[linux-elitists] eMail from web apps

[Andy Bennett]

Hi Elitists,

I'm currently writing a web app for online collaboration
(https://www.knodium.com/ ) and I hoped to solicit your opinions on how
and what eMail we should send to users that choose to supply us with
their eMail address.

What's good or bad about eMails you receive as part of a web app that
you use (for example, eMails from Facebook or Twitter)?

What do you expect from a "welcome eMail"? How about a notification eMail?

Should mails be "on brand" or should they appear to come from a person,
even if that person isn't real?

I guess by "on brand" I mean colourful HTML with images like Twitter or
LinkedIn and by "personal" I mean text/plain and text/html parts where
the text/html part is the kind that an MUA might generate.


I hope that this is not too off topic for this list but I figured that
people here might not only have some strong opinions on the topic but
might be able to offer some actual insights that "normal" people might
be oblivious to.





Regards,
@ndy

-- ***@ashurst.eu.org
http://www.ashurst.eu.org/
0x7EBA75FF

[Don Marti]

Post by Andy Bennett
I'm currently writing a web app for online collaboration
(https://www.knodium.com/ ) and I hoped to solicit your opinions on how
and what eMail we should send to users that choose to supply us with
their eMail address.

If it's a collaboration tool, you can expect that
users will forward some of the email they receive
from it. "Hey, Andy, the collaboration server is
still complaining about too many curse words in the
install guide. Can you take a look at this?"

So, notification email should be small, clean,
and contain a unique URL for the thing being
collaborated about. The URL should not be tied to
a user or session.

Post by Andy Bennett
What's good or bad about eMails you receive as part of a web app that
you use (for example, eMails from Facebook or Twitter)?

The Jira ones are good. The URL is high up and
easy to pick out, and there's enough context to make
it useful.

Post by Andy Bennett
What do you expect from a "welcome eMail"? How about a notification eMail?

Welcome email: persistent URLs for how to recover or
delete my account, or upgrade it.

Notification email: not too big, just the relevant
facts and URL. Consistent headers to facilitate
sorting and filtering.

Post by Andy Bennett
Should mails be "on brand" or should they appear to come from a person,
even if that person isn't real?
I guess by "on brand" I mean colourful HTML with images like Twitter or
LinkedIn and by "personal" I mean text/plain and text/html parts where
the text/html part is the kind that an MUA might generate.

More branding is fine in the welcome email or
weekly opt-in tips and news email. These can
be more personal and might be good to have them
signed by a "personality" who works on the site.
For notifications, though, any extra content is
potentially a problem because somebody might go into
a collaboration frenzy and generate huge quantities
of these while the reat of the team is on a trip with
limited bandwidth.

Post by Andy Bennett
I hope that this is not too off topic for this list but I figured that
people here might not only have some strong opinions on the topic but
might be able to offer some actual insights that "normal" people might
be oblivious to.

Also, RSS feeds plz.

[Peter Lowe]

Post by Andy Bennett
What do you expect from a "welcome eMail"? How about a notification eMail?

...

Post by Andy Bennett
I hope that this is not too off topic for this list but I figured that
people here might not only have some strong opinions on the topic but
might be able to offer some actual insights that "normal" people might
be oblivious to.

There are generally two types of emails sent automatically:
transactional and marketing. Stuff like monthly updates and new feature
emails are marketing; password reminders and subscription notifications
are transactional.

Depending on what content you want to send, the welcome email might be
marketing (ie, introducing / selling new features of your app, promoting
recent highlights or updates, etc.), or it could be transactional
("Thanks for registering, your details are...").

It depends on what you want to do with that welcome email. Personally,
I'd add a "marketing" page to your blog or site, and link to that in the
welcome email - gives people a chance to find out more if they want, or
just ignore it and use your app otherwise. But decide what you want to
do with it first, then figure out what content you want to include.

Marketing emails are generally best sent from a person who is good at
elucidating a point without writing too much (eg, I'm shit at this
without heavy editing - see this email for an example). Mailchimp (and
Ben) are *excellent* at this kind of stuff - see their blog for some
nice examples.

For transactional emails, in addition to Don's comments, I'd also add
that you should check the text-only versions first. Don is pretty spot
on - keep the information clean, useful, easy to access. Just, if you
don't make the text only version *also* easy to access, you risk losing
a small but vocal, and often influential, minority.

One teeensy tiny point to add... I'd perhaps question usage of the
capitalisation of the word "eMail". Are you trying to aim for the mass
market? Because I'm not sure that's an entirely common way of writing
"email".

[Andy Bennett]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips. The ones about the text-only parts are especially good.

For now I think we'll mostly be sending transactional stuff but I'm sure
the pressures of "business" will lead us into "customer lifecycle
management" at some point.

Post by Peter Lowe
One teeensy tiny point to add... I'd perhaps question usage of the
capitalisation of the word "eMail". Are you trying to aim for the mass
market? Because I'm not sure that's an entirely common way of writing
"email".

Sorry. I still spell it like that since I first learnt the word in the
early '90s. At least I don't check it on an iPhone. ;-)


I'm not the only curmudgeon in here, right? ;-)





Regards,
@ndy

[Rick Moen]

Post by Andy Bennett
I'm not the only curmudgeon in here, right? ;-)

Certainly not. However, if you were also a pedant, you'd insist on
'e-mail'. (I've heard of 'email': It's a French and German word for
enamel, and, more rarely, a naturalised word in English meaning the same
thing. Pronounced 'eh-mahh'.)