What Alternatives Are There To Automated Welcome Emails?
"Subject line: Welcome to SaaS App!"
Is there a better way?
Automated welcome emails are effective. When they work, they're a great way to onboard customers and get their feedback. I mean, they're ubiquitous for a reason, right?
Right?
Well I have two problems with them:
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They're annoying — In our app they consistently have a much higher unsubscribe rate than other emails.
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They're often dishonest — They are written to feel personalized but they're actually automated. ("Hi Steve, this is Doug from ___ SaaS app. Just wondering if you have any questions... ")
I don't mean to crap on a welcome emails— especially if I don't have a solution— but I don't think they are perfect.
So can you imagine any alternatives?
Trending on Indie Hackers
ConvertKit does (did?) personalized welcome videos for new customers
If you have a small enough number of people who are signing up, there's no reason you can't do a personalized welcome for them all.
What a great idea.
I just started using Loom a few days— would be the perfect tool :)
Instead of using a welcome email, it would be possible to provide a "useful info" splash page the first time the user logs in.
Giving a brief message like, "Hey, before you get started here is where you can get support & here are our social media links if you are interested" would be a low impact way to get this information in front of the user (and also protect your email reputation).
That's what I'm kind of leaning towards. I might include an optional text input ("what are you using ___ for?") to still get to know what users are hoping to get from our product.
That is a great idea.
You are going to be able to get more input while they are signing up to the site instead of soliciting the user for it later while they are just trying to browse their email.
Another benefit of engaging out of the inbox.
Agree. Ditch the Welcome email. Nobody wants it. At best people tolerate it. Welcome/onboard users in the app. Good luck.
The key is to provide value. The real value of saying "Welcome" is you are creating human connection, a greeting, which is why emails like this feel dishonest and insincere when automated.
If you give your customers tips to get started, a free resource, or provide value in some other way, your customers will be glad you emailed (even automated) rather than resentful.
Try this: personal email from founder + introduce another person from your team.
As patio11 tweeted a while back https://twitter.com/patio11/status/991007296833576960
Oh that's a great idea— thanks for sharing
I would make them sincere:
Great point, that would definitely be more honest!
Never tried this. But depending on your sign-up rate it might be cool to do something totally un-scalable like a short personalised welcome email written manually, based on a quick Google research on the person signing up, his location and other data you might have access to.
I think this is a great idea; especially when starting out. Sending something like a unique welcome video makes the experience so much more personal for people signing up. This is something @8bit does really well and it really makes a difference to put in that small bit of extra effort for your first customers and community members.
this is one of my all-time best ideas. i still do this, even after a decade+ of doing it. the camera gear gets better.
Great suggestion!
Sincere, real, valuable welcome emails work.
Introduce yourself. One sentence why you're working on the problem you're trying to solve.
Let them know where people generally trip up and offer some resources for those issues (if applicable).
Let them know they can give you feedback by replying to the email, ask them if there's anything you can help them with, etc.
I also saw some SaaS doing manual sends on subscriptions, and personally i really appreciate them.
You can tell they have meaning and value to them and I don't mind them only coming in like 4 days later.
I love the idea of personalised messages! I completely agree, the welcome messages are typically boring and written to feel personalised.. Even though everyone can see through it
Ever think of using a messenger chat bot? First they have 80% + open rate compared to emails, which is, huge! Second you got to have an option to talk to you directly if they don't like the bot. You can check https://manychat.com/, I'm workin on one at the moment as we don't have unsubscribes but we don't have crazy interaction as well with our onboarding ><.
Hyperise does such thing, customized e-mails and hole bunch of other things. They're currently running a lifetime deal @ $999 and frankly I wouldn't recommend lifetime deals, there'll be another Saas coming out with the exact same product in a couple months and much better UI.
Take a look:
https://hyperise.com/use-cases#email
We've started automatically inviting signups to shared Slack channels with us. It's unique and helps us get in touch with signups and actually have conversations with them.
We redirect users to an onboarding page the first time they complete the sign in process. It allows us to both welcome them to our product, and explain it a bit more
In the email it could say:
"Hi! I'm a bot, and this is our automated welcome email, to confirm your account"
What's the purpose though? I'm sending a confirmation/welcome email, so the user can click a link to confirm their account.
Otherwise, you don't really need to send a welcome email at all. If the purpose is to just say hi, you could add an onboarding for new users in the app?
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
I really like that. 👍