Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling | Hacker News Reader

Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling

blog.palabra.io

171 pointspau_alcala174 comments

I really hate these cheesy lines that are "excellent" according to the article, like:

- "You had enough fluff marketing content and so did we. So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now..."

- "Writing this from my couch at home, hoping to find you safe and well at yours. It's been a busy summer! I wanted to share more about out 2.9 release..."

No, just no. Leave me alone, we aren't friends, you did not write this to me personally. When I read such text I am mentally bracing myself and putting up my defenses because we are at war. You are fighting in the arms race in the attention economy at my expense. This kind of email is like mimicry in the animal kingdom. You are faking the appearance of a mail from a friend when it's a business. It's nasty, parasitic and off-putting.

But maybe it's a cultural difference. Perhaps American culture is more receptive to this. But in most European cultures politeness requires a certain distance and being overly enthusiastically friendly makes us immediately think you are a scammer (in real life too). So pay attention to local cultural customs because these kinds of fake-cheerful-friendly-informal mails don't work everywhere.

This is a great insight, our users are mostly american and they are pretty receptive to cheesy lines. I personally smile even though I know it's automated, just appreciate the creativity i guess? But I hadn't really thought about how these would sound for european readers. Will definitely keep that in mind

I'm American and agree with the GP 110%. If I get an email like that, not only do I delete it, but I'm less likely to read your future emails.

I think it is a California-centric "it's all good" vibe. Not all of America has California culture.

California native (east bay) checking in. These fake ass, liposuction, collagen injected carnival exhibit emails are bullshit. You should delete them and the companies from your life.

LOL. Thanks for writing that.

I am American and these kinds of things are hard eye rolls to me

> Perhaps American culture is more receptive to this

As an American I don't think people like corporations feigning social intimacy either.

But it happens all the time (according to my tiny sample size). A tong time ago, I was in an American coffee shop (probably Starbucks, I guess), and they asked for my name. I found that very strange and weird. You would neither be able to spell or pronouce it, so let's just go with James.

This trend is beginning in Denmark as well, and I don't like it. It'd be easier for everyone if you just assign me a number and announce that when my drink is ready.

I also encountered store greeters, which was the most bizarre thing ever.

> But it happens all the time

Doesn't mean people like it. I think there's also a difference between a low-level employee being friendly personally to me because it's their job and also it's just polite, vs some marketing employee being "friendly" to the 500k people on their mailing list.

It's also always worth noting, is the case with many countries, the US is very diverse. People in NYC probably think very differently about this vs. people in L.A. or Boise, Montana.

Boise’s in Idaho!

the real point of the store greeters is to limit shoplifting -- they hang around the entrance watching people and may check people's receipts against what they are taking out of the store.

making them say hi and act friendly to everyone is just a way of camouflaging this and making it seem less hostile.

you’re right about the goal, but not the mechanism. shoplifting is curtailed because greeting induces a sense of familiarity between the potential thief and greeter, thereby reducing the veil of anonymity, raising senses of guilt, reciprocity, and duty, while lowering the perception of potential success. it’s not foolproof of course, but helps at the margins. random receipt checks don’t do much other than impede flow.

The usefulness of having a greeter to limit shoplifting has been reduced drastically as many stores have implemented policies where regular employees are prohibited from preventing a shoplifter from leaving, due to liability issues if the employee gets injured in an altercation. This has led to a situation where shoplifters would brazenly walk out of the store with armful of merchandise, knowing that they won't be stopped.

Coffee shops ask for your name so they can write it on the cup to make sure you get the right order at the pickup counter. It's a quality control measure. I guess they could ask you to think up a random number instead, but some people would find that mildly offputting I think .

Some places will just give you an order number, which usually increases sequentially, and has the side-benefit that you have a vague measure of how far your order is from being completed. Although, having the person's name is also nice, because people tend to be good at recognizing when their name is called.

Replacing names with numbers? How dystopian!

This is of course a joke, I am a fan of the number system. The honour system also works fine here in Australia, they just call out the order and you go and take it after a tiny delay to see if the guy who was there first goes for it.

Perfect,your order is #56

You don't have to ask for a number, just give them one.

You'd need a ticketing system so people even remember what their number is. And for what upside when names work fine?

There's potential overlap using names when it's busy. This happened to me once and my name isn't particularly common.

> ticketing system

Receipt.

Yes, precisely. Even my local (definitely not very high-tech) fish-and-chip shop can manage to print a number at the top of the receipt, and then call that number out when your food is ready.

Starbucks ask you for a name to make the process seem more personal and friendly. Apparently they started doing this in 2012; it was met with quite some head-scratching in the UK at the time. The other big coffee chains here do not do this, to the best of my knowledge.

Names work fine if your name is easily pronounced. Otherwise you end up making up a name just for Starbucks which takes away from their personalisation thing

Taking away a corporation's personalisation thing sounds like a good idea.

It's definitely a good idea, but it's not clear why the corporation would want that.

It works fine for McDonalds. They just print the number in a huge typeface on the receipt. They don’t have to pretend to care, and I don’t have to mess around spelling my name out.

