Startup mistakes: Not emailing your users
One of the most important mistakes that affects the bouncing rate of users for new services is not to send them a confirmation email.
First of all you need to validate any email address that your users use for registering an account. This is important for 2 reasons:
- Helps those users that misspell their address
- Prevents bot attacks (on one of my sites I had a bot that created 10k accounts in 2h)
Emailing your users, gives them a reminder of your service. I consider myself an early adopter and I create accounts on various services and than I tend to forget them. If I don’t have an email from you in the first 5min, your chances to be forgotten are very high.
Also, periodically email your users, especially those with none to less activity to remind them how useful your service is and if you had added new features. There is no golden rule on how often you have to email them but from a few tests you will be able to figure it out.
4 Responses to “Startup mistakes: Not emailing your users”
By Daniel on Jan 18, 2008 | Reply
typo: “early adOpter”
By Razvan Antonescu on Jan 18, 2008 | Reply
thanks
fixed
By Daniel on Jan 18, 2008 | Reply
asking for an email address at registration is annoying for 95% of visitors; not asking is equally a drawback, for the case when the user forgots his password;
By Razvan Antonescu on Feb 12, 2008 | Reply
I usually recommend to my clients to use as login email addresses instead of IDs. This way you prevent users forgetting their IDs and you can communicate with them.