It’s the founding CEO’s job to personally email the first 1000 users

Definitely agree with the advice.<p>One objection that people often have is that "why should I do something that's not ultimately scalable and that I'll have to stop doing anyway?". But what they're missing is that when you're first starting a company that's when the fragile young plant needs the greatest care and nurture. In my opinion you should actually go out of your way to do things that you KNOW won't be possible to do manually or personally later because this not only increases the chances of getting off the ground successfully, but one day you're going to miss the early days when it was just you and those precious few people that valued your product enough to use it before it became a hit. So enjoy connecting with them and don't think of it as a chore.

This is a great recommendation for a startup looking to differentiate based on customer service.<p>I don't buy the implication that this isn't a great use of "executive time". I'm not the CEO, but I run a business unit and the buck definitely stops here. I still make time to:<p>- respond to random emails I pick out of our customer service email queue<p>- read all customer feedback submitted from the "feedback" tab on our website, and pick out any submissions that I think need special handling<p>- put my email address on many, if not most of the automated emails that get sent out, especially renewal notices and anything else we view as "really important". This usually generates a few hundred inquiries that I need to respond to, or route to another staffer<p>- troll social media looking for opportunities to perform random acts of kindness for our customers and prospects. This year I've sent t-shirts to Norway, a custom order of premium teas to Capetown, a box-set of books to Lincoln and many, more little gifts to surprise our customers.<p>- personally manage our primary twitter account, @hover to make sure it has a consistent voice and purpose. This account is in addition to the group-managed accounts we operate in support of the primary account.<p>So what's the pay-off? Why should a founder or leader be concerned with such trifling things? In the three years since making our commitment to providing real customer service (as opposed to lip service), we've built a culture where everyone understands what we each need to do to meet or beat customer expectations, and fix it when we don't. I don't think it hurts for my team to see me working alongside them helping customers and fielding inquiries day-to-day. The rest of my senior team works similarly and it really makes it easy to raise the quality bar when the leadership team is "walking the walk".<p>In our business, this extra efforts means that our renewal rate beats industry average by light years and our customer sat metrics are world-class.<p>(edit to fix formatting and some stupid grammar that crept in while I was distracted)

As long as you have their first name, I don't see why this can't be automated. It doesn't seem time well spent and there is more chance for error doing it manually.<p>I agree with getting in touch, I just don't agree with spending your time each day doing it.

One other thing that is also useful: for any automated message you send, make sure that it comes from a real address that you monitor. Many, many customers reply directly to the automated emails.

How can you go wrong trying to connect with your customers as a business owner. I think this is a great strategy to follow and even beyond the 1000 users, you can still grab x number of new customers to email personally. People want to feel important and personally communicating with the founder is one way they can do that.<p>I can recall a time when I received a personal phone call from the CEO of a marketing blog I followed. When he introduced himself, I recognized the name, but was sort of shocked he was calling me. The guy ran a very successful business with tens of thousands of subscribers, why was he calling me? That was my initial thought. He wanted my opinion on a few things, that was all. Wasn't trying to sell me anything. My answers were lame at best cause I was caught off guard (literally shocked), but after the call was over, I had to sit down and take in what just happened. I never forgot how that call impacted me. It did make a difference. I ended up buying several of his products after that, not because he called me, but I believed his products were good and felt comfortable buying them from him.<p>It's simple, really, after looking back, he was just building relationship and rapport which translates into trust which translates into relationship which turned into sales. When your product has a lot of competitors, who does your customer turn to first? If you have established some sort of rapport, it will be your business. It works...

I wrote a little about this here: <a href="http://peachshake.com/2011/01/02/engagement-secret-the-automated-personal-note/" rel="nofollow">http://peachshake.com/2011/01/02/engagement-secret-the-autom...</a><p>I do it fully automated, but take steps to make it look handmade. I've found it to be incredibly effective, with probably a 30% response rate.<p>Doing it by hand might be a little nicer, but everything is a balancing act. If I can get 80% of the benefit by automating it, I'm happy with that.

At first glance, I balked at the title, saying to myself, "Who has the time to personally email 1000 people while doing everything else a founder is responsible for. "<p>However, after reading the article, I completely agree with this approach. The personal touch, ID of earlyvangelists, and starting a constructive conversation. Great article.

I've mentioned this in another thread before, but Wufoo sent me a handwritten thank you note for being a (paid) customer one year around Christmas.<p>Now THAT made an impression.

I personally wrote thank you cards to our first hundred or so customers. It really goes a long way to show some sort of personalization.