The world is moving on from paper receipts, though. For regular Starbucks customers, payment by phone is routine, and there's normally no paper receipt.

Do names work fine when 3 John's walk in in a row?

That is indeed what most places do: the names are a more recent thing. Of course, now you need to keep the paper receipt with the number on it, or a plastic number card that might or might not be returned to the counter, then train yourself to listen for an arbitrary number, even though your brain is already quite adept at hearing your name. For most people, most of the time, the first name is an upgrade. For edge cases, unfortunately, it's worse.

One restaurant I love approaches the problem by giving out name cards (brightly-colored paper, so disposable or cheaply replaceable) rather than numbers on the receipt, but the names are of famous personalities. I've been Dolly Parton, I've been Arnold Schwarzenegger, I've been Jackie Robinson, etc. They're fun because unlike numbers, they're easy to remember and can provoke conversation in a group, or fond thoughts when alone. Bravo to Twisted Root Burger Co for this approach!

There are lots of people in the US who dislike this kind of stuff, but overall, it must be the case that more people like it (or at least are neutral). Otherwise the companies wouldn't bother with it, right?

Personally I don't like it, although I've never seen asking for your name lumped in with the false politeness. It is pretty widespread over here. People are more likely to pick up on hearing their name, rather than a number, right? Nobody can spell my weird name, but they just put a phonetically similar more common one on the cup and I've learned to listen for that.

Store greeters are a pretty strange trend.

I'm used to it now but when I first encountered the practice of food service staff asking for my name, I did find it very strange and not a little uncomfortable (it felt like an invasion of my privacy). It also has some serious downsides for foreigners/tourists/immigrants who:

(1) may not speak English (analogous scenario: imagine going to a Starbucks in Japan and having the cashier repeatedly ask for your name in Japanese, and you don't speak Japanese);

(2) have names that aren't easily pronounced/spelled in English ("Name?" "Zbigniew" "How do you spell that?" "Zed bee eye gee...." "Wait, what's zed?" "Last letter of alphabet" "Oh you mean zee" "No, zed");

(3) feel embarrassed about the whole interaction, which leads to them inventing a fake name, which in turn makes them feel dirty. (Zbigniew gives his name as "Zach" to the Starbucks employee although he has never used this name in his life -- it's not the name his parents gave him)

(4) then has said name confused with 3 other Zachs also waiting for their tall lattes.

It's almost like someone forgot to think through the UI/UX of this system with respect to internationalization.

When traveling in a foreign country its not uncommon to invent a name on the local language to make interacting with locals easier.

Even when not traveling, for people with 'unusual' names it's not uncommon to use a more easily recognisable 'cafe name' to get around this issue.

Yes, many people with such names have so-called "Starbucks" names, and some are quite creative and funny -- I mean, there are people who use "Barack Hussein" as their Starbucks name. Ordinary names like Bob or Sue are common too.

I understand why Starbucks does it. It's part of their corporate culture and marketing. I've no strong aversion to it -- as I said I'm used to it now and it is what it is. But I just wanted to highlight some of the downsides for people with unusual names, even though as you say it's no big deal to find a workaround.

And there exist more universal systems that aren't dependent on a barista's ability to spell or pronounce an arbitrary name, and that doesn't require the customer to reveal or invent a name.

p.s. English names are not exempt from this. Imagine going to a non-English-speaking country and having a name like Cecil or Xavier (which Americans pronounce Ex-zavier).

I do this, but I have certainly encountered some awkwardness if I transition into being a “regular”, and the baristas start to make small talk...

I'm not sure that it is that common. I mean, wouldn't it seem strange to take on the moniker of Takeshi while travelling in Japan, or Juan in Mexico, or Alexei in Moscow just to be able to order at Starbucks?

p.s. I should add the caveat that Starbucks baristas in Japan do not ask for names. It's culturally inappropriate there so Starbucks doesn't implement their names policy in Japan.

I mean, like many people on this board, I have a “Starbucks name” that I use because my real name is hard to pronounce. If I moved to a non-English speaking country, I’d probably adopt a local “Starbucks name”

> I'm not sure that it is that common

Anecdotal evidence to the contrary: I'm in the UK and have known a few people from parts of Africa over the years, they've all had made up simple short names because they tired of people but being able to deal with their real names (either not being able to pronounce it, or making a big thing if it sounding strange). And it wasn't just a short nick-name based on their name that they use generally: their friends from the region would call them something different. Likewise a polish fellow in one of my current circles does the same (though I don't know any of his wider social network so don't know if this simpler name is used more generally).

It may be a regional thing (partly because some languages use sounds like "clicks" that we don't, so have difficulty replicating): I've encountered numerous people from the middle & far East and they haven't done this.

Yes I agree this is common for folks who live in the country long term. But I wonder, for tourists though? And a tourist going to a country with a non-Indo European language?

It’s hard for me to imagine an Aloysius adopting a Chinese name while visiting China for a few days say. Would he use a derived nickname like Loy? I wonder.

