People don't write bad emails because they don't care. They really do care, but the emails that come from startups are often written with a mixture of fear of being perceived as spam, and a lack of understanding of how to connect with people.<p>Before I started an email startup, I would probably have written the same types of emails. It's amazing that once you start to focus on something, you notice the little things.<p>I taught a class a few weekends ago on how to write better emails (slides: <a href="https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-read" rel="nofollow">https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-rea...</a> ). I'm happy to help anyone (for free) who wants to do things better than they are now. Contact info is in my profile.
I wish programmers would also follow this advice when creating their GitHub repositories and project sites because they can suffer the very same problem.<p>It's pretty often I hear about a library or project, hit its homepage, and I <i>can't figure out what the heck it even is</i> without digging around.<p>The magic phrase, as used in this article, is "[thing] is [describe thing]". Tell me the name of your thing and what it <i>is</i>. Once you've got that paragraph out of the way, you can go to town!
Slightly off topic: the introduction the author recommends using, "(name) is the best (product category)", was slightly annoying a couple years ago when I first heard it and is now just a full-blown obnoxious cliché. Whenever I hear a startup type guy talking about how their product is "the best" blah, I automatically append "according to me". You may as well just say "my favourite".<p>Startups, please don't introduce your company as "(My company) is the best (what we do)" - that's for the market to decide, actually, and for you to just claim it up front is presumptuous, at best.
He reckons a sentence like "Learnist is the mobile product for curating and following complete learning experience" is worth adding to an email? Good grief! I actually have <i>less</i> idea of what it is than I did before I read that, and I've never even heard of it. If you're keeping track, that's <i>negative knowledge</i>. No, I didn't know that was possible either. You live and learn.<p>Seriously, though: if you have a business, and you can't explain what it's about without making people's brains bleed, perhaps you should go work for Google instead.
It isn't just emails in particular. Think for a moment about some fancy sites you've come across - say a startup advertising their service/product. How many times after being fed a plate full of bells and whistles, you still don't know what they <i>actually</i> do? It tells you how wonderful their product is without telling you exactly what is that product.<p>But this does make sense, because if they put things in plain words most of them will be "This is another social platform", or "this is another cloud service", "another image processing tool", "another education software". That doesn't sound very attractive, and they're well aware of it. The trick is to first convince that this is something wonderful, <i>then</i> subconsciously people will perceive it as something different from all existing services - and so willing to try it out.<p>However, most users are getting increasingly sophisticated and skeptical, and this sensible strategy sometimes backfires.
Everyone, please write better emails. Provide me with a single, clear call-to-action (aka next step) so that I "level up" and become more awesome. Side effect: I'll use your product and learn about your company.<p>Remember Kathy Sierra's advice: Don't buy this because we kick ass, buy this because we want YOU to kick ass.<p><a href="http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/buythis.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/...</a>
Copyrighting isn't easy, much the same as writing isn't easy. There's an inherently different mindset than most technical people are used to: putting yourself in your target audiences shoes and trying to fulfill their wants/needs/questions.<p>Writing better emails comes with practice and some good ol' analytics checking on user engagement. Also, the title is as important as a blog title. Study up on words that tend to drive engagement and curiosity.
Well put. There are many services, like Mailchimp, that allow you to send a portion of your messages before sending out all your invites (basically an A/B test before unleashing ALL your email with one untested subject line). I don't think startups always think through their open rates to the extent they should.<p>The body copy is a whole different story, but you nailed that in your post.
This that annoys me the most - it seems a few startups don't know to include unsubscribe links in their emails any more. Two examples from just this morning:<p><a href="http://cl.ly/image/0R101l3O101Y" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/image/0R101l3O101Y</a><p><a href="http://cl.ly/image/34020b0m3n1m" rel="nofollow">http://cl.ly/image/34020b0m3n1m</a><p>Now yes, with ShiftEdit they tell me I can delete my account, and probably in both cases I could email them asking to unsubscribe me - but it's an extra effort I shouldn't need.<p>I have another service (to be honest I've blocked the name from my brain at the moment) - it was some spammy twitter app that continues to send me emails via a personal account rather than the company - with no way to switch them off - I've emailed them a couple of times asking them to stop, but they don't - so I just mark them as junk now.
One thing which worked very well for me is focusing only on one thing per email. Startups always have this conflict of trying not to spam their users too much but still making sure they know everything. The outcome is that every time they do send emails they try to include e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in it. I struggled with it a lot as well, at one point we decided to dedicate each email to one new small feature, asking for a certain feedback, etc. Even when we released a new version we focused only on one thing. I think users find it much easier to read and digest. It also increases the chances your users will understand what you want them to do :)
I've definitely experienced this on the receiving end, both with startups and new products, but also with random mailing lists that only send out updates sporadically.<p>A good rule of thumb for ANY mass email communication is to lead with a short explanation of why they're receiving the email: "Thanks for signing up for updates from Newproduct, a new platform for knitters to connect online."<p>Remind them 1) they signed up, 2) what they signed up for (updates), and 3) who you are (descriptively).
PeoplePerHour I'm looking at you! Your emails are awful, border on offensive, and I can't reply to them. Finally unsubscribed, which means I'll probably forget about their service /even though I actually like it/.
I thought the exact same thing the other day. I have deleted many startup emails recently, only because I didn't know wtf they were all about, and didn't want to sign up just to find out. Example: "Startup X. It was a long way bla bla but.. We have finally released!", like I had been waiting for them all this time.