Community Welcome Mails

Signing up for a new service usually means receiving at least one little ‘welcome’ email. Often it requires you to confirm your email address, or simply tells you about your next options.

Most of the time I open these kinds of mails blindly, skimming the text until I find the confirmation link or any other important call to action. These mails always look the same, an go something like this:

“hi xyz, welcome to xyz, the best blablabla.  Please…” and so on.

Sometimes these mails are sent from a no-reply address, signaling: “it’s an automatic system talking to you here, don’t even think about getting in touch, just read the manual and be on with it. Ok, if you really need help [idiot] there’s the support center.”

BUT there are exceptions to the rule

1) founders2be welcome mail

From founders2be, I got this nice personal letter, the sender introduces himself as one of the co-founders and uses a regular email address with his name. He tells a little story about how the startup was born and convinces me to fill out my profile information because this will increase the value of the experience. I think the mail was personalized to the specific status of my profile information. It wasn’t particularly nice looking or fancily html formatted, it just looked like any old email from a real person who wants you to make the most of the service you’ve just signed up to. +1!

 

2) Gidsy keeping early sign ups happy mail

Some services allow registration before the actual launch. In some cases you end up forgetting you ever signed up because nothing happens, or you get frustrated by boring, newsletter type emails promoting a service you don’t feel attached to yet. Gidsy however have treated their early sign-ups really well, inviting them to a test round of the newly available features. The email is layouted in a subtle way, still looking like an email and not newslettery. Also notice the please-reply address – nice pun.

 

some REALLY mess it up

While what feels like at least 90% of messages of this type resort to the mediocre, standard variety, there aren’t only those who stand out as positive deviations from the norm. No, there are also the really annoying ones which make you lose all appetite for a service before even using it.

1) Pistachio blackmail

When pistachio pitched at betahaus the other day, they invited the audience to tweet for an access code. I found the concept interesting enough to want to test it. But instead of access to the service, I got this mail. They thank me for requesting an invite. Um… no, actually YOU invited ME, remember? Then they go on to ask me to invite more friends to the service. In fact, they blackmail me with what sounds vaguely like a threat: “the more friends you invite, the sooner you’ll get access”. You know what… I never really liked pistachios all that much.

I’m sure my colleague Jeroen had made  a very similar experience when he tweeted this just a few days ago:

 

This entry was posted by on Friday, October 28th, 2011 at 15:38. It is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Community Welcome Mails”

  1. Hi there, thanks a lot for the kind words! And actually, when you allow images to be displayed – the newsletter will even look better! At least, we hope you like it, haha.

    Cheers,

    Edial

  2. Oh yes – indeed there’s a real header to it! I even liked it without it. And also I adressed the tweet to @gidsy not @gidsynews. Perhaps I should think before I write ;)

  3. I received an email with much of the same sentiments as your post a few weeks back and agreed. The out of the box launchrock.com method (invite 3 friends) felt wrong and I changed the after sign up copy to:

    “We’re not doing that whole invite 3 people for early access thing, but we really would love it if you could help us spread the word. Thank you.”

    When I read this post was was like Blackmail, what, huh, they I just double checked our dashboard; I didn’t update the email copy.

    I’m sorry I lost your trust after you showed some interest, but thank you for saving the next beta email sent out.

  4. @Anthony thanks for your comment. indeed, you are not the only one using that method. in fact my colleague jeroen was referring to a row of other berlin based services using the same mechanism.
    I am glad you decided to change something about it, I’m sure it will improve people’s interest and trust in pistachio! Good luck.

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