Increasing User Engagement in Emails | Hacker News Reader

Increasing User Engagement in Emails

estromberg.com

76 pointsestromberg20 comments

I may be completely off-base but has anyone tried emails with NO images vs emails with images, and see what the difference is? Whenever I get an email from a company initially, I see blank images, especially on top of the fold, and in the body. That turns me off, so I just delete the email, or glance over it and delete it... It's just plain ugly.

However, if I am able to start reading the content right away, that gives me a chance to click through. Now, of course some emails need images, like Groupon. But I'm talking about unnecessary stuff like your huge logo.. I don't need to see that in every single email you send.

A good email template would utilize alt tags and have as much plain text as possible without relying solely on images for the content of the email.

Rule 0: If you want my eyeballs, don't stealth subscribe me to anything. Just because I bought one widget from you does _not_ mean I want to start getting recurring e-mails from you. Violate this, even once, and you've lost my business.

Sure, I am the same, but the problem is that for one "you" there is a hundred that aren't you, so your lost business will be well offset by the business of others. For them it's just a number game.

Hmm, this is an interesting business opportunity. I feel the same, but let me prod it further. I suspect the core problem isn't that you're emailing me - it's that you're doing so out of a focus on you, not me.

Hear me out: when I go through the email-signup hullabaloo on a website, it's usually because I really want something from there. It's probably a one time thing, and I'll likely forget about your site and brand momentarily after I receive the object of my attention. When you email me two weeks down the road with some "exciting features" or "website overhaul" or "biweekly coleslaw update of random things on your website" -- I still don't care about you or your website, and now you've annoyed me like a dinner party guest that blabs on about themselves after everyone's body language has made it clear they're not listening or caring.

What I do still slightly care about is the problem you've helped me solve two weeks ago. I imagine a neat way to engage me would be: "Hey, you downloaded these Visio stencils from our website, but check it out - we've just updated our stencils library with these slightly older pieces of equipment. If you've got something old kicking around, it's worth to have a look, instead of drawing it yourself: link. Oh, and by the way, if you want a template and some advice on modelling a building, check out this(link) post on our forums. UsernameXYZ has worked in several large corporations and has modelled enterprise-scale networks. 801 of our users thought it was good advice - it's probably worth a read!"

There is a reason people sign up for service to use it once, and that ought to be cleverly exploited to increase their engagement. The clever bit needn't be unscalable either - the majority of one-time users likely fit into several common scenarios (log in to download something, log in to post something, etc) and it wouldn't be hard to come up with a set of custom messages, each tailored for the particular scenario. That wouldn't cover every one-time use, but I imagine it'd be a fair stab at it.

Do you think this would be a good way to engage you, or would it still fall into the "annoying -> immediately delete from inbox" category?

You're spot on. If you make it about "what's in it for the reader or prospective customer", their receptivity and reaction to it will be much better. That is in stark contrast to "here's why we're great" emails which are the norm.

The ultimate user of this is Amazon who recommend you stuff based on what you've looked at or bought.

I think TylerE maybe in the vocal minority here (no disrespect TylerE) but the type of customized "what's in it for you" email your talking about works. And many users who are looking to make their lives easier actually may appreciate it.

My gut reaction is is that that's even worse. This may be a personal bias against "reaction" e-mails.

One thing that might help is to keep things VERY brief. If I see a wall of text I instantly go for the delete key. One or two sentences that DON'T look like some canned e-mail I _might_ scan.

But don't waste my time. My time is precious to me, your store (probably) isn't. Imagine if each e-mail you sent to me cost $10 to send. Do you still send that e-mail? If not, don't waste my time.

I also find behavioral targeting very creepy, so that'd be a turn off.

I agree with you and at our company we try to follow that as much as we can, but we can see other companies doing this kind of stuff and succeeding with it. They are able to generate massive email lists and most of people will never complain or report spam so... It really makes me wonder.

Yeah but in all fairness you already bought my widget.

But you've lost any chance of me becoming the one of the 10% of your customers that generates 90% of your sales.

they wouldn't care because u're in the 1% of customers who would care about these things.

I don't know how practical this is, but I'd be impressed as all get-out with any company that sends marketing emails to which replies are individually read and answered knowledgeably in case I want to follow up something in them. An autogenerated reply that I should "simply" visit their web page seems to imply that they consider their time more valuable than mine. Is this another case where they've done the math and concluded that it would be too labor intensive for them to do the right thing, or are people in corporate marketing departments genuinely unaware of the impression they're making? I'd be grateful to anyone on HN in a position to satisfy my curiosity about this question.

Everybody I've talked to feels that faded overlays (#5 on this list) are super annoying from a user experience perspective. And I agree.

Everybody I've talked to says their data shows faded overlays are VERY effective at increasing email subscriber signups. And I agree based on my data.

Weird, isn't it? Heh.

If the average user was sparked to initiative by their annoyance, we wouldn't have the DMV.

So, so true.

Sort of, but it's a selection bias at both ends.

Almost everyone I talk to on a regular basis uses OS X or Linux and isn't a fan of Microsoft. Yet Windows 7 is still the most popular operating system out there.

I suspect the people you like to talk to are mostly informed, intelligent people who find UI gimmicks a pain in the butt. Yet the majority of people are not like that, so the real world statistics play out differently. If I had to guess :-)

Same. It seems possible explanations are that 1) It is the vocal minority that are annoyed by these or 2) While perhaps effective once for capturing an email address, if you did a longitudinal study you'd find it results in less engagement over time (I remember reading somewhere that slow webpage speeds don't effect engagement during a given session, but rather cause people to not come back over time).

#2 not substantiated by evidence. Sorry, specifics NDAed.

I bet there is a significant portion of inexperienced users who are annoyed by those and then fill in their emails just to get it out of the way.

I'm curious to know if faded overlays increase bounce rate. I suppose if overall conversion rates are higher it can't affect things too much.

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