I don't make up an entirely new name, but I do mispronounce my own name differently in different countries to make life easier for everybody. I also know several person that either uses their middle names or shortened versions of their 'real' name when traveling in English speaking countries.

White, British here. Name has syllables that aren't expressed in Turkic alphabets, so in Turkey and parts of the middle east it's sometimes easier for people to call me Selim or Said instead of Steve.

If you're spending proper time somewhere it makes sense to make it easier for people to communicate with you. If you don't they'll just use a name they can say to refer to you anyway.

> store greeters

This must have been Walmart. I always figured they had greeters because the small town Protestant church from my childhood had greeters.

The Church had doormen since the beginning, in the West the office of the doorman was the lowest of the Minor Orders until when Paul VI reformed Lower Orders in 1972.

Not surprising that the Temple of Mammon also has doormen. Heh.

Happened to me in one of those definitely hipsterish places, I told them no and that it was bizzare, then barista told me: "all-right I'll call you Joe". My guess is that he already had a couple of John Does waiting or what.

UK comedian Dave Gorman did a section on this: he claims that his coffee shop, I assume Starbucks, stopped doing a particular drink he liked - maybe caramel macchiato? - so he heard someone in front ask for that drink, then said his name was "caramel macchiato" just to mess with them. They'd call the order as "caramel macchiato" and, he seemingly hoped, get trouble from the other customers who had been refused that drink ... cute.

Aside: I always assumed the whole 'spell your name wrong' thing that Starbucks did was a marketing thing - they certainly got a lot of social media posts out of it!

> I always assumed the whole 'spell your name wrong' thing that Starbucks did was a marketing thing - they certainly got a lot of social media posts out of it!

Not everything is a conspiracy. Take the average starbucks barista, add in a shop full of customers expecting the line to move quickly, and you end up with a "This looks good enough, fuck it" attitude to writing the name on the cup. Customers that get upset about their name being spelled wrong really need to relax.

I think this solution from Dave Gorman is perfect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erTaEeTRHDE&feature=youtu.be...

Just tell them your name is Big Dick. They always bring your order immediately by foot without name calling.

That's American business culture. You are expected to be fake happy.

It is exhausting.

To be fair to the article writer, I too write for non-technical audiences with the idea that they are sitting next to me and we are having a friendly conversation. It helps the writer's block.

I fight this fake happiness with every fiber of my being by being polite, professional and genuinely happy when something actually makes me happy. Otherwise perfectly content being perfectly content :)

Faking it as another person said is exhausting and draining and I ain't got time for that.

These opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer, the bottled water industry, and certainly not the cat sitting behind me.

While friendliness and happiness can be positive, I think in sales it's often emotional warfare, for example with door-to-door sales. A vacuum cleaner salesman will try to manufacture a personal connection with strategic taps on the shoulder, asking about the kids/grandkids and the spouse, but ultimately this is so that rejection becomes emotionally difficult for the untrained and unprepared customer.

I see these emails the same way as I see cheesy, slimy door-to-door vacuum cleaner salespeople.

There's a difference in intent which isn't obvious from the atonal text medium. Humans are pretty good at spotting fake in person. Thus the desire to shake a hand and look in the eye. Over email, I think many people have developed a decent sense for it, but it's much harder to distinguish the two.

> Humans are pretty good at spotting fake in person

I doubt it. People can be really really talented at being convincing but fake.

Define "pretty good" how you'd like, but to me both statements can be true.

Aren't you expected to be fake happy in all portions of American culture? I am American so cannot meaningfully comment on other cultures, but it I suppose it could be true for every culture as well.

People just like being around happy people.

Yep. We say "too polite to be honest" but "too friendly to be honest" works for me too.

None of our opinions matter though. We are not the target market usually. If the change in tone drives more business then it works.

Now you could make the argument that ethically this mimicry (I like that term you used) is morally wrong.

Its interesting because when you go to a coffee shop and they act friendly and helpful we like it and dont think about if they genuinely are our friends.

I think if the tone is paired with overall user friendly practices by the company (for example not charging me at the end of a free trial) then the tone is appreciated.

Coffee shop employees can act overly friendly but never say things like "So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now...", instead they use very short sentences and almost all of them have an utilitarian purpose like asking about your order; and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

and if you entered it means you already decided to purchase something there unlike e.g. being approached by a sales person on a sidewalk or getting a sales email.

Until you start getting incessantly upsold to a 'vente' or upsold to add a bagel.

I thought a friendly "no, that's okay, thank you" and a smile was enough but there was once a national brand franchise coffee shop that badgered me enough during the checkout experience, and on frequent enough visits when I'd get off the train and walk in for a cup of joe along the way to the office that I stopped going.

"I'm just trying to help you get a deal on your coffee".

Friendly, polite, chipper...probably pressured by a GM to upsell but I feel once a customer has politely turned down an upsell, maybe one more "are you sure?" and then after that just give a person some grace and let them buy what they've asked for.

Agreed. Some of the examples were cringe worthy.

Since the user is receiving an email they have shown some intent. To continue the example: its the barista being nice and suggesting add ons with a big tip jar right in front.

