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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

#121

Post by dvtrn »

maneesh wrote: post #118
bonoboTP wrote: post #54

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…

This comment reminds me of “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” And “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”

I see a pretty glaring difference between the parent comment and your examples: the former is an example of a human response to the stimuli of being communicated with, the latter examples...well aren't. At all. They're reactions to features of software (Dropbox is the easy one to guess, is the other Airbnb?).

How would you resolve this apparent dichotomy? Maybe there's something in your comparison that went unstated-but you meant to imply, and ultimately left me confused.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#122

Post by dawnerd »

I immediately delete + unsubscribe & sometimes report as spam any onboarding emails I get. If your product is so difficult to use that you have to keep giving me hints every week you have a problem.

I don't mind being auto subscribed if the only emails I get are major updates on the product itself, as long as these are not a weekly thing.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#123

Post by toast0 »

EamonnMR wrote: post #30
leephillips wrote: post #4

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…

When you need to track down your username months later it's nice to have that confirmation you can find later. It does not hurt to give your customers a searchable database of transactions and such.

Yeah, I don't think it needs to be long and full of salesy stuff, though.

Thank you for signing up for Foo, the best place to do Bar. Your username is X. You can login at URL, and contact us at email, support page, or phone number. Our mailing address, just in case.

oktnxbye

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#124

Post by toast0 »

olah_1 wrote: post #109

Are there personal email clients that send plain text instead of html emails? Perhaps the iOS mail app is one of the only ones?

You can configure most of them to send plain text, yes. It's probably not the default of course, but even Outlook can do it (most of the time).

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#125

Post by scollet »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #106
rovr138 wrote: 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?

> ticketing system

Receipt.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#126

Post by dvtrn »

mattigames wrote: post #117
jonshariat wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of our opinions matter though. We are not the target market usually. If the change in tone drives more business then it works. Now you could make the argument that ethically this mimicry (I like that term you used) is morally wrong. Its interesting because when you go to a coffee shop and they act friendly and helpful we like it and dont think about if they genuinely are our friends. I think if the tone is paire…

Coffee shop employees can act overly friendly but never say things like "So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now...", instead they use very short sentences and almost all of them have an utilitarian purpose like asking about your order; and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

Until you start getting incessantly upsold to a 'vente' or upsold to add a bagel.

I thought a friendly "no, that's okay, thank you" and a smile was enough but there was once a national brand franchise coffee shop that badgered me enough during the checkout experience, and on frequent enough visits when I'd get off the train and walk in for a cup of joe along the way to the office that I stopped going.

"I'm just trying to help you get a deal on your coffee".

Friendly, polite, chipper...probably pressured by a GM to upsell but I feel once a customer has politely turned down an upsell, maybe one more "are you sure?" and then after that just give a person some grace and let them buy what they've asked for.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#127

Post by subroutine »

leephillips wrote: post #4

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…

I also don't want an email.

Not because of the 1 confirmation/onboarding email you (the SaaS) just sent me, but because you simply can't help yourself. You and I both know more shiit is coming very soon.

But I get it. If I provide an email address and don't get a confirmation email within 8 seconds I assume that either (1) I made a typo or (2) your platform is running on some bargain-barrel servers (and frankly I'm questioning my decision to sign up - i mean what kind of operation...).

Anyway, I found an easy solution to this annoyance (I think we all have): Create an email account dedicated to SaaS sign-ups.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#128

Post by JoshTriplett »

bonoboTP wrote: post #54

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…

One of the things I love about working with FOSS is getting to know the humans behind it. And some of the technologies and services I care most about are those where I understand the people behind them and share their values.

Lines like the first one of those two don't work with me at all; they're targeting an audience that isn't me, and they do very much provoke the "uh-huh, what are you selling" reaction.

But I do want to see the humans and the humanity in a business. I do want to see a face and a personality and a set of values, rather than just noreply@example.com. If I share those values, I'm going to be much more enthusiastic about the business, and if I don't, I may be less so.

It's possible to create a cookie-cutter talking-about-the-weather-and-the-pandemic pseudo-personality that's kinda uncanny-valley human-ish, but doesn't take any chances. But that's not going to create that same resonance.

So the question then becomes, do you want to be faceless or pseudo-faceless and try to appeal to everyone, or do you want to be yourself, stop hiding the fact that your business has humans in it, and appeal very strongly to people who care about what you care about?

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#129

Post by HarryHirsch »

Igelau wrote: post #119
encom wrote: 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…

> store greeters This must have been Walmart. I always figured they had greeters because the small town Protestant church from my childhood had greeters.

The Church had doormen since the beginning, in the West the office of the doorman was the lowest of the Minor Orders until when Paul VI reformed Lower Orders in 1972.

Not surprising that the Temple of Mammon also has doormen. Heh.

Re: Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

#130

Post by tlogan »

bonoboTP wrote: post #54

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…

I do not think this is ‘American thing’. I think this is unique for ‘hipster start ups’ (not sure how to define them, but I can recognize one when I see one).

For me, messages like this resonate like ‘we are cool and do not use us if you need us to run your business’.

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