5 ms·

Thanks for you comments. I agree with you on unsubscribing from the emails, but it works. 86% of the users open, 54% click, 23% replied to the email and only 2

Thanks for you comments. I agree with you on unsubscribing from the emails, but it works. 86% of the users open, 54% click, 23% replied to the email and only 2% unsubscribed. At my job with HKSEO/Humankind, this is what I spent my days doing, but I would do 4-5 prototypes at a time, pitch them to the owner, build the 1-2, launch and repeat constantly. Once the product was making a decent amount of money, we would spend more time doing the split testing and on-boarding (which was also split tested). So I know a single developer can do this on 20% time if they aren't expecting a 1 week turnaround.

dcw303 10y ago
Question about on-boarding email: does the strategy lose its effectiveness as more products do it? Software developers are among the most cynical when it comes to marketing, so I expect us to say that these suck. What I wonder though is if every company starts to take the same approach, does a public collective fatigue set in? I imagine that the conversion rate on direct mailers that look like novelty checks started off quite high, but the public eventually became immune as the "trick" is absorbed.
- essayist 10y ago
  There is a free Markdown-based collaborative editing website I use. Wonderful stuff. Free (did I mention that?). Signing up enrolls your user email into a drip marketing thread, from "Joe", the founder. He asks "how's it going? can I help?" I reply with thanks and a couple of questions. No reply. A few days later, a canned follow-up email from "Joe", etc. As I try to figure out the service and sharing, I sign up with another email address. Bam, the same number of hours later, a "personal" query from "Joe", as above. Research suggests that "Joe" has abandoned this side project (his right, of course). I'd suggest though that "drip marketing" + abandoned site is an anti-pattern. I'd be happier with "Joe" and his free service if I'd never gotten the transactional email (especially the second or third in the sequence, when he's never replied.) The oddly good news: the lack of replies plus the Googling it instigated made me realize I was relying on an abandoned project, so of course I backed up my stuff.
huhtenberg 10y ago
> 86% of the users open How did you measure this if there's literally no email clients left out there that load remote content by default?
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  I would love to know this too ...
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  Gmail loads pictures by default these days.
  - huhtenberg 10y ago
    Yes, but not when email is actually opened.
    - jermaustin1 10y ago
      This my be true now, but when I was working and doing the marketing for my products, it reported accurately. I'm pretty sure it still does honestly. According to Customer.io, the change was to make images load by default, not requiring the end user to click Show Images. Thus making the open rates more accurate. https://customer.io/blog/gmail-loading-images.html https://customer.io/blog/gmail-loading-images.html
      - jordanwallwork 10y ago
        I don't understand that - if Gmail opens images ahead of time and caches them, then how will you know when a customer has actually opened the email?
        Nullabillity 10y ago
        AFAIK, it doesn't. It will proxy all images through its own servers (and thus hide your IP), but it happens as your browser requests it and is not cached.
xerophyte12932 10y ago
An actual user typed follow up email does wonders. Recently, Postach.io did a comeback with the service where they started out by mass-emailing inactive users what problems they are facing about the service. I emailed them expecting an automated "Thank you for your time" response. Instead, a while later I got a custom email talking about the very specific issue I had emailed about and how they had been getting complains about the same from other users and how they are working to resolve this issue. That made me feel they actually cared about my problems. Needless to say, I am on board!

dcw303 10y ago

Question about on-boarding email: does the strategy lose its effectiveness as more products do it? Software developers are among the most cynical when it comes to marketing, so I expect us to say that these suck. What I wonder though is if every company starts to take the same approach, does a public collective fatigue set in? I imagine that the conversion rate on direct mailers that look like novelty checks started off quite high, but the public eventually became immune as the "trick" is absorbed.

essayist 10y ago
There is a free Markdown-based collaborative editing website I use. Wonderful stuff. Free (did I mention that?). Signing up enrolls your user email into a drip marketing thread, from "Joe", the founder. He asks "how's it going? can I help?" I reply with thanks and a couple of questions. No reply. A few days later, a canned follow-up email from "Joe", etc. As I try to figure out the service and sharing, I sign up with another email address. Bam, the same number of hours later, a "personal" query from "Joe", as above. Research suggests that "Joe" has abandoned this side project (his right, of course). I'd suggest though that "drip marketing" + abandoned site is an anti-pattern. I'd be happier with "Joe" and his free service if I'd never gotten the transactional email (especially the second or third in the sequence, when he's never replied.) The oddly good news: the lack of replies plus the Googling it instigated made me realize I was relying on an abandoned project, so of course I backed up my stuff.

huhtenberg 10y ago

> 86% of the users open How did you measure this if there's literally no email clients left out there that load remote content by default?

lifeisstillgood 10y ago
I would love to know this too ...
Nullabillity 10y ago
Gmail loads pictures by default these days.
- huhtenberg 10y ago
  Yes, but not when email is actually opened.
  - jermaustin1 10y ago
    This my be true now, but when I was working and doing the marketing for my products, it reported accurately. I'm pretty sure it still does honestly. According to Customer.io, the change was to make images load by default, not requiring the end user to click Show Images. Thus making the open rates more accurate. https://customer.io/blog/gmail-loading-images.html https://customer.io/blog/gmail-loading-images.html
    - jordanwallwork 10y ago
      I don't understand that - if Gmail opens images ahead of time and caches them, then how will you know when a customer has actually opened the email?
      - Nullabillity 10y ago
        AFAIK, it doesn't. It will proxy all images through its own servers (and thus hide your IP), but it happens as your browser requests it and is not cached.

xerophyte12932 10y ago

An actual user typed follow up email does wonders. Recently, Postach.io did a comeback with the service where they started out by mass-emailing inactive users what problems they are facing about the service. I emailed them expecting an automated "Thank you for your time" response. Instead, a while later I got a custom email talking about the very specific issue I had emailed about and how they had been getting complains about the same from other users and how they are working to resolve this issue. That made me feel they actually cared about my problems. Needless to say, I am on board!