Why isn't anyone responding to my Welcome Email?
We have recently launched our chrome extension and web app (https://insiite.com) and have had a couple of hundred signups. However, once people are on the platform they do not seem to be doing very much.
We have experimented with a Welcome Email (see below) to try and reach out to people, but have not had a single response. We definitely need to speak with people to try and understand what is going on, but without getting any responses to our welcome email, not really sure how to assess the situation.
What do you think might be happening and how should we get to the bottom of this?
Thanks , Andy :)
Hey $firstName!
It's brilliant to have you onboard as a user of Insiite, the tool that we built for researchers, writers and journalists like you.
We built Insiite to make organizing research as simple as possible.
BUT!
Everyone has different ways of working, so it would be brilliant to understand what you would like to achieve with Insiite. Just reply to this email and we can start talking.
Thanks,
Andy
Founder, Insiite
@andy_roddam The question is a bit generic and not even a question if you think about it.
You don't want to make people think about coming up with a topic to talk to you about, pre-define it.
"Just reply to this email and we can start talking", again too generic.
3 ideas:
--
Hi [name],
My name is [your name] - I'm [company name]'s CEO (and I handle customer support). Thanks for checking us out!
We're still a super small company, so I was hoping you'd share a little bit about what you are hoping to get out of [company name]. What are you planning to use it for? Where did you hear about us? Any thoughts so far on what you like and what you wish for?
Also, I noticed you've [some action they performed on your platform]. How'd that go? Did it come in below/at/above your expectations?
Thanks - please let me know what I can do to help you get the most out of [company name]!
[your name]
--
Best of luck with it, let us know how it goes 👍
👍
You're right! I suppose I was just implying that I'd like them to let me know what they were hoping to achieve and did not really ask a direct question.
I like the format of your template, some elements of it are similar to the one that I used when I was doing customer development (which actually got pretty high response rates).
With regards to suggesting that I had noticed some action that they had taken on the app, at the moment there tend to be two scenarios within the first hour of signing up: 1) signs up --> installs the extension --> clips a webpage; 2) signs up --> disappears.
In the second scenario, would you suggest turning this into a 'install the extension' CTA? Although, I had been apprehensive about having too many things in this initial email.
I should also get something like Mixpanel setup to try and get a fuller picture of what might be happening after that initial signup.
I'll update after some more experiments.
Thanks for such a great response :)
There you go, a good data point on what worked. It's just a matter of replicating it then. 🙂
I see two options here. They either don't like what they see, or they don't know how to use it.
Once they sign up and NOT do anything with the product, maybe a follow-up email in a few days can be nice to ask them what was the reason they didn't use it and if you can help them in any way.
It's a great way to either get some feedback on what they didn't like or a little push to use the platform, also a great chance to provide good customer support by helping them use the platform if they are struggling.
Hope this helps!
P.S. When mentioning the platform in this post, you can link it to both increases the chance of someone checking it out, as well as make it easier for someone to see it, in order to provide feedback.
Great advice, this will be my focus for the next couple of weeks. I'll try and reach out to the users and try and understand why they haven't done anything. I was thinking of also including a link to a demo video to try and give them some idea of where the value in the tool might be or simply suggesting how they can use it.
I've added the link to the initial post. https://insiite.com
Thanks for the help :)
Great idea.
The link in the post works now 👍 but the one above has a typo 😉
That's what happens when I continually get up at 4am ;)
;)
This is a good start, but I think your email has way too many questions. I had something like that previously and got a better response rate by asking a single question that could get the conversation started.
I will definitely have to try and experiment with that. Not sure whether the amount of signups would create enough data to be significant at the moment though.
I might have to just try and feel it out at this point.
Also worth a test 👍
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So many great answers here. I'll give you my $0.2 cents.
Since I run plainflow.com I might be able to give some unique insights from hundreds of welcome email I see every day.
It's hard to send a message that works very well for everybody. This is especially true if you have different users personas that might use your product.
This is a simple workflow that a few companies are using in Plainflow.
https://i.imgur.com/BAsvIEf.png
It lets you send a welcome email based on the new user's job role. You can either get that information from Clearbit or collecting that data during your onboarding and send that via API.
Never use HTML emails if you're aiming to get responses. Write short sentences in short emails.
Send emails that could be read in less than 45secs.
if you're aiming to get responses, then you need to ask a clear-straight to the point question. Never use "Why" always use "What".
Ie. Never write "Why did you signup?" always write "What you made you signup?"
Be clear and tell them that this is an automated email. But also be explicit and say you're a real human being and if they'll reply then you'll be the one responding to them.
Some great advice here thanks. I don't think job role will really apply to Insiite at this stage as the tool is targeted as more of a personal productivity tool for individuals. However, your comment has got me thinking as to whether there is some vital piece of information that I need to segregate with.
At what point would you suggest letting them know that this is an automated email. Do you have an example of this?
