Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

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Do you not lose a bunch of on-the-fence users each time you send them an email which isn't immediately useful or actionable?

That's a number which is trivially calculable. I don't know what it will be yet, but if you asked me to pick the over/under, I'm in for 80 out of 16k people on our list at present. An unsubscribe is not "I hate you guys and wish you would die in a fire"; it's the email equivalent of a browser's back button. "Not for me, not right now." Many startups let each unsubscribe punch them in the gut. Don't do that. The only way to avoid unsubscribes is to avoid email. You profoundly don't want to avoid email.

We've sent ~2 emails since... March? If I were a consulting client of myself, I'd have written somewhere between one and two dozen.

Is this email going to produce business results for the company? Hard to say. Wild guess? I get a contact in the next hour from one of the companies who has a stalled LOI saying "Oh great you're shipping let's get that signed." Depending on which company that is, the economics are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many professional email marketers strongly disagree with writing long emails. I will chalk that up to a respectable professional disagreement. They work very well for me, by any trackable metric and by most of the intangibles. I've never felt like I created much value with the little 125-word-and-a-picture squibs that the industry blasts out by the hundred million; I know (because people tell me) that some people like my writing rather a lot and are disappointed that I don't hit them with 8k words every Friday. As it happens, a portion of Starfighter's list is folks who are in exactly that bucket.

Does that answer the question? Not trying to be very defensive about this, just trying to help other startups out. The modal startup sucks at email marketing. It is, far and away, the highest ROI channel you have and probably the easiest to use well. You should send more email. You should send better email.

As a data point - I'm one of the people Patrick mentions. I like his writing a lot and would be very happy to see an 8k word essay from him every Friday.

He's on my very short list of 3 or so people who do email marketing particularly well.

One of the other people on that list, incidentally, writes 200-ish word emails every day. I read everything she writes too. There's not a single optimal solution here.

(I'm also very much looking forward to playing the game after reading that post. Given I'm not a professional programmer, I have very little desire to become one, I'm very happy in my current jobs, and I suspect Stockfighter is going to kick my ass until I can wear it like a hat, that's of dubious business value to Starfighter, but I guess I'll probably also recommend it to some folk who may be of more value...)

Just anecdotal evidence: The two e-mails y'all have sent since I signed up have caused a pavlovian response, I literally left my office and sat down on a couch to read your last e-mail the second I saw it in my inbox.

I do that whenever I see anything from Patrick posted on HN, and getting it delivered in my email box has a similar effect. I would say that I have an irrational enjoyment of reading things that he writes, but I actually think it's pretty rational -- I've never read anything by him that didn't exceed my expectations of information, humor, and valuable content.

To add to the anecdotal evidence I had exactly the same response. Most of the emails are light and fluffy. It's refreshing to receive something with some real meat to it. I've gone from initially being on the fence, to being very excited after the first email, and more so after the second.

For what it's worth, I just signed up for the mailing list. I did this because I want to read articles like this that are mostly high-level technical stuff with a dash of business details. That sort of article is the reason I pay attention to HN.

I'd personally be fine with first finding out about Starfighter itself well after launch. I'll probably check it out, but it's not like I anticipate spending hours on it every week. On the other hand, your blog takes only a few minutes to read, and has great signal:noise.

Counter-anecdote: I got the email, was excited to see that Starfighter was launching soon... but was annoyed that I couldn't quickly skim the rest of the email to get the "tl;dr" version (the basics of what the challenge will involve, or if there's anything else I need to know about the launch, etc). I've been cutting down on my RSS reader lately because there are a lot of things I want to read and there's not time to read them all; I wish the emails were more respectful of my time. Just including a clearly-marked summary, followed by the long version, would make me far happier.

I concur it is about respect for time most of all. Though the technical portions are interesting, they could have been broken out into separate articles for people who want those additional details.

I may not be the target audience (novice coder) but I also feel the writing style would greatly benefit from greater focus.

A sentence that stands out in that regard is "Although my co-founders Thomas and Erin have done substantial work with securing real stock exchanges over their career, I have no particular background in finance." This sentence could be refined to "My co-founders Thomas and Erin have substantial experience securing real stock exchanges". This kind of editing would help the author avoid 8k word essays without a significant loss of content value.

You've reduced the word count with that edit, but you've also lost some texture. The voice and texture of Patrick's writing contribute greatly to its being so absorbing... there's no point in trying to turn a Melville into a Hemingway.

