Why I send no welcome email
A small product decision that took a year to fully accept.
My product sends no welcome email. It has no drip sequence. It does not ping you a week later asking how things are going. I had to defend this decision to roughly everyone who has ever advised me, and I have stopped defending it because I am now confident it is right.
The reasoning#
The thing I want a new user to do is open the product, not their inbox. A welcome email is a redirect away from the only place the product lives. A follow-up at day seven is a tap on the shoulder for someone who, if the product is working, does not need one.
If the product is not working, an email is not what fixes it.
What I do instead#
The first session is as good as I can make it. The product remembers where you left off. If you do not come back, the absence is information, not a problem to email around.
What I still owe#
Account-related mail. Receipts. Security notices. These are not welcome emails; they are mail the law and good manners require. They go out immediately, plainly, and never as marketing.
What I have learned#
Most of the marketing automation I have seen exists to manage the founder's anxiety about retention, not the user's experience. Removing it left me with cleaner numbers and a calmer week.