How Mixmax sends onboarding email

A 7-day series of tutorials, a host of mesmerizing product GIFs, and every email from the founder

Kevan Lee
Aloha — Welcome Emails
5 min readMar 5, 2018

--

Want better email?
See what Mixmax can offer.
Olof will show you.

Mixmax is an email powerup that does a host of pretty rad things: tracking, scheduling, polls, surveys — all done right within your Gmail. Mixmax specializes in email, so I thought they might have some pretty effective ideas about how to run a good onboarding campaign. And they do!

Here was my experience when I began a Mixmax trial last fall.

How often Mixmax sends email to new users

The first 35 days

Total: Ten emails sent, all within the first three weeks

My best guess at Mixmax’s onboarding strategy

Mixmax has one of the most vigorous onboarding campaigns I’ve seen with a lot of emails very early in your experience with the product. It was also an onboarding campaign that was quite easy to follow.

When you join Mixmax, they send you seven tips on how to get the most out of the product.

These seven tips arrive every two days.

Simple as that!

The only variance from this formula is for product announcements; these go out anytime, just not on a day when you’re receiving an onboarding email.

Learnings

  • Mixmax emails are detailed tutorials about the product, complete with easy-to-follow GIFs and instructions
  • They’re all sent from Olof, the co-founder and CEO
  • They’re all plain-text
  • The email subject lines are structured neatly as “Tip x out of 7,” which does a fantastic job of setting expectations and consistency for the recipient.
  • Every tutorial email ends with a big blue button just above sign-off. It’s the only big blue button in the whole email. This is one of my favorite email strategies: Your email should have one job. With this button, it’s very clear what the job of each email is!
  • There were no hard sell emails among the tutorials (Mixmax is a freemium product). The only sales were with the product announcements, which referenced paid plans and demos.
  • Mixmax emails are sent using a combination of Mixmax and Customer.io.

3 onboarding email tips and takeaways from Mixmax

  1. Put your product tutorials into email
  2. Deliver this value early: Within the first 14 days. And often: Every two days.
  3. If you’re explaining how to do something, feel free to write long and use lots of explanatory GIFs (a great alternative to video).

Here are all the onboarding emails (and beyond) that Mixmax sends

Here’s more on each email that I received from Mixmax during those 35 days. Caveat: I’m sure tons has changed and will change with their onboarding emails, so your mileage may vary when you sign up and see for yourself. 😊

First email

Sent minutes after I signed up.

Subject: Welcome to Mixmax!
From: Olof Mathé, hello@mixmax.com

Second email

Sent two days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 1 out of 7: Know who reads your email & when with email tracking
From: Olof Mathé, hello@mixmax.com

Note: The images in this email are beautiful GIFs.

Third email

Sent four days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 2 out of 7: Instantly set up meetings without the back & forth
From: Olof Mathé, hello@mixmax.com

Fourth email

Sent five days after I signed up.

Subject: delegate it
From: Olof from Mixmax, news@mixmax.com

Fifth email

Sent six days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 3 out of 7: Stop retyping that email: save hours with templates
From: Olof Mathé, hello@mixmax.com

Sixth email

Sent eight days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 4 out of 7: Never miss a critical conversation with snooze & reminders
From: Olof Mathé, admin@mixmax.com

Seventh email

Sent 10 days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 5 out of 7: Type faster than ever ✌️
From: Olof Mathé, admin@mixmax.com

Eighth email

Sent 12 days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 6 out of 7: Schedule group events instantly ✔︎
From: Olof Mathé, admin@mixmax.com

Ninth email

Sent 14 days after I signed up.

Subject: Tip 7 out of 7: Email. Made. Awesome.
From: Olof Mathé, hello@mixmax.com

Tenth email

Sent 18 days after I signed up.

Subject: the optimal time
From: Olof Mathé, news@mixmax.com

Your thoughts

If you have some thoughts or questions about Mixmax’s onboarding flow, I’d love to hear them.

  • What do you think of the longform emails?
  • How does seven emails in 14 days feel to you? Too much? Too few? Just right?

Add a response here on Medium.
Highlight any favorite pieces or parts.
Or clap along to help surface this story to others. 👏

Thank you!

Want to see more onboarding email breakdowns? Check out the rest of Season One of the series, featuring onboarding campaigns from …

👉 👉 Intercom ……. Trello ……. Extra.ai ……. Brandless ……. Fullstory ……. Wistia ……. MixMax ……. Grammarly ……. Dribbble ……. Hubspot ……. Pocket ……. Treehouse ……. CBS All Access…….

All available now on Medium.

--

--