Now, this is also not the only strategy out there, even for the same group of users. Before committing to a strategy like this you should do user research to understand your users, run A?B tests, and make sure it plugs into your overall brand strategy.

IMHO a business that puts the business first will always come off as fake and unattractive to users (so companies will succeed until a competitor comes along who treats them better).

A business that puts its users first and business goals as secondary to that, thrive and when the business shows a value and its actually backed up with past actions, its effective.

Could you give a counter example of a well written, successful mass mail in your eyes that you loved to read?

The last mass email I received that was successful (got me to do something) I didn't actually read. The subject line was something like "50% off sale through the weekend" which was literally the only information I needed.

Is there such a thing? Either I go out of my way for something or I don't. An email is just annoying.

I just assumed this was an American thing; as a Brit, I find it so cringey it almost hurts, and I'm embarrassed on their behalf.

I wonder actually, if anyone here customises their emails based on the mark's home region?

It's not uniquely American, its bog-standard "startup trying to establish a parasocial relationship".

As American, unless it's in-person, and contextually appropriate, I always get real pod-people vibes when I get messages like this from my employer.

I recently picked up a book written in this style. It's been nails on a chalkboard for me.

I think the big issue is that it attempts to conform to the structure of a casual conversation, while eschewing established norms for casually written textual content.

I know what a comment on the internet looks like, or an IM chat, and that's roughly what a casual email should look like.

Writing a 'proper' email, and peppering in smarmy sidebars just feels sleazy, reduces the information density of the text, and makes me cringe enough to put whatever I'm reading on the backburner.

Us nerdy engineers hate this stuff no matter where we're from. But from what I can gather at places I've worked at, most customers are neutral to positive about it. Some REALLY like it, believe it or not.

Tech companies are often stupid, but not THAT stupid. Most of the strategies in this article do improve open and conversion rate.

Agreed. If they wanted HN conversions the title would be 'Lessons learned from onboarding emails written in Rust'

One of the things I love about working with FOSS is getting to know the humans behind it. And some of the technologies and services I care most about are those where I understand the people behind them and share their values.

Lines like the first one of those two don't work with me at all; they're targeting an audience that isn't me, and they do very much provoke the "uh-huh, what are you selling" reaction.

But I do want to see the humans and the humanity in a business. I do want to see a face and a personality and a set of values, rather than just noreply@example.com. If I share those values, I'm going to be much more enthusiastic about the business, and if I don't, I may be less so.

It's possible to create a cookie-cutter talking-about-the-weather-and-the-pandemic pseudo-personality that's kinda uncanny-valley human-ish, but doesn't take any chances. But that's not going to create that same resonance.

So the question then becomes, do you want to be faceless or pseudo-faceless and try to appeal to everyone, or do you want to be yourself, stop hiding the fact that your business has humans in it, and appeal very strongly to people who care about what you care about?

I do not think this is ‘American thing’. I think this is unique for ‘hipster start ups’ (not sure how to define them, but I can recognize one when I see one).

For me, messages like this resonate like ‘we are cool and do not use us if you need us to run your business’.

I think these kind of lines only resonates within marketing people. At the end of the day, they are trying to sell palabra, that should be another platform for white-hat spamming everybody could live without; for sending the kind of emails that (for a developer) has a time-to-live in the inbox equal to the time it takes to drag the mouse to the delete button.

I think the tone of your communications has to hit a middle ground because I also have a sort of visceral reaction to emails that are too formal:

Dear sir, According to your previous request please refer to the following link to access your download.

Our team thanks you for your kind attention.

Yours warmly, blah blah blah

Somewhere in the (subjective) middle is an email that reads like you know i am a non-litigious human but not your best buddy.

Good points in here, but I disagree about using a person's name as the From address. If I'm getting an email from Notion, I want it to show up as "From: Notion" in my inbox, not "From: Ivan". I have several companies that do this and I never know who the email is from, which adds some cognitive friction I don't need when triaging my inbox. You can put your name in the subject line if you want.

Especially with all the phishing emails going around.

this is an interesting point. I think the email address matters if you expect people to answer. In the superhuman example, I know the CEO isn't sending me those emails, but I'm more likely to reply if I have a question. Palabra's onboarding emails come from my personal email address and many people reply with questions directly to me, which really helped us get immediate feedback

Since the article is specifically about onboarding, it might not be that bad. But chances are, I'm going to forget your name about 5 minutes after this introduction, so getting future emails with your name will just confuse me.

Right. Further to this, I consider it spammy when the same organisation uses a range of different From addresses in its mailings. I have unsubscribed from lists for this triage-hostile behaviour.

I see it as the exact opposite. If organization sends me marketing from marketing@ and order details from orders@, I easily have a way to quickly delete or classify marketing@ as spam. I can't do that if they send everything from the same email.

Yeah, but what if they send you marketing from Ivan, and also Sara and John?

    from:(organization) -from:(orders@organization)

Select all, mark as spam, delete.

I despise people names, takes me forever to figure out who it is. I feel tricked into spending time reading into the email to figure it out.

I personally strongly agree, but I want to point out that HN is not a remotely representative sample of email users.