This is excellent advice.<p>With every startup I've been involved with, the first iteration of our product was not the last, nor was it perfect. I see this more so as a means of ensuring your product doesn't get between you and the customer. Most startups simply do not value customer service as part of the opening strategy.<p>Side rant: I blame Google for the perception that you can automate your entire business, without any human interaction. (Ever try to get support from a Google rep for an application?) Even Apple, who offers products that "just work", offers very good customer support.

I've done this since day one in my startup (I'm in day 112). Not being a hacker I have to be really careful where to put my dev money, so any automation I might want to do I have to figure out ways to do it without involving the devs (that money goes to the service I'm building)<p>I have a combination of processes:<p>1. User must fill out a form with their name and email in order to get the download link. For this I use Madmimi.com.<p>2. I have setup a drip campaign. Basically what happens is that once my users confirm their email, Madmimi automatically sends out and email with an welcome text and the download links (the benefit here is obvious: I have the users email and I now have statistics about click rates on the link)<p>3. This drip campaign has two additional emails. One in 15 days and another in 30 days (after the signup).<p>The 15 days after sign up email, basically ask how's everything is doing and contains a link to a quick survey about the whole experience so far (I use Wufoo). Is a guided survey with close question.<p>The 30 days after sign up email is an open question about how they feel with the app. What does it mean to them, etc.<p>Also, my app sends me a log every-time the user uses it for the first time (here is where I haven't been able to do a full integration)<p>What I do is: I receive this log that contain the users email and some data about the usage. At that moment I fire up my email client and write a welcome email. This is a personal email from me to my user. I thank them, give them all my contact info and basically say: I'm here for you 24/7 (to this day no user has ever waited more than two hours to hear from me when they write) and I keep that promise.<p>Most of the time, the emails I get are basically about the same and my answers are very much alike.<p>To manage this and to be able to give it a personal touch, I installed TextExpander on my Mac and have setup several templates that contain most of my answers but not the full answer. This forces me to read what I'm writing and actually personalize it a bit.<p>This method, while not perfect has brought incredible benefits for my startup:<p>One client was having some issues with the app and my response was fo fast and so helpful that he could not believe it. Turned out the guy was a radio dj and had a show about entrepreneurship. We did a two hour radio interview.<p>Another client is actively pushing my app to his clients because of the customer support I gave him the first days he used the app. He was having some issues (all created by him) and I dedicated 6 hours to help this client. He is now one of my most active evangelist.<p>It pays, big time, to do customer support with passion. Let your users feel it and they will reward you for it.

This is a great idea, my problem is we're approaching 30,000 so its far too late. But this is something i'll try. I recommend using Toutapp as you can start with a basic template and customise for the user situation. It just speeds the process of emailing lots of people up.

I think it's a nice trick, and I will definitely apply it myself once we're ready to roll out. I do have one comment though (similar to redguava's).<p>Emailing the first 1000 users, fine. But doing it personally and manually, why? Aren't you going to end up using exactly the same text for all your users (either that or risk typos that make you look less professional, not more human)? Don't forget the risk of developing CTS while you could be doing much more constructive stuff.<p>I would say, have it automated but sent a couple of hours after signup, or have them sent in batches at a time where you would normally sit down and do it. I'm thinking that people either assume it's automated or they assume it's manual, one way or the other.

I'll go further and say that <i>it's the CEO's job to personally CALL as many of the first 100 users as possible</i> (if your startup is not aimed at developers/geeks).<p>I've been doing what this post recommends for Cilantro. We've hit 100 signups since launching the MVP 2 months ago.<p>A few random things I've noticed and done in addition to what's in this post:<p>- My response rate is lower than I thought (below 20%). My hunch is that this partly due to a very busy user base and partly due to language barriers.<p>- I tried using Tout to do this but in the end, I didn't see any benefit over GMail's canned responses.<p>- I actually called about 1 out of 3 new users (I ask for their phone number at signup). The response rate is WAY higher and the feedback I receive is much more valuable.

This is awesome, thanks!<p>I just emailed everyone who signed up in the past week using a similar template ...<p>Obviously I should have been doing this all along, But I'm a first-time founder, I need to be reminded ...

BTW, I was thinking that famous people like CEOs should sign their emails, espicially after the iPhone 4 antenna/BGR fiasco. At that time iOS 4 did not support S/MIME, but now that iOS 5 do, I wonder if famous people will use it.

I use this formula instead.<p>10,000 emails x 0.1 ctr = 1000 leads 1000 x 0.02% sign up = 20 users<p>I want to make sure I got enough leads or first time users and assuming only 2% of my leads actually sign up. I want to still have a decent monthly recurring income.

protip: setup a separate email account to this from