Keeping a personal touch while emailing customers - some best practices
Here's a quick breakdown of some tips we've used in our business. Thanks to the Intercom, UserFox, Mixpanel Engage and Customer.io teams for the tips. With these folks you can send your users personalized emails and messages, based on each users' specific patterns of activity.
- When users reply, make sure the email goes to a real person, who can respond back.
Nothing sucks more than a user replying to an email generated by you or by your system, and that email bouncing, or going to a noreply@. Or worse, their message actually matters, and no one responds!
More from Peter @ Userfox here
- Personalize as much as possible
This comes from our experience. Users have responded far better when they feel
a. the email came from a real person, andÂ
b. it was meant for them specifically.Â
In practice, this is fairly difficult to automate, but it pays off in spades. Some ways we do this:
- where possible, we check out the user's website or app. Particularly easy if you signed up with your work email address
- we see if they have any other Chat widget or helpdesk/CRM installed (particularly any that we integrate with)Â
- we tell you what we really think - if there's a typo, if you have great design, if you're switching from a competitor - we mention any and all those things because a. they matter, and b. we want you to know that we care that you do well.Â
You CAN automate some things - using first names in the subject line and email, targeting users based on key activities they've just completed, and so on.Â
- Be Proactive - establish trust.
@Brennandunn from Planscope has a great guest post on the Intercom.io Blog. The general thrust of the post is about providing better support than your competition. His point about being proactive though, is to
a. show the user that you personally care about them as an individual, and
b. Â using your data to know when reaching out will matter the most. For example, when users are at high risk of churn, reach out personally to re-engage them, and bolster the relationship, and establish trust.
More on this later - we've been using these tips and some others which we'll share in future posts!!