it does sound weird, we'll look into that. Thanks!

This is a great insight, our users are mostly american and they are pretty receptive to cheesy lines. I personally smile even though I know it's automated, just appreciate the creativity i guess? But I hadn't really thought about how these would sound for european readers. Will definitely keep that in mind

I'm American and agree with the GP 110%. If I get an email like that, not only do I delete it, but I'm less likely to read your future emails.

I think it is a California-centric "it's all good" vibe. Not all of America has California culture.

California native (east bay) checking in. These fake ass, liposuction, collagen injected carnival exhibit emails are bullshit. You should delete them and the companies from your life.

LOL. Thanks for writing that.

I am American and these kinds of things are hard eye rolls to me

Interesting point there. Does the same happen to you with smaller or earlier companies? I wouldn't trust Tom from Spotify is a real person, but some companies have founders sending and replying to those emails themselves. A good practice I saw from another onboarding sequence was Apollo.io's first email. It was from a person who told me they would be my point of contact if I needed anything from the company. I know it's automated, but I personally though it was much better than receiving something from support@apollo or onboarding@apollo. It makes it easier for me to reach out if I have something to say

I think the difference is less on small or big company, but wether it’s an open topic or not.

You don’t want a password reset confirmation mail from Andre, or in this case a simple account creation notification from Tom.

If it’s a full onboarding email where you are invited to have questions and interact further, sure, why not, assuming all following mails will be from Tom as well. Otherwise the mail having personality is just noise and abusing people’s social behavior.

I feel the same with mails addressing me on a first name basis. It’s skating on very thin ice, and I hate most companies doing it.

I does not make a difference, at least from my point of view.

I think those personal emails are warranted if my first contact with a company was human, like I reached out and contacted someone from the sales team.

But "personal" responses to an obviously automated process like signup is just dishonest. If the founder responds to support requests - fine. Send me a personal response once I have a support request, but not as a signup confirmation.

this is an interesting point. I think the email address matters if you expect people to answer. In the superhuman example, I know the CEO isn't sending me those emails, but I'm more likely to reply if I have a question. Palabra's onboarding emails come from my personal email address and many people reply with questions directly to me, which really helped us get immediate feedback

Since the article is specifically about onboarding, it might not be that bad. But chances are, I'm going to forget your name about 5 minutes after this introduction, so getting future emails with your name will just confuse me.

we started with Mailgun and moving to Amazon SES. We actually created Palabra to not have to deal with those services directly. If you want to try our third party tool instead of handling them yourself let me know

Totally agree here, would also add that adding value to each email sent is actually the most important part. Subject lines, emojis and images improve read rates. Value is what makes people actually stay around

Yes! I was heavily inspired by The Mom Test while writing this, and it's mentioned a bit later on :)

we have similar questions except for the last one, really interesting addition! It takes the conversation from hypotheticals to the product. I'll add something else that worked for us, when they tell us a solution they've tried, we'll dig deep in how they came up with it. That usually gets people talking about the issues they've been having without asking directly

That's a good one (asking about how they came up with their decision). It helps elucidate their purchasing logic and process.

To elaborate on our last question, it's also a tactic used to help potential customers convince themselves to buy something. Hey (the email app) did this in their prelaunch by asking people who wanted to get on their early launch to email them with reasons why they wanted to be on the list. There's a bit of reverse psychology at play here. Cognitive dissonance must be resolved.

I agree on segmentation, but at an early stage it's really hard to figure who your ideal prospects are. We're working towards that after our 1-1 conversations helped us identify who are the people we can provide value for.

Not sure I follow you on job postings, but also agree on domain expertise as an important trait, and think ageism is a big problem in the tech industry

lol totally agree. I quoted The Mom Test in the post because it was incredibly helpful to me