I was thinking about life-cycle marketing for Mr. Social the other day and was trying to decide which auto-responder to go with and what their feature sets were.
The idea of using an auto-responder for life-cycle marketing for web apps has been touted to be one of the most important tools for user engagement and retention.
But, it does not sit well with me.
Mainly because, it is TOO automated and makes me loose touch with my users.
Then it hit me, all I needed was a prompt and not complete automation.
Mr. Social now has too many users for me to personally look at the database and email people based on where they are at with the app.
Mainly, I need prompts for the following situations with every user…
1. When a new user signs up - Remind me to say hello, while telling me as much as possible about who they are
2. When a user has stopped coming back to the app - let me know so I can ask them what the issue is
3. When a user is mulling over upgrading (by going to our upgrade page) ask them if they have any doubts about paying us
4. When a user has not used a particular feature - let me know so I can email them and tell them how to use it
5. When the user’s trial is about to expire - let me know so I can remind them to upgrade or help them with extend their trial
and so on…
So I send myself a simple email when each of these things happen in the app…
Here is an example, I get this email when a new user signs up.
and even the email to the user is pre-filled so if I am on the road it requires very little editing to make it personal for that user.
All I have to do is click on “send” in the previous email I get this pre-filled in my compose screen…
I find that this way I tend to be more conscious of who is using the app and what theirs needs are and has helped me start a lot of conversations that a regular impersonal auto-responder will never do for me.
P.S. This portion of the code is now so efficient that I am thinking of releasing it as a product so other web app owners can get this going quickly.
Please leave a comment below if you are interested and we will be in touch.