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Notice the asymmetries in work, you send an automated mail with zero load for you, and, interested or not, the user should have to read all your mail, and decid

Notice the asymmetries in work, you send an automated mail with zero load for you, and, interested or not, the user should have to read all your mail, and decide that there is even more work to do if he wants to reply. You have minimum effort in one side, maximum in the paying other. With a short mail at least the reading work is not so bad, but you still have the analysis one. But giving out information that should matter to your particular client, like personalized info on how things are for his user (like how his account is using the service provided, and some hints on how to improve on that with new offerings) may deserve some more thought, even if that report/mail was generated by an script. Give more effort to your side. Even if is longer or require more work for the end user.

gk1 2y ago
(Author here) What I've learned, after hundreds of convos with developers sparked by emails like this, is that many people are happy that someone from the company is interested in their project and their opinions. Those who feel that way are glad to get this and they're glad that there's no burden on them to get on a call or schedule a zoom or fill out a questionnaire or even click out of their email client. And those who don't want to be bothered, well at most they've lost 5 seconds of their day to read the email start to finish. In other words I think this fairly symmetric... Low effort and high value on both sides.
- keybored 2y ago
  > And those who don't want to be bothered, well at most they've lost 5 seconds of their day to read the email start to finish. That adds up man.
- jkaptur 2y ago
  I know nothing about promotional email, but I'm curious if you ever provided links so that the user didn't have to type an answer in order to provide a bit of information - something along the lines of "I'm using this for a personal project" or "I'm considering this for my company".
  - gk1 2y ago
    I've tried that maybe once or twice in the past decade. It was a lot of work to set up. And while it made tallying up results easier (like a poll), it didn't nearly provide as much insight as open-ended answers did.

gk1 2y ago

(Author here) What I've learned, after hundreds of convos with developers sparked by emails like this, is that many people are happy that someone from the company is interested in their project and their opinions. Those who feel that way are glad to get this and they're glad that there's no burden on them to get on a call or schedule a zoom or fill out a questionnaire or even click out of their email client. And those who don't want to be bothered, well at most they've lost 5 seconds of their day to read the email start to finish. In other words I think this fairly symmetric... Low effort and high value on both sides.

keybored 2y ago
> And those who don't want to be bothered, well at most they've lost 5 seconds of their day to read the email start to finish. That adds up man.
jkaptur 2y ago
I know nothing about promotional email, but I'm curious if you ever provided links so that the user didn't have to type an answer in order to provide a bit of information - something along the lines of "I'm using this for a personal project" or "I'm considering this for my company".
- gk1 2y ago
  I've tried that maybe once or twice in the past decade. It was a lot of work to set up. And while it made tallying up results easier (like a poll), it didn't nearly provide as much insight as open-ended answers did.