You Should Be Emailing Your Users From Day One
Today’s post will focus on a few of the support lessons I learned while working on Everblog.us. I consider support as:
- Anything that involves working directly with a user to fix a problem
- Any feature that is not part of the core product. (Authentication, user management, etc.)
Email Your Users At Sign Up!
- Get permission to email the user in the future
- Send the user an email welcoming them to the site
Adding a check box and sending out an email are two very simple things that I should have implemented into the sign-up process. To be honest, these basic features weren’t even on my radar. Due to this oversight I lost an opportunity to start and continue a dialogue with people who want to support my site. I set myself up for various failures by not connecting with my users. The first email I sent to Everblog.us users was to re-authenticate their account after the “Great Evernote Password Reset of 2013”. I was scrambling and didn’t know who to send emails to. To make matters worse I had no idea how they would react to the message or if it would even get through their spam filters. If I would have started having conversations earlier with my user base it wouldn’t have seemed like such a big deal to send out the update in the first place.
Email Your Users Monthly
The first month or so I was a beast, I added features left and right – PDF support, RSS feeds, better notebook management and much more. The only place I announced any of these updates was in the Everblog Blog. It was better than nothing, but only a handful of users took advantage of the new features. In fact, I received a few requests for features that were already implemented from users that were unaware of the updates. If I had a recurring newsletter I am sure the features would have had better adoption and users would be happier.
Keep The Communication Going
Another important thing that I did not do, and will make sure to do next time, is create a forum for the site. It sounds old-school, but I think that it would of made a huge difference in how I managed the relationship with my users. It would have made my life a little easier in terms of answering questions about the site. Plus there is the added potential of crowd sourcing. If I can’t answer a question maybe one of the users can
I want to close out each one of these articles with a few “Startup Protips”
Raul’s Startup Protips
Keep an open dialogue with your users from day one with emails and a forum