[Tech] Waking up the sleepers

[Jamie O'Keefe]

This might be a good approach when we start emailing folks from the
email addresses we have in the db or from the announcements:

Waking up the sleepers Matt Sep 27
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/611-waking-up-the-sleepers

Sleepers. They're customers who have free accounts but haven't used
them in a while. They got far enough to sign up and start using your
product. They just never made it over the hump.

We've been thinking about how to wake these sleepers. After all, it's
a lot easier to wake a sleeping customer than win a new one.

A one-time reminder email seems like a good nudge. Something that
reminds these people they signed up, shows them what they're missing,
and offers a path for getting back in the saddle. And a discount or
coupon never hurts.

For example, Jamis tried StumbleUpon once a while back. They recently
sent him this email:

stumbleupon

There's also the option of offering sleepers a treat to wake up.
David, who stopped using NetFlix, recently got a letter from the
company saying "we miss you" and offering a 20% discount on the first
few months.

The goal is to find a nice, positive way to poke inactive account
holders. You could even frame it like this: "Hey, you have data with
us you haven't used. Would you like to delete your account? If not,
here's a deal…"

Of course, it's best to keep pokes like this to a minimum (sometimes
sleeping dogs just want to lie).

Also a good idea: Allow the recipient to cancel/unsubscribe. A lot of
these sleepers are sleepers because they simply don't want to use the
service. It's only fair to give them an easy to way get back to sleep.