Prefinery

Every Tuesday morning I pull a list of all users who have created a new account between 7 and 14 days ago and send them a welcome email.  The goal is to collect their first impression feedback.

When possible, I personalize the email.  If I know their name, I include it.  If I know their company or product name, I’ll check it out and include a comment.  I don’t use a mass email service — the welcome email is hand-crafted and sent from my own account.

Over the last month I have experimented with two different email templates …

Draft A - Short and Sweet

SUBJECT:  How are you liking Prefinery?

Hi there,

Can I answer any questions about your new Prefinery account?  How can I help make your beta more successful?

Just drop me an email if there’s anything I can do to help you launch your product!  I’d also love to hear your feedback on Prefinery, which you can give by completing a very brief, 8 question survey:

http://survey.io/survey/4e4ea

Cheers,
Justin

Justin Britten
Founder, Prefinery
http://www.prefinery.com

Draft B - Relate & Appeal to the Human Desire to Help

SUBJECT:  Please Help by Giving Feedback on Prefinery

Hello,

Thank you for signing up for an account on Prefinery!
What do you think so far?  Can I answer any questions?

I know that you’re incredibly busy, but it would be a
huge help to me if you could take a quick minute to pass
along your feedback. I’m bootstrapping this start-up and
working hard to make Prefinery the best software for
launching a private beta.

Please respond to this email directly, or feel free to give
feedback anonymously by taking this very brief, 8 question
survey:

http://survey.io/survey/4e4ea

I look forward to hearing from you!

Cheers,
Justin

Justin Britten
Founder, Prefinery
http://www.prefinery.com

Follow @prefinery on Twitter - http://twitter.com/prefinery

I’ve been doing this for just over one month, and have a response rate of 10%.  Both direct email replies and survey completions end up about equal, at approximately 10% each.

My sample size isn’t big enough for me to draw any conclusions from the A/B test just yet — I’ll update this post once the winner is known.  Winner aside, I’m quite pleased with the feedback I’m getting from my new users!