Time, I get so many automated emails a day.
That is so so true. Although, I need to try and do better than ZERO!! What kind of response rate for a Welcome Email is normal?
Most people aren't willing to give feedback because 1. it's going to force them to say unflattering things 2. there's no upside for them and a potential downside e.g. the person they're responding to could potentially start arguing with them.
Most of the responses here cover almost everything (personalize, passive tracking, ...). What's missing? In your message asking for feedback you can add, "You don't have to be nice". That should slightly lessen the friction.
That's a really good idea.
Good suggestion, I think I'll add that
Couple of questions:
1 - how soon do you send this email? I notice that I get so many "founder welcome emails" 1 hour after I sign up...which just isn't enough time for me to want to talk to anybody.
2 - what's the subject?
Beyond those two questions, you're making me (the recipient) do the intellectual work of figuring out what I might want to talk to you about. How could a conversation about what I'm working on actually help me in some way. Are you really going to custom tailor the experience to me?
After Amy launched JFS, I built this follow up sequence that has been VERY successful for us. It can definitely be improved, but it's designed to catch someone at a point where they actually have something useful to share instead of vaguely "starting the conversation."
Two great points! Currently, the email goes out after 3 hours and 36 mins (don't ask why). I had been getting ready to change it to the following day. I read your article, 75% is a really high open rate! How was the response rate to your questions?
It is unlikely that any responses to our initial email are going to be related the product experience. However as Julian suggested above, it will be worth trying to figure out why someone has come to us and where they have come from and I suppose this makes sense closer to signup.
I think you're dead right about not making it too intellectually strenuous for the recipient.
You could try making it more personal.
Even do a few minutes research about each user, and try to understand what they're planning to use the product for:
Hey $firstName -
It's brilliant to have you onboard as a user of Insiite!
We're a new product offering, and are onboarding all new customers personally, to ensure a smooth experience.
I noticed $somethingParticularAboutTheUser. $someQuestionTheUserProbablyWantsHelpWith?
Cheers,
Andy
I've encountered this exact problem the last couple months, and the above approach has resulted in several fruitful conversations.
Obviously this approach won't scale. But that's fine. At this point any conversations would be a great start.
This is probably non-material... but you use the word "brilliant" in your opening line. If your users are North American, this sounds a bit "off" (I moved from Canada to the UK, and the "brilliant" usage took me some time to get comfortable with).
North American, the use of brilliant certinatly threw me off as well.
Hahahaha! That's going to hurt as 'brilliant' is a word I use a lot. Will have to watch that one. :(
For researching the user, I have an email address and first name (and maybe a second name). Using the email address in Google, it seems that I can probably find a social profile about 20% of the time. What kind of information do you think is most useful?
Should I keep the personalisation relatively basic? Could over personalisation appear creepy?
You mentioned that this approach has worked well for you. How did you use the personalisation in your emails? Would you suggest something like the following? -- "I see from your LinkedIn profile that you are a journalist, do you intend to use Insiite to help you research your articles?"
After some time in the UK -- do you use 'brilliant' too now. I was in China and Taiwan for 15 years and had lots of North American friends, I certainly found it amuzing when I found hat I had picked up the occasional colloqial quirk -- 'brilliant' not being one of them!
Agree that over personalisation could come off creepy.
In my case there are a few ways to configure the product, so my email centres around which use case they're aiming for, and what I can do to help with getting started with that use case.
I think your journalist example would be worth trying. But perhaps follow it up with one additional remark about wanting to improve the product for journalists, and would love their input.
@Zeke's remark above about asking a small number of questions (i.e. one or two tops) is an important one.
Haha I do use brilliant a bit now. Forced at the moment, as with many other British colloquialisms, but trying to immerse myself ;)
I've been trying a new template similar to the one suggested by Julian above. Still early days yet, so I'm trying to figure how to perhaps create a sequence of emails that are activated by different actions from within the app. Not sure how this is going to look at the moment though.
Where in the UK are you?
I'm in London
I have a Chrome extension that has a big bold "click here to give feedback and sign up for updates" button that's always in a sidebar that's visible. Users will know it's there and use it when they have feedback they want to give. The button goes to a Google Form questionnaire where all the questions are optional and there's a general comment section.
Around 1% of users send feedback which sounds low but I imagine many users will never give feedback without a strong incentive. I've collected a lot of valuable comments this way so maybe worth a shot. I've emailed everyone back that had questions or mentioned issues as well and the vast majority of the time had a rewarding dialogue out of it.
Anyway, the general idea is:
have a highly visible way to give feedback within your app that the user keeps seeing
give an incentive to send feedback (e.g. you get signed-up for updates)
have several optional focused questions to tease out their thoughts instead of asking one general question
I've now installed ReAmaze in the web-app which allows for asynchronous chats and also access to some onboarding docs [still to be created :( ].
