Ask YC: The art of invitation design? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: The art of invitation design?

5 pointsprateekdayal7 comments

I am very interested in learning more about the art of invitations. I am talking of users inviting other users to try out a web service. I am particularly impressed with linkedin. The invitations from linkedin work quite effectively. Invitations from other social networking services are mostly ignored. Is it something about the subject line that can make it or break it.

Any thoughts on it?

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I'm curious... Where does your assertion that "invitations from linkedin work quite effectively" come from? Is this an assumption or something that has been proven?

Subject line most definitely has a lot to getting any email read, regardless of whether it's an invitation to use a service or attend a webinar or an event.

When it comes to users inviting users, LinkedIn keeps the standard template message very short. First time you get this invite, you're not sure if it was a template or hand written by whoever is inviting you.

The relationship with the inviter is also critical. My guess is responding to emails from people you have had a business relationship might seem more urgent/important than responding to a personal email.

Just some thoughts.

Lets say if it spreads from single member to friends with bubble effect; then having name of the member(preferably genuine name otherwise userid/handle) in subject line can help in long way. e.g. morbidkk wants to keep up with you on Twitter

I personally dont even read invitation mails from strangers.

1) so avoid generic subject line. - A friend invites you to xyz 2) Also check shelfari invite mail; which is very impressive as it just introuduces everything what can be done on shelfari in small but concise mail.

The single most important thing is to get the inviting party's name in the subject line. A personal note from the inviting party is golden, rather than a form mail. If you have to do a form mail, keep it brutally short.

Some email companies allow you to do A/B testing on-the-fly. For a list of 10,000 users, they'll send out 100 of subject line "A" and 100 of subject line "B". They'll pause, wait to see what the reaction is, and then send the remaining 9800 emails using whichever was shown to be the most popular. I don't know if that helps you but it's how companies with budgets/time do it.

This is how you do it, but don't send 100 and then a 100, use a much bigger sample size to make sure you are climbing up the hill correctly. In other words, do A/B testing in a highly statistically significant manner until you find what works for your service. You can grab things from other sites like Linked In to try to climb up the hill faster.

As LinkedIn is a professionals networking site, people probably take invitations recieved more seriously.

I disagree. For a long time I used to get confused by LinkedIn and Plaxo -- and Plaxo sort of spams people, so the category of professional networking sites (excuse me i'm getting this category wrong) isn't particularly reliable to me.

Personally, that LinkedIn is a professional site doesn't make me take it more seriously.

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