Lessons learned from onboarding emails with no HTML styling
I really hate these cheesy lines that are "excellent" according to the article, like:- "You had enough fluff marketing content and so did we. So the absofreakinlutely BEST thing you could do right now..."- "Writing this from my couch at home, hoping to find you safe and well at yours. It's been a busy summer! I wanted to share more about out 2.9 release..."No, just no. Leave me alone, we aren't friends, you did not write this to me personally. When I read such text I am mentally bracing myself and putting up my defenses because we are at war. You are fighting in the arms race in the attention economy at my expense. This kind of email is like mimicry in the animal kingdom. You are faking the appearance of a mail from a friend when it's a business. It's nasty, parasitic and off-putting.But maybe it's a cultural difference. Perhaps American culture is more receptive to this. But in most European cultures  politeness requires a certain distance and being overly enthusiastically friendly makes us immediately think you are a scammer (in real life too). So pay attention to local cultural customs because these kinds of fake-cheerful-friendly-informal mails don't work everywhere.