Actually, you're quite right, already had a good number of people pick up the conversation this way somewhere between 2 and 3% at the moment. Not sure whether this will get better or worse with time. I'm in the process of thinking how to integrate with google-analytics so that I can see whether more people click on this but then don't do anything. Also thinking that once i start to create some support docs, be good to see which ones people are looking at and then spend more time focussing on that.
How did you get those couple hundred signups?
Mixture of cold outreach on LinkedIn, Twitter and personal network.
For LinkedIn, I realized that if my profile was much more about the product than about me. If people accepted my contact request knowing that I was selling a product, then they would be much likely to respond well to a cold outreach message. The numbers I have seen are as follows: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyroddam/)
Contact requests ~ 20%
Cold outreach response ~ 40%
For Twitter, I have a personal handle (https://twitter.com/andy_roddam) and a product handle (https://twitter.com/insiite). Initially, I noticed if I followed 100 people, about 30 would follow back and 5 would click through to take a look at Insiite. However, the best activity I have seen through twitter has been from those that I am interacting with and chatting about stuff in general.
As for the actual signup rate, it would seem that we are roundabout 10% for new visitors.
Don't really know what the benchmarks for these should be ??
Interesting thanks
If people feel it's automated the chances they will respond will go down significantly. And it's really hard to make an automated email not sound automated.
It would be an interesting experiment. You should send some literally personal emails and see if it makes a difference. Obviously not something that's sustainable long term.
Product looks great, nice job! FYI, the svg's on the pricing sheet did not show for me. I'm running Safari on a Mac. Good luck!
I AM A ROBOT! Hahaha, what I mean is -- before I got the system to automatically send out this email, I had sent it out manually. It started with me just kind of remembering what I had written in the last email, to me then just copy and pasting everytime a new signup happened, to me then copy and pasting a template.
I had been trying to hold off on going fully automated, but it seemed that I had done everything but fully automate it with absolutely no success.
I couldn't figure out how to personalize the email as all I knew was the person's first name (or username) and their email address. I knew whether they had saved a web-page or not and that was about it. Either way, I seemed to reach for the canned response each time. Maybe, that's just lack of experience.
Thanks for the heads-up, I'll take a look at those SVGs.
To me, there doesn't seem to be enough of an incentive for a user to want to reply.
And too much hard-work trying to figure out what to do!
Are you tracking their actions with session recording & replay? What about heatmaps?
If not, then how are you tracking their activity and behavior? During what steps or process do they leave - what is blocking them?
The welcome email is simple and good enough, though I'd reword some things:
Which one am I? The researcher, the writer or the journalist? If you can't/don't know which I am specifically to only mention the one, remove this generic claim. It doesn't serve any purpose for me.
Same, generic claim. Tie this into your question, make it relevant to the question.
e.g. Are you looking to figure out if your platform actually makes organizing research easier? If so, why aren't you asking me?
"would be brilliant to", "would like to", "just reply to"
There are no calls to action. Make your questions more specific: define up to 3 questions and ask them in a short list with bullet points. Be direct with me, show me you want me (personally) to do something.
Treat it like regular email. Do you include "Just reply to this email" in every email you send, or do you usually assume your recipient knows how email works?
And make sure you send the email via your own name (e.g. "Andy Roddam andy.roddam@site.com"), no info@, support@ or similar.
If all of the above doesn't help at all, then consider adding a step for signup where you already talk to them or already ask a handful of questions to get them involved in the feedback process while they sign up. Make the experience personalized, every feedback they give should add to their user experience. That'll get them to invest early on and make it much easier to ask for more feedback later on. (Though I suspect it'll reduce total signups - but you need to choose what your primary goal is.)
You are right! I do not write personal emails like this. It seems that I have struggled with placing the recipient in mind and therefore crafted these generic claims.
Julian's template above seems to chime with most of your comments.
Tracking user actions is something that I'm just starting to think about. I have briefly looked into Mixpanel, but have not gone any further than that. What do you recommend?
For tracking, Hotjar is free for up to 2000 pageviews per day: https://www.hotjar.com/pricing
And you're right, Julian's template looks great. Use it! :)
Cool, thanks :)
I can recommend you to read this great article https://remail.io/write-welcome-email-new-client-best-samples/ about Welcome Email, hope, that you'll find out what's the problem
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I really like this simple short response. There have been a few people here who have suggested to keep it simple, so starting to rethink my approach there a little.
The email title is 'Hi, this is Andy from Insiite!'.
I'm andy_roddam on Twitter. Will send you a quick message :)
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Wow cool, thanks for the checking it out. Originally, I had really liked the idea of a user being able to make a project public, especially as this could really help the tool grow. Calling public projects 'Insiites' is a really good idea :)
The greatest issue that I have been concerned with, is the copyright issues for users publicly sharing archived web pages of the articles that they have clipped. Sharing just the URL as it seems Refind does feels slightly off-target for what Insiite is best at.
It's something really useful to keep thinking about though.