Study marketing a bit, and you'll find loads of things that email power users loathe that still get an overall very positive response from the general public.

Know your userbase. Cater to them, not some random people on the internet with strong opinions.

By "positive response", are you saying that human "from" names yield a higher click-through rate?

Yes, it does. It is widely thought to be true and certainly matches my experience at statistical significance.

Keep in mind the adage "you get what you measure". If you optimize for CTR, you are not necessarily optimizing for user satisfaction/loyalty.

Case in point: Netflix's auto-play feature used to drive me bonkers, so much that I would try other streaming services first. How could they think this feature was a good idea? The only plausible explanation I've heard is that they were optimizing for user engagement. Users click around more to prevent the video from auto playing.

You are critiquing your own question, which I was answering directly.

What I said also applies to any other metric, including (for example) income generation.

That, and feedback that they genuinely enjoyed things that the rest of us hate.

Microsoft heard from hundreds of users who were heartbroken when Clippy was removed from Microsoft Word.

This wouldn't be so bad if popular UIs like gmail weren't so opposed to displaying email addresses in an email client. In many places they display exclusively the name. It's very confusing, especially if the people you email have strange names for their contacts, which then get displayed in your client.

This for be too: a personal name that I don't recognise is not unlikely to get your message discussed and deleted as junk if I'm scanning my mail in a rush. That and emoji in the subject line (which I assume is designed to make you stand out, but to me grates more then ALL CAPS).

But I'm a grumpy old techie, how I see such things is going to differ to the general populous, so maybe a technique that puts me off gets more positive attention from more then enough others that losing me is worth it.

To add to the points others have made: If I see an email with a name in the title I don't recognize, I instantly think it is spam.

Please do not do this, it neither helps with your credibility nor does it help to build a "connection". I want to know where this email is coming from, and if I have signed up at Spotify, I expect to recieve my emails from Spotify, not Tom whoever at Spotify.

I really dislike emails that claim to come from a person but obviously come from an automated system - I find it remarkably dishonest.

Edit: I don't mind if I think the person is even vaguely aware I exist. But an email claiming to be from an executive of some huge company saying how happy they are that I have signed up doesn't fall into that category.

To me, if it's a 'real person' but an automated system it's even more dishonest.

The message is not coming from them.

I know it's not particularly disingenuous - it's just 'marketing' but at the same time it really triggers my 'Orwellian Dystopia' concerns about the completely impersonal future where relationships are utterly commoditized and we lose the ability to distinguish between man and machine.

In fact, the overly familiar tone of messages those that 'try to hard' to lack protocol bother me as well.

A 'corporation' using the language of 'friendship' is ridiculous. Sadly, I think this will go on as we love to think that 'someone who uses more casual language with us must be on more familiar terms'.

Frankly, I'd rather go back to proper titles. Mr. Ms. whatever.

"I don't know you, you are not my friend, you cannot be familiar with me, don't tell me jokes or help me 'chillax'" is what I feel like saying.

Also the odds that Ivan at Notion is using "mail.notion.so" .... umm no.

Why? It's just a matter of time and scale. It's impossible to email thousands of people a personalized message.

I still see it as an email from that person, assuming they wrote the template themselves. I would also expect to be able to reply directly to that person if I wanted to, though.

> I always feel awkward when I don’t know who is writing on the other side. Is it the CEO? Someone from Sales? Is it a super intelligent baby?

Why would someone feel awkward? It's from neither of those. It's automated so I think it's awkward and misleading to use a name.

Well, someone wrote the email. It didn't write itself.

They didn't write it to you, they wrote it to all new customers, it's misleading.

Interesting point there. Does the same happen to you with smaller or earlier companies? I wouldn't trust Tom from Spotify is a real person, but some companies have founders sending and replying to those emails themselves. A good practice I saw from another onboarding sequence was Apollo.io's first email. It was from a person who told me they would be my point of contact if I needed anything from the company. I know it's automated, but I personally though it was much better than receiving something from support@apollo or onboarding@apollo. It makes it easier for me to reach out if I have something to say

I does not make a difference, at least from my point of view.

I think those personal emails are warranted if my first contact with a company was human, like I reached out and contacted someone from the sales team.

But "personal" responses to an obviously automated process like signup is just dishonest. If the founder responds to support requests - fine. Send me a personal response once I have a support request, but not as a signup confirmation.

I think the difference is less on small or big company, but wether it’s an open topic or not.

You don’t want a password reset confirmation mail from Andre, or in this case a simple account creation notification from Tom.

If it’s a full onboarding email where you are invited to have questions and interact further, sure, why not, assuming all following mails will be from Tom as well. Otherwise the mail having personality is just noise and abusing people’s social behavior.

I feel the same with mails addressing me on a first name basis. It’s skating on very thin ice, and I hate most companies doing it.

The first time I got an email from "Ivan" or the "Tom" from so and so company, I opened and read it. However, a couple lines in, I realized it was an automated email and it went straight to the trash. I don't understand how it helps make a better connection when you aren't really connecting with a real person.

