And then there's the tldr version that everyone seems to be actually using:<p>1. Send at least one mail per day to urge your user to try out a random feature that he doesn't care about.<p>2. Make sure every mail claims to be "not a bot", "not automatic", "I'm a real human!!1".<p>3. Close every mail with an offer to be available at any time for everything and anything.
Make sure your user knows that he can call your CEO at 5 in the morning if he feels a sudden urge to have a personal product tour.<p>4. Mention at least two awesome webinars in every e-mail. Send regular reminders about webinars.<p>5. Also send invitations for every congress, meetup, bbq party, that you are however involved with.
I believe I had mentioned this before - and received a lot of downvotes for it: I, as a user, wish not to be bothered with emails.<p>I often just briefly want to see what the fuzz is all about. The app then "tricks me" into providing them with an email address, by pretending they need this as an identifier, most of the time in order to create an account. They then feel free to send me "Greg from blahblah app"-Emails.<p>To me, this is spam. It is an email I do not want. To me there is no difference between a random spammer who wants to sell fake viagra and Greg from blahblah app, who wants me to use his cloud-driven javascript thingy.<p>I believe there is a role missing, in the view on customer relationships. Just because I am looking at things in your store doesn't mean I want to be treated as a customer already. I believe there should be a differentiation between somebody who already bought something and somebody who is about to. Aggressively sending email at any chance isn't the way to make this transformation, imho.
Took the liberty of turning it into markdown so people can collaborate on the guide.<p><a href="https://github.com/sourceful/send-email-as-a-startup" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sourceful/send-email-as-a-startup</a>
Whoever is telling web companies that it is a good idea to suddenly start mailing "newsletters" to people that signed up for accounts is lying to them. Over the past year or so I've started getting emails from web sites I haven't visited in years - for example I signed into an old hotmail account and apparently fark is sending out newsletters now?<p>The only thing these things do is make me click unsubscribe and make a mental note that the site sucks.
What a great resource, bookmarked!<p>Of course much of this has been written about in various blog posts, but having it all compiled in a single resource is very handy, especially when being in the startup phase of a SaaS business selling booking software (<a href="https://zapla.co" rel="nofollow">https://zapla.co</a>). I'll definitely be implementing a lot of this advice!
This article actually explains how to make your client hate you and your business.<p>Dear colelagues, please don't use HTML email notifications as far as some technically advanced people just turn HTML off to
a) reduse valnurability (i.e. see all links and remove possible frames, img & JS)
b) make email processing faster and less resource consumptive<p>IMHO I see just one common and most important rule of email notifications. it must be simple as possible and not obstructive. And please never force client to register and leave email without real necessity. Minimize it and keep simpe. Then your audience (smart and most referenced group of it, at least) will love you.
Really good advice here. One thing I particularly liked is the advice to email the first 1000 users manually and only set up automated drip campaigns as a way to automate what you find yourself sending over and over.<p>I'd also like to add this PSA: Don't send automated emails that pretend to be from a human. <a href="http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot" rel="nofollow">http://blog.beeminder.com/smarmbot</a> (Blog post, "Don't Be a Smarmbot", in which I argue with @patio11 about this.)
Minor nitpick: surely the title should actually be "How to Send Email as a Startup". The current phrasing seems a bit odd - especially considering the fact that it is a lecture on reaching out to potential future customers :)
I like that first 1000 customers you must touch them personally.<p>My biggest hinderance is getting a phone number that won't cost a fortune to call people in US or abroad from Canada. some Canadian telecom companies absolutely adore ripping people off when it comes to dialing other countries as if we were in the 1980s.<p>Basically I want to approach my customers with a call me number that won't cost them a lot and won't cost me a lot to talk on.<p>I'm still reading through this wonderful guide it is ripe with useful information.