3 ms·

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

by 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.