Maybe I am getting old and I am not the target audience for these types of strategies but it really turns me off. I feel it takes away the value from actual email.

These emails are minimally styled HTML emails rather than "plain text" (in the original email text/plain sense). If there are links using normal text (rather than just autolinked URLs) or a logo, it's HTML – so deliverability or privacy arguments based around being "plain text" don't entirely hold up.

Now, do I think there are accessibility and privacy benefits to be had by sending truly plain text email? Absolutely. No open trackers possible, no potential for HTML related vulnerabilities, no dangerous elements to filter..

In an ideal world, I would like to write plain Markdown and send an email off like that, with conversion to HTML happening in the background. A suitable Thunderbird addon for this [1] seems abandoned. Formatting HTML is a real struggle for me in Thunderbird's WYSIWYG editor. On the other hand, using plain-text lacks in readability (lists, short links instead of full URLs, headers, quotes, ...).

[1]: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/markd...

It's more for newsletters than normal day to day email but Swizec Teller (a regular here) made https://techletter.app/ which may be of use to some with Markdown to email needs. It even drags in tweets, code, and so forth and renders it without you doing anything.

I've been using "Markdown Here" for the past few years and live in this ideal world already. It's great, you should come visit. :)

+1 for Markdown-Here. It works well enough for me despite it being abandoned.

The link in my comment is to "Markdown Here" as a Thunderbird addon, but it is not compatible with recent Thunderbirds.

I wish this became a standard - plain text is great, but sometimes you do want style and formatting, and HTML mail is beyond horrible to get working across clients (yes, I know there are a few well known templates, but still).

I think the problem is that HTML and CSS are now so big, and people use such a range of device sizes, that writing clients to display things accurately and consistently is very hard. Markdown sounds perfect to fill the gap between HTML and plain text.

The conversion should happen in the receiving client. That way it can be configured to the tastes of the person reading it and it would make pre-processed in other ways easier. Plus its backward compatible with plain test clients.

I disagree with the premise of the article:

“Every SaaS company must start their onboarding sequences with a welcome message that is sent when a user joins the platform. This is a must by now, since everyone who signs up will expect some sort of confirmation of their transaction.”

These emails invariably waste my time. They repeat what the website already told me when I signed up. If I sign up for your SaaS, I expect your site to tell me what I need to know about what I can and should do next. I don’t want an email.

Hum... As an example of what the article calls "everyone", I do expect that email.

I will not read it, just mark it read and archive. It is not the contents that are important, what is important is that your email is set correctly, and receiving the service's emails without problems. So, any future issue can be solved over email.

You have a point there. But haven't they already sent you the confirmation email?

The welcome email in this context is the confirmation email.

I think the article's author didn't even think about separated onboarding and confirmation emails. He's just stating that you can use the confirmation one for onboarding too.

I have seen those separated emails. I agree that they add nothing, and I imagine their conversion is much lower than a single email (they don't bother me, I'll just ignore another message). I do agree that onboarding is best done on-channel, but adding an extra link on the email you are sending anyway can only help.

I agree with this. The welcome or confirmation email is a transactional email -- I don't really read it (I usually mark as read too -- takes 1 sec), but I expect it to be there.

(This is distinct from an onboarding email. I don't need onboarding emails. Some site combine confirmation + onboarding into a single email -- that's ok with me.)

It's a searchable historical record that I once signed up for something under a certain username. Also, it's important for password recovery and such (not a best practice to be sure, but not all sites support 2FA).

Amen. It's just marketing bullet points / emotional statements about the product and so on.

I just signed up. I want to use the thing, give me some tips to get started and do something productive quickly, not a link burred under marketing, straight up spell them out in the email.

When you need to track down your username months later it's nice to have that confirmation you can find later. It does not hurt to give your customers a searchable database of transactions and such.

Yeah, I don't think it needs to be long and full of salesy stuff, though.

Thank you for signing up for Foo, the best place to do Bar. Your username is X. You can login at URL, and contact us at email, support page, or phone number. Our mailing address, just in case.

oktnxbye

I agree. I hate those messages. All the info to use a tool should be in the tool itself. Period.

"UI is like a joke, if you have to explain it, it doesn't work"

Some sort of email is absolutely necessary though. Preferably confirmation before creating the account, but I know of several that do this instead of confirmation - because someone else used my email address.

Yes, the conventional pattern seems to be a short email confirming your address and your intention to sign up, followed by the longer “onboarding” email after you confirm. Some commenters here are saying that these are the same thing and that I’m wrong. But it’s the onboarding email that I’m saying is superfluous, not the confirmation email.

I also don't want an email.

Not because of the 1 confirmation/onboarding email you (the SaaS) just sent me, but because you simply can't help yourself. You and I both know more shiit is coming very soon.

But I get it. If I provide an email address and don't get a confirmation email within 8 seconds I assume that either (1) I made a typo or (2) your platform is running on some bargain-barrel servers (and frankly I'm questioning my decision to sign up - i mean what kind of operation...).

Anyway, I found an easy solution to this annoyance (I think we all have): Create an email account dedicated to SaaS sign-ups.

