Ask HN: Can I email people who use my app? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can I email people who use my app?

5 pointsalacs54311 comments

I released an app an app a while ago, that initially suffered from not having a free-trial period.

People were downloading it and creating accounts, but failing to purchase premium features. Based on my analytics, I can see that they poked around, saw that many of the features were unavailable, and never returned to the app.

I implemented a default free trial period as a solution, and that has been working very well with new users. I would love to get the people who signed up before I was giving out free trials, to log back in, so that they can experience a free trial of the premium features.

This would require sending them an email. I feel like this is a breach of privacy, since, I never indicated when they signed up that I would contact them or use their email in any way. What should I do? I'm prepared to consider that bunch of users a loss, but I figured I'd check and see if I'm crazy for not emailing them to let them know about the new free-trial period.

When I sign up for an use an app I expect they will/could email me about the app.

If they were interested before, they would probably like to hear about new features and a free trial.

If you don't have a lot of users now, just add a reply with stop if you would not like to receive emails from us. Track these manually till you come up with an opt out email system.

Good luck converting some of the early signups to your app.

Unless you had an options for your users to opt out of that kind of email, specifically telling you not to email them, giving an email address for a service assumes the service could email you for reasons pertaining to the product/service.

hmmm... fair enough. I did not give them an option to opt out of emails. I never said anything about emailing them though.

Laws vary quite a bit by country, and some industries have specific rules e.g. telco/finance/pharma will have additional regulation if your app category is here.

2 general rules that will cover you in most of the world are;

1) Service messages are OK but marketing messages should have opt-in. It can be a fine line but keeping as a service announcement helps cover permissions.

2) Every email communication should have'unsubscribe'.

E-mail them. I've been e-mailed by an app developer in a similar situation. I used the app and he was not sure he could keep supporting it and wanted to know if his users would be willing to pay him. It was not an issue for me as it was a legitimate, app-related communication.

Email them

Thanks for the reply. So, I can safely assume that if you signed up for an app, you wouldn't be upset or annoyed if they randomly emailed you? Maybe I'm unique in that way. Hence why this post :)

I'd say that you can email them, but only very infrequently. Also, your first (and every) email to them should give them an opt-out mechanism, even if there wasn't one when they first signed up. (This means that, if you don't have the opt-out mechanism yet, finish that before you email them.)

I wouldn't WANT the email, but wouldn't be surprised by it. Its actually less offensive to email sooner. If you email me 6 months after I signed up just to check something out, I probably won't remember what the service was and will be annoyed. If you email a week after I signed up, I'll either read or delete and move on.

I for one will tolerate about one marketing or feature update email per month from a service I actively use. More than that and it gets irritating. Less than once every 3 months for a service I DON'T actively use, and I'll forget who you are.

And for me at least, feature update emails are the most likely to get at least skimmed. I'm generally not interested in your latest generic blog post about how to be better at X (hint: use our product!) Maybe some people are. But if your product now does something I was previously hoping it would (or that I hadn't even thought about but now realize would be super useful), I'll be GLAD to have received the email.

And yes, always offer and honor an unsubscribe. In many markets it's the law; and it others it's common courtesy.

If I signed up with my email address, I would certainly expect email communications at some point (with some way to opt-out of further emails).

I would be irritated, as I didn't agree to any communication. Apparently, there are different views on the matter.

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