mess around spelling my name out.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#144
post #79
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.

I personally strongly agree, but I want to point out that HN is not a remotely representative sample of email users. Study marketing a bit, and you'll find loads of things that email power users loathe that still get an overall very positive response from the general public. Know your userbase. Cater to them, not some random people on the internet with strong opinions.

By "positive response", are you saying that human "from" names yield a higher click-through rate?

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.th…

I've been using "Markdown Here" for the past few years and live in this ideal world already. It's great, you should come visit. :)

+1 for Markdown-Here. It works well enough for me despite it being abandoned.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#146
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it happens all the time (according to my tiny sample size). A tong time ago, I was in an American coffee shop (probably Starbucks, I guess), and they asked for my name. I found that very strange and weird. You would neither be able to spell or pronouce it, so let's just go with James. This trend is beginning in Denmark as well, and I don't like it. It'd be easier for everyone if you just assign me a number and an…

UK comedian Dave Gorman did a section on this: he claims that his coffee shop, I assume Starbucks, stopped doing a particular drink he liked - maybe caramel macchiato? - so he heard someone in front ask for that drink, then said his name was "caramel macchiato" just to mess with them. They'd call the order as "caramel macchiato" and, he seemingly hoped, get trouble from the other customers who had been refused that d…

> I always assumed the whole 'spell your name wrong' thing that Starbucks did was a marketing thing - they certainly got a lot of social media posts out of it!

Not everything is a conspiracy. Take the average starbucks barista, add in a shop full of customers expecting the line to move quickly, and you end up with a "This looks good enough, fuck it" attitude to writing the name on the cup. Customers that get upset about their name being spelled wrong really need to relax.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#147

I really hate these cheesy lines that are "excellent" according to the article, like: - "You had enough fluff marketing content and so did we. So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now..." - "Writing this from my couch at home, hoping to find you safe and well at yours. It's been a busy summer! I wanted to share more about out 2.9 release..." No, just no. Leave me alone, we aren't friends, you did no…

Us nerdy engineers hate this stuff no matter where we're from. But from what I can gather at places I've worked at, most customers are neutral to positive about it. Some REALLY like it, believe it or not. Tech companies are often stupid, but not THAT stupid. Most of the strategies in this article do improve open and conversion rate.

Agreed. If they wanted HN conversions the title would be 'Lessons learned from onboarding emails written in Rust'

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need a ticketing system so people even remember what their number is. And for what upside when names work fine?

Names work fine if your name is easily pronounced. Otherwise you end up making up a name just for Starbucks which takes away from their personalisation thing

Taking away a corporation's personalisation thing sounds like a good idea.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#149
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd need a ticketing system so people even remember what their number is. And for what upside when names work fine?

It works fine for McDonalds. They just print the number in a huge typeface on the receipt. They don’t have to pretend to care, and I don’t have to mess around spelling my name out.

The world is moving on from paper receipts, though. For regular Starbucks customers, payment by phone is routine, and there's normally no paper receipt.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#150
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally strongly agree, but I want to point out that HN is not a remotely representative sample of email users. Study marketing a bit, and you'll find loads of things that email power users loathe that still get an overall very positive response from the general public. Know your userbase. Cater to them, not some random people on the internet with strong opinions.

By "positive response", are you saying that human "from" names yield a higher click-through rate?

Yes, it does. It is widely thought to be true and certainly matches my experience at statistical significance.
Post reply on HN