I don't want to hear from "Ivan". If you send template emails while pretending they're personal, that will come off as dishonest.

If you use emoji in your communications, I will think you're not very professional.

These emails tend to end up in my spam folder.

Your first point is a personal bugbear. Its worst form is when the tone of the email is personal (first name in title, photo of said person, signed off by said person and bonues points for graphic of hand written signature), but it comes from a no-reply address.

I once received one of these after I was mistakedly billed too much for a product. The person involved had a C suite type role at an ISP. After a bit of searching, I found their personal work email address and forwarded my reply directly to that. It got a more or less instant response, roping someone in to help me and I was phoned twice by an obsequious rep afterwards to make sure I was satisfied with the outcome.

All I wanted was a normal email address I could reply to and expect a response.

> but it comes from a no-reply address.

I consider that an antipattern in and of itself.

Unless you have a truly abysmal average CLV, replies should be directed to a system that first filters out (and acts on) bounce messages, simple unsubscribe requests, and obvious spam, then dumps everything else into a ticketing system.

Exposing an avenue of communication (which is what email fundamentally is) then trying to pretend that it doesn't exist is just obnoxious.

The problem with everyone doing some of these tips is that I now just ignore all emails that appear to be from people instead because I don’t ever believe it’s from a real person, so unless I’m expecting an email from someone I won’t open these anymore and I just skim the subject. Not sure if people outside of the web community do this too, but probably only a matter of time if not.

Not just you. It’s a recipe for having your emails deleted without opening.

I largely do the same. Mixpanel uses this technique right now. I do not think Cassie is actually trying to reach me about webinars but if you are Cassie, send me a whats up so I know.

I still think trying to look like a real person probably makes me pay more attention. This definitely works if there is any "real" interaction with that person in the onboarding.

I see it as part of the arms race where people find channels or signals for communications they actually care about, then marketers discover they can get more engagement using them, and vomit their noise all over it.

The problem is that the "personal e-mail" signal can be faked cheaply as they have discovered.

I kind of wish e-mail worked such that anyone who isn't in my contact list has to pay me to send me an e-mail. I'm not sure what the right amount is, maybe $1.

EDIT: It's also a kind of tragedy of the commons. If you're the first marketer to fake the signal it will work very well. Once everyone does it, congratulations, you've ruined it for everyone, including people who are not faking it.

I caution the use of emoji, I've seen so many stack overflow job posts with memey use of emojis and it just makes me cringe and I find it hard to take the company seriously.

Why can't I just disable emoji in email subjects in gmail? I'd definitely like to.

If settle for just being able to disable animated emoji in the subject line.

(I was shocked the first time I got spam that started playing animations before I opened it.)

I never thought I'd see the lack of unicode support in my terminal as a feature...

Emojis in subject line reliably increase open rate in my experience. Also others report the same:

https://www.outreach.io/blog/will-emojis-increase-reply-rate...

Maybe SO emails go over the top though

How much did they increase your open rate?

The linked report actually indicates a decrease in replies.

  Combined across all seven test variations, we saw a 42% decline in reply rate when the subject line featured emojis.

Tbh I've never optimized for reply rate so this could have been true for me as well. Generally selling dtc. Open rate and sales increased reliably 10-15%. Haven't done any comparable email marketing in two years so things may have changed since then and obviously my anecdata may not be true for you.

I have never received any important email with emoji in the subject. Actually, I find them so unprofessional that I send them straight to spam.

Good point. If someone sends you valuable information, he don't have to try to steal your attention with such cheap tricks.

Counterpoint: eBay order updates use emoji in the subject. I don’t necessarily like it, but it could be considered important email.

I don't use eBay, so I don't know how these mails looks, but I bet they treat it as a marketing opportunity.

Not just unprofessional, actual spam is the only place I've ever seen this. It's the clearest signal to me to delete without reading.

Who on Earth think onboadrding mail is a good idea? It's junk mail and nobody reads it. Never place there any important information - most users completely ignore them.

The only mail I expect is email address confirmation.

If I buy a product it is not usefull to me. If I add a user in my org they are golden when done right. It becomes one less thing i need to demo and train a new hire right now before they can be productive.

In this thread: lots of grumpy people forgetting that if you’re on HN you are weird and not representative

I email 10,000+ engineers 3x+ per week. Individually they’re all grumpy and ugh about email. En masse, only 0.01% of them unsubscribe and 24%+ read the emails. Many even email back saying how wonderful they are.

And yes adding emojis to both subjects and emails themselves helps. The open and engagement rates improve.

Including your name in the email gets some complaints, but open and engagement rates improve.

Sending lots of [relevant] email gets some complaints, but open and engagement rates improve.

At the end of the day it’s all about brand. Are you trying to look corporate bland or personal and quirky? What works depends on your target market. I wouldn’t send emojis to 50 year old bank execs. But talking to 20 and 30 year old engineers? You bet

Totally agree here, would also add that adding value to each email sent is actually the most important part. Subject lines, emojis and images improve read rates. Value is what makes people actually stay around

> spam 3x+ per week

> 0.01% unsub rate

no way

Mail clients do pretty good spam filtering these days.