My advice to Patrick would not be to change his style, which is clearly very effective, but to also throw some shorter update emails into the mix so people can keep tabs with less of a time investment if they so choose.

Your comment was too long and was not respectful of my time. Couldn't you have found a way to convey your sense of entitlement to the content that other people freely provide you in a more succinct way?

I’m not quite sure how sharing an anecdote about how I, personally, found it difficult to find information in a particular email conveys a “sense of entitlement”—perhaps my phrasing didn’t come across well? The “respectful of my time” thing is just a phrase I’ve generally heard as shorthand for “make the information easier to access,” and I was merely expressing a wish, not a demand.

Maybe you didn't mean it this way, but "not respectful of my time" is semantically equivalent to "you are disrespecting my time". Disrespect (verb): to show a lack of respect for; insult. It makes it sound like something that the author has done to you. Your other points were fine about your personal experience. But saying the author is not respectful of you is the step too far.

To improve the wording, I'd suggest something that doesn't imply intent on behalf of the author and solely reflects your own personal views. For example: "I wish the emails were shorter as I don't have time for long-form content". It gets your point across that you have limited time and would prefer concise emails, but doesn't infer anything regarding respect (or the lack thereof) towards you.

Okay. The phrase is in pretty wide use with more casual implications (googling “be respectful of your reader’s time” brings up a lot of marketing email advice pages, for instance), but obviously it's not in as wide of use as I’d thought, so I apologize for overstepping!

I do wish your original comment had been a little less snarky; I’d like to contribute more to HN but it’s not so easy when replies seem to assume entitlement/bad faith/etc.

Agreed... sorry for being snarky; I should have explained what I meant originally instead.

I think the difference is that people give authors advice prior to writing an article which amounts to "be mindful that your readers will have to read this". And given that authors have a broad range of readers, it's perfectly fine for an author to consider this and still go ahead with something that's long form and detailed because there's a good chunk of their readership who actively appreciates it (and possibly expects it given patio11's typical article length).

Essentially, claiming the author shows you a lack of respect is disrespectful of the author for the work they put into it. Who has the greater onus to offer respect: someone who actively works to put out free in-depth articles that nobody is under any obligation to read, or those who passively consume those articles? Those who wish to read short announcements can simply say "Great post with lots of details, but is there a channel I can subscribe to which gives me short announcements?" That demonstrates respect.

juletide's comment was excellent constructive feedback. It had the right tone[1], explained context[2], and included a specific actionable suggestion[3]. This is the exact sort of feedback good authors want; it was in no way an expression of entitlement.

While patio11 may not follow this particular suggestion for potentially valid reasons that he may or may not have, it was good feedback either way.

[1]-It mostly referred to his or her experience negatively, not the text itself. This seems superficial, but it does matter anyway.

[2]-The RSS point validates the experience, and makes it easier for the author to understand.

[3]-The tl;dr bit was a specific suggestion to improve his or her experience.

Many professional email marketers strongly disagree with writing long emails.

I might venture an opinion that this is likely because they don't write as well or as interestingly as you do. By a long shot.

great response, Patrick. And count me in with the folks who love the longer emails. Your writing is invariably thoughtful and thorough.

I think the long email is a great example of how it's better to have 1,000 people who love you rather than 100,000 people who like you.

80 out of 16K is bang on the half-of-one-percent benchmark I've always used for Unsubscribes. If it gets too close to 1%, you'd have cause for concern, and if it gets too close to 0% then you have a spam filter issue that stops a lot o delivery.

One more anecdote: I read the email immediately, shared it with anyone I thought would be interested, and started to count down how long it would be before I could play the game with my 6yo daughter. So, um, it's working for me so far.

Agreed - it just feels nicer to read fewer longer emails - sort of New Yorker vs CNN tickertron.

Of course writing them is a pain so it's an investment. Considering I just gave a friend the "you must write long articles and build an audience" advice, it's amazing how badly I take my own advice...

> An unsubscribe is not "I hate you guys and wish you would die in a fire"

That's not universally true ;)

I always enjoy the times that the service polls me to find out why I've unsubscribed. But I also have to admit that I also hate it when I check the "I never signed up for this list" and I don't get an apology or something.

Keep sending your long emails. I have butterflies in my stomach. Very excited.

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