Hi
What’s a good way to engage new email signups one by one in order to start as many conversations as possible? (manual not automated emails and the goal is learning\customer development not sales).
Thanks for any experience and insights with this!
Current version:
Subject: Thanks
Hi
I wanted to reach out personally and thank you for trying out xxx.
Did you have any questions?
Elisha (Founder)
I am trying to do the same thing at the moment, it’s pretty hard to do if you are expected a mass of signups - what I am trying to do (see simplygrow.io) is make the initial email as personal as possible with some actions in it to get more engagement, in my case I have a google spreadsheet for people to complete if they want to get more involved.
Great question, something that I have struggled with as well, and unfortunately I don’t have a perfect solution either.
I did try adding some personal info about be in there, such as “I’m X, a dad of 2, and lover of remote-controlled airplanes. Just wanted to let you know I’m a real person looking to help you solve Y as much as possible”.
I also tried adding in something like “This is not an automated email - I’m writing this from my personal computer at 5:31pm on Wednesday.”
Neither of those really had any effect, but what has helped is to not ask a question that can be answered with a simple no. Instead phrase your question to make them always have an answer. Example - instead of ‘Did you have any questions?’ try ‘What questions can I help answer?’
I think it’s also important to keep it short, like you have done.
What’s your response rate from the template you have been using above?
Sending the manual “welcome” email a few hours or a day after signing up helps give an impression that it is not automated.
You could try calling them.
I recently started calling trial users to welcome them. This is yielding a ton of info I don’t get over email.
You might also consider adding a question or two on your signup form to help with customer development. You can then reference their answer in your emails and phone calls.
Hey. Yeah that is good advice about keeping the questions short but more open so they cannot be answered with yes and no.
I have very small numbers so statistics are not really relevant right now.
Actually maybe the best is, short, informal tone, and a question that is super easy to answer but has to be answered either way. That was what someone did to me and it worked and then the follow up email asks more interesting things (after getting the “micro commitment”)
Thanks! This is great! So you have a phone field in the signup form? Or you just try to look them up online?
Do you have the phone field as a required field or optional?
Yes, I have an optional phone field in the signup form. It’s surprising how many people fill it out.
Why skype for business?
Comes with Office 365 subscription.
We have been running a little experiment with our email newsletter sign up process.
When people sign up for UPDATES HERE, we ask them a couple of days later if they would like us send them some conference talks that might help them with a specific problem they are having.
When people respond, we then send them a very short personal video using Wistia’s Sopabox plug in that highlights three talks we think are relevant to them. This almost invariably leads to more of a discussion with the subscriber. It has given us a lot of insight into the kind of things people want to know about running a software company so is very helpful AND we have sold two conference tickets as a direct result in the past month.
Wow that is interesting. Asking them what they want but in a practical way not what you might do down the line based on what they say but immediate. Cool. Thanks for sharing!