Say the right thing at the right time
User communication is hard. Especially at scale. Whenever we’re mailing a large user group, the anxiety in the office matches that of a labour ward. Nervous pacing, constant questioning. It’s the one time I consider taking up smoking. The worry isn’t that our users won’t like the message. The message is rarely bad news. The worry is that once we click Send there is no turning back. If six thousand people don’t understand what we mean when we say”We’re now transferring customers to our new plan.“, we’re gonna hear about it. Six. Thousand. Times.
Anatomy of a message
When sending out a message to users, I ask myself these questions …
- Recipient – Who are you saying it to? Business users or Freelancers? Groups or individuals?
- Content – What do you want the recipient to know now that they didn’t before?
- Action – What do you want them to do about it?
- Tone – How are you going to say it to them? Is it a light hearted message, or a sober serious tone?
- Time – When will you say it? Do you want to get them during work hours? Would you rather they were idly browsing on a Sunday?
- Consistency – How often will you say it? Will you keep telling them until they do what you want, or is this a gentle reminder?
- Location – Where will you say it? In an email? On Twitter? In your App? If so, what page?
I said previously context is king for communication. Designers focus on the right words and the right style, but there is far less written about the right context. For example, here’s Delta airlines messages to me from the past two months…
Swing and a miss. Better yet, this is the only message I did open…
The problem with blanket messaging is that it leaves you with dirty data. Someone in Delta is probably running around wondering why their frequent fliers aren’t taking up their exciting hotel partnerships, when in reality it’s the messaging that’s all wrong. It’s the bad messaging that leads me to unsubscribe, or worse silently filter out Delta emails. Wrong message, wrong time, wrong tone, wrong place.
An exercise
Let’s say as a business you want to get your customers engaging with your app more often outside the office. To achieve this you’ve developed a mobile version of your app. The zero points thing to do here is an email shot, all users, right now, with a link to the mobile site. The problem is that some will receive it on holidays. Some will receive when they’re at their desk. Some will receive it while using the website on their phone. Some will receive it, who haven’t used your site in years. Mailchimp will tell you you had a 4.43% click-through rate and you’ll be disappointed as this was a huge effort. The more naïve boss will say “5%? That’s great, Just sent 19 more of them and we’re sorted“. The question is, can you do something better than this?
Some ideas
- We could split the groups by those who’ve logged in from mobile before, and those who haven’t. That would let us write a better message to each of them.
- We could leave a permanent message in the app for anyone using it on a mobile device so they know what they’re missing?
- We could email everyone after they next log out, so we know that they’ve recently used the app, and it will be fresh in their minds.
- We could write a hilarious message, poking fun at other companies, and include a funny graphic. That’ll get people talking which helps spread the word.
All of these are options that go beyond the default “Let’s just mail everyone loads” action that most companies pick. CDBaby, for example, went for the funny approach, and 13,200 people felt the need to blog about them. Google tell certain types of users about certain types of features, for example if you receive a lot of email you’ll be offered new types of inboxes. If you receive very little email you’ll be told how you can do voice or IM chat instead. The right message for the right person. The point being, it’s rare that a blanket “Dear Customer” email is the right approach for the message.
Twitter mobile
Twitter tell me about their mobile app at the exact right time. Twitter want me to use their app “on the move”, so they tell me about it just as I’m leaving. They could even go one better and only show this to those who they know have yet to install it.
Campfire/Basecamp/Highrise lets that opportunity slide and instead chooses to mail me.
Context is king
This idea of planning your app messaging is similar to how Dan Saffer uses Functional Cartography to locate features in an app. There is a right time and place for every message from your app. As Seth Godin pointed out “More people get engaged in Paris in the springtime than on the 7 train in Queens.” If your message matters, then the time, place and tone you say it in matter equally. After all, you wouldn’t drop $20,000 on a ring and then propose while drunk in a public toilet.
Follow destraynor & contrast on Twitter. Discuss this post on Hacker News and remember to use Intercom for sending better messages in the future. This is the type of thing I’ll be speaking about at CS Forum this September.