211–220 of 223 posts
"For marketers who are trying to establish a personal relationship with their customers..." Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? How can the relationship be "personal" when one side of it (the marketer's side) is really just algorithmically-generated (and by that I do not necessarily mean "computer-generated") and the conversation is one-way?
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A lot of people think that their special snowflake of a spam is the one that users actually want to see. These people deserve to be tasered in the mouth repeatedly, but sadly that hasn't happened yet.
I don't understand this attitude; every email sent through services like MailChimp contains an explicit and obvious unsubscribe link, and their policies regarding unsolicited email are pretty strict. If you don't want to receive these emails, then unsubscribe - or, better yet, don't subscribe in the first place. This new feature seems excruciatingly pointless anyway. I want all of my emails to arrive into my inbox, w…
I don't think I've had the same issue with MailChimp, but if I do, I'll do the same with them.
In general, I think it would have been smart to offer tabs to high volume users. When I only have 10 new things, tabs are ... stupid. (Amusingly it put an old girlfriend's "my new page is at" in promotions.)
I'm not really a high volume user (0 unread most of the time) but I have tons of tabs and filters. I really only want to be notified of a new email when it's from someone I personally know.
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When you have a business relationship with a company and you have not told them to not email you, the email is not entirely unsolicited, and thus not spam. If you gave them your e-mail address obviously for another purpose (for example, as an account ID, or to receive a confirmation message when your order is dispatched or your card is charged) and they then use it for general marketing then that's so clearly an abus…
The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user. Some users want NO communication, others was service outage notices, still others may want to know about new features or enhancements that may benefit them (or may appreciate the notice, even if they didn't have a preference). Additionally it's impossible to know who will benefit from feature announcements/promotions. Does that m…
Make each bit opt-in. Problem solved. These emails really should be off by default.
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The problem is, the line of what's acceptable communication is different for every user. Sure it is, but some things are the wrong side of that line for most users. That's why there are laws against them. Does that mean everyone needs to deal with no email communication by default just because a few people feel it's too hard to find a (legally required) opt-out link in the first email they receive? As I said, if you'…
Please go back (quite a ways at this point) and find my response that started this thread was. It wasn't top level, it was in response to someone specifically calling out companies for sending them email after signing up. In that respect, this isn't just about spam, it's about user responses to company email communications. Please view my posts in that light if you want to accurately interpret my position.
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To give an example, pretend I'm a coffeeshop with a MailChimp list of ~200 subscribers. 1. I send out an email to my subscribers saying "Hey, what do you guys want to see improved with your Uptown Coffee experience?" 2. Customers respond with responses ranging from things like "cheaper coffee lol" to "I really like the atmosphere but I get frustrated because sometimes there isn't anywhere to sit!" 3. I can respond pe…
To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.
Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away.
[1] https://www.taskrabbit.com/sf-bay-area/search?search=handwri...
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A lot of people think that their special snowflake of a spam is the one that users actually want to see. These people deserve to be tasered in the mouth repeatedly, but sadly that hasn't happened yet.
I don't understand this attitude; every email sent through services like MailChimp contains an explicit and obvious unsubscribe link, and their policies regarding unsolicited email are pretty strict. If you don't want to receive these emails, then unsubscribe - or, better yet, don't subscribe in the first place. This new feature seems excruciatingly pointless anyway. I want all of my emails to arrive into my inbox, w…
Unfortunately not all companies are as virtuous as MailChimp. What I've found is that despite unsubscribing various things happen like the unsubscribe link takes you to a 404 or 500 or the company doesn't actually unsubscribe you.
Why does it take "up to a week" for some companies to unsubscribe you anyway? Are the batch processes that long for something like unsubscribing? There should be some kind of global business rule that suppresses emails to non-subscribers instantly.
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To me an email survey is not personal. If you actually wrote an email to me, saying "Hey Joe, I see that you're doing x, y and z. What can I do to make your experience better?" which is written to me for me and not generic, that's establishing a relationship. I've gotten a hand written card from Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg which I've kept because that is personal.
On that note, do realize that the vast majority of personalized hand-written cards you receive are written by taskrabbits who are trying to give that "personal" touch [1]. Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away. [1] htt…
If you were on the other side of the equation, how would you deal with trying to get real feedback about your product? To me, it's fair to thing a company that's goes through the expense and effort to have a real person (taskrabbit or not) contact me deserves just a bit more consideration.
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On that note, do realize that the vast majority of personalized hand-written cards you receive are written by taskrabbits who are trying to give that "personal" touch [1]. Mixpanel is one of the worst offenders of faux-personalized email. "I see you logged on today - were you able to accomplish what you wanted?" "I noticed that you were checking out the funnels feature. Can we set up a time to chat?" Go away. [1] htt…
I honestly don't see why this is a bad thing. Would you prefer the automated emails? If you were on the other side of the equation, how would you deal with trying to get real feedback about your product? To me, it's fair to thing a company that's goes through the expense and effort to have a real person (taskrabbit or not) contact me deserves just a bit more consideration.
Funny results of this are the fact that I'll be working on something over the weekend, trigger one of these automated messages, and email a response: "Oh yeah, I had a question, thanks for noticing!" Naturally I don't hear back until some time the following week.
It is always hard getting real feedback about your product. But a message like "Hey, you just joined, and I think you could do a better job with the way you structure your sales data" - because a human had looked at our business, looked at the way we used their product, and spent a moment trying to come up with a way to be helpful - would be way cooler to me than an automated tripwire.
For me, part of the reason the handwritten notes (shifting away from email for a moment) resonate with us is because we feel like an employee of the company - a grateful, hard-working employee - decided to spend their time painstakingly writing me a personalized note. That's why we write cards to our loved ones over the holidays.
But when you can pay someone to do that, then the CEO doesn't care - they're just factoring it into the customer acquisition cost. Which is totally okay. But it is equivalent to saying "I don't mind paying higher prices for Apple products because the unboxing experience is so great."
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I don't understand this attitude; every email sent through services like MailChimp contains an explicit and obvious unsubscribe link, and their policies regarding unsolicited email are pretty strict. If you don't want to receive these emails, then unsubscribe - or, better yet, don't subscribe in the first place. This new feature seems excruciatingly pointless anyway. I want all of my emails to arrive into my inbox, w…
there are 7 billion people on the planet, and many of them pretend to be multiple people online. Am I supposed to click 10 billion unsubscribe links, most of which I've discovered are actually "subscribe me harder" links? The vast majority of mail I get from "reputable" mailers like mailchimp and constant contact is not something I ever signed up for. And those are the reputable senders that have offices and a phone…
My Gmail spambox already contains 40-50% legitimate emails that I have to rescue manually, so I already know I can't rely on Google filtering things properly...