Send Emails that You Would Want to Receive
What’s Broadcast? And how does it compare to MailChimp, Constant Contact, or other email marketing services?
This is a question we received recently from a longtime Highrise customer.
Highrise is a disciple of 37signals, now known as Basecamp. 37signals is known for eating their own dog food. Scratching their own itch. Or whatever other metaphor you want to use.
37signals believes in using the products that they build.
At Highrise, our small team believes in doing the same.
Why is that?
We believe in putting ourselves in the same situations as someone that uses our product. We believe in being our own customer.
Because when we use our own product, we know if it’s good or not. Our best work comes from using Highrise.
For example, we use Highrise for customer support and to hire new members of our team.
Our team, and a bunch of others, also use Highrise to send an email to a group of people. We call it Broadcast.
So, how do we use Broadcast?
A big way we use Broadcast is to message people that just joined Highrise to help them get started. Our CEO Nathan sends Broadcast emails every week to new customers.
Here’s an example of one of our Broadcast messages:
This message is in plain-text. There isn’t a whole lot of formatting or HTML needed. It’s a short, personal, and timely message welcoming you to Highrise. It includes a few useful links to resources and lets you know there is a group of humans behind the product.
So, what is Broadcast built to do?
First, let’s define what Broadcast isn’t built to do.
It’s not for sending a blast of email to a group of people you don’t know or a list of emails you bought somewhere. You don’t like it when you receive those emails, and we don’t permit them being sent through us.
Broadcast is conversational. It’s for sending email to a group of people who really want to hear from you. People you do business with. Or people who’ve opted in to receive messages from you.
Broadcast is custom but it’s not fancy. We don’t believe all those fancy templates and abilities actually serve you well to get your email accomplished.
Folks are numb to the gloss of email newsletters. Those extra steps in our competitors just get in your way and give you room to make mistakes. We keep things simple and constrained, but not inadequate.
Maybe you’re a public relations firm that wants to make each message personal and invite your friends and colleagues to personal events.
Or maybe you’re a real estate agent that wants to follow-up with 15 or 20 people that recently attended an open house.
Or maybe you build software and want to welcome your new customers with a personal message.
All 3 are examples of where Broadcast can be useful. And powerful. Our team averages almost a 60% open rate on all welcome emails using Broadcast. Lots of customers even reply to them, and start conversations with our support team.
That’s how Broadcast is different.
Too much of email marketing these days is misguided. Let’s blast a few thousand people that may or may not have asked us to email them in the past. Even worse, let’s buy a list of addresses to see what we can squeeze out of it.
It’s not 1998. It’s 2016, and people get tons of email every day. Most of it, they don’t even want. Especially, the blasts.
We built Broadcast with a different intention. It’s to start a conversation and get to know a small group of people. It’s to have more meaningful and personal interactions.
We made Broadcast to help you send emails you would want to receive.