I was typing a comment but you said it best - this is yet another HN thread where people brag about how different they are and how these strategies suck when they are the way to go in the real world.

I run a SAAS and still personally (non-automated) send a welcome /check-in/onboard email to every single signup. I've sent a 1000+ in the last year.

I try to make them really personalized. Like if your website is acmewidgets.com - I'll put "Acme Widget Help?" as the subject.

My own takeaways:

1. Plain Text for sure

2. Super short - my standard sort of email is now about 3 sentences.

3. Ask a question - in my case there's a couple of driving reasons to sign up so I try and make sure they're doing ok.

Even with all of the above I still maybe am only getting a 30% response rate.

It's interesting, I read your comment and thought your non-automated emails sounded like a time waster for you and the recipient.

Then I saw that you have a Security SAAS and instantly felt different. I would love knowing there was a human I could connect with easily at your company. Definitely a smart move on your part.

30% is really, really high for responses to an onboarding email. Manually sending out each one seems like a ton of work, though. I hope you have high customer LTV.

This is exactly what I do to. I get around a 15% response rate, which I'd thought was pretty good before reading your 30% - though TBH I've no idea what might be expected?

My customers are software engineers. The reply rate is abysmal. Sigh.

I don't see any data in the article to backup these "lessons learned." Seems like you just chose to write whatever you think makes a good marketing email without any data.

> Emojis in the subject (use with caution)

The only emojis I see in subject lines occur in emails in the spam box

What is the point of an "onboarding" email by the way? If you signed up on a website, can't that website show this info instead?

Receiving an email I didn't ask for (other than functional ones like verification, pdf receipt, ...) after signing up for a service also is spam to me. Especially if they come with some delay, or it start to become multiple ones

Is that not so for other people?

As I skimmed this I thought about reading text on my phone. When there is no formatting, the text flows pretty well. There aren't obnoxious colors or flashy imagery and the phone's dark mode gets respected. So, in our increasingly mobile-centric life, I think that HTML-less or minimal-HTML is probably a better reading experience.

That said, most people probably don't sit down to read text in emails most of the time, especially from a business.

Perhaps I'm showing my age here, but what the heck is 'onboarding'?

It's the introduction you give new people. Welcome them "on board".

"New potential customers," I guess. I'm familiar with onboarding as a term for what you do to new hires and was quite confused by this article until I figured out it's about marketing emails.

Thanks, both - it sounded to me too like something to do with new hires, but that didn't make a lot of sense to me in terms of a newsletter.

It's primarily used in the context of reaching out to users who just signed up for a service.

After they're signed up/subscribed, you send an "onboarding" email with general information on how to get started using the service, and encouraging them to do things that affect whatever KPIs your boss cares about.

They can be genuinely helpful for tools that have a steep learning curve, either by serving as an entry point into the documentation or by providing contact information for support.

Otherwise, at best they serve as a reminder in case you get distracted before you finish setting up your account.

I immediately delete + unsubscribe & sometimes report as spam any onboarding emails I get. If your product is so difficult to use that you have to keep giving me hints every week you have a problem.

I don't mind being auto subscribed if the only emails I get are major updates on the product itself, as long as these are not a weekly thing.

> It’s flattering to receive a direct message from a co-founder, it also gives the impression of commitment from the very roots of the company.

Really? Most people don't realize that the email can be configured to appear to be from anyone and the co-founder was not actually personally involved in sending it to you? Or is the suggestion it has a psychological effect despite knowing it's kind of artificial? Could be. Always just strikes me as kind of fake and manipulative, but i may not be typical.

Now, if I replied, and got a personalized response from the co-founder, that might see like flattering commitment. Until/unless I found out it wasn't from the cofounder at all , just someone signing their name.

While on the topic of onboarding emails and how the read focuses around early stage company development, what I would like to also see is a breakdown of lessons learned with SMTP services and how to approach for an early stage company.

Anyone have any advice/recommendations/suggestions?

Use a service with an API instead of SMTP directly. I like AWS SES (even if you don't use their hosting) as it is easy to integrate, fast and extremely cheap (10ct for 1k mails).

we started with Mailgun and moving to Amazon SES. We actually created Palabra to not have to deal with those services directly. If you want to try our third party tool instead of handling them yourself let me know

Please DO NOT send me emails with “a name and a face” if it isn’t from that person manually. I see through it and it makes me think you think I’m stupid and easy to manipulate.

Please. For the love of god. Just start being honest with your customers.

Since 'pau_alcala is here, what does this mean?

> "Zest win the contest of better subjects seding thing like: "

It just doesn't parse for me. Perhaps:

> "Zest wins the contest for better subjects, such as:"

But even that sounds a little weird?

it does sound weird, we'll look into that. Thanks!

This is the most oddly specific lesson to learn.

Are there personal email clients that send plain text instead of html emails? Perhaps the iOS mail app is one of the only ones?

You can configure most of them to send plain text, yes. It's probably not the default of course, but even Outlook can do it (most of the time).

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