Giuliano Iacobelli writes:
[U]sing Intercom and triggering 4,500 automatic email with a personal message for a specific segment of user and triggered on specific conditions: 1% replied.
Same logic, but only 110 raw text email with the same kind of personal message sent from my personal Gmail account: in less than 24 hours later I got 26 replies and established conversation ready to take off. 23% of replies. That's quite a good improvement, isn't it?
It's easy to lose sight of the point of regular customer conversations, which don't have to be over scheduled calls or meetings. Email automation and niceties can seem helpful at first, but not if they get in the way of actual learning.
Guiliano describes how he learned from more customers over email, just by emailing his users manually and in plain-text. The human touch goes a long way.