The Makings of a Great Customer Success Email

The dreaded email follow-up from a product you recently started using…Everyone knows that feeling…”Thanks for the email but I’m too busy and I don’t need you to sell me when I’ve barely used your product”…

Well, I normally have those feelings – but as I read through this email from Tori at HubSpot I changed my own mindset.

There are 6 things within this email that turned the tide for me and gave me hope that personalization on top of automation can be great for engagement.

1. Product Usage:

   Tori, in conjunction with the Hubspot product team, could easily understand the parts of the product that our team was leveraging. This information is powerful – Tori, now has a starting point to drive further adoption within our organization and can begin to ask the right questions that can drive expansion.

2. Company Profile:

   Similar to product usage, Tori used information readily available and accessible from our user profiles to make sure that we know they service our industry. Most likely this is a combination of our User Sign Up data with a few quick Google searches. This personalization helps me see that she isn’t just sending a generic email to the masses.

3. Industry Benchmark:

   Every company wants to know, “How am I doing against my competitor or industry average?” Well, Tori helps to address that by bringing in the Alexa ranking. This is a well known metric amongst the marketing community and can provide context to our inbound efforts. While this may not be the most relevant metric for our business, it does show how we have not been leveraging solid SEO practices.

4. Website Recommendation:

   Combining points 1 & 2 from above – this is where going the extra step can make a big difference. She looked at our website and noticed the blog where we’ve been releasing content and asks a question to get us thinking. Up until now, we’ve seen the blog as just a tool to release our opinions into the market. But she opens up a broader question about whether we should try to drive these readers onto our main site for conversion – this is a discussion we’ll be having internally.

5. Easy to Engage:

   After Tori provided me with personalization throughout the body of the email, she closes with an easy way to engage. By clicking the link I can schedule time on her calendar and cut-out the back and forth of booking a meeting. This is a big win for customers who have busy days.

6. Personal Touch:

   With the close of the email, she includes a headshot which humanizes the email and makes this feel authentic.  In a world where we are more connected than ever without ever being face-to-face, this simple step builds trust.

These six elements made the email very useful to me and changed how I think about engagement emails from Hubspot. Each one of these played a role in why I responded to Tori and how our future engagements will go. While I understand that there is still some level of automation involved, the combination of automation and personalization is a scalable way to engage with customers. She did the research, used the tools at her disposal and established the foundation for a partnership that can help both of our businesses be successful.

So, yes I did set up that call and now I’ve got time with Zac, a product specialist,  who will walk us through the platform and new features to understand the true opportunities for our business to take it to the next level.