Comments on: How Our Product Update Emails Get a 68% Response Rate

By: Karthik K

Karthik K — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 08:17:19 +0000

This is great @alex_turnbull:disqus. Have you guys considered a tool like https://hellonext.co to collect, organize and vote on feature requests?

By: Jens Gössing

Jens Gössing — Sat, 27 Aug 2016 20:19:00 +0000

hey, why don’t you build in part of this functionallity into groove? let me attache slave tickets to a feature request master ticket and then send the canned reply as soon as the feature has been released to ALL the slave tickets in a bulk action….

By: Wilco

Wilco — Thu, 19 May 2016 14:25:04 +0000

I always read stuff about how to grow the $ 100.000 to $ 200.000. Not the startup advice for a real startup. A startup always starts with $ 0 revenue. How did you find your first customers? And having them to pay your bill, to grow from $ 0 to a steady few $ (at least to cover the basic expenses). Can you share something about that?

By: Erica Xu

Erica Xu — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:20:46 +0000

Alex, this is great, we were doing exactly the same thing earlier, with the exact same tool (Trello)! I can confirm how effective this is – many users replied. I didn’t do the math, but 68% response rate doesn’t sound crazy at all!

However, I also found that Trello is inefficient in lots of ways. For example, our software has tons of components, and if you only write down what the feature requests or bug report IS, it’s hard to go back to find it later if you want to add another email address or ticket to it, since you may have forgotten how you originally described it. An alternative is to tag everything, but that’s hard too and it’s easy to forget. Another problem: keeping this list in sync with our internal bug tracker is a lot of work.

Our solution is to use our own software, Dynalist (https://dynalist.io), to organize all these bug reports and feature requests by components. For example, we first divide everything to “static pages” and “Dynalist app”. Under “Dynalist app”, there are search, styling, import/export, you name it. Under “search”, there’s per document search, file finder, and search everywhere. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for, and better yet, this is a centralized place for tracking bugs and notifying users. Each bug will also have its steps to reproduce, and we’ll add notes under it after we investigate. No need to sync your Trello board with GitHub any more (or whichever development platform you guys are on)!

Dynalist also has a handy feature that allows you to link to anywhere. In this use case, I would simply link to this bug in my todo list if I’m fixing this bug next. All the details of the bug and who to notify is just a click away. I’m loving the system sooo much and now I can finally sleep at night knowing that ALL feature requests and bug reports are tracked neatly in Dynalist.

By: Christopher Gimmer

Christopher Gimmer — Fri, 13 May 2016 00:11:25 +0000

This is genius. We track feature requests in Trello but never attached the individual people to the Trello cards. I always had to track down which people wanted which feature request after the fact. Thanks for the tip!

By: Matthew Wall

Matthew Wall — Thu, 12 May 2016 22:24:26 +0000

Alex, you can take this to the next level by using MailChimp lists. Basically, you create a new list for every feature request you would want to notify users about. Then whenever you get an email about the feature tag it in Groove. That tag will need to be linked to Mailchimp using Zapier. If the tag exists then add the user to the related MailChimp list. You’ll now have a MailChimp list with everyone that requested that feature. Next you can then link the Trello board item to Mailchimp via Zapier to automatically send out a pre-made campaign announcing the feature to everyone in the related list. Trigger the MailChimp campaign when the trello item is moved to a certain stage(complete).

Boom, automatic personalized emails for each feature completed.

By: Jonathan Peacock

Jonathan Peacock — Thu, 12 May 2016 20:39:16 +0000

We literally started doing this in the last couple of weeks, using Intercom’s “tags”. This is particularly nice because you can start to see some more in-depth data on the segment of customers that want a particular feature.

Good to hear this is working well for you Alex. Only wish we had done this sooner!

By: Julien

Julien — Thu, 12 May 2016 20:24:39 +0000

Hi Alex. I’m not fully convinced!
To how many people are you sending this personal email? i.e. how many people have requested the feature? If that’s a lot, you will spend a lot of time and if not, the 68% will apply to only a small subset of your base. And you keep the 10% for the larger part.
Well, spending time worth it if you get happy and loyal customers who will recommend your product. In that sense, I agree. But your title “How Our Product Update Emails Get a 68% Response Rate” is a bit over sold as it really apply to a minor part of your customers. Nevertheless I do understand the interest of such a title to make people like me to read the article.

By: Siddharth Shekhawat

Siddharth Shekhawat — Thu, 12 May 2016 18:13:50 +0000

This is Genius Alex. The approach is very simple and easy to implement in any organization. We have been struggling too with feature update emails, we never know what & when it becomes spammy. But this approach is Golden. Will definitely give it a try. Thanks for writing.

By: Malcolm Ocean

Malcolm Ocean — Thu, 12 May 2016 16:26:13 +0000

One additional tip I'll recommend, to make automated emails feel more personal... I've found that broadcasting feature release announcements is a great way to get old Complice users to come try the app again (either people who tried it and didn't convert, or those who signed up but never tried). But... it can be annoying to get an email if you're in the later category. Probably everyone here has had the experience of getting an email like "guess what, CoolApp3000 has custom templates now!" and you're like "WTF is CoolApp3000?" and nowhere does the email explain that context (which is of course so obvious to the people at the company). So I built a custom feature newsletter mailer for my app that connects with the user database, and includes a precise blurb on the user's relationship to the app. Towards the start of the message, I write $WHATSCOMPLICE, and then this is replaced with a message before sending. If they've used the app for a long time and are still active, the message doesn't even show up. Here are the messages: Just signed up, never used:

"(In case you've forgotten: Complice is the productivity app you signed up for " + signupAgo + " and haven't used yet. You're still on your trial.)"

Signed up a long time ago, never used:

"(In case you've forgotten: Complice is the productivity app you signed up for " + signupAgo + " but never used. Better late than never?)"

Used only a little bit, >40 days ago:

"(In case you've forgotten: Complice is the productivity app you signed up for " + signupAgo + " but haven't used recently.)"

Used a lot, stopped >40 days ago: "(In case you've forgotten: Complice is the productivity app you were using until " + usageAgo + " .)" Used a little bit, stopped >20 days ago: "(Just a reminder: Complice is the productivity app you were using until " + usageAgo + " .)" Used more, stopped >20 days ago: "(Just a reminder: Complice is the productivity app you were using a bunch last month.)" The signupAgo and usageAgo variables will say things like "last week" or "a few months ago" or "nearly a year ago", so they feel very natural. I've had several users reply saying they appreciated it.

By: Brandon Landis

Brandon Landis — Thu, 12 May 2016 16:12:33 +0000

Is it bad if we just copy your entire customer nurturing process? 😛

We’ve had such a great response from the personal question type welcome email that we’d be fools to not do this (I actually had a separate tag setup in Groove to help us note which people we should followup with at a certain time, so I may tweak the system but it’s really a great idea and one that’s passed my mind before – great to see it validated here!).